Mark (1)–

Manuscripts of the Gods: The Bible and Ancient Cultural Thresholds

by James Whitlark, Ph.D.

Mark/Coming Forth by Day

Clement’s private letter should not come as a complete surprise. In his Outlines, he writes of the transmission of a secret gnosis among a select group of early Christians (Grant 5). In Eusebius, H.E. 2.1.4., a fragment by Clement states, “To James the Just and John and Peter the Lord transmitted the gnosis after the resurrection. They transmitted it to the other apostles. And the other apostles transmitted it to the seventy…”( Robinson 2610. His other published attacks on specific mystery sects occasionally make common cause with them and the pagan culture from which they stem. Thus, he repeatedly transforms the traditional title of Christ as “Word” into “New Song” (to asma to kainon), thereby likening Him to the divine musician Orpheus of the Orphic mysteries (16-17). Pervasively, Clement quotes with approval theological remarks by poets and philosophers who were actually writing about gods. Ecumenically, he admits, “It may be freely granted that the Greeks received some glimmerings of the divine word…”(167). Inevitably, he thinks in terms provided by his Alexandrian milieu.

An important precursor of the Egyptian mysteries was The Book of Coming Forth By Day, better known as The Book of the Dead. Containing “Secrets of THE NETHER WORLD, MYSTERIE(S) OF the god’s domain” and myths continued into the Alexandrian cults, it remained popular until about the time of Clement (Brown 1923, 130). It is “the first book the regular sale of which is known and can be proved by good evidence” Nichols 39). The Egyptian expression prt em hrw, variously translated “Coming forth by day” or “manifestation day,” is also a term eventually signifing a text about resurrection or rebirth—the principal theme of the mysteries (Brown 1923, 125).

Both that book and Mark employ an ancient scriptural style that by modern standards sounds more appropriate for altering consciousness in a mystery initiation than for providing smoothly coherent discourse. Mark commences with the sentence fragment: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1.1). A section (not actually the beginning) of the other work starts “The beginning of the chapters of coming forth by day ....”(Allen 19)). Grammatically, these fragments can mean almost anything from a kind of title to a theological declaration.

As to the Christian phrase “Son of God,” its sudden introduction and manuscript problems make some scholars doubt its authenticity, but lengthy preparation was not necessary, since the basic idea remained familiar. For instance, in worship of Osiris (and of such of his reputed descendants as the “divine” Ramses and Alexander), by identifying with a deity who died, was buried, and rose to exalted new life, his devotees believed themselves to have become through him “God, the son of God.”(Budge1895/1967 lxxii; Cf. John 1.12: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God …”). Inscriptions throughout the Roman empire praised the emperor, using the term euangelion (Gospel, Good News) to describe the birth of the emperor and proclaim his divinity, so that Mark has co-opted a familiar phrase.

Next the oldest (most reliable) manuscripts of Mark conflate quotations from Malachi and Isaiah, identifying both with the phrase, “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet [–E saia t–o proph–e t–e ]” (Metzger 199). This is a good example of how bifurcations leave traces, even after subsequent changes. Some source had presumably joined the two quotations together, because of the ancient, editorial habit of presenting material in pairs. Because that convention was less pronounced in Mark’s time and because he did not recognize the quotations, he misidentified one of them. Throughout, he makes narration more chaotic through various conflations, including making the “voice” into something that readers are to “behold” (Idou), thus, typically, suggesting a melding of visible (i.e., written) and oral language.

Alexandrians would be used to the even–less coherent allusions in The Book of the Dead. In trying to reconstruct Egyptian sacred stories, scholars inevitably turn to Greek sources such as Plutarch. The Egyptians themselves were uninterested in presenting their myths as developed narratives. What mattered to the devout were inspired words.

