Some Speculation About the Use of the Gospel of Peter by the Alexandrian See of St. Mark [Part One]

This blog is not supposed to function like an academic paper. I am not trying to limit myself to things I can prove. This doesn't mean that I let myself 'go wild' and report just about anything that pops into my head. It means that I use this site to 'test' ideas 'out in the marketplace.'

If I say something totally stupid, I expect that at least some of the fifty or so readers I have every day will say, 'hey Huller, that's stupid.'

So it is that I presented the idea yesterday that Clement's Letter to Theodore seems to confirm and develop John Dominic Crossan's ideas about the Gospel of Peter's relationship to the Gospel of Mark. The irony of course is that the biggest critic of Crossan's theory is Helmut Koester, one of the most prominent defenders of the authenticity of 'Secret Mark' for the last few decades.

Of course life unfolds in unpredictable ways. If my theory holds up to academic scrutiny (which might occur if I develop a 'real' paper on the subject) I have managed to explain the one thing that has always eluded scholars - i.e. why Clement would think that 'Secret Mark' came AFTER the development of 'canonical Mark.'

What I have done of course is to argue that the gospel that Mark wrote for Peter 'during Peter's stay at Rome' has been wrongly identified as 'canonical Mark.' There are two principle reasons why everyone assumed that canonical Mark is being described here is because Irenaeus says this is so. Eusebius infers that Irenaeus cited Papias of Hierapolis to support the contention that the Gospel of Mark was developed by Mark as 'Peter's interpreter.'

The second reason follows from the first - namely that because Clement of Alexandria was a 'father' of the same Church as Irenaeus and the rest, Clement must have held the same ideas about Mark's work for Peter. Moreover, there is a work called the Hypotyposeis which passed under the name of Clement of Alexandria cited by Eusebius which seems to confirm that Clement held the same beliefs as Irenaeus regarding the Gospel of Mark being the gospel that Mark wrote for Peter.

Yet scholars have to IGNORE or manipulate Photius of Constantinople's explicit denial that the Hypotyposeis was written by Clement. This opinion seems to have been passed on by Photius's student Arethas who went on to become the archbishop of Caesarea and who failed to include the Hypotyposeis in his collection of writings of Clement. Furthermore I have demonstrated a number of clear reasons why Photius must have been right to conclude that the Hypotyposeis was not authentically Clementine - the most obvious being that the author of the Hypotyposeis thinks that Peter and Cephas are two different disciples while the 'real' Clement of Alexandria rightly acknowledges them as being names of the same person in Greek and Aramaic.

Once we unchain our understanding of Clement of Alexandria from the beliefs expressed by the author of the Hypotyposeis there is no reason for doubting that Clement is actually saying that Mark FIRST wrote the Gospel of Peter in Rome for Peter and then took worked pieces of that work into the Gospel of Mark at Alexandria. I believe Clement is saying that this Alexandrian Gospel of Mark was ur-Mark and that the text of the Gospel of Mark in the hands of people OUTSIDE of Alexandria were developed by people that Clement - rightly or wrongly - identifies as 'Carpocratians.'

The argument for this position goes as follows. Even though 'Carpocrates' is inferred to be of Alexandrian origin, the last known 'sighting' of a 'Carpocratian' occurs in Rome - viz. 'little Marcia' who came over to the city from somewhere else in the middle of the second century. I have presented evidence which suggests that a much shorter account of the Carpocratians was present in the lost manuscript of Irenaeus' Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely that was in the hands of Hippolytus of Rome in the early third century. Our surviving version of Irenaeus' account of the Carpocratians was a further expansion from the time of Hippolytus' citation of the material.

As such it is entirely possible that there was no original reference to the 'Carpocratians' in Irenaeus' original work. As I have noted many times the section which begins with Simon Magus and goes through to the 'Cainites' is a later addition and is often unknown to Hippolytus. For instance Hippolytus does not use Irenaeus' report on the Marcionites and many of the other heretics and uses something very different. Where the surviving text of Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely identifies the Marcionites as using a corrupt version of Luke, Hippolytus account of the Marcionites only denies their claim that they use the true gospel written by Mark.

The point of course is that most of the scholarly interpretation of the Patristic writings have been carried out in a hopelessly uncritical manner. I attribute this to an inherent laziness on the part of academics but the same phenomenon can be equally well be attributed to their inherent need for certainty.

This is undoubtedly one of the principle reasons why so many scholars were prepared to jump on the Stephen Carlson bandwagon to declare to Theodore a fake. The texts challenges ALL of our inherited notions about 'certainty' about the development of the canonical gospels.

