The Gnostic Throne of Alexandria

By Stephan Huller and Ruairidh (Rory) Bóid (Monash University)

In 828 CE a simple but quite beautiful object was removed from Alexandria and taken to Venice by a group of Italian pirates. The object in question was an alabaster chair, said to be the legendary Throne of St. Mark, the Christian apostle and gospel writer who, it was claimed, had once presided over the infant church in Egypt. This object represented the very beating heart of the early Christianity. According to Italian and Coptic tradition (which have meticulously pieced together in a previous article), the throne was taken with two other objects supposedly associated with the Evangelist - his body and an autographed copy of the Gospel according to Mark.

When these objects were plundered from Alexandria they were received with great pomp and circumstance in Venice. After a brand new church was built to house the physical relics of St Mark, they were ultimately stored in the cryptorium to prevent the same kind of pious theft that brought them to Italy in the first place.

Stephan Huller stumbled upon the Throne during a trip to Venice. He was amazed to see three letters in the Old Hebrew alphabet in its Samaritan form at the left-most end of the Hebrew inscription on the front of the seat of the object. It could be seen that tThe first three letters spelt the Hebrew eshel, “ tamarisk” (plate 1). A picture of a tamarisk could be seen on the front of the backrest. He was nearly as surprised to find that the entry on the throne in the catalogue did not mention this. The first explanation that came to mind was that the object was made by Gnostics. Its decoration is unusual or unique amongst Christian artefacts, yet it is undoubtedly Christian. That Gnostic Christians might use Samaritan letters might not be unexpected. Justin Martyr reports that 'almost all' of Samaria had in his day (mid second century) went over to a gnostic form of Christianity (Apol. 1.26). On the other hand, the throne’s orthodox origin is certain. The term gnostic accordingly needs careful definition. A beginning is made below.

For convenience of reference we give our reading of the inscription before discussing the previous readings. Our reading of the letters that follow is complete, and we think it to be the first complete and fully accurate transcription. We used multiple very detailed photographs with the light falling at different angles, and found that the details of faint lines could be distinguished from irregularities and blemishes in the stone. We also found that some lines invisible in the lighting where the throne is kept could be seen in some photographs with the light at the right angle. This is the first decipherment to take account of all strokes and lines; and the first to identify every stroke and line. This is also the first interpretation not to assume improbable or forced or impossible meanings for any word. We read as follows:


' Ṧ * L M R Q ' W N G L S T S ' L K S N D R Y H
Eshel Mark(os) Evangelist Alexandria

Remember the Hebrew letters go from left to right. We will consistently use Romanisation to avoid confusion over the direction. The apostrophe represents a glottal stop in the International Phonetic Alphabet. We use it to transcribe Alef for the sake of clarity.

The letters 'ŠL in our reading are in the Samaritan alphabet, and unlike the rest of the inscription are not mirror images. All others except Secchi have found four letters in square script in mirror images MWŠB spelling moshav and have erroneously thought this to mean “throne”. Our disagreement will be explained and justified in a moment. The asterisk in the transcription represents a big dot elongated downwards. It is inked in, like the rest of the letters (except for the top stroke of the bet). Secchi in 1853 thought it was a yod in square script. This reading makes no sense. Secchi found the word MWŠYB but this word does not fit the meaning Secchi proposed for it. Secch’s assumption that it was moshav with Phoenician spelling can be dismissed. Nevertheless, the mark is there and is inked in. If Le Hir, Bargès, Février, and Lohuizen-Mulder did not notice it, it was because it was incompatible with what they expected to see, the word moshav.

The inscription across the front of the miniature throne, just below the level of the seat, has been investigated five times. No-one has ever noticed the Old Hebrew (Samaritan) letters. The reason will become clear after we describe the rest of the inscription. There is universal agreement that there is an inscription in Hebrew using the Aramaic or square script, the script commonly but improperly called Hebrew script. The inscription is in mirror-writing. The letters are to be read from left to right and are reversed as in a mirror. The middle part of the inscription seems not to have been engraved deeply enough, and it is hard to read. There have been decipherments, by Secchi, Le Hir, Bargès, Grabar and Février, and Lohuizen-Mulder’s informant.

There has been general agreement that the letters at the left are MWṦBMRQ. Février found the letter W after this and read the Italian name Marco or Marcu. Everyone has found the Hebrew word moshav meaning a seat or sitting or session here, but everyone has wrongly taken the word to mean chair or throne, which is impossible. We maintain that the letters MWṦB are not there, and that three Samaritan letters ʔṦL are there. This point is developed below. Everyone has agreed that the letters MRQ are the name of Mark, correctly in our view. Février found letters after this making up a Hebrew word 'WNGELSṬS “evangelistes”, borrowed from Greek. We largely agree, except that we disagree on the second-to-last letter and find T instead of Ṭ. Le Hir found a verb meaning “evangelised” and Bargès found a Hebrew noun derived from the Greek Euangelion. Both readings assume unattested verb forms and can be disregarded for this reason alone.

