TANATA:

In our ongoing dialogue with Coptic clergy in the United States and around the world, a number of good questions have been raised about our hypothesis that John Mark, an African scholar, is “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” and not John, the son of Zebedee, a fisherman’s son from Galilee. From our reading of the gospels and Acts, he has never been an impressive enough figure, not one Jesus would have embraced. At first we thought that would be because he was smelly, but now we realize he must have been a lazy bum. Jesus would have embraced such a person as a close and dear trusted friend and confidant. It matters to us that the Copts, who have been persecuted for too long, have reasons to be encouraged and to cheer after all these many years.

Not to mention make way for the Holy One of Israel.

The following is intended to inspire the Coptic people, and all true believers in Jesus. It is meant first and foremost to convince the Coptic leadership in America and around the world — many of whom we have been in communication with — that it is time they began telling their congregations the truth and reverse the dwindling numbers in the Coptic church … and in all of Christendom. The enemies of the Copts, the Egyptian Christians, are hereby put on notice. We’re (I’m) sick of the little guy getting pushed around by liars and thieves.

We’ll take these questions which have come to us one at a time. Our first response is a lengthy one, which is meant to answer a lot of questions at once:

Q: What would be the benefit of proving that St. Mark and not Zebedee’s John is the author of John’s Gospel and the Revelation, in addition to the Gospel of Mark?

RCG: In our (my) case, one of the big benefits is largely personal in nature. But heresy, in all forms, bald-faced deceit about matters pertaining to life and death should be everyone’s business — because Christian heresy means someone, some lamebrain, is trying to steal or foul up your redemption and mine. And that is intolerable, as far as we’re concerned. (It makes me want to punch somebody’s lights out … though Jesus says I’m not supposed to do that. I’m not getting any younger, but I could go a few rounds, if I had to … I think.)

When The Da Vinci Code, the film, was released in 2006 with a lot of hype, the matter was put to all of us that Jesus was a fraud, who swooned or faked his death (how on earth does one do that?!) who had either heterosexually “loved” Mary Magdalene as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” or homosexually “loved” Zebedee’s John, the apostle John. We became more than tired of hearing such nonsense; we became livid. And the more our noses have been rubbed in this lascivious, ghoulish, esoteric trash, by people for whom nothing is sacred, the more livid we have become. Get yer gloves on!

This attempt to ruin the story of the life and ministry of Jesus and to smear his name, when he has been our (my) only hope since a supernaturally terrifying childhood, spurred us (me) to sit down and dissect once and for all Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” to go over it with a fine-toothed comb, so to speak, which we had never done, to find out what made these heretics tick once and for all. I found a nest of lies which have led to only more, which go way, way back — light streaming through a window at a Passover meal which is supposed to begin at sundown?! And no twelfth disciple, who is supposed to be the disciple whom Jesus loved?! That’s the reason for painting the (repainted) fresco to begin with. If John Mark is the disciple whom Jesus loved, whom we are convinced he is, the actual event took place in his home! But only eleven males, besides Jesus … and not a sleepy one anywhere. More later on that.

And in our book, what we can find substantive in the past, what the former things tell us … these things invariably reveal much pertaining to the present and the future. What we have found is that racism serves as the basis for this heresy, which involves an enduring campaign of deceit beginning many centuries ago, it would appear. Racism is evil’s most effective weapon: KKK, Nazis, Katrina watchers from Washington, D.C. Don’t get us started.

We knew these charges against Jesus were not true, and yet they had a long history. We knew they were not true, for starters, because everything in life is not about sex, for crying out loud. There are some things in life which transcend everybody humping their brains out, frankly. There’s no sex in heaven, we must believe. We resented what modern-day heretics were trying to do to Jesus and the faith of Christians — as if Jesus who did something as sacrificial and holy as what he did could have been swayed to ruin all of that sacrificial love for trashy sex. And go to the cross a sinner! The words and teachings of Jesus, his place in history, are too profound for him to throw it all away by lying to us. God does not lie. He is incapable of lying. Nothing touches the poignancy of the Christmas story anywhere else in any document in the history of mankind. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. If Christmas doesn’t turn you on, the Christmas you experience on the inside, get someone to take your pulse.

