SALOME
Aristobulus and Salome,NO KNOWN DATE Bronze.
ΒΑCΙΛΕΩC ΑΡΙCΤΟ- ΒΟΥΛΟΥ, (King Aristobulus)
rev. ΒΑΙCΙΛΙCCΗC CΑΛΩΜΗC, (Queen Salome)
(Imhoof, Por- trätköpfe, Pl. VI. 21 and 22).
name: Salome
born: ?
died: ?
mother: ?
father: ?
siblings: ?
offspring: Marcus, Berenice
The significance of Salome called Mary over her son Marcus cannot be underestimated; it likely will also never be fully appreciated. There was a palpable backlash in antiquity to her libertinism - especially accute among what we must presume to be Pharisaic Jews who objected to her "dropping" one husband (Aristobulus) and her subsequent marriage to his brother (Philip). She also appears to have had a significant influence over the development of an overtly "paganized" messianic cult for her son Marcus and close contacts within the Claudian family which ruled the Empire at the time. Salome may even have had a subsequent "relapse" into Judaism at the end of her days if we are to identify her with the "Mother Salome" who married R. Gamaliel.
At the very least all who have ever studied her immediately recognize her significance over the age. She appears as a Palestinian version of some of the great female literary figures from Shakespeare (Hamlet's mother, Lady Macbeth etc.). The story even becomes even more intriguing owing to what is certainly one of the greatest false historical reference of all time - the story of the beheading of a certain "John the Baptist." The early Catholic tradition cerftainly had its eyes set on this original "Mary" of Christianity; they almost completely divorced her from the tradition.
A FEMINIST BEFORE FEMINISM
Marcus Julius Agrippa came as the returning Moses and he set up what is certainly the closest thing to a universal brotherhood of man that ever existed in the history of the world. No, wait a minute. I didn’t get that exactly right, nor did any of my predecessors. The religion we now call Christianity certainly wasn’t a “brotherhood of man” but rather a “sisterhood of women” and it wasn’t “history” which he was establishing but indeed “herstory” and it wasn’t even Marcus who established it.
I don’t know why there aren’t books written about this or television programs or movies written about the most amazing society which appeared in
It is also explains why Mary is such an important symbol in Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic traditions. She is us and we are her. Yes, there appears to be two separate Marys – Mary the mother of Christ and Mary Magdala but we can be certain that there was only one entity of that name who passed through a series of female representatives stretching from Moses wife down to the time of Eva Frank. I know this is a lot to throw at my readers but great revelations are by their very nature challenging. I hope my readership is up to the task.
THE CHURCH ESTABLISHED THROUGH A WOMANSo now we must ask how is it that the tradition of Marqion understood that a certain “woman” was the first to introduce its doctrines to the Romans? Whoever this woman was she is somehow related by Jerome to be connected with “Phoebe” which interestingly is the Greek mythological equivalent of “Wisdom” in the Jewish-gnostic tradition. Of course what I am trying to suggest here is that this women is the same figure whom the “Valentinians” venerated as “Prunikos” – i.e the “whore” Berenice.
Indeed if we look closely in the reports of the Church Fathers we see that the Marqionites acknowledged Mary Magdala, the prostitute accepted into the fold by Jesus after her repentance as perhaps the most significant of Jesus’ disciples. What I am also suggesting now is that her role transcended something which just limited to the narrative of the events of 33 A.D. as outlined in the original gospel. She necessarily became the very example of the Church’s relationship with its messiah Marcus (or if you will “little Marcus”).
This is why we find if we look closely at the statements in Marqionite literature like that of the Testimony of Truth Mary Magdala’s example is that which all devotees of the messiah must follow i.e. ““no one knows the God of truth except solely the man who will forsake all of the things of the world, having renounced the whole place, (and) having grasped the fringe of his garment.” This example was first established by the Mary Magdala of the gospel and now it is set out as the path for the various “women” – i.e. castrated elect of the Church – to follow.
DID WOMEN ESTABLISH CHRISTIANITY?
Of course I now come to shake this all up. The Judeo-Christian religious tradition was in effect hijacked or at the very least radically transformed by a messiah appearing as the head of a radical social experiment where men and women were forcibly blended into one “new creation” of man. What are the words of the apostle again? now in the messiah you who were far are made near for He is our perfection who hath made the two one, and hath demolished the wall which stood in the midst and the enmity, in the gospel [besora] abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances that, in himself, he might make the two to be one new man; and he hath made perfection, and hath reconciled both with God, in one body, and hath slain the enmity by his cross.”
There of course so many levels to this understanding that I don’t even know where to begin in commenting on it. Nevertheless we may safely identify that what is being described here is the destruction of the old division of “Adam” and “Eve” established by the Torah were the female is subordinate to the male. In its place is a radical new image of perfection of the castrated male and the sterilized woman born as new creatures through the example of “completeness” in the messiah Marcus Julius Agrippa.
However the more I looked into matters the more I realized that the castrated example of Marcus Julius Agrippa in fact was part of a much wider and indeed ultimately overlooked phenomenon within the Church still to this day. Yes, of course the Catholic and Orthodox communities spout virulently misogynist doctrines about the “proper place” for a woman. Nevertheless I think that we ought to be bigger than they are and look past their bigotry as a complex which developed out of “skeletons in their own closet.” I mean they more than anyone must see their inherent “feminine” nature.
I have argued that Marcus Julius Agrippa was himself neither male nor female but “perfect” and the priests who attended to him were eunuchs after his image. This is why they are identified as “brides of Christ.” However it is Marcus only Marcus who helps explains why the Roman Catholic Church maintains ritual celibacy and the Eastern Orthodox Church still walk around in the garb of the eunuch priests of Artemis. The underlying point however is that in their earliest days the Christian presbytery were “women” just as the Church as a whole was female, recreated after the image of their castrated Father.
