the Catholic apostle 'Paul' was really Mark

copyright 2008 Stephan Huller

At the very least the reader should begin to acknowledge what we have set out to accomplish. There was a high probability that the “Akher” who stands behind “Rabbi Meir” was also this same “Mark who was also called John.” The well established tradition that Meir (aka Eleazar ben Arakh) was really a student of “John” solidifies this understanding. As such we should see that there was one historical figure behind the traditions of Meir and Marcion and he wasn’t a literal “fox”! My suspicion was that both schools went back to the last historical king of Israel, Marcus Julius Agrippa whom the neo-conservative apologists of the second century didn’t want their hearers to become familiar with.

No less a figure than Caesar was trying to break apart the original messianic tradition which united Jews, Samaritans, proselytes and pagans. So it is that just as “Akher” was accused of being “too Greek” or “too philosophical” to be a Jew in the period Marcion was attacked as being either too Jewish or in fact “a heresiarch” i.e. a founder of a philosophical sect. Indeed if my previous works proved anything it was that we can’t continue to believe in the fables established for us in the Mishnah or the Acts of the Apostles if we want to make real headway into the early history of our Judeo-Christian tradition. We instead have to smash the inherited propaganda on both sides to bits and put all the pieces back together as a united whole.

So it was that in those books we accelerated the process of do away with the Acts of the Apostles and its stupid claim regarding the existence of an apostle named “Paul.” The Marcionites were the earliest authorities on this apostle and they called him Mark! To this end we have in this present work done away with an equally silly Jewish fable regarding a person named “Elisha ben Abuyah.” If it turns out there wasn’t a Meir there certainly wasn’t an “Elisha ben Abuyah” either! His name likely takes us back to the figure of the “winged Elisha” we began our investigation. The “Akher” was undoubtedly somehow related to the “other” god Jesus.

Perhaps the best way to conclude this investigation into the inter-dependence of the “other” traditions is to emphasize once again how they both neecessarily go back to a paradigmatic “heavenly revelation.” All of this makes sense when you factor in the period in which they were writing. The old religion was now completely destroyed – so how does one continue to venerate the divinity? In all religions in all parts of the word a holy man would necessarily have a “heavenly revelations” which in turn was received by the community as the very word of God. The same thing can necessarily be associated with the Jewish “Akher” no less than the Marcionite “apostle” because they were one and the same person.

This underlying similarity between the two figures has long been noticed by religious scholars. As Gizberg notes:

The oldest and most striking reference to the views of Elisha is found in the following baraita (Ḥag. 14b; Yer. ii. 1) [speaks of him as having] entered paradise. There can be no doubt that the journey … is to be taken literally and not allegorically. This conception of the baraita is supported by the use of the phrase "entered paradise" since "entered the Garden of Eden" (= paradise) was a common expression (Derek Ereẓ Zuṭa i.; Ab. R. N. xxv.). It means that Elisha, like Paul, in a moment of ecstasy beheld the interior of heaven.

In other words it is quite easy to develop the theory the both invented Catholic figure of “Paul” and the invented rabbinic caricature of “Akher” necessarily go back to an obscured messianic “visionary” of the late first and early second centuries.
As I have said time and time again the Marcionites did not call their apostle “Paul.” His name in that community was Marcus. The understanding emerges from patching together dozens of “hints” within the writings of the Church Fathers. Yet it is interesting to note as a compliment to our efforts in previous works that Tertullian also seems to acknowledge that this figure was also identified as “another” as we hear in his Prescription Against the Heresies (which I quote in full) that:

inasmuch as our very perverse cavillers [i.e. the Marcionites] obtrude the rebuke in question for the set purpose of bringing the earlier doctrine [i.e. the Catholic faith] into suspicion, I will put in a defence, as it were … I say that we should never mind those who pass sentence on apostles! It is a happy fact that Peter is on the same level with Paul … Now, although Paul was carried away even to the third heaven, and was caught up to paradise and heard certain revelations there, yet these cannot possibly seem to have qualified him for (teaching) another doctrine, seeing that their very nature was such as to render them communicable to no human being. If, however, that unspeakable mystery did leak out, and become known to any man, and if any heresy affirms that it does itself follow the same, (then) either Paul must be charged with having betrayed the secret, or some other man must actually be shown to have been afterwards “caught up into paradise,” who had permission to speak out plainly what Paul was not allowed (even) to mutter.

Tertullian suggests what other Church Fathers have long reported – the Marcionites did not call their apostle “Paul.” Yet he infers that he was “another” or in other places he calls him “the stranger” yet another way of translating the Aramaic word akher.

If only scholars were forced to learn the various seemingly contradicting statements regarding the “Marcionites” in the Church Fathers they would realize at once the underlying similarity to the Jewish “other” tradition. As it is we treat “Judaism” as being about one thing and “Christianity” another and we never see that it was through the heresies that we get back to the original ground from which both sects developed. In other words, while Christians proudly declare that they believe in the same God as the Jews very little “Jewishness” exists in normative Christianity. The same cannot be said for Marcionitism which as I write elsewhere is utterly indistinguishable from the debe Jannai “the school of Johnny” reported in the rabbinical texts.

To this end most scholars fail to remember that it was one “John the son of Smith” of the debe Jannai who finally managed to curb the heresy of “Akher.” How was this accomplished? It was this “John” living in the late third century established the the Talmud which gave an authoritative “final interpretation” to the Mishnah. All that is left of “Akher” in the later tradition is him being portrayed ascending up to heaven to see “another God.” This mediator between Israel and God Almighty is now a completely heretical idea in Judaism. Somehow Jews aren’t supposed to talk too much about having an intermediary between themselves and their divinity while the opposite is true with Christianity.

In the Catholic Church and elsewhere Jesus is openly hailed as their mediator. The problem is his relationship with his “Father.” Are they one and the same or – as their very titles suggest – is the Son subordinate in authority to another God? You can see these religious scholars dance around this issue for the last two thousand years in the various texts which have survived from antiquity but the truth is of course that it was the sword which settled the issue. Both Judaism and Christianity ended up with something less than the truth because the Roman authorities didn’t like the idea of them celebrating them having a Lord higher than the “ruler of this world.” I wonder why?

All that we are left with is the story of their former master’s heavenly ascent and the implied revelation of “another” god. In the surviving Catholic writings of the “Paul,” the apostle is allowed to keep his revelation but through various deliberate textual corruptions he vows never to reveal its contents to anyone! This is why Tertullian comes after the Marcionites for saying that they know what the apostle saw. Only an idiot can’t see through this screen. And should be clear what their apostle received from the “other” God – the revelation of the gospel itself.
“It is my gospel!” the apostle screams out over and over again in his epistles. “It came to me by a direct revelation from God!” The Church Fathers are left scratching their heads asking why the Marcionites don’t call it the “gospel of Paul” if this were true. The answer is quite simple – they identified the apostle as being named Mark as Hippolytus infers in his account of the sect and their gospel was the original gospel of Mark.

If this testimony isn’t convincing enough consider the parallel text of the Armenian Eznik of Kolb solves the riddle left unanswered in Tertullian. Who is this “other” whom the Marcionites believed received this revelation? Eznik writes that “the apostle says that they are unutterable stirrings, the words that he heard (2 Corinthians 12:3) [and] Marcion he says “I, I heard them!” At long last we are beginning to make headway! There never was a “Paul.” There never was an Elisha. The apostle of Judaism and Christianity really was really “another.” As we shall see, his name was Marcus Julius Agrippa.