Baptism, Torn Heaven, and Wilderness

After the conflated verses of Isaiah and Malachi, Mark narrates the dynamic meeting of Jesus and John, a disruption of time and space that prefigures much of the later imagery. Chaotic “wilderness” is what links the quotations and the Baptist. Verse 1.12 repeats it again as after the Baptism the Spirit literally “threw out [ekballei]” Jesus into the wild. Compare. Philostratus, Life of Apolonius of Tyana 3.38–39, where a mother says that the spirit possessing her son drives him into the wilderness. The Gadarene, Gerasene, or Gergesene demoniac (Mark 5.15) seems to represent this tradition. Despite the polar difference between the Holy Spirit and the demonic ones, they both may be associated with the chaotic and liminal wilderness, the place of the paranormal and of tribal initiations.

Frequently thereafter in Mark (e.g., 1.13, 1.35, 1.45, 6.31, 6.32, 6.35), “wilderness” serves as a transition between scenes. Another aspect of this traveling in the wilderness is that, as in puberty and mystery initiations, symbolic movement in nature images a transition to a state of greater freedom (Lincoln 97). In Shamanism, Mircea Eliade interprets the almost ubiquitous image of entry into the wilderness as a “symbol of the beyond.” Eliade 1972, 64).

As John baptizes Jesus, we encounter an even–more disorderly Beyond within which God is made manifest. The heavens are “torn asunder [skhizomenous],” a violent term used again in Mark 15.38 for the spontaneous rending of the “veil ” of the Holy of Holies at Jesus’ death. Indeed, “veil [katapetasma]” was a synonym for heavens in Biblical Greek (Thayer 335). Thus, the beginning of Christ’s ministry foreshadows its end, each the opening of a secret, like the mystery–religion metaphor in Clement’s letter of “truth hidden by … veils.” In Greek, truth, alethia, etymologically signifies the un–hidden. This suggests a reality that must be uncovered, perhaps as if it were a cult object—usually an apotropaic image of chaos shut away within a holy chest.

While the heavens separate, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove (Mark 1.10)—probably an allusion of the dove bringing good news of global renewal to Noah. Even on first encountering this enigma, the Egyptians would have found the image familiar. Many of their gods manifested as birds such as Thôth, the ibis, or Horus, the hawk. The soul (ba) appeared as a human-headed bird. Egyptians sometimes related this spirit to the Divine as in Chapter eighty five of The Book of the Dead, where the deceased human as soul bird is to say, “I am the Soul which is God” (Budge 1911, 2, 172). At least after Hellenization, these zoomorphic representations had a sophisticated function. At a period when anthropomorphic divinities seemed normative, bestial ones were symbols of what lay beyond human order. Comparably, in Mark, if the divine message had come in traditional form (e.g., an anthropomorphic angel), there would be danger that the reader would look no further than the appearance. In the similitude of a dove, however, the image is more easily recognized as a mask of Transcendence.

From thence comes a “voice” (phone) from heaven, saying, “Thou art my beloved Son….” (Mark 1.11). Except for the word “beloved,” the proclamation is identical to God’s words in Psalms 2.7. That poem continues, “today I have begotten you.” Unlike the other gospels, Mark commences with the day of the baptism and Christ’s recognition as Son as if this were the beginning of the Good News. Championing the application of logic (particularly that of Aristotle and Galen) to exegesis, Theodotian Adoptionists of the first few Christian centuries interpreted this passage as meaning that Jesus was not Son of God before the baptism (Grant, 67–72. Benko 146. Eusebius, Church History 5.28, 13–190). Eusebius denounced them for preferring their own minds to the Holy Spirit, Who raised the sacred texts beyond human judgment. The Theodotians, though, were not secular humanists but religious literati, with the mystery–cult notion that the Divine adopted people through an initiatory ceremony. In this belief, they had much in common also with Christian orthodoxy.
All the instruction in magic and the secret literature of Hellenism is represented as the teaching of the father to the son; this is based upon the claim of the mystery communities and later also of the Christians that instruction, even where it is received in written form, makes one a son (Reitzenstein, 41.).

