MARK

name: Marcus Julius Agrippa
born: c. 28 A.D.
died: ?
mother: Salome
father: Aristobulos
siblings: Berenice (sister)
offspring: none

In our story Mark writes from his prison cell recounting the events which led upto his arrest. In this first installment of the story he deals with the early period of his life. He describes how he was born into the most important family in Palestine - that of the Herod clan - but how it ironic that he happened to be its "weakest link." Without getting specific about his ailments the elder speaks about how he suffered from a variety of physical ailments until he was healed and transformed through his encounter with Jesus.

It was the experience that he had in the days leading up to the crucifixion which quite literally changed him. However the gospel tells the story of the whole year which led to that world changing event. Mark's understanding of those historical details is very different from the traditional means by which we read the text. According to the original author it is only superficially an account about the man we have learned to call our Savior. In reality it is the story of the little boy in the background of the text and how he is the true messiah of Israel. Jesus was just his historical messenger from heaven.

THE BACKGROUND

Before the research behind this book there wasn't a scholar alive who even gave the only historically verified Jew named Mark a moment's notice. According to the prevailing mindset, he was merely "Agrippa II" or the second important leader of the Jews to be called by the family name. This understanding is based on false assumptions from Josephus which I discuss in greater detail in another section. As a result we follow the traditional rabbinic understanding of Agrippa's descent as well as other sources. We assume, as our justification for our rejecting of much of the surviving chronology of Josephus that Christian editors not only inserted the Testamonium Flavium but that effort was only one small part of literary campaign against Marcus in the middle second century A.D.

THE RABBINIC MODEL

According to the rabbis, Marcus Julius Agrippa was son of Aristobulos who in turn was son of Herod the Great. That makes Mark the grandson of Herod the Great and the direct descendant of the messianic Hasmonaean dynasty. According to the universal opinion of rabbis who make any reference to Mark - it is clear there was only one "Agrippa." This makes intuitive sense on several levels which we will examine later.

The other amazing thing about the rabbinic tradition is that there is a near universal chorus of writers who identify the "messiah" is of Daniel 9:24 - 27 with Marcus Agrippa. This almost never gets into any meaningful discussion of "Agrippa II" and it is terribly puzzling given its significance in traditional Jewish-Christian relations.

In the late Medieval period Jews were quite literally being rounded up and persecuted owing - not merely to their denial of European claims regarding Jesus as the Christ - but more significantly their identification of "someone else" as the true messiah. When this figure is named his identity is almost inevitably Marcus Agrippa. So much for contemporary scholarly claims of the "insignificance" of "Agrippa II." The real problem is too heavy a reliance on their part on the almost universally acknowledged Christian adulterations of Josephus.

Indeed given that persecutions against Jews who acknowledged Mark as the messiah occured as late as the fifteenth century - how can one imagine that these things just "popped up" over a millenia and a half after hsi death? The answer must be that this battle for the soul of "the true Israel" were ongoing from the time of Agrippa's death.

There are indeed numerous reports of orthodox campaigns against "followers of Mark." The heretic "Marcion" (i.e. "little Mark") no less than a heretic "Marcus" immediately come to mind. Communities devoted to "Mark" or "little Mark" survived in Alexandria and Osoroene long after the decline of the Roman Empire - in the case of the former community the Copts still number in the tens of millions.

One should also note that while most of us might naturally assume that the Roman Catholic church was exclusively to blame for inquisitions against "Markan Jews" - notable Protestant figures also developed anti-Agrippa doctrines including Calvin and Luther.

THE SAMARITAN MODEL

As intriguing as a Jewish belief in Marcus Agrippa as the messiah might be, it is the living tradition of Samaritanism which provides us with the only surviving Markan system native to Palestine. The community still preserve a religious system based on Aramaic texts and hymns written by a certain "Marqeh son of Titus" which several notable Samaritologists including Boid, Stenhouse and Kippenberg date to late first/early second century A.D.

This is Samaritan "Mark" is universally recognized by scholars to have presided over a complete reconstitution of the northern Israelite cultus. So in essence he functioned in exactly the capacity ascribed to the messiah of Daniel 9:24 - 27 - only now looking in reverse. In other words, he appeared made massive revisions to an otherwise proudly obstitent people ("Samaritan" means essentially "zealous keepers" of the original tradition of Israel.

What could have induced "zealous keepers" to have given up their old ways? There is only one answer - the appearance of their messiah, the one like Moses. It is almost universally recognized in Samaritan texts (no less than early Jewish ones) that this figure will come to "write the Torah according to truth." This means he will establish a "new covenant" to replace the old.

