« HIDDEN, Pt. 2 ... Putting it another way »

If the beloved disciple is John, the son of Zebedee, and if Mary, the mother 0f Jesus, is the woman named Mary who stands with a man named John at the foot of Jesus’ cross, to which home did they travel when they left together at that hour that Jesus spoke to them, as John 19.27 tells us that they did?

One in Jerusalem? Or Galilee?

Inasmuch the disciple whom Jesus loved is the third-person identifier used by this writer of the Gospel of John to identify himself, we can reasonably assume that this man’s name was John. And, if Zebedee’s John, the presumed beloved disciple, still lived in Capernaum … and if this Gospel account is accurate and true … then the presumed beloved disciple named John took a woman named Mary, the presumed mother of Jesus, to Capernaum in Galilee 200 miles north of Jerusalem, forthwith. Agreed?

In effect, it is the writer of the Gospel of John, whoever he is, who is telling us that he and a woman named Mary departed that very hour from Golgotha for Galilee. Well, we are led rightly to ask: From whom then does the writer of John’s Gospel obtain the remaining details of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection so that he may write about them in this Gospel account … if the writer has left with Mary for his home? And where did they go?

To a home in Galilee? To a home in Jerusalem?

The next time we see the brothers John and James, the sons of Zebedee, they are at the Sea of Tiberius, or the Sea of Galiee, fishing … so we can assume that a man named John, presumably Zebedee’s John, took the presumed mother of Jesus to Galilee. That would be a long trip for Jesus to impose on his poor mother. Nevertheless …

Jesus has already told the disciples that he will meet them in Galilee after his resurrection, and the sons of Zebedee, John and James are there fishing with the others when Jesus appears on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. So Mary, we must assume, is also in Galilee. But at whose home? The home of Salome, the presumed sister of Mary? The home of Salome who is also the mother of John and James, the sons of Zebedee? If Salome is the Virgin Mary’s sister, Mary would be living at her sister’s home, unless John and James have gotten an apartment, because they are never seen apart. But, if Mary is living in Galilee, living with John, and if John has not gotten an apartment, the Virgin Mary would be living with the Zebedees, her brother in law, her sister Salome and John and James.

Why would Jesus not have told Salome to take care of his mother, her sister?

Why would John, the son of Zebedee, be singled out from James to be Mary’s caretaker? What was so lovable about John? What qualities would have set John apart from James that Jesus should rely exclusively on John, if he is the beloved disciple and the writer of the Gospel of John? Perhaps Salome is not the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus; at any rate, John, the son of Zebedee, is in Galilee fishing when Jesus appears on the shore … so we must assume that John took the Virgin Mary to Galilee with him, if John did what Jesus told him to do.

There are problems here, some of which we have already raised, such as … how did John witness and record the events of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection … if he left with Mary for Galilee? Here’s a new problem: If the Virgin Mary lived and died in Galilee, who is buried at the tomb of the Virgin Mary in Jerusalem, where Mary’s actual son James, the half-brother of Jesus was head of the Christian church, which would negate the need for anyone named John or anything else to take the Virgin Mary in?

The Gospel of John has been tampered with … to hide the true John and Mary at the cross of Jesus … and they are found in Acts 12.12: Mary and her son, John Mark, African refugees, from Cyrene, from whence Simon of Cyrene, the bearer of Jesus’ cross, also hails. It is Mark who writes first of Simon of Cyrene being nabbed by the Romans to help carry Jesus cross, presumably because, in part, John Mark would have known Simon of Cyrene, they both being from the same place. We know that John Mark, the founder of the Coptic church, is from Cyrene (known today as Libya) … because Coptic biographical materials devoted to John Mark or St. Mark tell us this.

For now, let’s put aside whether John Mark and his mother Mary are Africans. If they are the actual son and mother at the foot of Jesus’s cross … why are we told that the woman Mary who stands with a man named John at the foot of Jesus’ cross is Jesus’ own mother … when she was not?

John Mark is not only the beloved disciple, the disciple whom Jesus loved, but he is the African scholar, scribe and priest who wrote the Gospel of John as well as the Gospel of Mark and the book of the Revelation.

Why has this been hidden from us?

The apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 4.11 confirms that it is John Mark in Ephesus, and not John, the son of Zebedee, when Paul tells Timothy who is himself in Ephesus or elsewhere in Asia Minor to bring John Mark or Mark with him to Rome when Timothy departs.

And yet we’re in the dark. Why? Because John Mark and his mother were Africans? If the Virgin Mary was not taken by John, the son of Zebedee, to a home in Galilee, if the Virgin Mary is not the woman named Mary standing with a man named John at the foot of Jesus’ cross, why are we told that she is?

