[Mark] having brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils. Thus, in sum, he prepared matters, neither grudgingly nor incautiously, in my opinion, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in Alexandria, where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.
It is incredible that no one has ever thought to identify where this 'church of St. Mark' was located. It does not appear anywhere in the writings of Clement and flies in the fact of Andrew Criddle's argument that Smith went out of his way to recycle words and ideas to make his forgery 'look like' a letter from Clement.
I happen to have discovered where this church was located. I did so through an underwater researcher named Harry Tzalas. It seems highly implausible that Smith would have added this new information to a letter which was only a hoax (Carlson) or with an agenda to argue for homosexuality in early Christianity (Jeffreys).
The appearance of all this new information in the letter to Theodore actually helps argue for its authenticity. Yet before we go there let's understand why the term aletheias would have been chosen to describe a hidden 'thing' at the heart of this Church of St. Mark.
I think the object hidden by seven veils is the throne of St. Mark. I base this on a parallel illusion to the divine throne being hidden by seven veils in Qumran fragment 4Q405 15 ii-16 3. Now the inevitable question which gets raised is why did Clement chose to call an occultated throne 'truth' (aletheias)? Heidegger comes to our aid here noting aletheias' literal meaning 'the removal of a veil' (lethe) or in this case veils. Hence one could argue that Clement's use of the term in to Theodore was an extension of his adaptation of a preexisting Jewish understanding of the divine throne being 'hidden' or 'concealed' by seven veils.
Heidegger on the Greek word Aletheia
"alétheia and truth: Alétheia is Greek for 'truth; truthfulness, frankness, sincerity'. Aléthés is 'true; sincere, frank; real, actual'. There is also a verb, alétheuein, 'to speak truly, etc' (cf. GA XIX, 21ff.). The words are related to lanthanein, with an older form léthein, 'to escape notice, be unseen, unnoticed', and lithe, 'forgetting, forgetfulness'. An initial a- in Greek is often privative, like the Latin in- or the Germanic un-. (The 'privative alpha' occurs in many Greek-derived words: 'anonymous', 'atheism', etc.) Aléthés, alétheia are generally accepted to be a-léthes, a-létheia, that which is 'not hidden or forgotten', or he who 'does not hide or forget'.
We reach the 'essence of truth', the 'openness of the open', from two directions: from 'reflection on the ground of the possibility of correctness (adaequatio)' and from 'recollection of the beginning (alétheia)' (LXV, 338). The first procedure is characteristic of Being and Time and early lectures, the second of later works. But early on Heidegger says that alétheuein is 'to take out of hiddenness [Verborgenheit], to uncover [entdecken]' (XXII, 25. Cf. XXI, 131; Being and Time, 33, 219); alétheia is 'uncovering' (XXI, 162); and aléthes is 'unhidden [Unverborgen(es)]' (BT, 33, 219). This has three implications: 1. Truth is not confined to explicit assertions and discrete mental, primarily theoretical, attitudes such as judgements, beliefs and representations. The world as a whole, not just entities within it, is unhidden - unhidden as much by moods as by understanding. 2. Truth is primarily a feature of reality - beings, being and world - not of thoughts and utterances. Beings, etc. are, of course, unhidden to us, and we disclose them. Heidegger later coins entbergen; Entbergung; Entborgenheit, 'to unconceal; -ing; -ment', since unlike unverborgen, they can have an active sense: 'aléthes means: 1. unconcealed [entborgen], said of beings, 2. grasping the unconcealed as such, i.e. being unconcealing' (XXXI, 91). But beings, etc. are genuinely unconcealed; they do not just agree with an assertion or representation. 3. Truth explicitly presupposes concealment or hiddenness. DASEIN is in 'untruth [Unwahrheit]' as well as truth. In BT (222, 256f.) this means that falling Dasein misinterprets things.
'Untruth' is not plain 'falsity', nor is it 'hiddenness': it is 'disguisedness [Verstelltheit]' of the truth (XXXI, 91). Later, 'untruth' is still not 'falsity', but 'hiding, concealing [Verbergung]' (LXV, 362). What conceals is no longer man, but being. There are two types of unconcealing: (a) of the open, the world or beings as a whole; (b) of particular beings within this open space. The first type (a) involves concealment: everything was hidden before the open was established, and concealment persists in that the open reveals only certain aspects of reality, not its whole nature. The second type (b) involves a concealment that we overcome 'partially and case by case' (LXV, 338f.). Plato errs in assimilating truth to light. We lose the idea of hiddenness and thus the privative force of a-létheia: the light is constant - never switched on or off - and reveals everything there is to anyone who looks. We lose the idea of the open, which must persist throughout our unconcealing of beings: a single light cannot account both for the openness of the open and for the unconcealing of particular entities (LXV, 339).