Our reading of the last letters in this group also makes both these readings impossible. Secchi’s reading can be disregarded as impossible on too many grounds to list. Two early attempts, first by Secchi and then by Le Hir, found the letters RMH on the extreme right. These two authors both read this as Roma. This is impossible. First, on the grounds of spelling, the word must have the first vowel letter representing the [o] sound. Second, the form of the name in ancient Hebrew is the Greek name Rōmē, not Roma. The expected spelling would be RWMY. When the object was taken from Alexandria, this would have been the spelling and pronunciation. In mediaeval Hebrew the form Roma can occur, but it still must have the first vowel letter and be spelt RWMH. Third, Alexandrians would be the last to associate Mark with Rome. They regard the claim of the Roman Church that Mark worked in Rome under the direction of Peter to be an implausible lie. Mark is the founder of the Egyptian Church. No-one in Byzantium would have found a reason to put the name of Rome on the throne. The Venetians acquired the relics of Mark so as to make themselves legally independent of the Pope. They would not have mentioned Rome either. Bargès and Lohuizen-Mulder have made out the last three letters as RYH, correctly in our view, and have then read the last four letters as DRYH and taken them to be the ending of the name of Alexandria, again correctly in our view. Thus, with the three words “Mark Evangelist Alexandria” our reading is not unexpected.

We ask the reader to bear with us here as we go through the reading and interpretation by J.-G. Février. The tedium is unavoidable because Février’s interpretation has influenced all later work. Its inadequacy by any canon of academic integrity or even sanity must be demonstrated so it can be forgotten. A large part of Février’s justification of a late dating was the bizarreness of his reconstruction. He assumed a bizarre reading because he thought the inscription to be a mediaeval attempt at giving a false impression of antiquity. This circular thinking has infected all later work, including the catalogues. André Grabar, an expert in Byzantine religious artefacts, tells us he happened to ask Février to translate the text because he had an office just down the passage-way at the Sorbonne. Février’s specialisation was Punic epigraphy. Neither Grabar nor Février took the presence of Hebrew letters seriously and so the Punic epigraphist came up with this: “The Throne of Marco Evangelist, and donkeys [!!] have dedicated it.”

To make the reconstruction, the wrong Hebrew word for donkeys was assumed, showing absence of feeling for the language and just as little feel for context. The object pronoun suffix had to be assumed to be feminine gender, even though moshav is a masculine noun, a fact Février didn’t notice. Grabar and Février developed a scenario whereby the Venetians authorities decided to add something in order to give the throne a mystical aura, so they asked local Jews to write something in Hebrew. The Jews took the opportunity to write something disparaging about the throne and its owners, but thought they had better put the words in mirror-writing so no-one could read what they had written. We’re not making this up. Février’s further argument for a mediaeval dating for the inscription from its spelling of Mark’s name as Mem Resh Qof Vav, as if it were the Italian Marco, is recklessly careless. The actual letters are clearly MRCAO [Mem Resh Qof Alef Vav]. For this purpose, Février ignored the Alef, even though it is one of the clearest letters in the inscription. The Alef and the Vav are the beginning of the next word, ‘Evangelistes.’ Yet Février found the word Evangelistes in the inscription, starting with the letters Alef Vav. So first the Alef had to vanish so the Vav could be read as the end of the name Marco. Then the Alef that had been made to vanish had to come back and become the first letter of Evangelistes, and the Vav that had been at the end of Marco had to be used again as the second letter of Evangelistes, after the Alef that had vanished before and was back again. In the catalogues, the reading “donkeys” is dropped, but Février’s misreading of Alexandria as “they dedicated it” has been kept, along with the mutually incompatible Marco and Evangelistes. This reading “they dedicated it” is NDRWH. The spelling of Alexandria is 'LKSNDRYH. Février has read the second-last letter, Yod, as Vav. He has done this because he had no experience in Hebrew epigraphy. Punic epigraphy, yes. If Février had had extensive acquaintance with old inscriptions or mss., he would have known that the form of Yod was once bigger, so that it looked very much like a printed Vav. This is why Secchi and Le Hir took the Yod as part of a Mem. Now this apparently minor mistake leads to the removal of the word Alexandria from the inscription, and the inscription becomes pointless, regardless of whether the donkeys are brought in or not. The traditional phrase “French superficiality” is appropriate here.