We have to ask ourselves are the vague identifiers such as “the other Mary” and “the other disciple” or “another disciple” a part of this effort to hide John Mark and his mother Mary?

Is the woman named Mary with a weird last name from Magdala, which may be in Ethiopia … is this woman perhaps a fabrication for the purpose of hiding Mary, the mother of John Mark?

Has someone tampered with the Gospel of John and the rest of the Gospels to hide Africans John Mark and his mother Mary?

If what we have discussed to this point is the only evidence which leads us to answer yes, it would be something, but it would not be an absolute confirmation that the Gospel of John and the other Gospels have been tampered with.

We also know that John, the son of Zebedee, could not have been “the other disciple” who argues on Jesus’ behalf as his defense counsel before Annas and Caiaphas, because the sons of Zebedee depart the Garden of Gethsemane in a hurry when Judas and the soldiers arrive. Who else could have been the other disciple, who would have known Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests, if he were not a scribe and himself a priest, as John Mark was, according to Coptic biographical materials. John Mark was a scholar and a scribe. By the second century B.C. all scribes were also priests. So John Mark would have been both where he worked administratively in Jerusalem.

Why don’t we know this? Why have people called John, the son of Zebedee, the beloved disciple and even divine … if he is not even close, if he ran out on Jesus, if Jesus told him and James that they would be martyred, and not live into old age to write in Ephesus and Patmos the book of the Revelation? Why? Because John Mark is an African … and John, the son of Zebedee … is white?

Has racism led someone or several people to alter the Gospels so as to hide John Mark and his mother Mary?

And what of Mary Magdalene? Where actually was she from? Where is Magdala, if not Ethiopia? If it weren’t for Bible tampering … Africa by this point in history would be looking pretty good. The Queen of Sheba was from Ethiopia. Bathsheba, which means daughter of Sheba, the mother of Solomon, was also from Ethiopia. Prester John was supposed to have been from Ethiopia, except he never existed. Genetic and migratory science tells us that if there is an Eden … that it is very, very likely to be found in Ethiopia, which happens to be the source of the Nile, though Ethiopia remains the most drought-stricken nation in the world … and derives no benefits from the Nile, the source of which specifically is Ethiopia’s Lake Tana.

And did you know that the patron of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” was an African: Ludovico “il Moro” Sforza, nicknamed the Moor, or blackamoor, or African at birth. He was the duke of Milan in 1495 when he asked Leonardo to paint a special version of the last supper, a unique depiction of the final meal Jesus shared with his disciples on the night he was arrested, which has very apparently been vandalized, so that it looks as if Andrew is being held up, his hands raised in surprise, while a hand gripping a knife without an arm or a person attached is being pointed at him.

Interestingly, the controversy in this so-called encoded masterpiece revolves around a person named Mary … and someone who is not present in the painting, but certainly should be: a man named John. There are only eleven male disciples in this painting, and the one missing is named John. Why, of all people, would John be missing in this painting. Here’s another interesting point: John Mark and his mother Mary are believed to have hosted the actual last supper, held in their home with an upper room near the Garden of Gethsemane, where we find a certain youth running naked, having been relieved of his priestly white linen.

Are these two verses which make no sense and which feature the vague identifier “a certain youth” … are these two verses also evidences of tampering to hide from us John Mark? We say yes.

If John, the son of Zebedee, is missing from Leonardo’s The Last Supper, though a woman named Mary is present, why of all people would he be missing … when it is a man named John who is supposed to have asked Jesus who it was who was going to betray Jesus? We must assume this person was named John, but it could have been John Mark … but no one named John is in Leonardo’s The Last Supper. Why? Vandals? Heretics? Racists? All three? In the more than thirty other versions of the last supper by other Italian painters of the Renaissance, these works all feature twelve disciples, including John … and no woman. None. Not even a waitress. Leonardo’s The Last Supper, which took him three years to paint, is a mess. Would the perfectionist Leonardo be responsible for the odd disintegrating wall painting or fresco which is at the heart of the so-called Da Vinci Code? Unlikely. If the patron for this painting, was an African, what questions ought to be raised about what might have happened to this painting after Milan fell to the French in 1499?

We think John Mark once appeared in “The Last Supper,” which was once an in-your-face fresco in a dining hall, for all the clerics to see and endure. So the question becomes … have all of these efforts to hide John Mark in the Gospels and The Last Supper and in the history of early Christianity been coordinated, from the second century A.D. till now? By whom … and why is what we want to know.

To hide the racial identity of Jesus? Perhaps Jesus was once a man of color in The Last Supper, rendering this painting … codeless and instead a coverup. The novel and the film have made tens of millions … and we’re still waiting for an agent to call us back.

—rcg