Based on other (probably later) gospels, Christian orthodoxy insisted, however, on distinguishing between God’s adoption of followers and the Eternal Sonship of Jesus. Thus, the tradition gradually placed more emphasis on Christ’s fixed place in the cosmic hierarchy than on the initiatory plunge into chaos, an experience all could share.

Analysis of the Marcan gospel has tended to assume it is a linear work, e.g., a closely connected sequence that leads causally toward its end, like a traditional novel or conventionally crafted biography. Such a literary way of writing is at most nascent within Mark. More often than otherwise, the organization is a chaotic self–identity of each incident with the whole (seen by Clement as an initiation). Thus, the same pattern of birth and death pervades each initiatory coming of the Divine, enlightening or healing mortals (as the mysteries claimed to bring spiritual illumination and physical cures). “… even Plutarch believes that in the mysteries a divine power is imparted, one which assists toward knowledge of the truth.…What [initiates] expected from these rituals is of course widely varied: many did relate the soteria which is promised in all of them, primarily to the outward aspects of life, to deliverance from dangers, success in business, protection against illness [or healing from it] …” (Reitzenstein 30).

In the Marcan gospel, Christ’s relation to his disciples is like that of the mystagogue in the Hermetic “Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth” (tentatively ascribed to Egypt of the second century C.E.). Douglas M. Parrott summarizes it thus: “The attainment of the final … stages for the initiate requires that the mystagogue have the experience first and thereby become the embodiment of universal mind.…” (in Robinson 322). Strong evidence suggests that an epiphany of such a divine hero lay at the heart of the mysteries, as, for instance, in a manuscript from the second century C.E., where Herakles says that he does not need to undergo the Eleusinian ritual, for he already “saw Kore” (Lincoln 87). She is a personification of Nature and as such an opposite of human order. Mark begins with Jesus’s witnessing the rupture of Heaven, qualifying Him to serve as mystagogue in the rest of the Gospel, a series of His epiphanies.

Pagan mysteries involved symbolic death and rebirth, also the traditional interpretation of Christ’s baptism. Similarly, the healings are miniature resurrections, sometimes with the analogy quite obvious, e.g., the child left “as one dead” before Jesus “lifted him up” (9.26–27). The image also pervades Christ’s message: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.” Ched Myers reads the healing of the child (9.14–29) as a “conspectus … of each of the previous healing/exorcism episodes before Bethsaida” (Myers 254). As confrontations with spirits (pneuma), these verbally recall the descent of the Holy Spirit (pneuma) at Baptism and subsequent struggle with the spirit of evil in the wilderness.

With a self–reflexivity characteristic of the chaotic, the initial description of Christ’s divinity presents itself in metaphors for holy language. John is the Isaiac “voice … in the wilderness,” and Jesus, son of the heavenly “voice,” who paraphrases Psalms 2.7. On one level, they personify sacred communication, verbal (the “voice[s]”) and written (the scriptural allusions). In Mark 1.4, even John’s baptizing is presented as something he “preach[ed]” (nineham 57). Mark models his baptismal introduction on the Hebrew scriptures with echoes of 2 Kings, Isaiah, and Genesis. John’s clothing imitates those of Elijah in 2 Kings 1:8, as Nineham notes, 57. As many have remarked, the descent of the Spirit may allude to Isa. 42:1, “mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him.”. God’s words of approval resemble His repeated acknowledgement of goodness during the first Creation in Genesis.

About early Christian imitations of Christ’s baptism, Burkert comments:
… there are some features in Christian baptism that irresistibly remind one of pagan mystery initiations: the individual ritual upon application, often thwarted by oknos: the preparation and instruction; the nocturnal celebration, preferably on the eve of the great common festival, which is Easter; the use of milk and honey… (102).
Officiated by priests of pre-Christian Egyptian rites, baptism was probably one of many ceremonies connected with that widespread symbol of chaotic metamorphosis—water:

The man whose ideogram in Egypt showed water flowing from a vase …the w-3b priest pursued a hallowed ministry. He sprinkled blest water in the temple of Isis. He resembled the minister of Mithras and of Christ inasmuch as he performed the rite of baptism (Witt 22).
As the symbolism of Christian baptism eventually became associated with Noah’s surviving the overflowing waters, so “the picture of a disastrous Flood … in the Book of the Dead is closely linked with rites of resurrection and salvation … (Linsey 199).