Now to explain why we don’t find the letters MWŠB spelling moshav on the extreme left. It must be acknowledged that it would be expected that the letters on the extreme left would be square script in mirror writing like the rest of the inscription, not Old Hebrew the right way round, but there are arguments in the other direction that we consider cumulatively stronger. First, the reader is encouraged to see the letters on the extreme left as different by the way they are carved. They are more regular, more ornate, and are cut deeper. Second, the illustrations to this article show that the three Samaritan letters of the word eshel stand out more than the supposed word moshav. This is not a circular argument. The Alef stands out like a beacon, written in an elaborate uncial bookhand with five strokes, suitable for a heading in a manuscript but hard to carve. Third, the symbol seen by Secchi which he thought was a Yod in square script has no explanation if MWŠB is read. In our reading it has a place as a marker of the separate quality of the three Samaritan letters. The modern equivalent would be to write .אש"ל Fourth, the letter Bet is not there! It is only there if you want it to be there enough to overlook what is actually carved. The top stroke is not there. There is a line that has been taken to this top stroke, but it slants upwards, does not join onto the rest of the letter, and above all is too long. Without any presuppositions, it can be seen as a blemish in the stone. If this line is meant to be part of a letter, what do we do with the line above it that is just like it? The line is unpolished on the inside and has not been inked in. Fifth, the two letters MW are improbable. What is read as a Vav is a line coming down nearly vertically and joining onto what is thought to be Mem before the letter Mem is finished.

Linguistic argument for our reading. The translation of ‘moshav’ as meaning ‘throne’ or ‘seat’ as in a physical object which someone could sit on demonstrates absence of Sprachgefühl. This word does not mean a throne or chair, as everyone has thought. The natural Hebrew word for either a chair or a throne is kisse כסא with a qualifier if needed. The word moshav has a range of meanings similar to the French words séance and siège, but it does not mean chaise, chaire, or trône. Moshav can mean a session (of a court of law and so on) and in the right context, the hearing and judgment. This is its most common usage. Even this meaning is limited, since a routine sitting of a committee would be termed a yeshiva. Moshav would also be applicable to the act of enthronement. The word moshav is not the designation of the object. If the word were here, then it could have only two meanings. It might have been copied from some banner at the time of inauguration of St. Mark himself, and might mean the inauguration or enthronement of Mark. The circumstances of such copying are unlikely. Or otherwise it might refer to the word Alexandria. This is difficult. The meaning would be “The seat of Mark the Evangelist is Alexandria”. It is hard to see what the point of this might be.

Arguments for our reading from the object. First, The word eshel fits in with the picture of a tamarisk behind it. Second, the word eshel is used in Palestinian Rabbinic Hebrew to mean a person pre-eminent by virtue of wisdom, knowledge, and ability. It is a suitable epithet of Mark. Reading the inscription as “The Pre-eminent One. Mark, Evangelist of Alexandria” makes perfect sense.

Argument for our reading from history. The script is at least as old as the 6th century. This is being conservative. For the moment it is enough to say that a mediaeval date is ruled out. The spelling of Evangelistes with Tav instead of Ḥet and Aleksandriya with Kaf instead of Qof would be archaic in Jewish spelling, and agrees with the known standard Samaritan system. The spelling is either Jewish and archaic, or Samaritan, or both. Hebrew mirror-writing is in itself an ancient practice. Lohuizen-Mulder’s informant’s statement that Hebrew has never been written in mirror-writing is only a layman’s confession of ignorance. It is seen in some mss. from Qumrân Cave 4 from the Herodian period. All these indications of antiquity are consistent with the presence of Samaritan letters. Scholars estimate that in the first century AD the Samaritan community probably had over two million members across the Mediterranean region and their largest community outside the Near East was located in Alexandria. It has also long been recognized that many of the early ‘gnostics’ happened to be Samaritans including perhaps the most famous heretic of all –- Simon Magus. From a Jewish perspective, to construct even a simple phrase using letters associated with the Samaritans would be nothing short of a blatant declaration of one’s heterodoxy. We think the inscription survived the sojourn of the throne in Byzantium only because Samaritan scripts were and are almost totally unknown and unrecognized, even by experts. The academic papers on the subject of the Throne of St Mark prove this to be the case. Bargès had published an article on two fragments of the Samaritan Pentateuch in 1865 and had published a booklet entitled Les Samaritains de Naplouse in 1855, but still did not recognise the Samaritan letters.

After a long period of sustained Samaritan conversion to Christianity from the time of Jesus’ ministry, the developing Roman Church slammed the door on the Samaritan community near the end of the second century. It went on to effectively declare that Samaritans and their teachings should not be part of the general assembly of Christians. The start of the process can be seen in Justin Martyr’s silence on the Samaritans, except for harmless anecdotal information. Justin was a native of Nablus! Of course Alexandria seems to have represented a unique cultural environment for Jews and Samaritans. One might well imagine that the two communities managed to escape from many of the cultural wars which raged between their respective faiths in Palestine. Scholars have noted a great degree of affinity between the writings of Philo of Alexandria and the earliest Samaritan interpretation of the Pentateuch. In this very article we have shown the affinity of Samaritan exegesis of the Torah with Philo’s interpretation of Genesis II:8, Genesis XXI:23, and Zechariah VI:12-13. When would it be natural to think Samaritan letters might be inscribed on an Alexandrian artefact? The most obvious answer was that it occurred in a period when Samaritans had great influence over the Alexandrian Christian community. We know that Samaritans lived in Egypt and Alexandria in great numbers. We still have the remnants of Samaritan literature from Alexandria written in Greek. The indications are that this literature was extensive and varied.