There were two things which equipped us to tackle “The Last Supper” in search of any sort of code:

First, I was trained as a Navy cryptographer after being drafted in 1972 and shipped to Ethiopia, which turned my life upside down for no good reason, but I did gain valuable experience on a number of fronts. Secondly, in college, being myself an artist, I excelled at art history and knew quite a bit about the Lombardy school of Italian painters during the Renaissance. I also knew from my religious education in my youth that, in the words of a very devout instructor of mine, “there are serious John and Mary problems” in the gospels. Signal Mountain Baptist Church. He was an engineer, and therefore a very precise man, and he proceeded to point out the frankly glaring problems that puzzle so many scholars today. I love him. So many there I miss.

This is a very important point. We are not alone at all in rejecting Zebedee’s John as the most lovable of Jesus’ disciples; the vast majority of Bible scholars, for a number of reasons, have stated it could not have been Zebedee’s John. But no commitments have been made to resolve the matter, because no one, like Dionysius, like Luther, have been willing to go out on a limb and focus on St. Mark, or John Mark. When 2 Timothy 4:11 clearly puts John Mark in or near Ephesus!

Where we have failed on this issue, one could say, is in our trusting nature as Christians, which is a good thing, which is as God would have it — errancy in the Bible is very tricky; but things have changed. The adversaries of God have thrown down the gauntlet, they have taunted us and laughed at us, when we have stood by God’s word, arguing inerrancy issues. But heretics, by their nature, are stupid. They have revealed themselves, and people like us, and there are surely many, are more than willing to take them on and destroy their heresies, for good. We (I) hate them with a passion, and have since childhood; it has been a curse, our repressed anger … but now our hatred is a blessing. And yet we love all men. (That doesn’t mean we won’t punch your lights out with boxing gloves on. Or maybe none. Try us. Kidding. No we’re not.)

This teacher who taught me about the “errors” in the gospels at Signal Baptist, particularly toward the end of each gospel, was a devout man, as I said, a firm believer that the Bible was God’s inspired word from cover to cover, but, he said, Christianity has enemies, as does Judaism — as does the plan of God’s salvation. And they would love to ruin a beautiful story which means life and not death for so many people. I understood this wise man. I don’t imagine he knows how much I respect and love him. I had the privilege of teaching his own children in my Sunday school class. Ron Burton is his name.

There has been only so much that the heretics could do with Jesus and scripture, however … because the story of Jesus rings with truth, so much more than any of the other anti-Christian, anti-Judaic forms of religion which we have studied. The Babylonian creation epics, for instance, which claim to precede Genesis, are laughably unsound, with gods fighting like children. There is only one God. Otherwise, chaos. Can you imagine a heretic, who can’t write or edit, or be inspired or inspiring, having any input on creation? And if a co-creator were a faithful co-worker with God … there wouldn’t be one. Does that make sense? In other words, the non-fallen angels know their places, as if they could do quantum mechanically what God has done. More on that. Fascinating. Shoots sacred geometry straight to hell. Cellular automata, a New Kind of Science, do a search. More on this. Pretty pictures, too. One Rulemaker. ONE.

We learned how to defend the resurrection of Jesus as fact, though not everyone would agree with us. Nature is one way we can defend the resurrection, which occurs every spring; it is built into creation. Hello? And then those who have died for the truth, disciples who have been martyred, knowing that Jesus was true, because they experienced him first hand, is obvious proof Jesus was who he said he was. No man will die for a lie — at least no one who follows after Jesus and watches his every move. The Gnostics, the New Agers, those who have tried to supplant the one true God are on the verge of dying, because they have been deceived. I believe their coming tribulation will sift them, set them right, those who are called to be wise, or wiser. For now, all of the esoterics are fools; who knows who will be turned and who will not, when they experience the one with whom they have been doing business? He is laughing at them. He is formidable, but he is nothing to Jesus. To Jesus, evil is less than a child. Evil is an angel of light. Jesus is light, he is truth, he alone is God, the Son.

