Mark's Use of Ordinal Alphabetic Ciphers in the Mimar Marqe

I wrote this book about this theory that St. Mark was really Marcus Julius Agrippa the last king of Israel. Yes, it sounds stupid. Maybe it is stupid but it is the inevitable consequence - in my opinion - of any student of early Christianity learning to understand and appreciate the nuances of the Samaritan tradition.

If there was one thing that life taught me it was that it is always a bad thing to go 'out on a limb.' The safe path - the path that virtually every other scholar of Christian origins takes - is to 'stay within the lines.' You know - either defend, attack or manipulate the Irenaean paradigm of Christianity being a development of Judaism.

You know, all that stuff about God transferring 'the promise' from the Jews to the Christians. Well, what always struck me was the question - what about the Samaritans?

What about the fact that almost everyone OUTSIDE of the Irenaean paradigm from 'Simon Magus' on down has some connection to this un-Jewish tradition.

Are we just supposed to forget the Samaritans? Oh. I forgot. Two hundred years of scholarship on the subject of Christian origins HAS JUST FORGOTTEN THE SAMARITANS.

Well then, good luck figuring out where all the 'heresies' came from ...

The way you are supposed to play the game it to recycle all the BS that has been floating around for two thousand years. 'Redemption' means this. 'Christ' means that.

The secret is to learn how to sound like you're saying something new when really you're just repackaging something somebody else said and proving that you're smart enough to work the system.

Of course, I was never much good at 'playing the game.'. I was never skilled at exhibiting cleverness. I guess that makes me stupid ...

Most people of course think that this idea is totally ridiculous. You can't get from Mark to Marcus Agrippa, they say. I am not going to argue that my critics are wrong.

I have to admit, IT IS DIFFICULT TO PROVE that St. Mark was Marcus Agrippa. But then again we are just left assuming that this 'nobody' named Mark wrote what amounts to being the second Torah of Israel - viz. the gospel.

That doesn't make much sense given that the first author of the Torah was Moses, and he was no schlub.

What I attribute what makes me different from all those other experts is that when I was very young I befriended a Samaritan named Benyamim Tsedaka. Even though I was Jewish by birth, my parents were atheists so I basically 'relearned' all of the traditions of my ancestors through Samaritan eyes as it were and then applied that knowledge to my quest to make sense of the origins of Christianity.

Does that make sense?

If you have been following my blog you know that I have been typing out MacDonald's 1963 English translation of the most important book in the Samaritan tradition (I know you are supposed to add the words 'after the Pentateuch' but the writings of Marqe define the entire manner in which the Samaritans interpret the Torah so it is really difficult to say which is more or less important; for instance the Jews actually give higher authority to the Talmud than the Pentateuch, if you want to get a parallel example).

In any event, it was from the Samaritans that I got the basic idea that someone named Mark would NECESSARILY have been taken to be the messiah in an Aramaic speaking community (the name has the numerological value of the name 'Moses').

It was from Book Two of the Treatise of Mark - the book I am now transcribing - that I got most of my ideas in favor of the idea that this messiah named Mark lived in the late first or early second century.

It's not like I am alone in dating Marqe to this period. Kippenberg, Crown, Stenhouse and Boid - all respected scholars of the Samaritan tradition have developed arguments independent of one another to put him back in the 1st or 2nd century.

You can read their books and articles to see what about Marqe's writings make them think he came from this early date. Boid will have a new article coming out in the next two years which should prove this point beyond a reasonable doubt. He really is the smartest of the lot.

I will however translate the pertinent bits from Kippenberg's 1969 article to help those who can't wait.

Here's what I add to the mix.

If you look at the last chapter I just transcribed, Marqe decides to count the number of times that the four elements - i.e. earth, wind, fire and water - 'help' the redemption of the Israelites.

Why anyone would attempt to begin a book with such a silly argument is beyond me. Maybe you can think of a reason. I can't other than the fact that he is hiding something of great significance in this poetic essay.

Remember the Samaritans, like the Jews are not supposed to worship the elements any more than the hosts in heaven or anything else other than God himself. Marqe's mystical bent is well known to students of Samaritanism.

He is without a doubt the most important - and under-appreciated - kabbalist from the earliest period of 'Judaism.' You'll see this as the work goes on.

All I need right now is for the reader to notice that he groups the number of times that earth, wind, fire and water 'help' the ancient Israelites gain their redemption in a way that defies logic.

He counts 3 examples of fire's 'help,' 10 of wind, 6 of earth and 14 of water.

I have never seen a single reference to the elements as 'fire, wind, earth and water' in any ancient text. The report neither groups the numbers in ascending or descending order. So I suspected that they were so arranged because they were meant to be taken as letters.

Now before some of you tell me I am grasping at straws, let me remind you - you likely no nothing whatsoever of Marqe's kabbalistic bent. He is very creative with his mystical interpretation of letters and numbers. Marqe goes beyond anything we know in Philo or even the Sepher Yetsirah.

Just wait and let me show you.

