Another Thought ...

I have already presented one of the central arguments in my book, the Real Messiah, which demonstrates that Marcus Julius Agrippa might have been St. Mark the original gospel writer - i.e. by the manner in which all reports of a 'Jewish' Mark in the first century period seem to have a fixation on the 'heavenly Torah' viz. the ten utterances which Moses received from Sinai as divine fire.

Let's leave that argument aside and focus instead on the three Marks of earliest Christianity viz.:

(a) Marcion
(b) St. Mark
(c) Marcus the heretic (from Irenaeus' report in Against the Heresies Book 1 Chapter 13f)

Are these figures entirely separate individuals (as scholars like to believe) or are they (as I suggest) three separate traditions associated with the same historical individual?

I have written a lot about (b) and (c) being one and the same person. I will bring over the argument that appears at my other site (therealmessiahbook.blogspot.com). Yet let me observe something else in passing.

I find it particularly intriguing that Clement in to Theodore encourages the denial that Mark was the original author of the Alexandrian secret gospel. I don't know what other scholars make of this emphasis. I don't want to hear from the homophobes who say that the letter is a fake. The exact same idea appears at the end of Hippolytus' recycling of Irenaeus' report on the heretic Marcus (who I think again is one and the same St. Mark).

The question we should have been asking is why the Markan tradition felt it necessary to deny that Mark wrote the longer gospel (if you look at Irenaeus' report about Marcus you will see that he too employed a 'gospel harmony' i.e. a longer version of the gospel than our canonical text)?

It is utterly baffling.

You'd think having Mark as the author of the gospel would necessarily add authority to the text. Look at how Tertullian attacks the Marcionites for not identifying a human author. So why were these heretics so stupid as not to see this?

The answer is obvious to me.

Something about Mark was problematic. Something about having a single, long gospel associated with Mark led individuals and communities to 'get into trouble' with authorities and possibly the Roman government.

The idea that Mark wrote a longer gospel isn't just witnessed in that letter discovered by Morton Smith. It is implicit in the acrostic at the beginning of the Diatessaron. It is implicit in the Coptic remembrance of where to identify 'St. Mark's presence' in his own gospel narrative - the scenes cited by the Copts aren't even found in the existing canonical gospel of Mark!

Let's look at this another way.

(1) the Marcionites don't say who the author of their gospel was and the Catholic exploit this and say that their text necessarily came subsequent to the accepted canonical gospel(s).

(2) the followers of Mark in Alexandria deny that Mark was the author of their gospel for some unidentified or unexplained reason too.

(3) then Hippolytus says that when confronted with Irenaeus' original charges about what their secret beliefs were and the contents of their gospel and 'Mark' as the head of their tradition these 'Marcosian' deny everything in Irenaeus' report.

(4) and then there is the 'kicker' as we say in English. 'St. Mark' is a shadowy figure who is only known through his absurdly short gospel. Trobisch noted this long before me. The Gospel of Mark is too short to be used on its own. This has to be seen as deliberate on the part of the final editor of the New Testament canon. With this 'editorial choice' anyone in the post-Irenaean environment would have to look to the other three canonical texts to make sense of the religion.

There is no mention of Jesus as 'the son of David' in Mark. There is no account of the resurrection. In short the gospel is absurdly short because the editor of the final edition was Irenaeus and Irenaeus - as he himself acknowledges - wants to destroy the arguments of 'those who prefer the gospel of Mark' - viz. the original single, long gospel which didn't require the addition of the other three counterfeit texts he procured for the world.

Now let's go back to the original problem.

(a) the followers of Mark in Alexandria and Lyons and undoubtedly Asia Minor too are forced to deny the 'secret tradition' associated with apostle which included a longer - indeed a single, long - gospel of Mark.

(b) the Marcionites used a single, long gospel which began with Mark 1:1 and consistently reflected western readings from Mark.

(c) when we look carefully at the Dialogues of Adamantius we see the Marcionites engaged in argument which denies that Mark was the author of their gospel. They deny that Marcion wrote their text and ascribe it to 'heaven,' 'Christ' or 'Chrestos.'

The Catholic representative tries to corner them into admitting that they are of 'Mark' or 'Marcion' and they consistently argue for them belonging 'to the house of Paul.' When the Marcionite writings of the Scillitan martyrs are introduced they are said to be 'books of Paul.' The same idea is present in the Acts of Archelaus, in the Marcionite stronghold of Harran, Osrohone.

Now it is possible that the Marcionite avoidance to invoke Marcion as the original evangelist and apostle is because it was simply untrue. You can argue that the Catholic assumptions about the 'Paul' were shared by the Marcionites yet this seems highly unlikely. The Church Fathers rarely allow us to hear what the Marcionites actually believed or why they believed what they believed.

Yet we know that they rejected the one historical text in our canon - the Acts of the Apostles - and had a completely different understanding of how Christianity spread across the globe. Indeed I think there is good circumstantial evidence to accept that Marcionitism was based in Alexandria.

Indeed if we look at the greater tradition of Mark in Alexandria and elsewhere we see a similar pattern unfold without reference to Marcion or Paul.

Look again at Hippolytus' statement against the Marcionites for a moment "“[w]hen, therefore, Marcion or some one of his hounds barks against the Demiurge, and adduces reasons from a comparison of what is good and bad, we ought to say to them, that neither Paul the apostle nor Mark, he of the maimed finger, announced such (tenets).” [Hippolytus Book VII, XVIII]

Clearly this isn't only in my imagination. Hippolytus says that Marcion isn't Mark nor is he Paul or if you prefer - he isn't behind the texts of the gospel of Mark and the letters of Paul as some of his followers secretly claim ("secretly" because as we have seen the public position of the sect was that the gospel didn't have an author).

It is difficult to PROVE that the Marcionite secret denied that Mark was the real author of the gospel and the real apostle of their tradition. Yet the idea seems to float around in the late second/early third century Christian environment. It just can't be definitively proved.

It is worth noting that Irenaeus reports on those who deny that Paul was really the name of the apostle too.

All I am saying is that this 'denial' associated with Mark in three different communities can't be ignored even if we can't definitively explain what it actually signified. We can't just stay on the 'safe' subjects that everyone already knows the answers to.

I happen to believe, for a variety of reasons spread out in a variety of previous posts that there was a war against Mark and the presence of Marcus Julius Agrippa within Christianity in the late second through early fourth century period. This is why the persecutions were focused on Alexandria as this was the center of Markan worship.

I believe that this was the reason why the various adherents of Mark are so adept at 'always denying' his presence in their tradition. To acknowledge this was at once - in my opinion - tantamount to accepting a death sentence - viz. acknowledging someone else as the true Lord and judge of the world.

Let me know what you think after you have actually considered this position. It may take awhile. It took me twenty years to come to this conclusion. You might not agree but at least consider it, okay? ...