Presumably, for both pagan and Christian Egyptians, the initiation occurred naked (i.e., outside ordinary order). Certainly the first Christian references seem to take baptismal nudity for granted, though it implied a miraculously altered consciousness according to at least one early Christian:
Immediately, then upon entering, you removed your tunics.… Having stripped, you were naked.… Marvelous! You were naked in sight of all and were not ashamed! (Cyril 161).

Margaret R. Miles comments:
The practice of naked baptism presupposed the creation of a priviledged ritual situation, a time out of time for which the initiate’s associations, interpretations, even perceptions of ordinary life had been carefully deconstructed and reformed through lengthy and arduous catechetical preparation (Miles 25).

Initiatory nudity is thus not a simple state but a complex one, arising from the indirect effect of language. In Lacanian terms, embarrassing nakedness belongs to the “imaginary,” bodies viewed in a simultaneously childish and sexualized manner (as in Freudian theories of infantile libido). Instead, catechumens enter the more mature, linguistic state, the “symbolic,” by thinking of themselves as symbols: the flesh transformed metaphorically to language, modeled on Christ’s recognition as Son of the “Voice” from Heaven (or John’s description of Him as “Word”).

Mark’s Christ is not only sheltered from embarrassment but opened to the miraculous. He witnesses “the Spirit descending upon him like a dove …. (Mark 1.10) Do others see it? In the Gospel according to John, the event is verifiable: “And John bare witness, “I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him” (John 1.32). The baptism is no such public spectacle in Mark. (Indeed, at Mark 8.12, Jesus denies that his generation has received or will receive a sign from heaven.) The descent of the Spirit to the baptismal waters recalls creation, when the Spirit hovered over the watery abyss of chaos. This new creation, however, is apparently private.

The next supernatural event after the baptism, struggle for forty days with Satan, is also relatively secluded, as if it were a psychological agon.
It has no named witness but animals (yet Mark discloses it). Sent from human order, the Second Adam, at the edge of chaos, competes or coexists peacefully
with the beasts. If the latter is the case, this Edenic theme would make Christ’s coming into His own like a Pharaonic enthronement (which included a baptism; Reitzenstein 20):

The theme of peace among the animals, which appears in Isaiah’s prophecy (Isa 11.6-8) as well as in Vergil’s 4th Eclogue [and Mark 1.14], has a firm place in ancient Egyptian enthronement language (Koester 305).
To Alexandrians not familiar with Moses’ forty days on Sinai/Horeb, Christ’s sequestration for forty days might still be an expected consequence of the baptism. Preserved in the Sudan is the tradition, “Aspirants to the respected rank of magician persevere [after baptismal initiation] in the observance of taboos and diet for at least forty to sixty days before casting a spell” (Shah 154).

In the Pentateuch, the competition was between fractal characters who obey the Infinite and less detailed figures who combat it. In Mark, struggle over the Infinite is depicted more vividly through Christ, on the one hand, and Satan with his minions on the other. This extreme dualism resembles much non–Hebraic mythology, such as Osiris’s battle with Set. That conflict stands behind most of The Book of the Dead. For Mark, the cosmic image of heaven torn in two (skhizomenous) sets a grandiose mood preparatory to this division between transcendent powers, Jesus and Satan. Together, Jesus’s initiation (baptism and ordeal in the wilderness) establish a theme of opening, division, and trial (versions of bifurcation) iterated throughout the rest of the gospel.

Continue to Mark (2)

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