Argument from the known exegesis of the time and place. Although the identification of the Hebrew eshel is certain in light of modern knowledge and was equally certain in ancient times (that is when the Greek and Aramaic versions were produced) in its one occurrence in the Torah it was taken in another sense. In Genesis XXI:33 the statement that Abraham planted a tamarisk at Beersheba is rendered in the Samaritan Targum, Targum Neofiti, and the Fragmentary Targum as saying that Abraham planted a pardes (i.e. a grove or garden with trees). In Targum Yonatan it is “the pardes”. The LXX translates as aroura, cultivated or planted land. In Egypt, an aroura was a unit of measurement of about 2,500 square yards. Philo finds in this translation a hint at the concept of the constant replenishment of the earth by the work of exceptional pious individuals who pass on the power of the Garden of Eden. (Concerning Noah’s Work as a Planter, book II). He asserts that the eshel is one tree, but that this tree is the root of the whole Garden of Eden and thus the metaphysical root of all plant and animal life. Philo’s interpretation might be partly his own invention, but there is no denying that most of what he says must have been traditional and that the LXX translators knew of it. There can be no other explanation of the translation of eshel in the LXX as aroura. Having established this, we have to conclude that the same tradition (not necessarily in quite the same form) must lie behind the translations “Pardes” in Targum Neofiti, the Fragmentary Targum, and the Samaritan Targum; and the translation “the Pardes” in Targum Yonatan. The very weakly attested reading in Targum Onkelos, by which eshel is rendered as “the tree”, was printed in Bomberg’s two editions of 1515 and 1524 and has thus been reprinted ever since. It is accordingly unthinkingly cited as the reading of Onkelos. It could be argued that this is the original reading, and that Bomberg had the best mss., as usual. .צ"ע

Of all the Versions, only one has the same word here and in Genesis II:8, where the reference is to the Garden of Eden: that is, the Samaritan Targum. Only two extant mss. have this verse. Ms. A reads Pardes. There is a lacuna in ms. J which the editor judges not to be big enough for the word Pardes. All four mss. of the Samaritan Targum extant in Genesis XXI:33, (mss. JECA), have Pardes. In the same way, the Samaritan Mīmar Mårqe [Treatise of Marcus] connects the planting by Abraham with the planting of the Garden of Eden, more briefly than Philo but just as explicitly. The connection is made in passing, in the course of another argument. There is no room to explain the context here and no need. For the explanation of the full argument, see Ben-Ḥayyim’s notes. “The letter Ṭet (Samaritan pronunciation Ṭit) was made into a great Pardes. The True One [God] said it and Abraham renewed it. The Lord planted (Genesis II:8): Truth [God] said. Abraham planted a tamarisk (Genesis XXI:33): Truth wrote [in the book of the Torah by the agency of Moses]”. (Mīmar Mårqe, Ben-Ḥayyim’s edition, book II, paragraph 16, Aramaic text p. 123, Hebrew translation and notes p. 122. Macdonald’s translation, p. 56, is wrong here, as in other places too many to count. We decline to continue the dishonest practice of using Macdonald’s incompetent translation because it is conveniently in English). We see that Marqe must have read Pardes in the Targum in both Genesis II:8 and XXI:33.

In view of the development in the Jewish exegesis, the dating of Mårqe is important. Now Mårqe is not dated in the Samaritan tradition. The very few references to his possible date reduce to one late guess in the form of a scholion, and quotes of this scholion. This absence of data is startling, given that Mårqe is revered in the Samaritan tradition as second only to Moses. The names Mårqe MRQH and Mūshi MShH [Masoretic pronunciation Moshe] have the numerical value of 345 and the spelling only differs in the middle. The fact is frequently mentioned, not as a curiosity but as a way of mentioning the status of Mårqe. The Mīmar Marqe [Treatise of Marcus] has de facto canonical status in matters of doctrine. Mårqe (vocative case of Marcus), was the main author of the core of the Samaritan liturgy, along with his father Ṭūṭe (Titus), ‘Amråm Dāre (probably his father under another name), and son Ninnå (i.e. Johnny; the name is a diminutive of חנניה and יוחנן); together with the Durrån, possibly a collective name meaning “ancients”. The hymns by Mårqe have de facto canonical status, like the Treatise [Mīmar]. One reason for the absence of historical data would be catastrophic loss under the rule of Commodus, who devastated the religious life of all Syria from 180 onwards, for reasons obscure but deadly. Another reason would be a collective wish to forget some theological movement in the time of Mårqe. As Hans Kippenberg has shown, regret and contrition for the theological errors of the immediate past pervade the little Durrån collection. (Ein Gebetbuch für den samaritanischen Synagogengottesdienst aus dem 2. Jh. Nach Chr., ZDPV vol. 85, no. 1, 1969, pp. 76-103). The errors are never defined, but it is assumed that the reader or reciter or hearer knows precisely what they were. We think the theology rejected in the Durrån is a form of Christianity, since the date of the collection is a little bit after the publication and preaching of a pamphlet calling on the Samaritans to abandon Christianity and return to their ancestral religion. (I.R.M. Bóid, A Samaritan Broadside from the Mid Second Century AD, ABR, vol. LI, 2003, pp. 26-36). There has been no proper investigation into the date of Mårqe. Kippenberg has shown that the Durrån collection is from the first half of the second century. In language and content, the work of Mårqe belongs with the Durrån. Boid’s preliminary work on the disentangling of the sources combined by Abu ’l-Fatḥ (see the introduction to the article cited below) indicates the same date as the Durrån for the Mårqe hymns as they stand, but in a future article an earlier date will be proposed for Mårqe the real person and the original form of the hymns, and it will be proposed that this date was the same as the period regretted in the Durrån collection.

