I know I have a crazy-sounding theory. One which has never before been posited by historians or religious scholars. At least so far as we know ...
I happen to think that one man named Mark was behind all the Marks reported to be involved in the establishment of messianic religious faiths in late first century. Their names are Mark (Sam. Aram 'Marqe') the son of Titus, St Mark of Alexandria, Marcus of the 'Marcosian sect' and 'Marcion' of the 'Marcionites.'
The common denominator is that they all happened just happened to be involved in re-engineering the religion of Moses.
Just think of the coincidence here.
We're not talking about four Jewish Marks who worked as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. We're talking about four Marks who ALL claimed to have met God. Four Marks who had a vision come down to them from the highest heavens. Four Marks who were involved in a religion which claimed to surpass the traditional Jewish faith within the same cultural milieu, at the same time and likely in the same parts of the world.
Quite a coincidence, don't you think?
Maybe I am wrong about one of those faiths being a mere 'mirror image' of the other four. I might be wrong to suppose that one report about Mark came to us in Jewish Aramaic and another in Samaritan Aramaic and Greek.
Maybe I was wrong about the Greek Mark being related to the Samaritan Mark, the Mark in the south of France and the Mark who went to Alexandria. Or maybe the Samaritan Mark being related to the Greek Mark, the Mark in the south of France and the Mark who went to Alexandria.
But I simply can't be wrong about at least some of the reports about this messianic Mark fellow being garbled, confused or deliberately manipulated accounts of the one historical Mark in the first century who claimed to have had a vision from the God in the highest heaven to establish a cult superior to the traditional covenant of Israel.
I just can't be.
The only reason people haven't seen it before is because successful scholars train themselves to 'keep their eye on the ball.' To write papers which lead to advancement and avoid leading them to what might aptly be described as 'career suicide.'
Why argue for something that can't be proved? Because it's probably true.
How can it be true if it can't be proven with the existing evidence? But what are the alternatives? How could there be four Marks engaged in the same purpose at the same time and the same cultural milieu?
Those people will keep denying any other possibility other than what has always been held to be 'true.' They will keep raising the bar on the burden of proof and in the process effectively argue to absurd lengths that 'everything is a coincidence.'
Indeed why isn't there a stigma attached to being a 'coincidence theorist'?
The answer of course is that seeing everything but the accepted truths as 'mere coincidence' helps edify the status quo.
Has the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles ever been proved to have any degree of historical accuracy or truth? Of course not!
Then why is it the starting point of every theory about the origins of Christianity that has ever been taken seriously in scholarship?
There is an UNCONSCIOUS conspiracy to keep things as they are. In organism the principle is known as osmosis. In human beings, intellectual complacency.
I have shown over the last few posts a handful of the uncanny parallels between the 'apostle' of the Samaritan tradition, a man who founded their entire religion and was called 'the apostle' of the tradition because he was 'like Moses' ('the apostle' is a traditional title of Moses within Samaritanism because he was 'sent' by God) and 'the apostle' of Christianity.
If we limit our scope to just Christianity. I don't believe there was ever an apostle who was ever given the name 'Paulos' by his parents. The Catholic tradition AGREES with me. Even in their tradition 'Paulos' is a name that this individual who came to take on the title 'Apostolos' assumed after his baptism.
So Irenaeus and I are in agreement so far. There was never an apostle who was given the name 'Paulos' from birth.
With me so far?
The apostle obviously had a name before he assumed the appellation 'Paulos.'
The Marcionites did not accept Acts so they could not have accepted its story that it was a name developed from 'Saulos.' They didn't accept the story of the conversion on the road to Damascus or his alleged 'reconciliation' with Peter recorded in the same 'fraudulent' (at least according to the Marcionites) book of Acts.
The testimony of the apostle himself in his epistle disputes the claims of Acts.
So what was the original name of the apostle according to the Marcionites?
The short answer is that we don't know how the Marcionites or any of the early heresies identified 'the apostle' beyond this title. Irenaeus does testify however against 'those who do not recognise Paul as an apostle.' [AH iii.15.1] The Church Father points to Luke and his composition of Acts to prove that the Apostle was indeed NAMED Paul but the problem is that the Marcionites did not use Acts.
We end up back to where we started save for one important lead.
Tertullian makes clear over and over again that the Marcionites held that the man who wrote the gospel ALSO WROTE the apostolic letters attributed by the Catholics to a man whose name was Saulos but who changed his name to Paulos.
The Catholics again, on the authority of Luke, deny the Marcionite claims and - following Irenaeus' lead in Book 3 of Against the Heresies, argue that the gospel of Luke was the gospel Paulos used.
In my Against Polycarp I point to the fact that the Ignatian correspondances never mention this Irenaean formula and point to the idea that the original idea of Polycarp was that John wrote the gospel used by Paul.
Of course the Marcionites would point to repeated statements in the apostolic letters that support their contention that the same man who wrote the gospel ALSO wrote the apostolic letters. At the same time Tertullian reports that the Marcionites were emphatic that their gospel was not identified by them as 'the gospel of Paul.'