And so, we set about our task. We learned that none of Leonardo’s other paintings have ever been assigned “codes.” None. And, we learned that Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” was not the only Renaissance depiction of the Passover meal Jesus shared with his twelve male disciples on the night of his arrest. In fact, from the early 14th century, beginning with the work of an Italian painter named Duccio (1308) through the painting by Phillippe de Champagne in 1630, there have been at least 35 paintings of the last supper by artists other than Leonardo. None like this one! Further, between 1304 and 1650, there are an additional 70 paintings which depict the apostle John. Why him? So, needless to say, the apostle John, despite the fact that he is not the scholarly favorite to be “the beloved disciple,” was a big favorite of mostly Italian and German painters during the Renaissance. Who gets turned on painting a nobody? Unless commissioned? Spooky.

Zebby’s boys were a fisherman’s sons, and were probably not even casual fishermen. They aren’t fishing when we first see them in Mark … they’re goofing off.

Why not Peter instead of Zebedee’s John? Why not some other male candidate for “the disciple whom Jesus loved” like a brother? What made the fisherman’s son from Galilee so popular? Why did the Templar Knights have an order of St. John? And why was the apostle John a patron saint of Freemasonry, along with John the Baptist? And how was the Presbyter/Prester John snafu tied up in all of this, which I had never answered to my satisfaction, but now have done. It’s all in the name. John and Mary.

According to my research, even many Freemasons did not know the answer to the question of why Zebedee’s John was so worth emulating, as if these people emulate anything or anyone of true lasting value in the first place. Why, I wondered, was “a son of thunder,” who may very likely have been Jesus’ cousin, along with James, been labeled “beloved” and even “divine”? Divine? That’s hyperbole at its worst. No mere man is divine. Even Peter, upon whom Jesus said he would build his church, wasn’t called divine. So why was the less significant figure Zebedee’s John so divine?

And why not John’s brother James? What made the apostle John so much more lovable than his brother James, when they were always presented together in the gospels … until the latter chapters of the fourth gospel, when everything begins to go haywire, with weird identifiers like “the other disciple” and “the other Mary”? It’s not like we aren’t confused enough … with everyone at Golgotha who was female, it would appear, having been named Mary. In fact, including Salome, the mother of John and James, whom some people have said was also named Mary, which means Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have had a sister named … Mary! (And I’m the king of Spain).

And why, I wondered, in reference to the two Zebedee boys, would Jesus have singled out one over the other, which would have surely caused charges of playing favorites and generated friction among the disciples directed at Jesus, which he would not have needed? The disciple whom Jesus loved had to be another disciple, outside of the twelve. That is implied by Jesus when he tells “the disciple whom Jesus loved” at the last supper that the one who will betray him … is “one of the twelve.” So the beloved disciple … is not one of the twelve.

In fact, there are two disciples whom Jesus loved, a man and a woman, both of whom happen to have been African, whose names were John and Mary, but not the John and Mary we’ve been led on to believe. These were not relatives of Jesus, they were his friends.

A cursory review of the scenes which give us a clear picture of John and James, “the sons of thunder,” are not flattering at all. They reveal that not only were the two brothers not lovable, they were getting Jesus’ message of humility and love the least right out of all of the disciples! This is illustrated by the question put to Jesus by John and James as to whether fire should be called down to destroy Samaria for its failure to accept the good news message of forgiveness and redemption. What nutty sort of Christian does this remind you of? I have long believed that Jesus is more displeased with Christians who beat people up for the purpose of “saving” them … than he is with the apparently unsaved, who often have hearts for God.