Do we have proof that Samaritans held their "Marqeh" to have been their messiah? Of course if Mark was a messiah he would necessarily have had to have been viewed as a "failed one." The world did not end, the final judgement did not occur. So what we see in Samaritanism by contrast are isolated fragments of an original belief in Mark as the new Moses which include:
There are many more tantalizing "bits" which we cite elsewhere but that should suffice for now.

What about the apparent contradiction that the historical Marcus Agrippa was a "son of Aristobolus" and the Samaritans call him "son of Titus"? This can be resolved by the fact that the historical Agrippa was effectively adopted by the Flavian dynasty. Titus was the son of the Emperor Vespasian during the so-called "First Jewish War." Marcus Agrippa was supported by Roman troops under the command of Titus who ended up destroying the hated rival Jewish temple.

There were numerous examples of contemporaries of Marcus Agrippa being "adopted" Flavians. Josephus was certainly one and he is known to present generations of scholars as "Flavius Josephus" as a result. Similarly Marcus' secretary Justus must have underwent the same process which accounts in my mind for the Christian figure "Flavius Justinus" or "Justus" as well.

THE COPTIC MODEL

The Christian community in Alexandria goes back to within a generation of the crucifixion. When Church Fathers identify who was its original founder they necessarily point to a shadowy Palestinian Jew named "Mark" of whom we know precious little from official sources. Eusebius, the first officially sanctioned Church historian of the Roman Empire - himself having deep contacts in Alexandria - identifies Mark as establishing the first monasteries in the city.

The "healing" community Eusebius describes seems very similar to a Jewish community described in Josephus. A Latin translation of Eusebius' original source specifically connects the founding of the sect in Alexandria to the rule of "Agrippa." Indeed a careful examination of documents from the period reveals that the Jewish king already identified as a "messiah" and the "one like Moses" by two other communities was openly regarded as a "Lord" and "Savior" in Egypt too.

Agrippa's involvement in Alexandria can be dated back to the period of the Emperor Gaius who allowed him to view first hand the abuses claimed by local Jews as being directed at them by the Roman governor. He continued to protect their interests through the reign of the next Emperor Claudius. We know little of the ages which followed other than the fact that Josephus says that Marcus was in Alexandria when the Jewish War broke out.

It is difficult to explain what happened from the brief mention of Mark's establishment of monasteries in the city before the war and the eventual rise of Christianity in Egypt. What is clear is that the orthodox model of a community founded on the authority of Peter never took over completely. The Catholic doctrine only effectively became established in the city with Clement's conversion at the end of the second century A.D. This leaves almost a century and a half where "another kind of Christianity" held sway - devoted to Mark rather than Peter.

All that is available to us to make sense of this original lost model are some tantalizing "bits" as to its original constitution. They include the idea that:
For a more or less complete understanding of the tradition Coptic attitude toward their beloved "Father" Mark I recommend reading the on-line text of their current Pope's work entitled Mark the Evangelist which spells out many of the ideas behind this book.

THE OSROENE MODEL

The pioneering work of Bauer demonstrates quite convincingly that at the very time that the Emperor Antoninus became ruler of Rome Marcionitism seems to have become especially influential in the kingdom of Osroene. What can account for this eastward migration of what are now in this age clearly deemed "undesirable" Palestinian elements? The answer must be found in the idea that Markan communities found their welcome worn out in the Empire a mere five years after the defeat of the great so-called "Jewish revolt" of 130 - 133 A.D.

We have almost no information about the causes of this war were other than to assume that they were somehow connected with Palestinian messianism. The surprising thing however is that no one is actually identified as "king" in this uprising like one might expect. Even Simon bar Kochba is called "prince" for reasons which are unclear to us.

While I cannot get into certain parallels which exist between the Palestinian rebels (one must remember that Jews were only one party among many other participants in the cause) we can take notice of one of the most surprising outcomes of the conflict - Hadrian's ban on ritual castration and his successor Antoninus' reinstatement of Jewish customs and practices.

Yes, Jews were banned from setting foot on their native soil. They must have went in every which direction. However it is baffling that Antoninus should be so intimately connected in their literature with the reconstruction effort to "refound" Judaism. His association with the new leader of the community - simply called "Jew" i.e. Judah - is rather inexplicable other than to betray his direct involvement overseeing that the final product was utterly unlike the dominant Jewish orthodoxy of the previous generation.

With all of that said it is impossible in my mind to ignore the fact that one of the directions which Palestinians must have fled their native territory was eastward toward Osroene. This kingdom effectively formed the buffer state between Persia and Rome. Not only does the evidence cited by Bauer suggest a dramatic shift in population from Palestine and Syria to Osoroene owing to the war, there are other factors too.

The Mandaean sect traces its exodus from Palestine in roughly the same age and they identify a similar "stop over" in Osroene. Yet the most significant document available to us (and hitherto ignored) to demonstrate the Marqionite presence in the kingdom is actually connected not with Edessa (the city studied by Bauer) but Harran, the reputed birthplace of Abraham.