It is obviously important to know whether the exegesis mentioned in passing by Mårqe reappears elsewhere. It clearly survives in the Targum. The line of thought that the occulted Garden can reappear, or the occulted Tabernacle can reappear, ushering in the reign of Heaven on Earth, is pervasive in later liturgy; but the Garden seems to have a less defined role than the Tabernacle. On the other hand, note the significance of the four streams from out of Paradise for the theology of the Dositheans. The Dositheans seem to have identified the manifestation of the Garden and the manifestation of the Tabernacle, and seen piety in the fallen world as a preparation for this. Abu ’l-Fatḥ reports “They [the Dositheans] said that the book they had, by the Children [first disciples] of the Apostle, showed that God might be worshipped in the land of Ḥavilah (the land encircled by the first river, the Pishon; Genesis II:11) till he might be worshipped on Mt. Gerizim”. (I.R.M. Bóid, The First Description of the Dositheans by Abu ’l-Fatḥ bin Abi ’l-Ḥasan ad-Dinfi, Bibliotheca Orientalis, vol. LXV, nos. 3-4, 2008). Note also that in the ancient conclusion to the Samaritan equivalent of the book of Judges, the Monday when the Tabernacle was occulted is seen as an echo of the Monday when Adam and Eve and all living creatures and all of creation left the Paradise (Pardes). This document has a history going back at least to the second century AD. (I.R.M. Bóid, The Transmission of the Samaritan Joshua-Judges, DS-NELL vol. VI, pp.1-30. A warning. This document, extant in an Arabic translation of an Aramaic abridged translation from Hebrew, is NOT to be confused with the book in Hebrew touted as the Samaritan Book of Joshua by John Macdonald and since 1964 by A.D. Crown, which was written at the start of the 20th century by a known author as a guide for Europeans interested in the Samaritans! The fact has been demonstrated in print several times starting in 1908).

In the Jewish tradition the connection with the Garden is obscured, though not entirely wiped out, after the war against Rome. Aquila (final editing about 140 AD) renders eshel as dendrōma. This word is not otherwise attested. The natural meaning of the form would be a tree growing as a mass of main stems close together, like an oleander or a lillipilli or a pittosporum. It is a suitable epithet of a tamarisk. (To get a feeling for the suffix, compare plērōma, rizōma, or the modern term genome). On the other hand, by not translating by the specific name of the tree, room is left for an identification or connection with Genesis XXII:13 and the young ram caught in a bushy tree. In that place Aquila translates the Hebrew sevach סבך by the word sychnéōn, a word otherwise unattested. This too is a suitable epithet of a tamarisk. There is still a trace of the tradition in the Rabbinic assertion, in both Talmuds, that Abraham planted a clump of fruit trees for people’s benefit, or that the eshel is a free travellers’ inn that Abraham set up and ran, but the tradition has been reduced to fanciful assertions without any rationale. We think this was on purpose. The explicit form could be developed in a Christian direction. The attenuated form would have been invented as mechanism for preserving the tradition for those that knew how to read. There is a vague rendering in the Peshitta and Symmachus (a bit before Aquila), which say that Abraham planted plants. Targum Onkelos (according to nearly all witnesses) agrees with the Peshitta. Jerome translates eshel as nemus, meaning a glade. He must have known the rendering in the Palestinian Targums, but has not followed them. He must have known the translation in the LXX, but has not follow this either. If he had not seen Philo’s explanation, the LXX would have seemed very vague. It is apparent from his translations elsewhere that he knows eshel means a tamarisk. Jerome seems to have been influenced by his Rabbinic contemporaries.

Now this connection between the word eshel and the Garden can be seen in the most prominent of the illustrations on the throne. The front of the backrest shows a bushy tree, such as a tamarisk. The four rivers of Paradise that water the whole earth (Genesis II:10-14) are shown flowing out from in front of it or under it. They do not branch out in four directions of the compass. Their flow has the pattern of two pairs of streams going down a slope. This is a static representation of the Samaritan concept of the four rivers flowing, at a certain level of existence, from Paradise, which is above Mt. Gerizim, through the mountain, and out from under the base of the mountain. The mundane images of these four streams are the pair the White Nile (Pishon) and the Blue Nile (Giḥon), and the pair the Tigris and Euphrates. We have seen that the Dositheans attached eschatological importance to the four streams flowing out from the Garden and connected them with the expectation of the restoration of the occulted Garden to its rightful place. Here we have yet another instance of resemblance between Samaritan theology and the Throne of Mark. There is a Jewish tradition about the site of the Jerusalem Temple resembling this, but this tradition is not central, not salient, and not the same.

