The Most Powerful Argument for the Commonality of Markan Traditions

I think I have developed a number of lines of reasoning here which at least suggest that there was some commonality between the various 'schools of Mark' identified in the Church Fathers.

If Christianity can be said to be the religion which developed from Mark's gospel it is impossible to ignore the fact that this text was interpreted by its earliest interpretators to signal a return to the ten original utterances which alone of Moses' commandments came from heaven.

I also demonstrated that this idea appears not only in Mark's gospel but on his episcopal throne - i.e. the ten torches - split five to each side - of the object represents this same principle associated with Mark - i.e. 'the heavenly Torah.'

I also proved or at least provided strong evidence to suggest that that "those of Mark" - ie the Marcosians in Irenaeus' Against the Heresies Book 1 Chapter 13f - are one and the same as the Markan believers in Alexandria.

Now let me take this one step further.

It is well known that the Marcionites did not identify their Lord by the name "Jesus" or "Joshua" but the three letter appellation Isu (yod-samekh-vav).

This name has never been properly explained but bears a striking structural similarity to the name of Jesus in rabbinic literature - viz "Yeshu" (yod-shin-vav).

As such the Marcionite and Jewish name for Jesus seem to come from a common source.

Yet notice that Irenaeus in Book Two Chapter Twenty Four seems to indicate that the 'those of Mark' - i.e. the 'Marcosians' - share the same name for Jesus with the Marcionites:

Moreover, (the name) Jesus, which is a word belonging to the proper tongue of the Hebrews, contains, as the learned among them declare, two letters and a half, and signifies that Lord who contains heaven and earth; for Jesus in the ancient Hebrew language means "heaven," while again "earth" is expressed by the words sura usser. The word, therefore, which contains heaven and earth is just Jesus. Their explanation, then, of the Episemon is false, and their numerical calculation is also manifestly overthrown. For, in their own language, Soter is a Greek word of five letters; but, on the other hand, in the Hebrew tongue, Jesus contains only two letters and a half.

The idea that the name 'Jesus' only contains 'two and a half letters' is easily explained by the original translators of Irenaeus as they note the name 'Jesus':

being written thus, ישו, and the small י being apparently regarded as only half a letter.

I asked Rory to develop an explanation for the rest of Irenaeus' argument about Jesus meaning 'heaven' and 'earth' being expressed by the words sura usser a long time ago and his work appears here.

The difference between those of Mark and Irenaeus is that the former see Jesus' name signifying only 'heaven' while Irenaeus argues that Jesus' proper name is 'Yeshu' and this signifies Yahweh Sura Ushera.

The original Marcosian argument is not reported but one can make a strong case that the difference comes down to the Marcionite rendering of the name 'Jesus' with a samekh rather than a shin. Why so? Because the numerical value of this name is seventy six (yod = 10, samekh = 60, vav = six) which in turn has the same value as the Aramaic word for being 'full' (mem-lamed-aleph-heh - see Jastrow p. 785) or 'fullness' viz. mem-lamed-vav-aleph).

It is interesting that the Aramaic word for 'word' - you know that hypostasis that appears at the beginning of the Greek gospels as the 'logos' would be spelled the same way - i.e. mem-lamed-heh or even mem-lamed-aleph-heh.

If the latter form is acceptable then we would theoretically have a term which meant both 'word' and the equivalent of the Greek term pleroma which is assigned in the NASB the meanings (1), fulfillment (2), full (2), fullness (10), patch (2) which also happened to have the same numerological value of the Marcionite spelling of the name Jesus - viz 'Isu' or 76.

In other words, what Irenaeus fails to say is that the 'followers of Mark' used the same Marcionite name for Jesus - Isu - and took it to be a gematria for 'fullness' or heaven, a term used throughout the apostolic letters.

Does this mean that the Marcionites employed a similar gematria? It is difficult to say right now but at the very least it seems clear that the Marcionites (Marqione = Aram. 'those of Mark') and the Marcosians (Gk = 'those of Mark') shared the same spelling of the name Jesus.

Clement of Alexandria can be argued to have used the same term when he argues that the root of the name Jesus is in the Greek name 'Jason' (from the root yod-samekh-vav ?) rather than Joshua.

Again the underlying argument is that ALL the Markan traditions shared the same spelling of Jesus name viz. Isu (yod-samekh-vav) and likely took it to mean that Jesus was 'the fullness' from heaven i.e. an angelic hypostasis.