If there was a popular understanding of the term 'dia tessaron' which developed from Pythagoreanism, how can we claim that 'Tatian' so named his 'gospel harmony' because it was made 'through four' gospels? Those who claim this sort of this are just too eager to close the book on the Diatessaronic tradition in order that we may return to the comfort of the Church Fathers. I have been wrestling with the terminology all week and have come to a radical solution to the problem - a solution that involves the existence of an ur-gospel of Mark which developed from an original text associated with Peter (or indeed the Gospel of Peter).
I have been studying the so-called 'Gospel according to Peter discovered something no one has noticed before. Many scholars have realized that the women are depicted discovering the empty tomb on the Sunday which follows the end of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. However no one to my knowledge has attempted to reconstruct which day Passover would have fallen on in such a scenario (undoubtedly part of the reluctance is that the results are necessarily going to challenge our inherited assumptions about Easter).
Given the fact that the Gospel of Peter specifically says that the Feast of Unleavened Bread had just ended on the Sabbath before 'the Lord's Day' (i.e. יום א׳ = Day 1, or Yom Rishon or יום ראשון). Indeed the Gospel of Peter has long been noted to be very aware of Jewish terminology and theological concepts so perhaps a little background for the days of the week in Hebrew is in order:
1.Yom rishon - יום ראשון (abbreviated יום א׳) = "first day" = Sunday (starting at preceding sunset)
2.Yom sheni - יום שני (abbr. יום ב׳) = "second day" = Monday
3.Yom shlishi - יום שלישי (abbr. יום ג׳) = "third day" = Tuesday
4.Yom reviʻi - יום רבעי (abbr. יום ד׳) = "fourth day" = Wednesday
5.Yom chamishi - יום חמישי (abbr. יום ה׳) = "fifth day" = Thursday
6.Yom shishi - יום ששי (abbr. יום ו׳) = "sixth day" = Friday
7.Yom Shabbat - יום שבת (abbr. יום ש׳) or more usually שבת - Shabbat = "Sabbath day (Rest day)" = Saturday
The names of the days of the week are modeled on the seven days mentioned in the Creation story. For example, Genesis 1:5 "... And there was evening and there was morning, one day". One day also translates to first day or day one. Similarly, see Genesis 1:8, 1:13, 1:19, 1:23, 1:31 and 2.2.
In any event, because the Jewish holidays fall in a predictable pattern we can immediately work out what the rest of Passover must have looked like for the community that used the Gospel of Peter:
Friday (14 Nisan)
Sabbath (15 Nisan) = First Day of Unleavened Bread
1st day (16 Nisan)
2nd day (17 Nisan)
3rd day (18 Nisan)
4th day (19 Nisan)
5th day (20 Nisan)
6th day (21 Nisan)
Sabbath (22 Nisan)
1st day (23 Nisan) the empty tomb/witness of the angel
It is impossible not to see that the gospel of Mark has taken over the Gospel of Peter's narrative about the women appearing at the empty tomb on 23 Nisan and placed it instead on another day.
The narrative now reads as if Jesus was the one raised and on the Sunday which is counted as 'three days' from a Friday 15 Nisan death. The manner in which the Johannine and synoptic accounts of the crucifixion disagree with one another has been well documented. Nevertheless, it should be noted that a resurrection at dawn Sunday 17 Nisan after a death late afternoon Friday 15 Nisan, three days does not maketh.
Scholars have tried and failed to explain all these difficulties. We are all working with the same basic assumptions. Christianity ultimately became rooted in an 'eighth day' resurrection. Under the standard model encouraged by the Roman Church in the late second century, Sunday was the eighth day because it falls after the Sabbath (i.e. 7 + 1).
However there is a remarkable pattern which emerges from the chronology of the Gospel of Peter which might have still influenced the Gospel of Mark - and more importantly the 'secret' or mystic text which Clement witnesses in to Theodore. It should be noticed that Clement witnesses the canonical reading of Mark 10:34 that Jesus will be resurrected 'after (meta) three days.' As many commentators have noted 'meta' here cannot be read as 'on' the third day but the fourth. At first there seems to be a conflict with the repeated mention of 'on the third day' in other gospels but the reality is that both can be reconciled when we notice that the fourth day after Jesus death is actually Tuesday the 'third day' - i.e. yom shlishi - יום שלישי.
We should suspend our judgement for a moment with regards to what the 'synoptic chronology' is and how it was different from the 'Johannine chronology' and just notice what emerges from very early chronology of the Gospel of Peter:
Friday (14 Nisan) death in late afternoon
Sabbath (15 Nisan)
first day (16 Nisan)
second day (17 Nisan)
third day (18 Nisan) = 'after three days' i.e. in the morning the visit to the tomb
In Genesis God formed light on the third day (Tuesday). In the gospel it is Christ who is 'stood' (in Hebrew and Aramaic qum has a variety of meanings including to rise up, to set up, to establish; in Samaritan literature and that at Qumran it is often associated with the one who is to come). Nehora (light) is understood to be the name of the messiah in the rabbinic literature.