My solution to the dilemma is to point to at least sixteen pieces of evidence which infer that the gospel of the Marcionites was in fact our Gospel of Mark. This understanding comes from Hippolytus' explicit testimony to this effect, the fact that Marcionite textual variants from Luke actually resemble western readings of the gospel of Mark, the fact that the title of the Marcionite gospel according to Tertullian was 'the gospel of Christ' [Mark 1.1], the fact that the Marcionite in Adamantius' treatise supports this understanding, the fact that Aphraates' testimony confirms the name Marcionite (Marqioni) meant 'those of Mark' in Aramaic, the fact that only Mark has an enthronement ending and Origen reports that the Marcionites learned from their gospel that Marcion (i.e. Mark) ended up enthroned, the fact that the Marcionites and the Alexandrian tradition of St. Mark were originally both monophysite AND monarchian, the fact that both traditions emphasized Jesus as the angelic presence of the Father, the fact that both traditions engaged in the ritual castration of its presbytery, the fact that both demonstrated a marked interest in asceticism, the fact that Origen's patron Ambrose was a Marcionite and the fact that Roman legal codes against the heresies never recognize that a sect called 'Marcionite' ever existed.
These are only some of the proofs. However before we get distracted let's go back to our original observation over the last few posts that Mark the founder of the surviving Samaritan cult has been recognized by MacDonald among others to constantly echo Christian - and specifically 'Pauline' - theological formulas. MacDonald explains this as a result of Marqe being influenced by Christianity. But I am not so sure.
My friend Rory Boid is at present working on a paper which will date the Samaritan Mark to the late first century - the exact time that the Christian Mark was publishing his gospel.
The point of this post is to ask however - even if this is a theory which sounds utterly crazy to those unfamiliar with Samaritanism - what is the burden of proof here? Indeed the alternative proposal first put forward by Irenaeus that Mark was one of four evangelists through whom the Holy Spirit 'magically' worked.
While no scholar accepts this explanation almost no one before me has utterly ridiculed it. While the evidence shows that Mark wrote the original gospel and the other gospels were copied from that original text, all scholars still feel it is there duty to reconcile science with Irenaeus' fable about four winds and four evangelists.
For some reason no one will follow the testimony preserved in Arabic historians and dated to between the second to fifth centuries by modern scholars that the Roman government was involved in the final codification of the fourfold gospel, employing turncoat presbyters - presbyters who strangely resemble the Marcionite portrait of Irenaeus. (cf AH iv.30.1]
My point here is to ask - what is the burden of proof that is required to take my theory that the same Mark wrote the gospel of Mark AND the Mimar Marqe seriously by other scholars?
We know that Irenaeus' model doesn't work. Science cannot accept the idea that a wind was responsible for the manufacture of the gospel. Nevertheless every scholar and his uncle feels it as his duty to modify Irenaeus' argue to make it sound plausible. I have talked to these professors and they inevitably develop some complicated theory which has ABSOLUTELY NO WITNESSES in antiquity (besides Irenaeus again) and which effectively serves only to so confuse its readers that only an equally pedantic professor from a rival university dare stand up and posit an equally boring and complicated theory - none of which has any basis in fact or reality.
The end result is that with all these unworkable theories is that they effectively cancel each other out and we are always returned to accepting the fourfold canon which Irenaeus presents to the world without citing any elders to support it.
The question I have is why do we have to always go through Irenaeus. The Syrian Church didn't use four 'separated' gospels until the fifth century. They didn't go through Irenaeus - why do we?
The bottom line for me is - if ten generations of scholars in the modern era can't find a formula to explain how the quaternion was developed isn't it about time to consider the possibility that the whole 'Irenaeus hypothesis' is simply untenable?
Of course the question always comes back to the same point. What is the burden of proof? What is the burden of proof to DENY Irenaeus' authority? What is the burden of proof to accept a theory that denies the authority of Irenaeus?
I think it all comes down to habit. This is a habit which causes even the brightest of minds to become utterly irrational. It blinds even our most enlightened guides. The question I put before them is the same question that therapists put before alcoholics, people in dysfunctional relationship, or those who can't control their urges to gamble or do harm to their family.
In short - 'what's the burden of proof to get someone to quit a destructive habit'? In this case, an almost two thousand year old psychological addition to Irenaeus' quaternion?
The answer is undoubtedly as we have seen - whatever it takes to preserve our dependence. No crack addict has ever been as dependent on his dealer as scholars are on the UNCORROBORATED testimony of that Church Father who thrived along with his Church under one of the bloodiest rulers in history.
Remember, the first golden age of the Catholic Church happened under Commodus. With everyone dying all around them, the Irenaeus feels compelled to answer charges that he and the other Catholoci who sat in the Imperial court of Commodus sold their souls to the Devil.
His words, yes we receive money from Caesar, but think of all the good we do [cf Irenaeus AH iv.30.1]...
It was in this horrible age that none of us would want to live through - a true holocaust for all humanity that Irenaeus introduces our fourfold gospel canon. And not only that! While everyone else was ducking and hiding for cover, Irenaeus manages to strengthen his hold over the church and help 'hunt down' those who defy his vision of orthodoxy.
Why isn't Irenaeus afraid like everyone else in the period? Where did he get his confidence and his authority? Indeed why is everyone listening to Irenaeus in all corners of the Empire and accepting HIS VISION and HIS UNDERSTANDING of orthodoxy when it is clear that there were so many conflicting notions about what orthodoxy even was?
Why do bishops of other Sees fear him when he is so far away in Rome ... in Rome, sitting in that stupid, insignificant little Imperial court that happens to be piling up dead bodies in almost every corner of the Empire, searching for any sign of 'enemies' and those who secretly oppose Commodus' authority? ...
Yes it's all just a coincidence. It just HAS TO be a series of coincidences. Divert your eyes. Move along. Nothing going on here.
Be still while we slip this needle under your skin ...
