It is of the utmost importance that we LISTEN to one another. There is no one who takes the study of the Bible seriously whose intelligence is so mean that their opinions should be dismissed without due consideration.
That's how I learned something of critical importance from James Snapp today.
I never realized that the Roman Church must have had an autographed copy of the Gospel of Mark in Irenaeus' day. The logic is inescapable. It just required that I listen to the years of work that James Snapp put into thinking about the Roman claims about this text.
Think about it. James told me that Irenaeus reports that Mark was written in Rome. This is the kind of statement that I would typically ignore because I have a low estimation of Irenaeus' honesty.
Yet let's "go" with Irenaeus' claims.
Mark was written at Rome. Mark was really Peter's gospel. The Roman Church represents the episcopal line of Peter. As such Peter's gospel was an integral part of the Roman Church's claims of primacy - something I never thought about before because I was so busy promoting my own ideas.
When you think about it, the Roman Church MUST have claimed to possess the original autographed copy of Mark. Irenaeus' authority depended on that.
Then when you reconsider the claims of to Theodore with its RIVAL autographed copy you can begin to see context of the violence directed at the Alexandrian Church for the next hundred and fifty odd years.
There is no proof that Irenaeus was ever martyred. Demetrius the Catholic bishop whose "strangeness" and alienation to traditional Alexandrian teaching is still stressed in Severus manages to stay installed as hostile "overseer" of the church for almost half century while every other notable Alexandrian was being beaten, executed or running for their lives.
What? Couldn't they find the head of the church? What about his ornate wardrobe didn't give his whereabouts away?
Yet if you think about to Theodore and its "extra material" necessarily meant that these two autographed copies of Mark couldn't have co-existed in one Church. We don't need to provide more of an explanation than that.
I think and many people think that "Rome" didn't like the "gnostic message" in secret Mark. Yet we don't need to delve into the motivation beyond the obvious - there couldn't have been two autographs in one Church.
The detractors of course will say that to Theodore is a fake but I have a surprise for them. The claim that Alexandria had such an autograph can be demonstrated independantly of to Theodore and Morton Smith.
When the Venetians stole the body of St Mark from that very same church of St Mark in Alexandria in 828 they clearly and explicitly testify to have taken the autographed copy of Mark which the Christians there claimed to have possessed from the very beginning of Christianity.
Fragments of this text still survive. It was kept (stupidly) in the damp crypt beneath the Basilica di San Marco along with the body and the throne.
The point is that the idea that all we need is the recognition of two rival autographed Gospels of Mark to explain the motivation for the persecutions directed solely against one side in the debate - and their secret mention of a hidden "something" symbolically screened behind seven veils.
Oops I did it again ...