THE
Yet I want to go beyond this now and for most of the remainder of the work to make a secondary point which I am certain will scandalize the readership – namely that Berenice rather than Marcus Julius Agrippa was the center of the outer religion of Christianity in the age. What I am suggesting of course is that the average convert to the messianic tradition of Agrippa likely didn’t even know that his tradition was really devoted to Marcus. Someone who lived in the age immediately after the destruction of the temple likely heard all about Jesus and his prophesy about the one who was to come, he saw the image of Berenice holding her sudar and naturally assumed that Titus her lover and Son of the ruler of the world was the messiah in question.
It was left only for those who entered into the fold of “brides of Christ” whoever received the secret knowledge about “another messiah.” It was they who learned about the fact that their king, Marcus Julius Agrippa, was really the beloved disciple Mark who was called John and all the other answers to the enigmas and parables raised by Jesus in the gospel.
As such, while I am certain that Marcus Julius Agrippa wrote the original gospel his sister Berenice – a woman - had a much greater role in the development of the Church than anyone has previously recognized. I am not alone in my assumption. Eisenman has proposed a female writer of the gospels and Berenice in particular. Helms sees her as a respectable widow while Griffith rightly notes that “[t]here are only four women mentioned in the NT whose existence can be confirmed from non-Biblical sources, and these women are all closely related to each other. One of these women is Berenice” and identifies her as the author of the gospel.
I am much more relunctant than all of these scholars to simply develop ideas in my head without support from ancient sources. No one in antiquity ever claimed that Berenice wrote the original gospel. Clearly the best theory of existing scholarship is that a man named Marcus wrote the original text in the period leading up to 70 A.D. and the “prophesy” of the destruction of the Jewish temple which its author must have witnessed. The Copts support the idea of Mark as the first gospel and their tradition goes back at least as far as the first Catholics in
MARQION
In other words, there must be an explanation for how the religion of Christianity rapidly conquered
So it was that the gospel written by her brother Marcus became the new law of the land in
Immediately after an account of various later Jewish authorities enmity towards Christianity, encouraging their disciples to destroy Christian books and scrolls associated with the “evangel” (identified as the 'awen gilyon i.e. “the falsehood of blank paers” or “’awon gilyon” the sin of blank papers) we hear of story of what life was like for Palestinians living under the original gospel as “messianic law” of Israel. Interestingly again R. Gamaliel appears the historic opponent of Agrippa but the means by which the gospel was subverted is not attributed to him directly but instead a woman – his wife Imma Shalom – viz. Mommy Salome!
I find it very peculiar indeed that a figure named Salome should be identified as the vehicle through which the gospel was corrupted especially when we know that it was also the name of Agrippa’s mother. Nevertheless the story tells of the manner in which Salome when went to court where a min or a “Christian heretic” lived in his vicinity. Even though he “bore a reputation that he did not accept bribes” Salome thinks she can corrupt him or as the text relates “they” – i.e. her and her husband – “wished to make sport of him so she brought him a golden lamp and went before him.”
The point then is that Salome wants to corrupt the new law through bribery – but the narration which follows never actually claims that she managed to get back to the original Law of Moses. Instead what results from her bribery is a gospel which is used in conjunction with the Law – a position which the Marcionites were quite hostile to. We read that:
Salome said to him, 'I desire that a share be given me in my [deceased] father's estate.' 'Divide it,' ordered he. Said [R. Gamaliel] to him, 'It is decreed for us, Where there is a son, a daughter does not inherit.' [He replied], 'Since the day that you were exiled from your land the Law of Moses has been taken away and the law of the Evangel has been given, wherein it is written, 'A son and a daughter inherit equally.' The next day, he [R. Gamaliel] brought him a Lybian ass. Said he to them, 'But at the end of the book, wherein it is written, I came not to destroy the Law of Moses nor [or some versions “but”] to add to the Law of Moses, and it is written therein, A daughter does not inherit where there is a son. Said she to him, 'Let thy light shine forth like a lamp.' Said R. Gamaliel to him, 'An ass came and knocked the lamp over!'
The underlying point isn’t that R. Gamaliel and his wife managed to stop the use of the gospel as the Law in the
This is quite a significant distinction one which might not be revealed to the reader if the person recounting the story was an orthodoxy Jew or a believing Christian. Indeed we should also be certain that this gospel wasn’t the gospel as we now know it. The account of Shabbath 116a implies two different versions – the original which was Marqionite and this second text (introduced by Salome?) which corresponds with its historical rival the so-called “Gospel of the Hebrews). Indeed the reference here to an “offensive law” about the daughter and son receiving equally didn’t even make it into our derivative texts but is certainly in keeping with the spirit of “Pauline Christianity” – i.e. where there is neither male nor female, Greek or Jew etc.
THE FEMINIST TRADITION OF LITTLE MARCUS
Whenever a feminist writer ends up championing the cause of women in the Church the name of “Marcion” is never far from the conversation. It usually goes something like this – yes, he was a “heretic” but he allowed “women” to become priests. Indeed the argument sometimes becomes extended to the gnostic tradition as a whole. As Pagel’s notes "Whereas the orthodox often blamed Eve for the fall and pointed to women's submission as appropriate punishment, gnostics often depicted Eve . . . as the source of spiritual awakening."
These female (and sometimes male) writers inevitably “applaud” the role of women in Marqion’s churches and for the “fact” as they see it that “the Christian gnostics, such as those who followed Marcion, opened to women in full respect [the opportunity of being priests], but were again suppressed by the orthodox.” Of course anyone who had any discernment in such matters would have to see that the understanding of “male” and “female” take on new “spiritual” significance in gnostic literature. Pagel alludes to it repeatedly, no less than her mentor Quispel, however a careful and indeed accurate understanding of matters in the early Church necessarily go back to a primal myth which has in my mind never before been properly understood by scholars and is the real purpose behind the whole enterprise of the present work.