Plato's error was fateful. He - not Aristotle, who did his best to repair the damage (Nietzsche II, 228 / Nietzsche IV [English translation], 171) - initiated the decline of a-létheia into 'correctness' and truth as agreement (XXXIV, 21ff; Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, 201ff./ 215ff.). Alétheia was originally the basic feature of phusis (roughly, 'nature') and thus 'essentially rejects any question about its relation to something else, such as thinking' (LXV, 329). In Plato it 'comes under the yoke of the idea' (Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, 228). Idea, from the Greek idein, 'to see', refers, on Heidegger's account, to the visual 'aspect [Aussehen]' of entities. The ascent of the prisoners out of the cave is a progressive 'correction' of their vision of this idea and the entity whose idea it is. Hence alétheia is no longer primarily a characteristic of beings: it is 'yoked' together with the soul, and consists in a homoiósis, a 'likeness', between them. Homoiósis has since become adaequatio and then 'agreement', and since Descartes, the relation between soul and beings has become the subject-object relation, mediated by a 'representation', the degenerate descendant of Plato's idea. Truth becomes correctness, and its 'elbow-room [Spielraum]', the open, is neglected (LXV, 198, 329ff.)."
Note: "In references to Heidegger's texts, a slash separates the pagination of the German work from the pagination of the published English translation".
From: Michael Inwoord - A Heidegger dictionary - Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1999, pp. 13-14.
THE "ROMANIZATION" OF TRUTH: FROM ALETHEIA TO VERITAS
"As Heidegger puts it elsewhere, in Plato and Aristotle beings win the gigantomachia, the struggle between Being and beings, for Being is now understood as the highest or first being (G [Gesamtausgabe] 33 24, 43-44; cf. The End of Philosophy 9-10). As he explains in his wartime Parmenides lectures, in and with the philosophical tradition's understanding of truth and falsehood, aletheia is opposed to pseudos, to falsehood in the sense of incorrectness, which displaces the inceptive Greek senses of unconcealing and concealing (G 54 24-56). The translation of aletheia as veritas is related to the political-moral economy of ancient Rome, and therewith, Heidegger makes clear, to the manifold successors to Rome: medieval Christianity, modernity, Nietzsche, and—I agree with William V. Spanos on this point—National Socialism (57-72).
The Latin falsum has the sense of "bringing to a fall" or "downfall," which is "only a subsequent effect [Wesensfolge] within the essential domain [Wesensbereiches] of dissembling and concealing which makes up the essence of psuedos" (58). "Imperium" and the "imperial" constitute the "essential domain" decisive for the "experiential domain" (Erfahrungsbereich) in, from, and for which "bringing to a fall" acquires its status as the designation for the counter-essence of "what the Greeks experience as alethes, the 'unconcealing' and the 'unconcealed.' " The experience of imperium is that of "command," of the taking over of a territory, which is ruled by commandment. "Command," then, is the "essential ground of sovereignty" (Wesensgrund der Herrschaft) and, moreover, describes the characteristic actions of the god of the Old Testament and the gods of Rome, but not those of Greece (59). In a further specification, "command" determines Roman law and right, ius and iustum; iustitia "has a wholly other [ganz anderen] essential ground than that of dike, which arises from aletheia." "Being superior" (Obensein) belongs to "command" and is the "constant surmounting [Überhöhung] of others, who are thereby the inferiors [Unteren]." Surmounting requires the power to "oversee" (übersehen), which means, therefore, to "dominate" (beherrschen) (59-60). The "overseeing" of imperium requires constant "action," by which enemies or rivals will be brought to fall through " 'direct' attack" (Ansturm) or "subterfuge" (Hintergehen) or "trick," which, "not accidentally," is an "English" word (60). Those who fall are not destroyed but rather "raised up" (aufgerichtet) within the boundaries established by those who rule; this "fixing" (Abstecken) is Roman peace. Indeed, the greatness of the imperial, Heidegger writes, lies in the subterfuge by which it secures its dominion. The expansion of early Rome through treaties and treachery shows this (60-61).
