Do you know that just by uttering these five words - the Church of St. Mark - we have shattered almost two thousand years of historical darkness?
There are many of people out there who take in an interest in Alexandrian Christianity. It ranges from 'serious scholars' to popular writers. Yet only a handful of them recognize the significance of the Church of St. Mark.
Birger Pearson is one of those people and though he gave my Real Messiah a bad review and the fact that we are on opposite sides on the issue of the authenticity of the Mar Saba document, he was the first person I emailed with today's big news.
And what is that news?
My good friend (I am so isolated now living in Washington State that anyone who corresponds with me immediately becomes a 'good friend') and famed underwater investigator Harry Tzalas has decided to rescue what remains of the Church of St. Mark off the shores of Chatby Beach in Alexandria.
Here is his email to me yesterday. He wrote:
I am now discussing with the authorities the permission for raising out of the water a multitude of architectural elements that may be related to this Church. All what I know is that this church was still standing until the early 13th century and even after its destruction its ruins were visible for centuries. I will be in Alexandria for a week as from the 2nd of April for a conference and for the launch of the English translation of one of my book of Alexandrian short stories.
I don't think the world will ever be ready for what the Church of St. Mark originally meant to Christianity. I can only compare it to the Jerusalem temple for Jews or Mecca for Muslims.
I know there are those who will accuse me of overstatement but I stand by my words. I have my own theories about the origins of the church which I will share with you but I will try to break it down for those less familiar with the facts.
By the ninth century, the Muslim authorities must have prevented the Copts from having access to the building. We know this because somehow the Venetians managed to take away the bodies of at least two saints including Mark and various relics associated with him.
There is absolutely no way that the Italians could have gotten away with this plunder if they didn't have the support of the government. The church must have already been off limits and with no one around the site, the sailors were able to take away the most sacred objects associated with the Egyptian religion.
I think this event more than any other put the last nail in the coffin for Christianity in Egypt. By the time Severus begins writing his history of the Coptic Patriarchs, the plunder was over a century old and the tradition struggles to make sense of itself and its relationship to now legendary patron.
The history of Egyptian Christianity is intimately connected with this one building. Severus acknowledges that this was the only church in all of Egypt up until the end of the third century. Christians clearly had to make pilgrimages to this holy site for special days or, as Severus, notes worshiped in caves.
There can be no doubt that there wasn't one physical building over the first thousand years of Egyptian Christianity. The building that Clement references at the end of the second century was probably destroyed and rebuilt in the fourth or perhaps early fifth century by Cyril.
This structure survived the Muslim conquest but seems to have been again razed to the ground in subsequent attempts of the Byzantines to reconquer the city. The church was again rebuilt when things settled down in Egypt but the important point is that the location of the building certainly remained consistent throughout time.
The Church of St. Mark is always identified as being on the other side of the eastern walls of Alexandria in the region called the Boucolia, the traditional Jewish quarter of the city.
I see very good reasons for supposing that the first church of St. Mark was actually the survival of the massive double stoa synagogue of the Jews in Alexandria which had been established since Herodian times and was known to Philo and the rabbinic tradition.
Information about the Jewish structure is available here.
The point is that the entire history of Christianity ends up getting rewritten when you come round to accepting the idea that Philo's Alexandrian synagogue eventually was rebaptized as the Church of St. Mark. If I am correct the Herodian structure would certainly have pointed to historical identity of 'St. Mark' no less than his messianic status which - by the tenth century and countless catastrphes - Severus only has the faintest remembrance:
St. Mark the apostle and servant of Jesus Christ has appeared among all creatures like the mustard seed (which speaks the Gospel), which grows and becomes a huge tree, so that the birds come to rest on its branches and get away from his shadow, because, although our Lord Jesus Christ (may he be glorified!) have wanted to nominate himself for this comparison, however, can also apply the meaning to St. Mark, this shining light, for those who follow Christ are themselves Christs and other members of Christ. [Homily on St. Mark 1 p.7]
If the Church of St. Mark and the graves of the Patriarchs had not ultimately been made 'off limits' to the Copts (first by the Byzantines and then later by the Muslims) Severus might well have been able to connect all the dots with regards to the identity of St. Mark. Nevertheless it should be noted that another Coptic document in the French edition of the Homilies of St. Mark confirms my theory in the Real Messiah that he was Marcus Julius Agripppa. I will cite this shortly.
The point is that only with the functioning Church of St. Mark with the throne hidden away behind the veils of the inner sanctum and a Patriarch sitting 'in place' of the apostle could Mark's historical identity finally be revealed to Copts of a later generation.
Yet we needn't delve into these matter just yet. The important point is that we should stress how central the Church of St. Mark was to Alexandrian Christianity. It was nothing short of a second temple, the successor to the one destroyed in the recapture of Jerusalem in 70 CE. That St. Mark decided to write a gospel - a second Torah - and deposit it in a building which so closely resembled it in Alexandria is one of the clearest signs of its original significance.