To sum up. In the Jewish line of transmission, the word eshel combined with the representation of the four branches of the river of Paradise fits in with an interpretation known to Philo and the LXX. This line of interpretation is attested in all branches of the transmission of the Palestinian Targums. It is completely replaced by an anodine fable in Rabbinic Judaism, though behind the fable the original tradition can still be discerned if the reader has the right knowledge. In the Samaritan line of transmission, the explicit connection is made by Mårqe (about the same date as Aquila), and all recensions of the Samaritan Targum assume it. Concern with the concept of a process leading to the manifestation of the Garden continues. The conclusion is that the combination of the written word eshel in the inscription, taken from Genesis XXI:23, with a representation of the four rivers from out of Paradise, indicates an early date. Early is a relative term. Nevertheless the indication is that the throne belongs to a date before 150 AD and could be earlier. The tradition identifying this object as going back to the time of St. Mark, the founder of the Egyptian Church, is accordingly made plausible.

In the foreground ‘entangled’ in the eshel ‘planted’ at the place of outflow of the four rivers of Pardes is a young ram. It announces a contemporary ‘fulfilment’ or re-enactment of what happened immediately following Abraham’s planting of a tamarisk in Gen xxi:33. This was the near-sacrifice of Isaac (Gen XXII). It has been argued by many scholars that the original Gospel writer Mark deliberately retells the story of Jesus’ crucifixion as if Jesus were Isaac. Philo stops short of making an explicit connection between the planting and the near-sacrifice. Yet he does develop a parallel interest in the closely related offering of a goat on the Day of Atonement. His discussion bears striking resemblance to ideas presented in the Epistle of Barnabas –- where Jesus is identified as the slaughtered goat -- and with the early writers of the New Testament –- who connect him with the Passover sacrifice. If this ram is not meant to be Jesus, then Jesus is entirely absent from the illustrations on the throne. This hardly seems conceivable. The central image on the throne –- the combined ram, tamarisk, and four rivers of Paradise –- is to be understood as reflection of an Alexandrian doctrine of an immediate revelation of the kingdom of heaven after Jesus’ ‘offering’ during the Passion. There were many Alexandrian Christian schools tied to this belief, including Cerinthus, who taught that immediately after the resurrection the kingdom of Christ would be set up on earth. (Eusebius, Church History, III:18:2; cf. Epiphanius, Panarion, XXVIII.6.1). This original Alexandrian Christian ‘gnosis’ continued to be influential down to the time of Celsus (fl. 140 AD) who reports their venerating an image depicting “a heaven slain in order to live, and an earth slaughtered by the sword, and many put to death that they may live, and death ceasing in the world … by the tree of life, and a resurrection of the flesh by means of the ‘tree,’ because their teacher was nailed to a cross.” (Origen, Against Celsus, VI:34. The speaker is Celsus).

Subsidiary argument for our reading. We present the following as evidence for our Christological and eschatological interpretation of the written word eshel and the image on the front of the backrest. If the argument holds up, then the presence of the three Samaritan letters is further confirmed. The tree is not strictly symmetrical. If you count the number of fruit on each main branch, you get 8 7 6 5 9. If these are converted to the corresponding Hebrew letters you have Ḥet Zayin Vav He Ṭet. The first four letters formed the Aramaic word ḥezwa, meaning a vision, in the emphatic state (absolute state ḥazu). The last letter can be read as the number 9. This gives the words ḥezwa tish‘ana meaning ‘the ninth vision’, in Aramaic. The question then is, the ninth vision in which part of Scripture? Boid is inclined to see it as a reference to Genesis XXII:13, where Abraham sees the ram that he is to sacrifice. He recognises the difficulty that this is not a vision of God. Normally a vision in the Torah that is not said to be in a dream is a vision of God. But what if the Christian makers of the throne identified the ram with Jesus? Theologically difficult. Jesus is not God. But perhaps this is being too Protestant. What if we are to see the ascended Christ, the Pantokrātōr? Perhaps. Both of us agree with the suggestion by a colleague at Columbia University that there is a second referent to the term “the ninth vision”. This is the ninth vision in the book of Zechariah, ch. VI, verses 9-15. The vision that is seen is the messianic king enthroned and ruling with the High Priest.