The "Romanizing" of the Greeks conditions not only all subsequent understanding of them in the history of the West but also the historical and metaphysical Auseinandersetzung of the modern world and antiquity. Even Nietzsche's metaphysics, as a modern attempt to recover antiquity, is conditioned by Rome and thus is ultimately "unGreek." The Roman experience of beings, encountered under the "Roman stamp" (der Romisch Prägung), reaches into Christianity and hence to the medieval and modern ages (64-72; cf. The End of Philosophy 13). "Romanization in the essential sense of the Greco-Roman historical domain," Heidegger writes, must be understood as a "change in the essence of truth and Being"; it is an "authentic event [Ereignis] in history" (63). The transformations of aletheia and pseudos as correlates with the imperial experience mark an epochal boundary. "The imperial as a mode of Being of historical collectivities [Menschentums]," Heidegger explains, is not the ground for the essential change of aletheia into truth as correctness but is rather a following of the enfolding of truth into the meaning of correctness (62-63). Heidegger makes clear that there is something "make-shift" (Notbehelf) in the phrase "change in the essence of truth," which does not speak clearly enough of the way "in which it unfolds itself and history 'is' (wie sie selbst west and die Geschichte 'ist']" (63). This process exhibits the inner connection of the coherent modes of action which ground Western history, and is not to be understood causally."
From: James F. Ward - Heidegger's political thinking - Amherst - University of Massachusetts Press, 1995, pp. 180-181.
It is worth noting how often Clement uses the term 'truth' in exactly this sense of 'unveiling.' Here is an example from Book Eight of the Stromata:
Accordingly, by investigation, the point proposed for inquiry and answer knocks at the door of truth, according to what appears. And on an opening being made through the obstacle in the process of investigation, there results scientific contemplation. To those who thus knock, according to my view, the subject under investigation is opened.
And to those who thus ask questions, in the Scriptures, there is given from God (that at which they aim) the gift of the God-given knowledge, by way of comprehension, through the true illumination of logical investigation. For it is impossible to find, without having sought; or to have sought, without having examined; or to have examined, without having unfolded and opened up the question by interrogation, to produce distinctness; or again, to have gone through the whole investigation, without thereafter receiving as the prize the knowledge of the point in question.
But it belongs to him who has sought, to find; and to him to seek, who thinks previously that he does not know. Hence drawn by desire to the discovery of what is good, he seeks thoughtfully, without love of strife or glory, asking, answering, and besides considering the statements made. For it is incumbent, in applying ourselves not only to the divine Scriptures, but also to common notions, to institute investigations, the discovery ceasing at some useful end.
For another place and crowd await turbulent people, and forensic sophistries. But it is suitable for him, who is at once a lover and disciple of the truth, to be pacific even in investigations, advancing by scientific demonstration, without love of self, but with love of truth, to comprehensive knowledge.
What is this object called 'aletheias' because of its unveiling to the initiate? Well to begin with - anyone who has even been to a Coptic church realizes at once how the heart of the building could be identified as an adyton. It faces the rising sun and is enclosed by a veil separating the initiated from the outsiders. In prominent ancient churches there is typically a bishops chair which cannot be seen by those outside the inner sanctum (those unfamiliar with Coptic Churches should read Meinardus' description).
There is a consistent hint in the writings of Clement and Philo before him that it is an image which reinforces God as the King of the universe as we read in Book Seven:
For pre-eminently a divine image, resembling God, is the soul of a righteous man; in which, through obedience to the commands, as in a consecrated spot, is enclosed and enshrined the Leader of mortals and of immortals, King and Parent of what is good, who is truly law, and right, and eternal Word, being the one Saviour individually to each, and in common to all.
He is the true Only-begotten, the express image of the glory of the universal King and Almighty Father, who impresses on the Gnostic the seal of the perfect contemplation, according to His own image; so that there is now a third divine image, made as far as possible like the Second Cause, the Essential Life, through which we live the true life; the Gnostic, as we regard him, being described as moving amid things sure and wholly immutable.
Ruling, then, over himself and what belongs to him, and possessing a sure grasp, of divine science, he makes a genuine approach to the truth. For the knowledge and apprehension of intellectual objects must necessarily be called certain scientific knowledge
It is not at all difficult to connect the countless references to the unveiled 'truth' with this image of 'God the king.' What could this image have been in the heart of the church of St. Mark? It couldn't have been a statue depicting God wearing a crown or something overtly pagan. My argument will be that it is either the throne I discovered in Venice or the original on which it is based, perhaps even with God's human representative - the Papa (the Father) - sitting in his traditional attire which made him resemble a king as we see clearly evidenced with the latest Coptic Patriarch:
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