There is an underlying but now entirely lost historical narrative relating to the Jewish War which necessarily forms the background to the various “gnostic myths” which are misunderstood by such scholars. Indeed the fact is that the detractors of these “new age” scholars who seek to develop the material from Nag Hammadi in such a way to “speak to people in the world today” are quite right when they attack the “inherent ambiguity of these interpretations.” Pagels and others act in such a way as to actually obscure the real significance of these myths by indirectly supporting the idea that they are somehow “vague” and ultimately “nonsensical fictions” by applying them in this haphazard manner.
The truth is that if they had looked to the historical context of Jewish War, the establishment of “females” who venerate the perfect “maleness” of their Lord Marcus Julius Agrippa we would immediately realize who was the paradigm for their female yearning for the Father – viz. his sister Berenice.
It is again almost mind-blowing the degree to which big pieces of the puzzle of Christian origins have been just “lying around” waiting for someone to discover them. The same is true in the case of Berenice’s role in the founding of her brother’s religious enterprise. For the truth is that amateur and professional scholars from Pagels to Brown have noted the manner in which the figure called “Mary Magdala” is raised to an amazing degree in the gnostic tradition. This grouping certainly includes Marqionitism but is also extended to the closely related “Valentinian” tradition also.
THE TWO WOMEN IN MARCUS’
My basic understanding to the present work is that Marcus Julius Agrippa stands behind the gnostic tradition as a whole. This accounts for the interrelatedness of the “Marqionite,” “Valentinian” and “Naaseni” communities in addition to other gnostic groups – viz. the “Harpocratians of Salome,” those of Marcellina just to mention a few. We have taken an important step in identifying the figures of “Salome” and “Berenice” as the mother and daughter of the messiah Marcus.
Similarly the manner in which the Herodian family was connected to the Davidic roots of the Hasmonaeans through “Mary” the wife of Herod the Great is very helpful too. However we will blow the case wide open when we discover that Berenice is consistently identified as “Mary Magdala” this woman who clung to the garment of Christ. What is required now above all else is patience on the part of my readership to allow me the opportunity to sketch out the life of the messiah and the two powerful women who determined his existence for him.
As such I think it very important to conclude our introduction to the development of the Roman conspiracy to understand the central role that women played in the founding of the Church. I cannot help but believe that what I am about to assemble about Christianity being founded through the efforts of a couple of “prostitutes” is the very reason why the Acts of the Apostles develops a Church History which entirely excludes women from its make up. Indeed the Catholic Church necessarily was even forced to include “Mary” into the fold because it had inherited a Markan gospel tradition which placed women at the beginning, middle and end of the “Christ discovery” process.
The discovery that the two Marys of the gospel are indeed the mother and sister of Marcus Julius Agrippa in my mind bring the whole discussion to an important historical context which finally explains the many curious and baffling mythological stories of the various gnostic communities. As we shall see what follows once we come to terms with the very person of Berenice the sister of Agrippa it is easy to see that it was she who established Christianity through her legendary love affair with Titus and was rewarded as such with a special place in the mythological “codes” of these same gnostic communities.
Indeed as I have already alluded to briefly in my previous discussion I believe that it is equally clear that her role as “sister/wife” of the messiah became the very place that all the castrated “women” of his tradition stood. In other words, just as Berenice was married to her brother in a spiritual rather than sexual union so too did the “sisters” of Marcus in the early Christian community.
The fact that her and her brother were actually married while still emphasizing their “brother” and “sister” relationship in my mind is the very basis for the manner in which Christians ever since have identified their fellow parishioners. It cannot also be avoided that Irenaeus spends a great deal of time in his understanding of the followers of Marcus dealing with their understanding of “Truth” as a female hypostasis. Similarly the whole heretical tradition as we have already seen has a strange emphasis on “females making themselves male” and “men becoming women.” We must therefore see Berenice having a significant influence over the role of “women” (whatever that meant) in the contemporary Church where by they continued her devotion to Marcus and his hope for a fully independent “kingdom of heaven.”
THE CONSPIRACY OF WOMEN
The point of this book as a whole then is not merely to argue the case that Marcus Julius Agrippa was the real messiah of the Jews, Samaritans and Christians but that there is a lost story – even a lost history – which has never before been recognized by scholars which defined these formerely separate traditions. The Flavian Emperors conspired with Agrippa to bring order and unity to the Israelite community, to allow him to assume a special position in the traditions of all these religions. They actively supported his persecution of those who continued in the old ways of Moses banning circumcision in the period 70 – 135 A.D. In its place we find a seemingly cynical belief which encouraged Jewish sterilization.
Yet the last laugh was to be gained by the apostle of this new community or in his words of its founder as they “speak of the divine secret Hochmah (or understanding), a Hochmah that has been hidden and that God predestined for our glory before the age began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have restored the Lord of glory.” Something was going on beneath the surface, waiting for the right time to reveal itself. The messiah was preparing for the day when he and his believers would finally revolt from
We are however confronted by this strange emphasis on a “hidden Hochmah” being part of the plot too. Scholars of gnostic and Marcionite interpretation of this and other passages where the word “Wisdom” is used know that they reference goes back to the idea of a woman. In other words, “Hochmah” is a female hypostasis in Judaism, approaching a companion of god in some traditions. She is the “mother goddess” of the Frankist community too.
