The Danger of Not Having a Well Rounded Understanding of History

I think I have made a pretty good case for the inner circle of the Emperor Commodus being heavily involved in Christianity. I stumbled across David Xavier Kenny's collection of artifacts from the period and - entirely independent of me and my interpretation of contemporary LITERARY material - says that PHYSICAL evidence suggests the transition FROM Commodus to Pertinax involved an appeal to an early Christian conception of 'divine right' of rulers:

in my opinion the depiction and inscriptions seen on this ring shows that [Marcia] was in fact a Christian. It also suggests that Pertinax may have had a sympathy or even an empathy with the Christians. Either way it is evident that Pertinax was viewed as a "Great Hope" for the Christians, as well as the rest of Rome.

The point of course is that if Kenny's PHYSICAL evidence points to the framing of the transition from Commodus to Pertinax as a succession of Christian rulers then it clears the way for understanding the unmistakable presence of a core group of Christians in the courts of the most important Emperors which followed including Septimius Severus and Alexander Severus.

Of course the history books say that Septimius Severus persecuted Christians. But what they fail to notice is that the real center of the persecutions took place in Egypt and north Africa. At the same time we have to take into account the great numbers of Christians in this Emperors family including:

(a) the wet nurse for his eldest son Caracalla who "everything thus indicates that the Christian wet nurse also sojourned in Rome (with his sons). After 193 the year of the Imperial proclamation of Septimius Severus she probably numbered among the Imperial family.
(b) Caralla's subsequent chamberlain Prosenes
(c) Torpacion Proculus, an important figure in Septimius Severus' court who became influentialto Caracalla later in life
(d) Alexemenos
(e) Vitalinis

Just to name a few. I have provided a link to a more detailed discussion of the physical evidence for the influence of Christians in the Imperial court of the time here.

The point is that it is impossible not to see that something was going on at Palatine in this period which happened to coincide with Rome becoming the center of Christianity. I know it sounds like just another conspiracy theory when I say that the Christians in Alexandria and north Africa were being punished by the Imperial government IN ORDER to help change the center of gravity in the Church. But how else can one view the evidence?

By 250 CE we have clear indications that bishops in north Africa and around the world were part o a Church that was based in Rome. To discount the bloody half century which preceded this evidence is simply reckless in my mind. What's more - if we see Constantine make certain that the Christian Church of his day was located within arms reach of his throne, why is it so ludicrous to assume that previous Emperors want to encourage the same thing in their day?

If you are with me so far, it has to be seen that the same situation is reflected with regards to the text of the gospel. The preferred text of the Imperial circle is the four faced gospel. The form that is pushed to the side is the single, long gospel form - a la Diatessaron. This doesn't mean of course that the Diatessaron as it is now constituted or even that form that was known to Ephrem is the original gospel. But given the fact that something like our present text was known to Tatian and this form was continued to be used by Clement, Origen and many other third century sources in spite of the preferred status of the four faced gospel, it seems obvious to me that the single, long gospel form is the more original.

Now I can't deny that I am entirely biased in this regard. I don't think that when the earliest sources use gospel in the singular - i.e. 'the gospel,' 'my gospel' etc - that they ever meant four gospels. I also happened to have read and accept David Trobisch's analysis of the earliest canons - viz. that they were developed as 'a set,' that is that each seperated gospel in our canon was not a natural or organic development on its own.

As such when I read the letter to Theodore I can't possibly understand how the Carpocratian text mentioned therein is OUR CANONICAL GOSPEL OF MARK. I have a problem you see BECAUSE I HAVE A WELL ROUNDED SENSE OF HISTORY. There couldn't have been two texts named the gospel of Mark any more than a parent could have given two children the exact same name.

I will say to the end of time that the only explanation of Clement's exegesis is (a) a single, long original Gospel of Mark in Alexandria (b) a Carpocratian SHORTER gospel of Mark and (c) a gospel which Mark wrote for Peter - which I identify as the Gospel of Peter.

We don't know what the Gospel of Peter looked like before our surviving fragment. I see no reason to see that it - like the Diatessaron - might well have resembled Mark in crucial sections like chapter 10. But then again - as I have already noted - I happen to have a well rounded knowledge of a lot o things including history.