How I Might Have Solved a Two Thousand Year Old Mystery at a Local Massage Parlor ...

No it wasn't how to keep sex interesting while married. Nor was it really a 'massage parlor.' My wife has been raving about a Chinese reflexology unit that just opened in our area that charges $25 for an hour long massage. But the point is that as I was leaving to get $25 massage (it ended up being $40 dollars because I felt bad getting such a good deal - I felt obligated to tip the man in order to make sure it wasn't such a good deal!) I was flipping through Jastrow as I do almost as a kind of habit and I saw for the first time that יוֹנָ as a possible variant of יוֹנָה (p. 569).

Boid had long ago pointed out to me that aside from meaning dove the term could also have been a diminutive of יוחנן (John).

The reason I am so interested in יוֹנָ as a possible diminutive of John is that it has a numerical value of 66. We have seen the manner in which the Marcosians understood the sixth letter to have fallen from heaven in the beginning. While the arguments Irenaeus sites from his Marcosian contacts reference the episemon (the 6th letter of the Greek alphabet) the 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet - vav (ו) - has always been the subject of mystical speculation among the Jews.

When the letter is spelled out it is represented as two sixes - viz. וו - which is also the number 66.

Indeed, even though Irenaeus cites Marcosian ideas that developed in the Greek language it is not difficult to see allusions to the understanding that the sixth letter actually had a value of twelve because it was made up of two sixes.

So we read the female hypostasis announce to Mark:

Consider this present Episemon, she says-- Him who was formed after the Episemon, as being, as it were, divided or cut into two parts [Irenaeus AH i.14.7]

and again:

They therefore term the Duodecad--because it contains the Episemon, and because the Episemon [so to speak] waits upon it--the passion. And for this reason, because an error occurred in connection with the twelfth number, the sheep frisked off, and went astray; for they assert that a defection took place from the Duodecad [AH i.16.1]

And to make absolutely certain that the Marcosians 'added up' the letters which spelled out other letters:

You may more clearly understand what I mean by the following example:-- The word Delta contains five letters, viz., D, E, L, T, A: these letters again, are written by other numbers, and others still by others. If, then, the entire composition of the word Delta [when thus analyzed] runs out into infinitude, letters continually generating other letters, and following one another in constant succession, how much raster than that [one] word is the [entire] ocean of letters! [AH 14.2]

The point is that we can already see that the Marcosians would undoubtedly have recognized that the letter vav was itself an expression of two vavs and thus had a value of twelve or sixty six.

I think that if it is possible to argue that John the son of Zebedees name was spelled יוֹנָ (and I am actively trying to get a second opinion on this) then we have basis for understanding John was Jesus's beloved disciple THROUGH kabbalah.

Anyway I will think about it some more ...