What I am suggesting now is that if we look carefully at the “plot” developed between Marcus Julius Agrippa and the Roman Emperors it is impossible to discount the role played by the two women in his life – his mother Salome and his sister Berenice. They would both later assume this title of “Hochmah,” a precursor to the mother and daughter Matronit figure of Frankism. I would even make the case that the chain of female hypostases in the Herodian tradition goes back to their connection with Miriam the wife of Herod and Hasmonaean princess who conencted the family to the messianic bloodline of David. It is the very reason why all the women of the gospel are called “Mary” also.
THE MOTHER OF CHRIST
What I want to do with the remaining portion of this book is to abandon for the moment the argument for how the messianic religion established by the Flavians eventually ended up “turning on” the Empire and instead focus on the idea of how women played a central role in the establishment of that tradition. This is a most revolutionary argument for I make the case that once develop an understandign for Marcus Julius Agrippa as the messiah of Christianity you necessarily discover that his mother than sister are repeatedly identified as being in his gospel.
The best way to edify that understanding is by stating clearly that Salome only appears in the “gospel of Mark” and according to Tertullian, the gospel of Marqion. As we have already mentioned Hippolytus alludes to the idea that Marqionites claimed to have possessed the original “ur-Mark” – i.e. the original “fuller” gospel which stood behind our Mark. Similarly this was a Mark according to Hippolytus and Tertullian who was self-castrated. When we go to Alexandria, Egypt and hear Clement tell one of his friends that a secret gospel of Mark existed there too, we also discover a series of other statements in his writings about a secret Egyptian gospel where Salome similarly becomes the spokesperson for ritual sterility. We can see the same thing evident from Tertullian’s statement about Salome in Marqion’s gospel.
As important a role as Salome can be demonstrated to have played in the development of Christianity her work was continued and developed by her daughter Berenice. She occupied the same position as her mother in the later community but her love affair with Titus the son of the Emperor Vespasian in the period leading upto and immediately after the destruction of the Jewish temple became the stuff of gnostic Christian legend. If Salome was the equivalent of our “Mary the mother of Christ” then Berenice was our Mary Magdala and we can now start to piece together the amazing lost story of how women and not men founded the Church.
RETELLING THE STORY OF CHRIST
With so many traditions now available to us ranging from Jewish, Samaritan, Coptic, Marqionite and gnostic sources we have suddenly stumbled upon a new problem – where to we begin to tell the real story of Marcus the messiah? The simple answer of course is to “begin with the beginning.” Josephus makes clear that Marcus Julius Agrippa was born c. 28 A.D. The exact place of his birth is unclear but it is certain that in 33 A.D. he appears in Tiberias, Galilee – the very year that Jesus was understood to have “descended from heaven” (i.e. the fifteenth year of Tiberias viz. where the city Tiberias was founded in 18 A.D.). The overlap is now obvious – Marcus Julius Agrippa was “little Mark” because he was the five year old young boy who is the secret “beloved disciple” of Jesus in the gospel.
I don’t want to get too deeply involved in the whole original Christian particulars of the original tradition for it will become too distracting for my Jewish readers. So instead I would like to pick up the general details from the Coptic tradition where its contemporary Pope drawing on much earlier traditions identifies Marcus as “a Jew from the Levite Tribe, he preached both Jews and Gentiles, but mainly among the gentiles. He had two names, "John", is the Jewish name and "Mark", is the gentile one. Mark became his distinctive name.” Shenouda also goes one step further which makes him accord perfectly with Jewish traditions about Marcus Julius Agrippa saying that his father was named Aristobolus and his mother was Salome. While Jewish tradition never identifies the name of Agrippa’s mother, his father is consistently represented as being named Aristobolus just as we see in the Coptic tradition.
Indeed the Coptic Pope Shenouda goes one step further in a manner which is likely to have eluded most scholars completely when he says that his beloved apostle Marcus was also married to Berenice. This severely limits the number of possibilities open to us as to who the historical Christian figure of Marcus originally was. Not only did he have a mother named Salome, a father named Aristobulos, a wife named Berenice but was also identified by the Jews as “John.” Believe it or not my readership, every single aspect of this identification can be directly connected with our man Marcus Julius Agrippa – something which is at once comforting and ultimately disturbing – for we must ask ourselves at once, why didn’t someone more qualified than me ever make this observation before? …
THE DISMEMBERING OF MARCUS JULIUS AGRIPPA
Indeed unlike western tradition which is based on a version of Josephus which has log been argued to have been interpolated by a Christian editor the Jewish tradition knows nothing of the existence of two Agrippas. The first known person to make the case for a deliberate falsification of the original work of the Pharisee Josephus by the goyim is Abarbanel – the fourteenth century Jew who said Agrippa was the messiah. Think there is a connection here?
I am quite certain that scholars don’t go far enough when they say that the editor only added things to make Josephus seem like he was a Christian. The real point was to obscure the information he provides about Marcus the messiah as the son of Aristobolus and Salome. Once you know that the Coptic tradition identifies its Marcus-who-was-called-John as the son of Salome also it is difficult not to put the pieces together – hence the dismemberment of Josephus. Salome only appears in the Gospel of Mark tradition – interestingly Marqion, who is identified by Hippolytus with the same gospel of Mark tradition, has Salome appear in his text too.
How do I know that Agrippa’s mother was Salome? That is coming up momentarily but first let’s get a little sketch of the life of Marcus from Coptic circles. The Copts say Marcus grew up in
We should be quite intrigued when we hear from Pope Shenouda that St. Marcus of this universal Church was married to Berenice, Marcus Julius Agrippa’s sister. This is what we might call a proverbial “home run.” For once we couple the understanding that the surviving texts of Josephus have been corrupted in order to obscure information about the original messiah of Christianity we can start to make sense of some of the discrepancies.
For while our texts of Josephus pretend that the Marcus which his sister Berenice was married to was “some other” Marcus – an otherwise unknown Marcus Julius Alexander – Juvenal’s independent identification of Berenice as the “Berenice [who]was given [a marriage ring] as a present long ago by the barbarian Agrippa to his incestuous sister.”