Things often are not as they appear. Sometimes the most devout Christians are the most practiced at appearing to be Christian … and this is a sick and dangerous sort of person, it has been my experience. It is this sort of person who often turns out to be a heretic, one who is too proud to realize that he or she desperately needs Jesus most of all … but doesn’t get it.

The unlovability of these two thunderous men is further shown in their continual harassment of Jesus as to whether they were going to get anything out of all this ministry business. In other words, what’s in it for me?

James (presumably the elder of the two brothers, which is another strike against the other brother) and John became such an annoyance with regard to this question that the other disciples began to complain. And then, there is the scene involving Salome, the mother of John and James, likely Jesus’ aunt, who shows up to ask the same question of Jesus on behalf of her two sons — which is, “Are my boys going to get special seats in heaven for all of this stuff you’re doing or not? … because they sure aren’t making any money.” I know the type. So do you. Salome confronts Jesus, after “worshiping” him, notably, for special favors, because they are family. But Jesus here shows that he does not play favorites — there is no substitute for readying oneself for the kingdom by trying to pull strings and assuming that grace is just naturally always going to be there.

Jesus has just predicted his crucifixion for the third time, so to say that Salome’s confrontation of Jesus is callous and insensitive would be understating things. Were these lovable relatives of Jesus? No, they were not. And yet they feigned worshiping him. So, what made the apostle John so lovable in Jesus’ eyes?

Nothing. In fact, and this is the kicker, Jesus turns the tables on them, knowing that these two men will in fact be martyred, and asks them if they can do what he is about to do in Jerusalem, which is die? “Can you drink from the same cup as I am about to?” he asks them.

“Yes, Jesus,” they said. “We sure can. Just give us a special seat in heaven. We’re on it.”

And Jesus said, “And so you will drink from the same cup as I,” meaning, figuratively, prepare to be martyrs. An early church father, Jerome, I believe it is, reports that the Jews did in fact martyr both James and John, but I’ll check that. And so, not only were the two brothers, probably Jesus’ cousins, not lovable, not worth singling out for special favor, but they were going to die like all of the other disciples … except for one disciple … the youngest one, the thirteenth.

And that, of course, would have to be someone named John. Jesus’ coy, metaphorical response to James and John about their coming deaths, spoken in a way that they did not grasp at the time, clearly, suggests Jesus was tired of the questions and was toying with them, playing word games. This is the same manner in which Jesus spoke over the heads of the slow-minded leaders to his true followers, who were bright enough to catch the deeper poetic meanings of his words, while the less sophisticated listeners were left dumbfounded. This is an appropriate message for us today, for those of us who haven’t done their homework … and deny that evil people will walk all over them, if they allow it.

It’s worth noting that even though John, James and Salome were abusive somewhat toward Jesus … they still believed that he was in fact the Son of God, otherwise he could not have been in a position to grant them places in heaven. I wondered at one point why it was so important to John and James that they get special attention in this way, and why it was that Salome was even willing to get involved when her sons had not gotten the answer they had been seeking. We can go back to the point when Jesus calls John and James to be his disciples in Galilee. You’ll recall they’re sitting in a boat with Zebedee mending nets with hired help when Jesus arrives on the scene. Jesus says, come on, let’s go. And the two brothers, sons of an obviously wealthy fisherman, with hired employees, take off like a shot. This raised two questions for myself: Why did Jesus have to say no more than he did to summon them and get the two to follow him, if he did not intimately know them and they him? He obviously knew them well. And why does Zebedee, the hard-working fisherman, say nothing when his sons take off with Jesus? One, because Zebedee must have known Jesus, he being family, so to speak, and two, the two brothers were goof-offs anyway. Zebedee probably said “good riddance” when they left, because they were only getting in the way of the work being done. This is confirmed by Salome getting involved. She knows her sons are good for nothing, and they’re wasting their time with Jesus, so she wants to know if it is going to be worth all the trouble when her two sons could be learning how to make a living catching fish.