Even though the so-called Acts of Archelaus derive their origins from the third century they testify clearly to the Marqionite presence in the kingdom and the continuing influx of "believers" from Rome owing to official persecution. The spiritual "head" of the Christian community is "little Mark" who is represented as "communing" with the "leader of the people" and deciding matters of orthodoxy.

One telling statement made in the text is of the parallels between the "living little Mark" and "one of reknown" whose "fame had spread throughout the world" many generations before. He is described in the following terms by the writer from Osroene:

[this] Marcellus of old, furnished aid most indulgently, so that they all declared that there was no one of more illustrious piety than this man. Yea, all the widows, too, who were believers in the Lord had recourse to him, while the imbecile also could reckon on obtaining at his hand most certain help to meet their circumstances; and the orphaned, in like manner, were all supported by him, so that his house was declared to be the hospice for the stranger and the indigent. And above all this, he retained in a remarkable and singular measure his devotion to the faith, building up his own heart upon the rock that shall not be moved.

There are other details of the text which confirm the underlying connection to Marcionitism and earlier forms of Markan Christianity which I deal with elsewhere but this is enough to get the reader up to speed.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Of course this emerging portrait of geographically specific representations of Markan culture completely ignores the testimony of the survival of a Markan theology in the Roman Empire in the second - sixth centuries A.D. Scholars in my mind have approached the reports of Polycarp (c. 140 A.D.), Irenaeus (c. 170 A.D.), Clement (190 A.D.), Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen (early third century A.D.) and Ephraim (c. fourth century A.D.) uncritically. They see the pathetic condition that Marcionitism found itself in the period and see it as always having been subordinate to "the true Church."

These men are forced to endure the seemingly endless propagandist statements from these Church Fathers agaisnt the "heretics." They claim not only that their adversaries are to be deemed "illegitimate" by their weakness in the age but as a corollary the legitimacy of the "true Church" is confirmed by the powerful position that the own organization found itself in from the middle of the second century A.D. onward.

There can be no doubt in my mind that the Church Fathers are not lying when they say that the Marcionites were severely weak in the very period where their community was strong. In this sense the testimonies of the "anti-heretical" treatises do indeed reflect the reality of the day they were written in. However to ee it as following from these reports that there never was a period where communities like the Marcionites flourished is simply ridiculous.

The problem with Christian theologians and scholars is that they are first and foremost Christian believers. There is a part of them which will never let go of the idea that God himself by miracle, by actively involving himself in the world established the conditions for which the religion which now calls itself Christianity ended up flourishing. It doesn't even come into their consciousnesses that all this might indeed be true in a "spiritual" or "metaphysical" sense while still having more "earthly" or "everyday" explanations for its genesis.

What I am saying of course is that not a single scholar to date has taken up the testimony of the Islamic theologian Al Jabbar that what now passes as Christianity was actually engineered by a succession of Caesars as part of an ongoing campaign against "Middle Eastern extremism." Al Jabbar wrote at least a thousand years from the apostolic age. However Pines has convincingly demonstrated that the material he draws from likely comes from Christian sectarian groups active in the fourth or fifth century A.D.

In other words, we can chose to believe that the spread of Christianity has no logical explanation - that it is all miracle - or that there is an "real world" explanation which was indeed integrated by early theologians into a different theological model than we now use (i.e. the "fooling the rulers of the world" doctrine of the apostle in many of his writings).

What I am suggesting is that there has to be a reason why writers like Celsus who campaigned against Christianity in the earliest days of Antoninus identify Marcionitism as the dominant form of orthodoxy in the period rather than our own community. It must have been true. The reason then why we see (a) the sudden exodus of Marcionites and other Palestinian sectarians eastward, (b) the sudden parallel rise of our "Catholic orthodoxy" and the emergence of rabbinic Judaism all in the age of Antoninus is because the Emperor was orchestrating all three phenomena through his continuation of the original campaign against Palestinian messianism by his predecessor Hadrian.

If you really think about it, our Christian tradition has no messiah. It has no one who fulfills the specific political dimensions to messianic thought in Samaritanism and Judaism. There is no one who will establish a "kingdom of God," no one who will lead the call against foreign occupation of Palestine, there is no accompanying call to unity as a specific people. Is this all accidental? Or is it as I suggest part of a pattern which goes on to this day - i.e. a war on Semitic group consciousness in order to continue to support the western hegemony over the region.

MARK AS ENEMY OF THE STATE

Thus when we you start to pay careful attention to the obvious "gaps" which exist between the European Christian concept of "Christ" and the tradition Jewish "messiah" it becomes increasingly obvious that these could not have developed accidentally. They must rather represent a conscious effort on the part of the "rulers of the world" to waterdown and "manage" the threat that a united Middle Eastern messianic culture posed.