So there was originally one Marcus, son of Salome, who was married to his sister Berenice and ruled with her in the Syrian
Now the story reads like this – Berenice marries this “other guy” Marcus, who we never hear of again and who suddenly vanishes and she goes off with “another Herod,” unnamed uncle, whom she rules Chalcis with until his death when her brother takes over his throne. It is all a pack of lies designed to water-down the original story. Indeed if we look to the surviving material of Josephus we can still find the original family tree buried within the rewrites that “
Let’s get back for a moment to the real history of Marcus Agrippa’s family background. It appears in another section of Josephus which speaks of a Salome the daughter of Salome the daughter of Miriam the wife of Herod the Great who “was married to Philip, the son of Herod, and tetrarch of Trachonitis; and as he died childless, Aristobulus, the son of Herod, the brother of Agrippa, married her.” Indeed I think the reader can begin to get the sense of the great secret of the gospel – the main characters were all tied to the house of Herod.
The apostle Philip was Philip, the uncle of the gospel writer. Salome is already connected to the house of Herod through Chuza in our texts but now it is equally apparent that she must have been the “sinful woman” who had married and remarried a bunch of brothers. In other words, she is the unnamed Samaritan woman in what is now John chapter 4 whom Jerome describes as being part of the Dosithean sect of Samaritanism. Peter is described as a “freeman” of Salome in Josephus and the uncle of Marcus Julius Agrippa. Another uncle Herod Antipas is trying to kill Mary Salome and her bastard son in order to prevent him from being the messiah.
If we fast forward a little to the time of the Caesars it is now entirely understandable where, when and how Christianity escaped punishment from the rulers in
We hear that this Emperor in particular was very fond of young Agrippa. We also get out first inkling of an esoteric doctrine associated with the king of
Here in no mistaken terms we have a report dating from 41 AD where Agrippa describes himself as being "raised up... from the dead.” Of course the word "resurrection" literally means "to be raised up.” We should also keep in mind that Caligula is usually described as the “mad Emperor” because of the many “nutty” things he did during his reign. The idea of befriending a ten year old boy is crazy enough but what follows is even more incredible for anyone but an insane ruler. A thirteen year old Agrippa is sent in the dead of night with a party of “spies” to
Philo turns around an original report of another pagan leader of Alexandria, this time a certain Flaccus who was prefect of all Egypt that the community hailed him as its messiah. Flaccus apparently reported sometime during the previous administration that a teenaged Marcus Julius Agrippa slipped into Alexandria’s harbor in the dead of night and went to a secret meeting of Jewry were eyewitnesses report members waved palm branches and identified Agrippa as their messianic "Lord!" Caligula apparently dismissed these charges no less than his heir Claudius whom we see engaged in a similar situation a generation later.
It is one of the great tragedies in the history of literature that we don’t have more information from this now entirely fragmentary work called the Acts of Isidore. All that we know from it is that Isidore was one of it leading citizen in the middle of the first century A.D. He was brought before the Emperor on charges of leading a pogrom against Alexandria’s Jewish residents. Why did he attack the Jews? There was on going unrest in the city because the Emperors were defending the rights of Jews to be equal citizens to Greeks and native Egyptians.
Isidore eventually concludes his testimony by pointing his finger at the now twenty-something year old Marcus Julius Agrippa and declaring:
'My lord Caesar, what do you care for a twopenny-halfpenny Jew like Agrippa?... I accuse them of wishing to stir up the entire world... They are not of the same nature as the Alexandrians, but live rather after the fashion of the Egyptian... I am neither a slave nor a girl-musician's son but gymnasiarch of the glorious city of Alexandria, but you [Agrippa] are the cast-off son of the Jewess Salome!"
Agrippa, like the Jews of Europe, is accused of plotting to “take over the world” by this leading citizen of Alexandria. Isidore’s accusation echoes that of Flaccus in the previous age. Agrippa wasn’t just some sweet, innocent and indeed terribly intelligent boy – he was plotting to take over the world. We can be certain his mother, Salome (the mother of the same name for St. Mark) was certainly actively promoting this agenda.
If we go back for a moment to the time of Caligula again it is interesting to note that this same “Mary” is being threatened by the same “Herod” of the gospels i.e. Antipas who is afraid that “Christ” will be allowed to become king of Israel. “Herod” wants that title for himself. However because of the closeness of Agrippa to the Emperor, Herod Antipas is eventually stripped of his rule in Palestine and Agrippa is put in his place. This secures Marcus’ messianic claims for the next one hundred years.
MARCUS IN ALEXANDRIA DOWN THROUGH THE AGES
As Marcus Julius Agrippa’s relationship with Alexandria is the subject of our discussion for the moment let us recap by noting that from the time of Caligula there is a connection between the future messiah and the city. He is hailed as its “Lord!” from this age – even a resurrected Lord. It is noteworthy that based on the testimony of Philo Eusebius understands identifies the development of early Christian “monasteries of Mark” sprouting up in Alexandria, the rest of Egypt and indeed the rest of the world at this time.
I am certain that the Christian heretical sect of “Harpocrates” was an early community of Gentile converts who recognized Agrippa as the “divine child Horus” in the city. The dominance of Marqionitism and heretical communities in the city must be similarly related with the “letter to the Alexandrians” (our letter to the Corinthians no doubt) in their canon. The first Catholic representative is only established here with Clement in the late second century, and Origen follows closely behind in the third. Both men were later identified as being of dubious orthodoxy owing to their maintain of what must be described as native Alexandrian heretical beliefs.
