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It is a thin little brown hardback. It looks more like a tour guide book than a serious book. I used to take the tenth volume of the Ante Nicene Church Fathers with me when I travel but I wanted to show the production company what a 'Diatessaron' looks like and nothing else so I took this copy from my library.
In any event, once I got to London everything was so much better. A limo picked me up at the airport. The driver had my name on the sign so the girl I was chatting up on the plane thought I was someone important. So the limo takes me to my hotel. My agent meets me later that night and can't even afford to buy me a drink.
I wake up the next morning, put on the only Canali suit I own. That suit has been everywhere - the White House, the United Nations, you name it). I tell everyone a Canali suit looks expensive on the rack but the material lasts forever. I highly recommend them to everyone. LOL
I confuse the research team in the meeting. I immediately board another plane to Venice but this time its first class all the way. Water taxis. 5 star hotels. I am living the good life.
The Basilica ends up refusing to allow us to film the throne. So the trip's a waste of time. Except for the fact that I end up standing in front of this two thousand year old throne (behind the barriers that separate the tourist from the object) still with this copy of the Diatessaron in my hand.
The throne looks a lot small than I remember. The object is actually turned AWAY from the tourists so the people can't even see the backrest. They can only see one side of the object. I think its the image of the bull with the six wings. I remember that van Lohuizen-Mulder said that she thought that it was raised on platform.
In any event, I hadn't yet developed my theory that the Alexandrian Gospel of Mark was like a Diatessaron - in other words, a single, gospel with all the true stories arranged in one narrative. But it was the throne that gave me the idea.
Yes, I am here to tell you that I even crazier, stupider and flakier than all the other scholars I ridicule.
It wasn't like the object 'talked to me.' It really wasn't like that. I was just hanging out, standing with this Diatessaron in my hand, waiting to get permission to film me standing in front of my discovery and then - it just happened ...
I was bored so I just started reading the Diatessaron. I ended up getting down to the part which is the parallel to Mark chapter 10. It was then that I noticed that the story of Zacchaeus has something 'inserted' in the middle of it just like we see in LGM 2 (the second addition to the Mar Saba document).
This gives me the idea that maybe there is some relationship with Secret Mark here. I thumb to the end and notice that the story ends with the enthronement of Christ so I am thinking 'okay, this text COULD have developed from a tradition where Salome's question about who will sit on the throne ends up with one of the two sitting on the throne.
I notice in the note section (or a hand written note of my own) that the Codex Fuldensis omits the business about the Son of Man 'being killed' when he is condemned in Jerusalem (like Matthew):
They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and crucify him. Three days later he will rise.
Then I remember that the disciple who has the stigmata probably claimed he was crucified and buried with Christ (like 'Paul' who also 'bears the marks of Christ' on his person).
In the matter of few seconds standing waiting for permission to film me standing beside the throne, it all comes together. I can see that the Barabbas theory that I develop in my book, the Real Messiah, 'starts' with section cited in the Mar Saba document (i.e. the equivalent of Mark chapter 10).
This is the point that Jesus prepared the disciple he loved - the neaniskos - to receive his Christ soul.
Of course, I haven't put all the pieces together. I don't think I could have even explained to you or anyone else what had been implanted in my head. I just knew for the first time that the throne has a central place in the narrative. I knew that the question from Salome was like Chekhov's gun - i.e. "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."
I had already of course theorized that when Irenaeus says that 'those who prefer the gospel by Mark separate Jesus and Christ and say the former suffered while the latter watched impassibly' (AH iii.11.7) But now I started to see that the initiation of LGM 1 COULD HAVE BEEN the point at which the 'two became one' new man (Eph 2:5).
Again, I don't want anyone to think I am promoting something supernatural. It was just this strange moment, standing and waiting and then learning that our request to film the object was ultimately turned down, made it appear that everything was being arranged for me to have that moment.
If I didn't or don't believe that, I just participated in one of the biggest wastes of time of my whole life. Well, know you know what a crackpot your are dealing with when you read this blog. This is how I work. This is what makes me tick at the most fundamental level - i.e. a rational restraining of numinous experiences.
I guess the other way of putting it is that I always trust my instincts after confronting them with a heavy dose of skepticism. It sometimes leads to fruitful ideas (or some might argue 'grand delusions'). As long as I can express those ideas rationally, it shouldn't matter what set of random circumstances led me to embrace those opinion.
Anyway, back to fighting windmills ...
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."