These ideas are not my own of course. I take them word for word from the writings of Al Jabbar and his lost Christian source. Of course with this emerging understanding manifesting itself the obvious question which emerges is what the original "unpolluted" form of Christianity looked like - the one which emphasized the very Semitic consciousness which Antoninus likely deemed too dangerous for continued propagation within his realm.

When you look carefully at the period it is impossible to miss that "Marcion" - i.e. "little Mark" - is made into a scapegoat at the very time when an Antonine reform effort was underway in Judaism. Many of the accusations leveled against this "heresiarch" by the Church Fathers seem to support the idea that Marcion was connected not merely with "theological apostasy" - i.e. something abstract and which only religious scholars would care about - but where his religious doctrines were understood to be veiled calls for insurgency.

Many of these examples we can furnish ourselves with in this regard actually come from Celsus, the very man who tells us most clearly that at the beginning of the Antonine period the followers of "little Mark" were the dominant Christian sect. In that anti-Marcionite polemic (the first known in all of literature interestingly enough) we find a continual "questioning" of the loyalty of Christians to the cause of the Emperor.

The question of course is that if this mistrust marked the end of Marcionitism can it help but be posited that at one time it also enjoyed the favor of the Roman Caesars? What most scholars have failed to recognize that its overt "anti-Jewish" stance must have played well with the official policy of Rome against Judaism in the period spanning Nero's rule down to Hadrian. Each Emperor - with possibly the exception of Trajan demonstrates himself to be "more the enemy of Jews" and Judaism than the other.

The ultimate question now is - whether a religious tradition like Marcionitism which appealed its message to Jewish proselytes, denied the value of circumcision, traditional legal observances and the Law and prophets have ended up anywhere but in bed with Caesar in this age of bitter "anti-Semitism"? Most troublesome of course is the idea that Marcionites clearly acknowledge that they openly flattered the "ruler of the world," that they never told him "the deep mystery" of their faith.

So what do we imagine that they were hiding? Do we really believe that it was something entirely esoteric - the ancient precursors of Madame Blatavsky? Or are finally prepared to see that this was a wholly Semitic religious order much like we see among the Muslims, Druze, Alawites, Ismailites and other sects originally from that part of the world today where all aspects of the life of the adherents were integrated into the overall cause of the community - even the offering up of one's life.

THE LIFE OF MARK

It is this kind of a background that I think is useful to frame the question of the life of Marcus Julius Agrippa. One can merely look to the surface and agree with scholars that he was simply "a weak ruler" or indeed do what I do with this work and see it as a screen for something far more powerful. Marcus was involved in a quest for political power f

kingdom


Our premise then that there is a secret tradition which understands "Mark" to be "disguised" in the gospel he wrote is a development of existing beliefs Coptic and early Latin texts.









Marcus Julius Agrippa: the basic understanding to the whole book is a thesis I published in the Samaritan Aleph Beth p. 5 that the last historical king of Israel typically identified in scholarly literature as “Agrippa II” was not only the Mark who wrote the gospel but also the man credited with being the “second Moses” of the Samaritan tradition – viz. Marcus “son of Titus” – and the “messiah” of Daniel 9:24 – 27 of the earliest historical Jewish authorities viz. Rashi, Nachmanides, Abarbanel etc. The argument that there was one Mark behind all three traditions necessarily assumes that now entirely separate traditions of Judaism, Samaritanism and Christianity came together in the late first century. This is not the standard scholarly understanding of the religions in this period – nevertheless what often goes unsaid is that there actually is no firm scholarly understanding as to what happened to Judaism, Samaritanism or Christianity in the period immediately following the destruction of the Jewish temple. The only thing which is certain is that Marcus Julius Agrippa friend of the soon to be Emperor Titus sat as king of a Syrian kingdom for at least thirty years after the end of temple Judaism. It is clearly at this point in history that the most scholars understand that a man called Mark wrote the first gospel (most understand this occurred sometime between 67 – 72 A.D.). It is also the time that many prominent Samaritanologist understand that Marcus son of Titus was active establishing his religious reforms (i.e. Boid, Stenhousen, Kippenberg etc.) which included direct citations from gospel material. It also the period that Judaism was under the authority of a man named “John” – it is a standard understanding of Christian theology and the Coptic Egyptian tradition especially that “John was the name Mark was called by the Jews.” The point then is that the argument that the last king of Israel was indeed the founder of a new messianic form of religion which united the formerly hostile regions of Judea, Samaria and Galilee has support from ancient sources such as Justus of Tiberias (Mark’s historical secretary), Josephus (Mark’s historical Jewish rival) as well as the statement of the Coptic Pope Shenouda III who effectively identifies “Mark” as “Marcus Julius Agrippa” in a recent book.





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