So, not only is the apostle John not “beloved,” not “divine,” and not worthy of a straight answer regarding his death for the cause of salvation, but because of his and James’ gruff, dim-witted behavior (“sons of thunder” is probably an indication that they were hot tempered, like their hard-working father with two no-good sons) they were not educated enough or hard-working enough to make anything of themselves … unless Jesus helped them out and pulled some strings. Do you choose your best friends on such a basis? Surely not. I don’t. Who does?

For anyone to assert that Jesus was sexually weird as an adult with either one of these two men, or anyone else, including the fabricated youth in white linen in the secret gospel of Mark (which is Morton Smith’s fraudulent piece of garbage), makes such a person out to be a pervert himself. Whenever you see or hear someone kicking around the idea that God might be gay, that person has got some serious issues he is trying to work out … and doing a miserable job. Jesus was a sensitive man, as I am, as many men are. But this doesn’t make Jesus a pansy. If he wanted to, as a carpenter who had worked with his hands, he could probably punch your lights out. Sometimes, I swear, I wish he would have. I know, that’s tacky, but I’m former military, through no fault of mine. I’m patient to a fault. I’m a doormat. I want to be kind and compassionate and considerate toward other people. But if a person keeps getting in my face … I’m going to punch your lights out. And, the good Lord can have a word with me when I get to heaven, and probably say, You know, he really did have it coming.

So gay is out, although the weirdoes love to talk about the disciple whom Jesus loved laying all up against his chest. He was leaning back, for crying out loud, to ask Jesus a question, and reclining at the supper table, as they did. Because Peter was not bold enough to ask the question himself. Is it always about sex? Jeepers, get a room or something. Or take a cold shower.

If you had to choose between Zebedee’s John and John, of Cyrene, an African scholar, who, according to H.H. Pope Shenouda III, the patriarch of the Coptic church in Alexandria, was a brilliant young man skilled in Latin and Greek, as well as Hebrew, according to this great man’s biography of St. Mark, or John Mark, which John would you choose to live on and write? The Zebedee boys were probably illiterate anyway, judging from their lack of a work ethic. And, I might add, so might Peter have been, whom, you’ll recall, needed John Mark as a person scribe. And that fact says to me that Peter didn’t guide or lead John Mark to write anything, and there are several things in the patristic writings which drive this point home. For starters, Peter, along with John and James, who fled Gethsemane, have already blown it the night before when John Mark is describing the scene involving his home boy Simon of Cyrene being grabbed “at random” as Jesus is being taken to the cross. And, John Mark proceeds from there to Golgotha to describe the events there that transpire. He didn’t need Peter in this instance — so he never did, in my opinion. If the heretics ever let anyone know that Peter was not calling the shots with the writing, and he wasn’t (1 and 2 Peter are beautifully and poetically written in classical Greek), suddenly John Mark is perceived as the dominant writer that he was.

If John Mark cared as much about Jesus as he shows here, intervening first on his behalf with Annas, as “the other disciple,” and if he is the only follower of Jesus named John at Golgotha — the only one — who is going to be the disciple whom Jesus loved as a brother? There is no other John whom Jesus calls for. The woman Mary who accompanied this man was also not Jesus’ mother, with whom I think he had a little tiff going, probably on the basis of race. And, I don’t believe there was ever any such person as Mary Magdalene, for two reasons: She has a weird name that sticks out like a sore thumb, for one, and two, with all of the Marys being used to cover up John Mark’s mother at Golgotha and at the tomb of Jesus, you must suspect that some dumb heretic got carried away!

Mary, the mother of John Mark, is most likely the one who most likely wrapped Jesus in expensive linen, because she was a woman of means; Mary Magdalene in my humble opinion is a fraud, a fabrication of heretics, like the little homo guy in white linen in Smith’s secret romp, fantasy, whatever.