Marcus Julius Agrippa was in Alexandria when the Jewish War broke out and had to race back to Palestine to rescue his sister who was trapped in Jerusalem. The Coptic tradition claims that their Marcus died some time in the same decade but his death sounds to similar to that of his uncle “Simon” – i.e. the “rock” of the Jewish rebels – to be taken seriously. Indeed many other Jewish and Christian traditions similarly attempts to “kill off” in the age even though we have firm archaeological and linguistic evidence to contradict this claim. The underlying effort again is to obscure the central position of Agrippa throughout the ages.
The Copts interestingly admit that Marcus was also called John and identify a certain “Anianus” as following immediately after him (itself a variant of “John”). Indeed Marcus is identified as reappearing in the list of popes in the second century and the name “Agrippinus” is also there. Of course if as we suggest Marcus Julius Agrippa was the messiah of a Jewish community which extended into Palestine and throughout the world it is impossible to expect that the Alexandrian Mark could have spent all of his time isolated in Egypt. We would expect him to have been preoccupied with Syrian affairs including Palestine no less than making frequent visits to Rome and other places.
THE
We have now developed the beginnings of an understanding for the manner in which a very young Marcus Julius Agrippa was moulded into the messiah. He was the prince of peace – the very contemporary Roman “best hope” to stem the violence which was spilling into the streets of the eastern portion of the Empire. The scheme to make Mark into Christ was certainly originally developed by Marcus’ mother Salome. It was her dream to make her son a star – quite literally. Salome in many ways is the historical precursor to our modern “stage mother.” She undoubtedly personified the doting Jewish mother who maps out her child’s future, making him live out her ambitions and her dreams.
Salome must been deemed to have been responsible for the first attempts toward establishing this syncretic cultus of Christianity – this fusion between Jewish and Hellenistic cultures - in Alexandria. The formula wasn’t exactly right however. The correct balance of Israelite and pagan elements still had to be worked out properly in order for it to be deemed acceptable to the adherents of traditional Judaism. That right mix would eventually be found – only it would occur under her daughters supervision of her eternal child Marcus.
Some might say that the closeness which had seemingly always existed between Herodian and Roman rulers naturally led to this “messiah project.” However we must give Salome her due. Salome’s wonton ambition certainly kickstarted the enterprise in the close of the first half of the first century A.D. The Christian tradition still recognizes this. It is why “Mary” is hallowed as the “divine mother” in the Church – not merely as “Mary the mother of Christ” but clearly “Mary mother of the Church.”
I don’t have time for the idea of “Mary the mother of Jesus.” In the earliest Christian orthdooxy – that is Marqionite tradition as we have already seen – Jesus wasn’t human. He was angel who necessarily had no human mother. The figure of Mary belonged to Marcus – she was his mother but still managed somehow to maintain her virginity. Whatever the case may be, we need only think of “Mary” as the mother of Christ and split the difference down the middle. She just didn’t give birth the physical person of Christ but indeed the very idea of her son as the messiah. It was her creation - this is why she is called “mother of the Church.”
The idea still permeates the cult of “Mary” even after she was transformed into somebody else’s mother. As Pope John Paul II notes Mary is the very symbol of the Church where “the title of "Mother", in this context, proclaims the attitude of thoughtful closeness with which Our Lady followed the Church's life. Mary was to open her heart to the Church to show the marvels done in her by the almighty and merciful God.” If by “open her heart” John Paul II means “received the revelation” of the organization devoted to her son’s greatness, we would certainly agree.
When John Paul II notes that “[f]rom the very beginning, Mary carried out her role as "Mother of the Church": her action encouraged understanding [in the early community] … [and l]astly, Mary expressed her motherhood towards the community of believers not only by praying to obtain for the Church the gifts of the Holy Spirit necessary for her formation and her future, but also by teaching the Lord's disciples about constant communion with God” we would also agree. Salome certainly began the process by which Christ was established in the community.
When the Pope goes on to describe her as becoming “the Christian people's teacher of prayer, of encounter with God, a central and indispensable element, so that the work of the Pastors and the faithful would always have its beginning and its inner motivation in the Lord” and he concludes that “[f]rom these brief remarks it can clearly be seen how the relationship between Mary and the Church is a fascinating comparison between two mothers. It clearly reveals Mary's maternal mission and the Church's commitment ever to seek her true identity in contemplation of the face of the Theotókos.”
Let us borrow John Lennon for a moment and simply “imagine” something. Let’s all imagine that Mary wasn’t the mother of Jesus. Let’s accept the Coptic and
THE TWO MARYS
The truth is of course that if anyone wants to see the manner in which Mary was really the mother of Marcus they just need go back to their gospel. If you accept the original at least some of the arguments we have presented so far you necessarily have to believe that some deliberate tampering occurred to the formerly “immaculate gospel.” Beyond the issue of the ridiculous number of “Marys” appearing in successive developed versions of the gospel there is the disappearance and reappearance at critical moments of the figure of the “beloved disiple.”
We know that Marcus was present at the crucifixion. The Copts identify him as “Mark-who-was-called-John.” He is also the “beholder of God” – why acknowledge him by this title unless Marcus saw something or saw him at some time when no other disciple was present. Whatever the case is, at one critical juncture the surviving text just wipes out his name when we know he is certainly standing alongside his mother and sister watching Jesus appear crucified.