It was only later that the myth that church was the repository of the physical body of the saint. This story is clearly unknown to Clement in the letter to Theodore.
What is important is that we come to terms with why the Patriarchs AFTER St. Mark the Christ were enthroned in a chair that looked like the divine chariot in this building. Something greater than the temple was being established here.
The idea that man could attain the level of angels is the whole raison d'être of the Christian religion. This is why Origen was a eunuch as well has his rival Demetrius.
I just did an interview with Miguel Conner of Aeon Byte (my fourth already) and I could tell he didn't like the answer. We were talking about the gnostics and I mention that Clement uses the term gnostic to identify the Alexandrian tradition. But then you remind the people that gnostikos is an artificial technical philosophical term from Plato which only makes sense when applied to a messianic community and then people start to want to go back to their inherited assumptions about each of us being a 'gnostic.'
The point is that there is more to the words which appear in Clement's To Theodore regarding Mark composing:
a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected ... [and which 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.
A throne will even be established in mercy, And a judge will sit on it in truth [aletheias LXX] in the tent of David; Moreover, he will seek justice and be prompt in righteousness. [Isaiah 16:5]
The seven veils are clearly the curtains which prevented the lay members of the church from seeing all but shadows about what was going on in the inner sanctum. A deacon typically served as interpreter for those who had not yet joined the ranks of the presbytery.
Clement is very consistent in his understanding of a 'truth' hidden behind veils in the inner sanctum of the Church of St. Mark. Though the structure goes unnamed we see the idea repeat over and over again in his writings. You just have to look at the picture of the throne in the image of the four seraphim to see the connection with 'truth' in each case:
Ruling, then, over himself and what belongs to him, and possessing a sure grasp, of divine science, [the gnostic] makes a genuine approach to the truth. For the knowledge and apprehension of intellectual objects must necessarily be called certain scientific knowledge, whose function in reference to divine things is to consider what is the First Cause, and what that "by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made" [ibid 3]
And since the dawn is an image of the day of birth, and from that point the light which has shone forth at first from the darkness increases, there has also dawned on those involved in darkness a day of the knowledge of truth. [ibid 7]
[The gnostic], then, having received the things respecting God from the mystic choir of the truth itself [ibid]
the Gnostic [is] at once friend and son [of God], having grown in truth as "a perfect man, up to the measure of full stature." [ibid 11]
Now such to us are the Scriptures of the Lord, which gave birth to the truth and continue virgin, in the concealment of the mysteries of the truth. [ibid 16]
And the lover of truth, as I think, needs force of soul. For those who make the greatest attempts must fail in things of the highest importance; unless, receiving from the truth itself the rule of the truth, they cleave to the truth. [ibid]
But he who has returned from this deception, on hearing the Scriptures, and turned his life to the truth, is, as it were, from being a man made a god. [ibid]
Seeing, therefore, the danger that they are in (not in respect of one dogma, but in reference to the maintenance of the heresies) of not discovering the truth; for while reading the books we have ready at hand, they despise them as useless, but in their eagerness to surpass common faith, they have diverged from the truth. For, in consequence of not learning the mysteries of ecclesiastical knowledge, and not having capacity for the grandeur of the truth [ibid]
Not laying as foundations the necessary first principles of things; and influenced by human opinions, then making the end to suit them, by compulsion; on account of being confuted, they spar with those who are engaged in the prosecution of the true philosophy, and undergo everything, and, as they say, ply every oar, even going the length of impiety, by disbelieving the Scriptures, rather than be removed from the honours of the heresy and the boasted first seat in their churches; on account of which also they eagerly embrace that convivial couch of honour in the Agape, falsely so called.
The knowledge of the truth among us from what is already believed, produces faith in what is not yet believed; which [faith] is, so to speak, the essence of demonstration. But, as appears, no heresy has at all ears to hear what is useful, but opened only to what leads to pleasure. Since also, if one of them would only obey the truth, he would be healed. [ibid]
Those, then, that adhere to impious words, and dictate them to others, inasmuch as they do not make a right but a perverse use of the divine words, neither themselves enter into the kingdom of heaven, nor permit those whom they have deluded to attain the truth. But not having the key of entrance, but a false (and as the common phrase expresses it), a counterfeit key (antikleis), by which they do not enter in as we enter in, through the tradition of the Lord, by drawing aside the curtain; but bursting through the side-door, and digging clandestinely through the wall of the Church, and stepping over the truth, they constitute themselves the Mystagogues of the soul of the impious. [ibid]
What I am suggesting to my readers is that the importance of the Church of St. Mark cannot be overestimated. It was the temple in whose inner sanctum 'the truth' of the Christian religion - an enthroned kind in a chair made to resemble the heavenly chariot - resided. As we learn from the Letter to Theodore catching a glimpse of this 'truth' was the whole purpose of the mystery religion.