I never believed that the Gospel of Peter was earlier than the Gospel of Mark so my opinions about what the Letter to Theodore says is not part of a personal agenda on my part. I do think however that my reading of the material helps subordinate canonical Mark as a necessary 'shortening' of the Alexandrian original. This always puzzled interpreters of the Mar Saba document. As such they would be forced to say things like we believe in the authenticity of To Theodore but we think that Clement is wrong when he says that 'Secret Mark' was developed after canonical Mark and the like.

The interpretation I have developed supports Crossan's basic assumptions about the Gospel of Peter. It came before the lost 'longer' ur-Mark of Alexandria in what we read:

As for Mark, then, during Peter's stay in Rome he wrote an account of the Lord's doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected.

Canonical Mark was then developed as a shortening of the original Alexandrian text of Mark by people Clement cryptically identifies as 'Carpocratians.' I think that the testimony that the Carpocratians only came to Rome from somewhere else implies that they were one and the same with the inner circle of Commodus (i.e. Irenaeus and Florinus) both of whom - we learn from Irenaeus' explicit testimony - came from Asia Minor from a 'royal court' where both men were students of Polycarp.

The critical think for us to see here is that we have been entirely enslaved to the opinion of Irenaeus as to the identity of 'Polycarp.' Florinus had very different ideas about Polycarp and Florinus clearly must have argued that he received his initiation into 'Valentinianism' from the man that Irenaeus calls 'Polycarp' in one instance in Book Three of the Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-Called but - as Charles Hill notes - this is the exception rather than the rule. Irenaeus usually refers to Polycarp by the generic title 'the elder' owing to the fact that I believe that Florinus knew Polycarp (itself a very unusual name) by another appellation.

So if the reader follows me so far - I think there is reason to link the Carpocratians who Clement says corrupted Gospel of Mark and who came to Rome in the middle of the second century from somewhere else with the circle of Polycarp (Florinus, Irenaeus etc) who came to Rome from somewhere else.

Interestingly the 'somewhere else' in either case is not Alexandria but Asia Minor. Epiphanius says that Carpocrates was born in Asia Minor while Irenaeus says that the circle of Polycarp was apparently 'born' in Asia Minor too.

Reconciling Epiphanius' testimony with all the rest that we hear about 'Carpocrates' would make us infer that 'Carpocrates' came from Asia Minor to Alexandria and somehow managed to steal the gospel and then 'Carpocratians' i.e. later adherents corrupted the text. How can this be explained with regards to Polycarp?

Well if my regular readers haven't taken the time to read my paper over at Hermann Detering's site linking Polycarp with the Christian 'Stranger' figure of Lucian of Samosata's Passing of Peregrinus I would ask them to do so now. It is here.

There is EXPLICIT mention of an important event which takes place when 'the Stranger' (i.e. Polycarp) went to Alexandria and learned asceticism and apatheia (a term used throughout the writings of Clement which special significance):

Thereafter the Stranger went away a third time, to Egypt, to visit Agathobulus, where he took that wonderful course of training in asceticism, shaving one half of his head, daubing his face with mud, and demonstrating what they call 'apatheia' by erecting his shameful thing (aidoion) amid a thronging mob of bystanders, besides giving and taking blows on the rump with a rod, and playing the charlatan even more audaciously in many other ways [Lucian Passing Peregrinus 17]

Of course no one should take the account seriously but there is I believe the beginning of something of the caricature of the 'Carpocrates' as a licentious individual.

There is no explicit mention here of 'the Stranger' stealing a gospel let along the Gospel of Mark but his destination is made absolutely explicit in what follows:

From there, thus equipped, he set sail for Italy and immediately after disembarking he fell to abusing. everyone, and in particular the Emperor, knowing him to be mild and gentle, so that he was safe in making bold. The Emperor, as one would expect, cared little for his libels and did not think fit to punish for mere words a man who only used philosophy as a cloak, and above all, a man who had made a profession of abusiveness. But in our friend’s case, even from this his reputation grew, among simple folk any how, and he was a cynosure for his recklessness, until finally the city prefect, a wise man, packed him off for immoderate indulgence in the thing, saying that the city had no need of any such philosopher. However, this too made for his renown, and he was on everybody’s lips as the philosopher who had been banished for his frankness and excessive freedom, so that in this respect he approached Musonius, Dio, Epictetus, and anyone else who has been in a similar predicament [Lucian Passing Peregrinus 18]

Now remember most people assume that Irenaeus was saying that he and Florinus saw Polycarp in Asia Minor at the 'royal court.' The facts however is that Irenaeus' testimony never makes this explicit and it seems far more likely that the actual place for this encounter would be Rome as Florinus and Irenaeus are clearly pictured as sitting in court of Antoninus' grandson in the same city a generation later.