In order to get a sense of the original context all we need to do is go back to the gospel narrative and scrutinize of one of the last scenes in the gospel. There we can immediately see yet another example of the obvious relationship of the two Marys with Marcus – only once we acknowledge that our surviving text has been tampered with. Indeed if we take an absolutely literal rendering of the Syriac rendition we hear that:
now were standing at the cross of Jesus his mother and his sister of his mother … and Jesus saw his mother and a disciple whom he loved standing there and he said to his mother “Woman behold your son” and he said to that disciple “Behold your mother” … and at that hour Jesus knew everything was complete so that the scriptures might be fulfilled … [so] Jesus said “It is perfected” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit
If we restore the figure of little Mark-who-was-called-John back to the previous sentence of the narrative (which only makes sense) we get instead:
now were standing at the cross of Jesus was his beloved disciple his mother and his sister of his mother … and Jesus saw his mother standing there and he said to his mother “Woman behold your son” and he said to that disciple “Behold your mother” … and at that hour Jesus knew everything was complete so that the scriptures might be fulfilled … [so] Jesus said “It is perfected” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit
In other words, rather than having to read the passage as if it were some kind of “allegorical relationship” between Jesus’ mother and his beloved disciple (i.e. that they just somehow became “mom” and “son”) we should see that in the original tradition they were always mom and son.
Pope John Paul also mentions a mystical understanding of the relationship of Mary and son and mother gazing into each other’s faces in what follows. He sees it as a symbolic beginning of the new covenant. Of course most of you aren’t as familiar with the meaning here because you haven’t studied Jewish mystical literature. Mother and son are made to accord to the tabernacle of Israel. There in the holy of holies in the temple we would have seen two cherubs staring at one another – one male the other female – representing Israel’s relationship with god.
Of course the new understanding has a creepy underbelly with mother and son taking over this originally extraordinarily sexual representation of God and Israel as man and God – yet in a family where brothers married sisters and wives married all their brother in laws it is hardly out of step with reality.
BERENICE AS SECOND “MOTHER OF THE CHURCH”
So we have not one Mary but two and we argue that none of these women was ever actually called “Mary” – it was a title sacred to the Herodians. For Marcus Julius Agrippa and indeed almost all his close family relations were connected to the original messiah David through the Hasmonaean princess Miriam, who was married his grandfather Herod the Great. So important was this connection that scholars as late as Rashi use it to prove not only Agrippa’s Jewishness but in reality also his claims to be the messiah.
The Koran in fact has a similar tradition of an apparent “resurrecting Mary” when “Miriam” is identified at once as the mother of Christ and at the same time the sister of Moses. Mary wasn’t a proper name for these women but rather an identity. The idea of an individual representing or embodying an important person from the past in the contemporary age appears over and over again in the writings of early Christianity. Some Christian groups speak of a reincarnated “Helen of Troy” who was captured and fought over by the “rulers of the age.” Other reports come to us about an “eternal whore” in a similar vein.
What I would like to do for the present moment is for us to develop the significance of Marcus’ sister Berenice - the second Mary. In order to do this we will have to restore the original context of the crucifixion narrative. Someone certainly tampered with the gospel to make an important truth known to us, the understanding that the two women who stood under the Jesus’ cross were the mother and son of the beloved disciple rather than Jesus. Then we can start to see how the surviving text develops in such as way as to open the door to Berenice filling in her mother’s shoes.
In my mind the surviving gospel was little more than a second attempt at “jump starting” Marcus’ messianic claims. Salome must have initiated the argument that Marcus was divine in Alexandria as far back as 40 A.D. She was “rewarded” with the various titles associated with the “mother of God.” However it is important for us to see the gospel material is deliberately ambiguous about which “Mary” we are dealing with at any one time. Among the figures who are identified by the Syrian tradition of Ephraim (c. fourth century A.D.) as being one and the same person we find – the unnamed Samaritan woman, the sinful woman who annointed Jesus with her tears, the woman who discovered the empty tomb and had the “revelation” in Christ.
Why is there such ambiguity? Again I suspect that Berenice – the “other Mary” – was being “rewarded” for her assistance in establishing the cult in the years leading up to 70 A.D. In other words, we should understand that Salome and later Berenice were “paid back” for their help in making Marcus the messiah by having him include them in his narrative about the events in the ministry of Jesus.
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We know that Berenice was a significant figure in the Markan tradition. It is obvious from the early Latin literature such as the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Vengeance of the Savior. These texts seem to know of an original Marqionite gospel which places “St. Veronica” (a corruption of Berenice) at Jesus’ passion. Berenice was the disciple who wipes Jesus’ face with her garment while carries the cross to its final resting place. This cannot be a later development of Latin Christianity but instead a remembrance from a scene originally in the Marqionite text which was deliberate removed by later Catholic editors. Why? The name “Berenice” made it far too obvious who the real messiah was.
When you look at all the surviving evidence it is impossible to argue that any other Berenice is meant here. Indeed how could “another Berenice” have been understood to have been as intimate with the Emperor’s son Titus when we know that this was only historically true for this Herodian Berenice? That over pattern of a mother Salome and sister Salome of a son Marcus is just too overwhelming of a coincidnece to ignore.
So now we understand why it is that her presence was eventually removed from the later gospel material. There simply were too many Herodian figures in the gospel – Marcus, Antipas, Chuza, Philip, Salome, Berenice, the freedman Peter – the list goes on and on. Keeping the name Berenice the sister of Marcus in the text would make it far too obvious as to who the beloved disciple really was and what the central mystery of Christianity was really saying.
All of this points to the original understanding that Marcus, his mother and his sister were the original “family Christ.” The were the Herodians, a Christian sect who the tradition of the early Church Fathers tell us “held Herod to be the Christ.” “Herod” here must necessarily be Marcus Julius Agrippa. His mother and sister were both recognized to be “great whores” in the age. The former couldn’t help marrying all of her relatives and the latter, according to tradition, couldn’t stop screwing everyone else.
Yet isn’t it a little bit odd that the originally celibate cult of earliest Christianity owed its success to a couple of harlots? The contradiction seems insurmountable until we remember that the idea of “redemption” is central to the Markan community. These are whores who are redeemed by Marcus just as we too are “whores” seeking redemption through the Savior.