Here is the Hebrew of verses 12b-13. “Behold a man whose name is sprout [or growth bud: tsemaḥ]. From being static [literally from under himself] he will sprout [yitsmaḥ] and will build the Temple of the Lord. He will build the Temple of the Lord and will take on royal majesty [hod]. He will sit and rule on his throne, and the Priest will be on his throne, and there will be concord between them”. Here is the Greek translation (conveniently but improperly called the Septuagint, LXX). The Greek of the Minor Prophets is an interpretative translation, without being arbitrary. “Behold the man whose name is Dawn [anatolê]; over the horizon [hypokatôthen, literally up from under] he will dawn [anatelei], and build the house of the Lord. And he will take on nobility [or prowess: Greek aretê], and sit and rule upon his throne; and there will be a Priest on his right hand, and there shall be concord between them”.

There is no difficulty in reconciling the Hebrew and the Greek. There are two main groups of meanings of tsemaḥ in Hebrew and anatolê in Greek. They can mean “sprouting” and “first appearing over the horizon, shining for the first time”. The two verbs tsamaḥ and anatellein have the same range of meaning as the noun. The root idea, a first appearance from nowhere, can be seen clearly in their use in speaking of the outwelling of the headwaters of a river from the ground. When opening most modern English translations we find the Hebrew word tsemaḥ rendered as “the branch”, or something to that effect. This is a bad rendering, caused by mental association with verses in Isaiah and elsewhere that speak of a new branch, as well as being due to absence of feeling for the Hebrew language. It sounds like something said by the Black Adder when taken out of context –- “behold a man whose name is Sprout”, or “behold the man whose name is the eye of the potato”. That is what the text actually says. Aquila renders it in Greek as “new growth” [anaphyē; the noun is not in Liddell and Scott, but the verb is well attested]. Symmachus and Ho Hebraios render as growthbud [blastēma]. The Bible de Jérusalem and the Traduction Ecuménique de la Bible also both translate correctly as ‘germe’ in French, meaning growthbud, such as the eye of a potato. The Greek translator chooses a valid alternative interpretation, the first dawning. Here is Philo’s comment on Zechariah VI:12, “Behold a man whose name is the Daybreak (Anatolē)”. Philo says these words are: spoken of a man who is compounded of body and soul; but if you look upon it as applied to that incorporeal being who in no respect differs from the divine image, you will then agree that the name of the Daybreak has been given to him with great felicity. For the Father of the universe has caused him to spring up as the eldest son whom, in another passage, he calls the firstborn; and he who is thus born, imitating the ways of his Father, has formed such and such species, looking to his archetypal patterns. (We quote from the Loeb Classical Library). Philo finds a hint of the connection of both the passage from Zechariah and Genesis XXI:23, the planting of the eshel, with Paradise in Genesis II:8, “The Lord God planted a Garden in Eden in the East.” The Hebrew is miqqedem, which can also mean “aforetime” and this is the interpretation in the Jewish Targums. Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus do the same. In the LXX however the term that appears in its place is kata anatolas “in the east”. The Samaritan Targum agrees. There can be no doubt that Philo understood that the Jewish Messiah would come like a solar god, exactly as we see indicated by the combination of images on the throne.

The imagery in Zechariah is of a future king. Using the image of a tree, he is still only a sprout. Using the imagery of the sun, he is the first dawn. He is a child. The dimensions of the throne are right for a child, not an adult. The illustrations on the throne show or symbolise the stages of his growth and expected rise to uncontested kingship. The imagery is mostly solar. This is most clearly seen in the image of an eagle near the sun disc on the back of the chair. The combination of the eagle and sun belongs to the old religion of Egypt, not Christianity. It is associated with Horus and with resurrection. The sequence of illustrations on the back and sides of the chair symbolises the stages of the future king’s expected rise and the coming of the ideal kingdom, or heaven on earth, but there is no room here to demonstrate this. Although the imagery is solar, a linkage is made between the tree metaphor and the sun metaphor by the prominent depiction of two pairs of palm trees. The palm tree is associated with the phoenix. In addition, the numerical value of tamar, a palm tree, is 640, the same as the numerical value of shemesh, the sun. On one panel, the pair of palm trees are still partly below the horizon. On a panel to be read as later in the order of development, the pair of palm trees are fully over the horizon, growing out of the ground as normally. The final panel has an eagle pushing the sun disc up with its wings and carrying the gospel in its talons. A coded reference to Mark is built in here. If you take the word nesher, an eagle, in Hebrew spelling and substitute the previous letter of the Hebrew alphabet for each letter, N becomes M, Sh becomes R, and R becomes Q, spelling Marc(us), Mark(os), Mårq(e), Marq(a).