The point is that my grandfather once taught me a thing called mispar katan among the Jews - i.e. where letters are hidden as numbers based ON THEIR ORDINAL VALUE. So instead of the letter mem (M) being assigned its NUMERICAL VALUE of 40, it would be assigned the number 13 because it is the thirteenth letter in the twenty two letter Hebrew alphabet.

If you look at our last chapter then:

3, 10, 6, 14

spells out the Greek name 'Gaius' as it would naturally be rendered in Samaritan Aramaic:

GYON

In case you think I am making this up I have an email today from my friend Ruairidh Boid of Monash University which says that not only would a Greek speaker render Gaios as Gaion but:

Gaius would appear as Gaion in Aramaic and specifically gimmel-yod-vav-nun.

The point of course is that Marqe couldn't be introducing 'just some guy' named Gaius into his treatise about the ancient Israelites. I will demonstrate to you that in chapter seven of this same book THE EMPEROR TITUS is cryptically introduced as 're-establishing' the land of Israel as Eden or Paradise for Israel.

Of course this is not what any of us would expect JEWS to write but we mustn't forget the Mimar Marqe is a Samaritan text. The very same period which was so devastating for Jews was something of a golden age for Samaritans and the Herod's were viewed very favorably in Samaritan writings.

I think that THE WHOLE of Book Two is a mystical attempt to project the Exodus narrative as a 'typos' of what was happening in the first century period when 'Mark' - i.e. Marcus Julius Agrippa - was establishing the Samaritan cultus.

Let's just put this idea on hold for a moment while I demonstrate the use of ordinal alphabetic ciphers in other parts of Book Two of the Mimar Marqe.

Let's look at Mimar Marqe II. 8. I will cite the whole chapter in a couple of days but it is enough to say that Marqe continues his 'poetic grouping' of types of miracles that we just saw in chapter three. This time however he counts the number of 'marvels' or miracles that were accomplished in the crossing of the Red Sea. He ends up with:

10 marvels AT the Red Sea, 6 in the water, 4 outside the water

Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this spells out the letter 'yod' which has a numerical value of 10.

Some might say of course that there is no reason for Marqe to emphasize the number ten again after he just lists 'ten miracles' as being accomplished AT the Red Sea. Yet no one should think that emphasizing THE TENTH LETTER of the Hebrew alphabet is redundant. The Hebrew word for ten is different - eser. Yod has THE MYSTICAL VALUE of ten and is used through Jewish mysticism to signify a quality of the divine essence which cannot be referenced in open discussions.

At the very least I should sat that I think Marqe is emphasizing that it wasn't just ten miracles at the Red Sea but ten miracles accomplished by the letter yod.

For those who are still not sure that Marqe really meant this I encourage you to wait for Books Three, Four and Six were the letter Yod almost literally takes on a life of its own.

The point is that the idea that Marqe meant for his readers to take the ordinal values of the letters 3, 10, 6 and 14 to 'get' the name Gaius is a way of secretly acknowledging that the Emperor Gaius 'Caligula' had a parallel role in the 'redemption' for the nation of Israel in the contemporary environment in which he was writing.

That GAIUS CALIGULA helped Marcus Agrippa save the Jews and Samaritans of Alexandria against the plots of the wicked Egyptian governor Flaccus is the basis to my Real Messiah. By the time we get to chapter seven we will see that he uses a secret cipher to identify to Titus re-establishing Israel as a Garden of Eden or Paradise.

Indeed what I will eventually argue is that there can be no doubt that what Marqe is attempting to do in Book Two - albeit entirely 'secretly' - is establish that HE IS THE MOSES of the current generation who have all received their 'redemption' in the period and have ultimately been allowed to 're-enter Paradise' in contemporary Palestine.

I will also argue in an upcoming blog that Marqe's use of the specific term 'Palestine' for the eretz Israel reinforces the correctness of his being dated to a period when the region was still called this (i.e. the early second century at the very latest).

Before I get too far into this discussion let me just remind my readers of a basic parallel NOT COVERED IN MY BOOK. About forty years separates the incident in Alexandria 38 CE (where Marcus Julius Agrippa saved the Jewish and Samaritan populations) and Titus becoming Emperor just as the ancient Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years.

Marqe is Marcus Julius Agrippa and the Mimar Marqe was written around 80 CE.

One other thing, I should mention. My study of the Marcosians demonstrated that they thought that the gospel was written in the exact same way as we have just seen 'Mark' compose the Mimar Marqe. Of course, there isn't a Samaritan scholar out there that doubts for a minute that Marqe was 'addicted' to kabbalah. Let's see if we can get even a handful of Christian scholars to admit that the 'Jewish' author of the gospel might have employed Jewish mystical practices known to Jews at all times and all places when composing his text.

Fat chance!

They simply don't want to let Semitic truths into their little Christian pretend party.

No wonder they never took up an interest in Marqe either. His writing style was 'too Jewish' I guess. Good thing that God only wrote the gospel with the Gentiles in mind. Strange that he would have to pick a Jew like St. Mark carry out his work for him ...

More to follow ...