So let’s recap - the Marqionite sect (i.e. the “followers of little Mark”) identified the sinful woman of Luke 8:36 with Mary Magdala. At the same time related Christian traditions identify Mary Magdala with Berenice and the rabbinic tradition says that Mary Magdala was the mother of the messianic pretender called ben Stada (i.e. “son of the unfaithful woman”). The confusion only arises because there is one Mary who is “passed forward” through the mother and daughter tandem of Salome and Berenice in the period 40 – 80 A.D.
So it is that we find ourselves dealing with a “Mary” who transmigrated from one woman to another throughout the generations. Marcus Julius Agrippa was born to an unfaithful woman and then was guided through his peak years by his equally disillute sister. We know exactly when this “son of Mary” lived and that he was not Jesus because of the rabbinic tradition. There we find a repeated understanding that the Christian messianic figure born to an “unfaithful woman.” However the rabbis who were contemporaries of this “ben Stada” make clear that he flourished in the age immediately after the destruction of the temple not before.
What all of this evidence necessarily shows is that the original tabernacle of the Church Salome gave way to her daughter Berenice and then the lines became blurred. The point of the Christian covenant is to hold up this formerly wonton seducer of men into what is clearly now a repentant harlot. Her sexuality is identified as a hunger for union with perfection – the “completion” finally manifest in the person of little Mark. The historical union between Marcus Julius Agrippa and Berenice in the reign of Claudius must have provided the cultus with a new model for “spiritual marriage.” A sexless bond between members of the family of God – it may even be why Christians refer to one another as “brothers” and “sisters.”
Whatever the case may be, Pope John Paul II’s call to pay close attention to the scene where the two figures of mother and son “beholding one another” is also a part of this new revelation. Jesus says “it is perfected” as he “gives up his spirit” allowing it to become established in this new tabernacle of love. “Mary” is about to be saved in the manner that we are all to receive redeption – viz. by acknowledging Marcus as the awaited messiah.
THE GNOSTIC
This gnostic understanding of salvation takes for granted that we must go beyond the surface to attain our understanding, that things are not what they seem. What may seem like “mother and son” is really a symbol of Church and bridegroom – even the coupling man and god. The earliest example of this “transmigrating whore” in the surviving Christian literature seems to be associated with the Christian culture in
This “hope” for receiving perfection is spelled out in the so-called Canticle of Edessa. There the story unfolds of the hopes of a “harlot [who] heard the report of Him from afar, as she was standing in the street, going astray with idols, playing the wench with carved images. She loved, she much desired Him, when He was far away, and begged Him to admit her into His chamber.” The story is clearly a carry over from the original Marqionite interpretation of the sinful woman’s relationship with Christ as the model for salvation. It is described in detail in many of the treatises of the Church Fathers and appears in the Nag Hammadi text the Testimony of Truth in the form of the belief that “no one knows the God of truth except solely the man who will forsake all of the things of the world, having renounced the whole place, (and) having grasped the fringe of his garment.”
The one who originally “grasped the fringe of Jesus’ garment” was Mary Magdala. The seeker of truth is now identified as following in her footstep, that her actions were meant as the new halakhah (
It is equally significant to see that the restood Jesus came to Mary in the tomb and revealed the stigmata of Christ on his body. This was not Jesus but indeed her brother “little Mark.” Now do we understand the rabbinic connection between “ben Stada” and Mary Magdala in the latter half of the first century A.D? The reason the gospel reports have the disciple “unaware” that Jesus was with them after the crucifixion was because he was now “in the person” of another. Of course we are getting a little ahead of ourselves here unless it is to demonstrate that the idea of “transmigration of the soul” from one living person into another is at the core of the original Christian doctrine.
FROM SALOME TO BERENICE
I cannot help but see then that the real life harlots of Salome and Berenice are similarly described as “repentant whores” in the Markan gospel tradition. The person of the resurrecting “Mary” has a little of Salome in her and a little of her daughter Berenice. She is at once “the unfaithful woman” of many husbands who repents from marriage to be like the angels as much as she is the “whore” who is fought over by the rulers of the age - the former is Salome the latter is Berenice.
All of the surviving references to Salome in the secret gospel of Mark tradition have Jesus lecture the mother of his beloved disciple as to virtues of abandoning her wanton sexuality. He declares to her “I came to destroy the works of the female” or Salome’s own statement that “I have done well, then, in not bearing children” (in case you are confused she is the “ever virgin” despite having children in the Coptic tradition). In the original gospel (and likely even some of the tractates of the Talmud) who is at the heart of the status of the “woman who marries many brothers.” The new halakhah is that one should be “like the angels” and marry no one in order to receive redemption.
Berenice takes many of these attributes of her mother and develops them alongside the persona of the woman who gets a lot of men to fight over her virtue. She is also the new “Mary” in the divine covenant where the Talmud merely describes as “the whore,” imitates the same “gazing into the face” concept only now with Titus – viz. “he took a harlot [Berenice] by the hand and entered the Holy of Holies and spread out a scroll of the Law and committed a sin on it.” The coupling of Titus and Berenice in the Holy of Holies is a satire of the Christian identification of Berenice with the “whore” Wisdom. She also is connected with the “curing” of the menstrual cycle – i.e. being rendered sterile as a “hope” for women. In the East the haemorrhiossa was called by the name Berenice.
Through it all we should see that the Christian literature which developed over the course of the first century A.D. has the idea of a progressively “more perfect” revelation of “Mary.” Bardesian has Wisdom announce the words “[l]et her who comes after thee to me be a daughter, a sister to thee” while the Thunder Perfect Mind has this same idea in the pronouncement:
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.
And what is this final and indeed “perfect” manifestation of the redeemed whore Wisdom – the one who engenders the resurrection of royal messiah in the contemporary age. How does she do it? Her beauty causes men to fight over her leaving the messiah as the victor.