The throne is a Gnostic relic, but the term needs explanation. The term “gnôstikoi” was used in ancient times to denote adherents of what we call Gnosticism, but it was used in this sense by their opponents, mainly early Catholic Christian writers. (Note that we call it Gnosticism. There was no Greek word “gnōstikismos” before the 19th century). When these persons called themselves gnōstikoi, Gnostics, they used it not as a term denoting denominational adherence, like Presbyterians or Calathumpians, but rather as a description of their own nature and purpose. The word is artificial. It is a deliberately made up technical term. It is at this point that nearly all discussions of its origin go astray by assuming that the word was made up by the adherents of what we call gnosticism. The original intended meaning of the artificial term gnōstikoi is then guessed at. The guesses are necessarily vague, something like “those having, or claiming to have, special knowledge”. But in fact the term was invented centuries earlier, and it is known who made it up and precisely what was meant by it. The word was made up by Plato. Philo and his contemporaries would have known this fact, and would have known what Plato meant by the term. As Morton Smith points out, it describes “the ideal king, the only man capable of knowing God, who would therefore act as the mediator between God and man; he would be, in effect, the Nous [the divine intellect] of his subjects, in whom he would restore their lost contact with the heavenly world from which he came.” The Throne of St. Mark demonstrates that the original evangelist –- St. Mark himself –- was conceived as sitting on a throne like the earthly representative of an ancient sun god or like Plato’s “gnostic” philosopher king. The presence of numerous and varied symbols, codes and kabbalistic ciphers typical of what we call Gnosticism on the throne along with symbols that express Platonic doctrine adds weight to the theory that what we call gnosticism arose out of a kind of Jewish Platonism. Many scholars have noted an uncanny similarity between the theological concepts behind the gospel and the writings of Philo. The surviving Christians of Alexandria –- the Copts –- maintain that Mark the original evangelist was Philo’s cousin. The Throne of St. Mark at long last gives independent confirmation that there was indeed a historical relationship between the two.

The veneration of Christ as riding through the heavens in a solar throne was not added to theological imagery at the time of Constantine, though it was certainly strengthened then under the influence of Mithraism. It was noticeably present in the earliest Jewish sectarian influences on Christianity –- viz. those of the Essenes and Therapeutae. Josephus mentions the Essenes “offering certain prayers to [the sun], as though entreating him to rise” (War II.128). Philo says of the Therapeuts: “They are accustomed to pray twice a day, at morning and at evening. When the sun is rising entreating God … so that their minds may be filled with heavenly light.” (Philo, De Vita Contemplativa, I:27). We can infer that this veneration was almost immediately transferred to a ‘second advent’ theology present in the earliest gospels (Matthew XXIV:27; Diatessaron 42:14, 15 “for as the lightning cometh out of anatolē, and shineth even unto the west; so also shall the coming of the Son of man be”). We see Clement and Origen (Nicetas, Catena on Matthew, XIII:46; Origen, De Principiis, I.5.5) describing the Messiah's resurrection as being of the nature of the rising of the Sun in the East. Origen specifically cites Matthew XXIV:27 to prove the Messiah's Second Coming to be from the East (Anastasius Sinaita, Guide, in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, vol. 89, cols. 77f; Origen, Commentary on John, I:25). The fact that the early Church Fathers from the time of Hippolytus have identified the Essenes as the precursors of Christianity is noteworthy. Eusebius’s claim of the Alexandrian Therapeutae having been established by St. Mark himself is of particular interest in this connection (Church History III:28). While many scholars have dismissed the claim, it is part of the official doctrine of the Coptic Church, which asserts it to be known by tradition, independently of Eusebius. Morton Smith (Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973, p. 27) observes that the legendary details of this transmission and the specific context of Eusebius’ statement imply that he got the idea from Clement of Alexandria, the earliest Catholic representative in the city. Mark represents the historical link between the early Jewish communities venerating the sun and the subsequent Christological symbolism.

In a future article we hope to show that the pictorial and numerical symbolism on the throne was known to the author of the book of Revelation.

List of Previous Studies of the Throne or the Inscription

1. Giampietro Secchi, La Cattedra Alessandrina di S. Marco etc. etc., Venice 1853.
2. André Le Hir, La Chaire de saint Marc, Etudes religieuses d’histoire et de littérature, 1870, 4e série, t. V, p. 672 ff.
3. J. Bargès, Dissertation sur l’inscription hebraïque de la chaire de saint Marc à Venise, Annales de philosophie chrétienne, 3e série, t. III, 1880, p. 222 ff.
4. André Grabar, La ‘Sedia di San Marco’ à Venise, in Cahiers Archéologiques VII, 1954, pp. 19–34.
5. [Series] Il Tesoro di San Marco, dir. H. R. Hahnloser. [Publication no. II] Il Tresoro e il Museo . Florence 1971. [Article pp. 19-34] Cat. No. 10. Trono-reliquario di albastro calcareo detto « sedia di S. Marco », by A. Grabar.
6. The Treasury of San Marco, Venice. [Catalogue]. Milan 1984, pp 98–105. [Article pp. 98-105] Throne-reliquary (the Sedia di San Marco), by G. Gaborit-Chopin.
7. Wladimiro Dorigo, La cosidetta «cattedra di San Marco», in Venezia Arti, 1989, numero 3, pp. 5-13.
8. Mab van Lohuizen-Mulder, The Cathedra of St. Mark in Venice, in Babesch. Bulletin Antieke Beschaving, vol. 63, 1988, p. 165–179.