The Hitherto Unrecognized Pythagorean Formula at the Heart of Clement's Letter to Theodore

I have started to revise our traditional understanding of the gospel called 'dia tessaron' which was associated with Tatian the Assyrian.  The name can't mean a gospel made 'through four' other gospels.  The diatessaron was a well established Pythagorean musical term that penetrated all aspects of contemporary arts, culture and science.  The diatessaron was the 'fourth' note in an eight tone (seven plus octave) scale.  To argue that Tatian gave the name 'diatessaron' to his gospel without knowing or independent of the contemporary meaning of the term in popular culture would be like a manufacturer pleading ignorance after developing a chicken flavored popsicle product called 'cocksuckers.'

I have been struggling however to figure out exactly why this gospel was called 'diatessaron' when the 'the fourth' was inherently imperfect.  The idea that has been slowly emerging in my head is that 'the fourth' necessarily designated the original written gospel because it was acknowledged to be just this - imperfect. 

I can't help but get the strange description of the creation of the 'secret' gospel which clearly resides in a place ritually understood to be an 'ogdoad' (i.e. a place which has the symbolic value of eight).  Clement writes in the Letter to Theodore:

As for Mark, then, during Peter's stay in Rome he wrote an account of the Lord's doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils. [Clement to Theodore I.15 - 26]

Even the people who claim that to Theodore is a forgery have never been able to explain why Morton Smith would have put forward such a strange sounding conception.  There is nothing like it in all of the Patristic writings as far as I can determine which makes it very odd as a 'hoax' attempt.  First there is a gospel which isn't perfect written by Mark in Rome and somehow associated with Peter.  Then later Mark takes this 'hypomnemata' associated with Peter and then adds to it to it something of his own and then makes the 'mystic gospel' which resides in the place of 'eight' (eight because one has to pass through seven veils to get to it). 

Now we know that there was this gospel called the 'diatessaron' which was widely circulating in various parts of the Empire, especially in the Christian East.  The strange thing is that the diatessaron was also understood to be the first produced 'thing' in the process of establishing the 'harmony' of the ogdoad (or 'octave' as it is called in musical theory).  We hear a completely fictional story (we know this because modern scientists have repeatedly tried to reproduce the results but can't) that Pythagoras took the beginning of his discovery of the various ratios which make up the 'diatessaron' (the fourth), the 'diapente' (the fifth) and 'diapason' (the octave) while passing by a blacksmith's workshop, he sensed that the strikings of the mallets upon the anvil were dissonant and consonant. 

The story goes that upon entering, Pythagoras at once comprehended the reason for the difference of the strikings and for the consonances. He discovered this by concluding that as the hammers were of different weights, the ratios of the magnitudes of the weights were the cause both for the difference and the consonance of the noises. He discovered that the hammers having a sesquitertian ratio in their weights (i.e. 4:3) produced the consonance of a diatessaron in their noises; he perceived that the hammers weighing in a sesquialteran ratio (3:2) resulted in a diapente consonance in their striking; and he sensed that the hammers duple in weight produced the consonance of a diapason (2:1) in their sounds.

The reality is that it is only the second part of the Pythagoras legend which has any truth to it.  It is said that after this discovery he tried to duplicate his results with some string and weights of various measurements.  After suspending two strings — equal and similar and of the same material — he attached on one a weight of three parts, on the other a weight of four parts; when he plucked both, he discovered that they were consonant in accord with the diapente consonance.  After that, he fastened a duple weight and discovered that the strings produced the consonance of a diapason.

Regardless of how Pythagoras actually came upon his discovery the order in which the ratios were discovered is always the same:

1. diatessaron
2. diapente
3. diapason

Yet more importantly there is an underlying formula which inevitably always gets reported in the literature.  Pythagoras ultimately uncovers that:

diatessaron + diapente = diapason

Why is this significant?  Because the pattern necessarily imitates what appears in the letter to Theodore insofar as:

1. diatessaron = ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν αποστολων (Justin Dial. c. Tryph. 106) and the υπομνημα of Peter (Clement to Theodore I.15 - 18,19)
2. diapente = υπομνημα of Mark (ibid I.19)
3. diapason = the secret gospel of Mark which is the ogdoad (ibid I.20 - 26)

The point then is that the term 'diapente' was undoubtedly not a gospel but the thing which Mark adds to the original narrative to make it reflect the 'perfect' ogdoad.  So just to break it down for people who don't fully 'get it' -

1. As for Mark, then, during Peter's stay in Rome he wrote an account of the Lord's doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed = diatessaron
2. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes = diapente
3. [Mark added this] to that those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected = diapason 

As noted about the 'eightness' of the gospel is confirmed in the line "Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils."

The sanctuary of the church of St. Mark of course only ritually represents the 'root' from which the gospel originally derived its origins - i.e. an unspeakable revelation given to the apostle in the highest heaven called 'ogdoad' as we read in the report of Basilides:

from the Ogdoad the Gospel then came to the Hebdomad (the seven heavens). The son of the great Archon caused the light which he had received from above, from the Sonship to rise on the son of the Archon of the Hebdomad. Thus enlightened, the son announced the Gospel to the Archon of the Hebdomad;  and the impression it produced on him was not different from that produced on the Archon of the Ogdoad [Baur the Church History of the First Three Centuries p. 218]

I will demonstrate in my next post that Clement also understood the gospel to be the 'ogdoad' in my next post in Stromateis Book Six.  Yet the main point is that the strange manner in which Clement lays out a gospel which unfolds from an imperfect beginning necessarily develops from the Pythagorean understanding of the ogdoad (= octave) unfolding from the addition of the fourth interval (diatessaron) with the fifth interval (diapente).