But why does Mark decide to allude to the event as occuring on the 'fourth day' (i.e. one more than 'three') rather than merely identifying it as being 'the third day'? There can be no doubt that the existing copies of Mark reflect a Sunday resurrection and so reject the connection with Hebrew and Aramaic terminology. Nevertheless it is difficult not to be drawn to some association between the positing of a 'mystic' gospel of Mark and the consistent identification of Pythagoreanism as 'mystical' in the writings of Clement. In other words, the identification of the empty tomb discovery on the fourth (dia tessaron) from the death of Jesus is necessarily rooted in the inherited mysticism of Alexandrian Judaism.
Let's start with the acknowledgment that the most common sense of the word 'mystic' in the Stromateis is that of a Pythagorean interest in numbers. So we read:
... three mystic intervals completed in six weeks. [Strom 1.21]
Accordingly that Pythagorean saying was mystically uttered respecting us ...[ibid 4.23]
So very mystically the five loaves are broken by the Saviour [ibid 5.6]
the mystic name of four letters which was affixed to those alone to whom the adytum was accessible [ibid]
he ordered (three) unleavened cakes to be made, intimating that the truly sacred mystic word, respecting the unbegotten and His powers, ought to be concealed [ibid 5.12]
When we move to Book Six of the series there are just so many references to mystic meaning a 'Pythagorean interest in numerology' it would be impossible to reference them all without losing our main point.
The point here is that it can't now be ignored that once Clement acknowledges the existence of the Secret Gospel of Mark, he happens to reveal an additional narrative after the foretelling of his Passion in Mark 10:34. As Clement notes, immediately following "after three days he shall arise" (= four days):
the secret Gospel brings the following material word for word:
"And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.' But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightaway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb, they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do, and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan."
Following the same logic we have just laid out Scott Brown rightly determines that 'after six days' should be read as the youth coming on the evening of the 'seventh day' to receiving ritual initiation. Brown of course doesn't see an explicit reference to baptism, but Smith is certainly right that one is being alluded to here.
Nevertheless what most people have noticed here is that secret Mark's mention of a baptism which occurs 'after six' days immediately follows a prophesy which is referenced as taking place 'after three.' The cageyness of Mark is now immediately understandable. For hidden in the deliberately ambiguous reference in the Pythagorean sesquitertium - i.e. the 4:3 ratio which is the diatessaron.
Now let us reconsider the so-called 'short ending' of the gospel of Mark. To be sure, the canonical texts emphasize that this occurred on Sunday (i.e. the first day of the week). Yet we have already determined that the existing references don't add up. The immediate point we should realize is that a group of Christians preserved this abrupt ending as properly belonging to Mark, even though Irenaeus explicitly argues against it and witnessing what he claims is the correct ending (the so-called longer form with an enthronement).
While the existing so-called 'short endings' ultimately conform to 'the first day' resurrection claims of the Catholic Church we should notice that even these texts preserve the Jewish understanding of the counting of days. I don't understand how someone can definitively say that 'the third day' can't mean Tuesday when Mark 16:2 introduces the discovery of the empty tomb as 'on the first day of the week' which is clearly an Aramaism.
I will never understand these people but clearly there was an Aramaic or Hebrew underpinning to the Gospel of Mark. There are numerous occassions when it is cited. Matthew is said to have the 'Gospel of the Hebrews' behind it as well. How then can a resurrection occurring on 'the third day' not have been originally interpreted as an event predicted to happen on Tuesday given the fact Mark 16:2 uses exactly the Jewish manner of naming days to identify the same event?
The clear point then is that if Mark was - as Clement himself says - borrowing from a gospel written according to Peter, and saw it contained a confirmation of the resurrection on the eighth day (i.e. Sunday) how is it not likely now that his mystic gospel is little more than a development of that original narrative according to a Pythagorean interest in the mystical significance of numbers? This has to be the reason that he not once but twice hides the real calculation of days. The 'after three days' prediction was originally mystically connected to an 'after six days' demonstration and thus 'the diatessaron' to the 'diapason' (the full scale of seven plus the octave).
Indeed I can't help but see the reason for the baptism here is to again confirm imagery of 'redemption' at the heart of the Exodus narrative. The Israelites are said to cross the sea at the 'goings out of the Sabbath' (i.e. the evening of the Sabbath). The evening of the Sabbath here is exactly eight days from original Paschal sacrifice (both of Jesus and the slaughter of the lambs). The youth who enters initiation on the seventh day is clearly baptized on the eighth according to the scheme of Secret Mark just as the Sunday revelation in the scheme of Secret Mark (i.e. the gospel developed with additional material after the 'diatessaron' empty tomb discovery on yom shlishi (Tuesday).
The point I am driving at is that the original Alexandrian gospel of Mark must have been constructed in a twofold manner exactly as Clement describes. The 'short narrative' originally concluded with an empty tomb discovery 'after three days' (i.e. four) without any explicit reference to the day being Easter Sunday. The original text probably said 'on the third day' with Mark's typical gnostic coyness.
The Secret Gospel however certainly revealed to its initiates (after Mark's original development of material developed from a gospel associated with Peter) that the completion of this discovery process (or diapason) occured on the octave or the 'eighth day.' If you reread the passage in To Theodore I think you will all finally see it ...
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."