We all have heard that 'it's a small world' but the world isn't that small that two people sitting in a 'royal court' in Asia Minor end up sitting in another royal court in Rome twenty years later. Come on ...

In any event, at the risk of boring my readers with my readers it can't be denied that there is one missing piece of evidence to tie the idea that the 'Carpocrates' who went from Asia Minor to Alexandria to Rome could have been the same as the Polycarp who came from Asia Minor to Alexandria to Rome (remember Irenaeus confirms that Polycarp was in Rome during the tenure of Anicetus which happens to be same time that the Carpocratians came according to the Refutation of Irenaeus interesting!).

How can the name 'Carpocrates' be connected with Polycarp?

You can't imagine how I have been struggling with this idea. Every idea I put forward just doesn't work.

And then as a good Jew I remembered that Clement of Alexandria expresses an interest in gematria and numerology in Book Six Chapter Eleven of the Stromata. Could it be that Karpokrates is a cover for something else via the 'tricks' of numerology? Even the Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-Called uses this 'trick' not once but twice over the course of its narrative so the idea has some real possibilities.

The first step here was to get the 'numerological value' of the name 'Carpocrates':

Karpokrates = k (20) + a (1) + r (100) + p (80) + o (70) + k (20) + r (100) + a (1) + t (300) + e (5) + s (200) = 897

Then came the hard part. I had to find something that 'Carpocrates' might have been a cover for which held the same numerological value - i.e. 897. Words can't describe how frustrating it is to take stabs in the dark with Greek names and calculate their value. It is very time consuming too. So then I just thought - why not use Google? Maybe there exists a tradition where the number 897 already has some significance.

Remarkably something did come up which fits my theory about Polycarp to a tee. I found thatsome other crackpot has determined that phrase 'the seven churches which are in Asia' has a value of 897.

The seven churches of Asia of course are supposed to belong to John. Yet, as the Harris fragments of the Martyrdom of Polycarp demonstrate so clearly, it is difficult to distinguish between John and his supposed student Polycarp.

I have always suspected that the 'John of Asia Minor' is not only an invention of Polycarp but that it was specifically developed from Mark's rib. After all the Alexandrian tradition recognizes to this day that 'Mark' was only the evangelist's Gentile name. His Jewish name was 'John.'

I won't get too distracted with explaining how I think Polycarp invented his 'John.' The point however is that the idea that Clement might have been secretly maligning the Johannine tradition - i.e. the seven churches of Asia Minor. Many people will certainly scoff at the idea that Clement might have been 'holding back' his contempt of the Johannine corpus owing - as I claim - to the fear of Imperial persecution at the hands of the Carpocratians (i.e. disciples of Polycarp) in the court of Commodus. Nevertheless it is difficult to explain why Dionysius, the student of Origen and the grand-student of Clement effectively should happen to emerge IN AN AGE WHERE THE ROMAN EMPIRE LOST CONTROL OF ALEXANDRIA casting dispersions on the authenticity of this text.

The official chronology of course claims that Dionysius' rule 'suddenly ended' with Zenobia's rise and eventual conquest of Egypt but Severus Al'Ashmunein reports a chronology which extends Dionysius' rule through this period of 'liberation' of the Alexandrian Church as we read:

At this time Dionysius, patriarch of Alexandria, went to his rest, after remaining in the see for seventeen years; and he died on the 13th. day of Barmahat. But in a copy in the Monastery of Father Macarius it is said that he continued upon the episcopal throne seven years.

Seven years would mean that Dionysius - the one who could finally declare the contempt that the Egyptian Church ALWAYS HAD for the Romans - would end up being tortured according to this alternate chronology by the Roman government who reconquered the city from the hands of Egypt's liberators.

I have always said that scholars aren't well enough acquainted with history. Notice also that ALL sources say that Dionysius missed the condemnation of Paul of Samosata - the bishop of Antioch ALSO who carried on officiating the church in Antioch under the rule of Zenobia.

Do you notice a pattern here?

When the Romans re-united the Empire they didn't just allow Christianity to keep on functioning the way it always had done. Aurelian is CLEARLY involved in the reshaping of the tradition. He even imposes Christmas on the Church!

It's at least worth considering ...