An Enlightened Suggestion From Rory

My good friend Rory Boid has helped craft an explanation for how the names of the four evangelists were developed from the original single long gospel. I thought I would share it with you and would like to say that if any other readers of this blog have ideas like this - i.e. which help explain the development of the four gospels from one original long text - I would be delighted to pass them on to everyone.

Rory wrote to me yesterday noting that the four names can be seen to derive from the first words of the Diatessaron:

I think the name John either derives from or represents what is said in John I:16-17. So John is a TITLE of Mark. The original Gospel MUST have started “The Gospel of Jesus the Son of God. In the beginning was the Word …..”This is because the essence of the Gospel is in the start of the later John.

Dositheus was called “father” and his followers were called the children of Dositheus. They were empowered to become children of God by Dositheus. “They said the dead would rise soon as children of Dositheus the Prophet of God”. “They said the dead would rise soon as thanks to Dositheus and his sons and daughters”. John I:12 “… he gave POWER TO BECOME children of God”.

All four later gospels are called after the same two persons, the second Moses and his Apostle = Anointed Prince AND THE EVENT OF THE GIVING OF THE SECOND TORAH.

Mark. The book of both Marcus Agrippa and the Second Moses.
John. The second and better Torah.
Matthew. The giving of the second Torah.
Luke (from Latin Lucius). The book of the SHINING ONE. Moses covered his face with a veil because the Israelites could not bear the radiance. Compare the Transfiguration.

So Mark WAS called John, AS A SYMBOLIC NAME.

And Matthew is Mark. Thus the tradition that Matthew is the oldest gospel.

I think that something like this is definitively a workable hypothesis and the original editors of the Diatessaron reinforce this by placing that acrostic right at the beginning of the text:

In the name of the one God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to him be glory for ever. We shall begin, with the help of God most high, the writing of the pure gospel, the blooming garden, called Diatessaron (a word meaning “fourfold”), the work compiled by Titianus the Greek out of the four evangelists—Matthew the elect, whose symbol is M, Mark the chosen, whose symbol is R, Luke the approved, whose symbol is Ḳ, and John the beloved, whose symbol is H.

Which in turn was immediately followed by the very words Rory used to reconstruct the names of the evangelists:

The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus the Son of the living God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God is the Word. This was in the beginning with God. Everything was by his hand, and without him not even one existing thing was made. In him was life, and the life is the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not.

Please tell me there is someone out there BESIDES Rory and me who can see this. I want to believe that this ISN'T something that is only destined to stay entre nous.