Last month I posted what looks to me like an instance where the author of the Gospel of Mark drew on a particular image and thought that we also find in Philo. Who said this? was about a parable or riddle of Jesus in Mark:
Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean.‘ (Mark 7:15)
In that post — and it was further elaborated with contributions from others in the comments, if I recall — I noted the same idea expressed as its converse in similar imagery:
as Plato says, mortal things find their entrance, and immortal things their exit. For into the mouth do enter meat and drink, perishable food of a perishable body; but from out of it proceed words — the immortal laws of an immortal soul, by means of which a rational life is regulated. (Philo, On the Creation, 119)
There is another saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark that also comes to mind when reading the same work of Philo, On the Creation (or Opus Mundi).
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)
I hadn't noticed that before, but then again there is a whole ocean of material that hasn't been analyzed by anyone (even though the Alexandrians TELL US implicitly and explicitly that there is a relationship between Mark and Philo).
There is so little time folks. People keep asking me why I spend each night developing these posts. As I calculate it, if I manage to be blessed with forty more years of life (who knows) and there are 365 days in a year if I type one post a day that's less than 15,000 posts until the day I die.
That's hardly enough to accomplish all the work that is necessary to even sketch out the interrelationship between:
Philo of Alexandria, Marqe the Samaritan, the tradition of St. Mark at Alexandria.
This is where the gold is my friends. If you have followed my post over the last year and the 1,700 posts I have managed to write so far (mostly by dumping old email correspondences from the last five years between Professor Boid and myself) all my research is heading in this direction.
I keep promising myself that I will polish up my Semitic language skills. This however would take away from the time writing my new book (which happens to be on this subject) and the aforementioned posts. Nevertheless, I won't have Professor Boid as a source and arbiter for what works and what doesn't forever.
So little time folks, so little time. The cause needs help from people who are willing to help examine the origins of Christianity in Alexandria. But first of all we need people who accept that Christianity DID INDEED START HERE. Anyone willing to sign up?
