The facts are that Christians ALREADY THINK THEY KNOW WHAT THE GOSPEL is about. As such they aren't interested in the whole question of who Mark is, the text's original author.
It's amazing. It's like they have this recording in their head that goes 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus' all day. Can you imagine if someone had a document testifying to what was going on in the minds of the founding fathers of the United States and political hacks told everyone that this 'wasn't really important' - all that REALLY mattered was 'faith' ...
This is what goes on everyday in religious scholarship. It could drive one mad, or to fits of laughter, so I chose the latter.
It is the only way to comfort myself.
The truth is that I am interested in Mark for a number of reasons. I won't get into all of them in this post because most of them are quite personal. It is enough for me to say that BECAUSE I WASN'T BORN WITH A HYPNOTIC RECORDING IN MY HEAD that says 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus' whenever I read the gospel, I inevitably start to think about the author.
Crazy, I know ...
I have studied the text for a long enough period of time that I know that the original form of the gospel of Mark was changed over time. No, I don't need Morton Smith's discovery of the Letter to Theodore to tell me that. I see it reflected in Irenaeus, the first REAL HISTORICAL Catholic Church Father.
This is what is so frustrating about close-minded people who happen to be interested in religion. They only read texts in a way which SUPPORTS PRE-EXISTENT BELIEFS.
So it is that NO ONE before me (at least to my knowledge) ever noticed that Irenaeus' gospel of Mark was different from our text. It was different in its opening lines, it was different in the 'middle' of the narrative and its ending - the one about the enthronement - happened to be shortened.
Of course close-minded religious people happen to have that soundtrack that goes 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus' in their head, so it is no wonder that they didn't notice this.
It is also no wonder that when Morton Smith found a letter which reflects the picture that emerges from Irenaeus' text of the Gospel of Mark - i.e. that the Gospel of Mark was LONGER in the second century - they wanted to kill him.
Morton Smith was interrupting that wonderful 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus' soundtrack running through their heads.
It's so stupid. The whole thing almost me envious of my dog because her species - unlike ours - is utterly incapable of intellectually dishonesty.
Why don't these people with the soundtrack that's going through their heads realize that THIS is what is distracting them from meaningful questions about their own faith.
Yet maybe that's what they are looking for. Distraction.
I am not degrading Jesus. Seriously. I am just saying that this particular name - i.e. 'Jesus' - is meaningless. Irenaeus in Book Two Chapter Twenty Four of Against the Heresies makes clear that the only name that matters is Yeshu. This three letter name AND ONLY THIS THREE LETTER NAME is the 'real name' of Jesus.
I can't figure out why the three Hebrew letters which make up Jesus' name - i.e. yod shin vav - should have 'magical significance' but the idea is present everywhere in ancient literature, from the writings of the Church Fathers to the hostile testimony of the rabbis.
Again I can't figure it out. You probably won't be able to figure it out. Other scholars won't be able to figure it out so let's at the very least recognize that WE ARE LIKELY NEVER GOING TO RECAPTURE THE ORIGINAL POWER ASSOCIATED WITH THIS NAME OF GOD.
So we will have to move on and try a different approach to make sense of Christianity. Calling up 'Jesus' is no different than any other name in the phone book as it was NEVER recognized to be Jesus' real name. Not even by the most important Father of the Catholic Church.
Yet before we get ahead of ourselves let's put everything in perspective.
I don't think that God wants us to know what Jesus' real name was.
If we go back to the original paradigm for sin - the garden of Eden it is impossible to believe that Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise for not having a 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus' soundtrack going through their heads at all time? No, they were had to leave Paradise because they chose pleasure over truth.
God didn't want Adam and Eve to recognize his glory - or himself - by the name of a particular person. Only mzungus could fall for something that ludicrous. Above all else, God wants us to circumcize the foreskins of our hearts and submit to his will.
His will has absolutely nothing to do with referring to him by the name Jesus, Joe, Potsie or Ralph Malph.
It is amazing how distracting Jesus is to the true path to salvation, the true path which begins with understanding who the author of the New Torah - i.e. the gospel - is.
I am not trying to start a new religion, here. I am only hope to engage in science because I - perhaps naively - think that truth HAS TO BE the starting point of anything meaningful, including salvation.
It is because I believe in the truth that I can't get around the paradigm that the guy who wrote the original gospel - the new Torah - HAD TO HAVE UNDERSTOOD HIMSELF TO BE THE NEW MOSES.
I don't see how there is any other way around this paradigm. Mark didn't know that three other guys were coming after him to 'complete' the quaternion. He knew there was this thing called 'the Torah' whose authority would last until the beginning of the messianic age.
The very fact that Mark was taking his stumped-fingers to write out a document which necessarily would represent the beginning of that period implies that he himself had some sort of messianic authority.
There certainly were communities in Irenaeus' day who only used Mark's gospel. He makes this explicit in book three. This gospel was even longer than his 'longer gospel of Mark' which we have been discussing for the last few posts. I also think there is strong circumstantial evidence that this community attached to Mark's gospel and only Mark's gospel originally came from Alexandria.
So here's what I don't understand.
How DIDN'T Mark think that he was the messiah - or at least - the apostolic 'link' between Jesus and the messianic age to come?
You've got to look at things from Mark's perspective. There was Jesus crucified and then ... there's just Mark and his gospel. That there were people running around with 'remembrances' or 'sayings' of Jesus is a big 'so what.'
The fact that Mark felt that owing to some sort of revelation from heaven he thought he had the authority to write out a text which identified itself from its very opening lines as 'the gospel of Christ' (or some such variation) can mean only one of two things.
Either (a) Mark thought that he was Christ or (b) that Mark thought he had the authority to speak on behalf of Jesus in the messianic age.
In either case we're back to the same idea - viz. Mark necessarily conceived of himself as some sort of figure like Moses [Deut 18:18] and thus - by implication - some sort of messiah.
The very fact that a thirteen million strong Alexandrian tradition continues to this day built around a Papacy where men like you and I get transformed into 'mediators' for God through the authority of St. Mark tells you all you need to know.
You just have to stop that soundtrack that goes 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus' in your head all day in order to hear what this object is actually saying ...