On this point, keep in mind that the only way heretics can discredit Jesus, the only way they can smear him, is to portray him to be a cheese ball like the rest of us. To cover up the man who modestly refers to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” in John’s Gospel, written by John Mark, the heretics decided to play off the “love” thing … which is what gets the heretics who tampered with and botched Leonardo’s “masterpiece,” which began to disintegrate, chip, peel and flake off within years of its completion in 1498, just before the French invaded Milan in 1499, into so much trouble. They played the sex card … so that they might play the race card. They tried to make Jesus out to be a pervert with another Mary and another John, other than John Mark and his mother, to hide Jesus’ special connection with them.

What does that tell you, if the French invaded Milan a year after Leonardo finished his painting? I’ve been to Paris a couple of times … don’t get me started. At least they can paint, but … in this case, they botched the repainting job.

Well, why would anyone have wanted to repaint Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” in the first place … which left numerous glaring errors, like sunlight streaming through the window behind Jesus when Passover begins at … sundown? Why was “The Last Supper” repainted? And how do we know it was? That’s for part two.

My frustration throughout all of this research and sharing it with scholars and clergy … is that these things have seemed insignificant to so many, and, have for 1,900 years after the gospels were written … and we still haven’t got it figured out. And, as I said, there is a reason for that. But it is a new day, which, by the way, is what “tanata” means in Spanish. Like the gospels, Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” has a very glaring “John and Mary problem.” Big time. Actually, there are two “John problems,” and maybe two “Mary problems” in this painting … and compared to the other versions of the last supper … these problems are flashing like neon.

Knowing that while Leonardo wrote backwards no so-called “codes” had ever appeared in any of his other paintings, I smelled a rat from the beginning of my investigation. It didn’t take me long to be floored by what I found. I’m still floored, floored that the author of this outrageous tale which has sold tens of millions of books and made somewhere around $200 million in box-office receipts, has not been hung in effigy somewhere. Or everywhere. That he can show his face (which he doesn’t do much), or sleep, for that matter, having been part of a charade of historic proportions. I’m amazed that he would have the audacity to become a party to an obvious smear campaign against Jesus and then try to pass himself off as a Christian and a legitimate journalist/writer. He’s not even a good pagan! He’s a bum.

It is not a code we’re dealing with in this painting, but a cover-up of what was once a legitimate painting which had to be repainted by the enemies of Christianity … and was badly. I did not anticipate finding parallels between “The Last Supper” and the event it depicts. But logically, knowing that the last supper was held in the home of John Mark and Mary, and knowing they were North Africans, thanks to the bio on John Mark by the Coptic patriarch in Alexandria, which is readily available online, and knowing that I needed another John besides Zebedee’s to play the role of the beloved disciple, the little brother of Jesus who was as brilliant as Jesus was … it was frankly a no-brainer to choose John Mark.

And then I started looking into who Leonardo’s patron was for “The Last Supper.” And bingo! From that point, everything else fell into line. There are heretics fingerprints all over the place in their efforts to obscure John Mark and his mother Mary. But why was it necessary to do that? Why has it ever been necessary to be a stinking bigot or racist? But more importantly in this case, why was it necessary to hide an African scholar as Jesus’ best friend? More on that in part two.

That’s the long answer to this first question. The short answer is truth, pure and simple. If people are going to go big with heresy, and lie, I’m not going to play around with them, because I hate a liar. This is why I have aggressively begun to inform and encourage the Copts as to the identity of “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” who was one of their own, John Mark having founded the Coptic church, apparently in a dramatic fashion as he faced down the Gnostics in Alexandria. Don’t mess with my Jesus. He’s my ticket and yours too out of this mess. And globalism is a devilish way to try to artificially produce what only God can, and will do, which is deliver heaven on earth … for those people who behave and act like they will belong in a world where all men and women, of all races, will be brothers and sisters … forever. Hey, forever is possible. Timelessness? If you can conceive of the Theory of Relativity, the speed of light times itself … you can conceive of a realm where no time exists, and that would be heaven.

Part two coming soon

— rcg