User talk:EliOAtlanta

An African scholar wrote most of the New Testament, including two of the four gospels, as well as the Apocalypse of John, also known as the book of Revelation, according to an American Bible researcher and writer, who formerly worked as a military intelligence specialist in Ethiopia at the height of the civil war there from 1973 to 1974. Randall Carter Gray credits his time spent living and working in the only independently Christian nation in Africa for his insights and his stunning hypothesis.

“The pieces of this obscured puzzle, hidden from us due to racism dating back to the days of Jesus, finally fell into place,” Gray said. “We are ecstatic.”

Gray says a resurgent new day of respect and influence for the black church may lie ahead, if the dramatic details of his surprising announcement hold up that African scholar St. Mark, or John Mark, an apostle of Jesus, is the author of the Gospel of John and the Revelation, in addition to Mark’s Gospel. After two years work, aided by biographical materials on John Mark provided by the Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, the former newspaperman is “absolutely, 100 percent positive” that he has cracked the enduring New Testament mystery of the identity of “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” whom Bible scholars agree wrote John’s Gospel and the Apocalypse of John or the Revelation.

St. Mark, whom Gray says has been at the center of a 1,900-year-old heresy campaign to obscure him, evangelized Alexandria, Egypt in the 1st century and founded the Coptic church. John Mark, the writer said, was born in Cyrene, a North African nation which we know today as Libya.

If true, this new finding, the Tennessee Bible scholar acknowledged, “would turn Christianity upside down” — and reveal the depth of an age-old racially motivated heresy campaign involving extensive biblical tampering. “But turning Christianity upside down wouldn’t be a bad thing,” the writer added, “giving credit to the black church where credit is due. It’s time for the cream to rise to the top anyway.” Gray, 54, is a white man.

The former religion editor and reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press credits his year in Egypt and Ethiopia after being drafted in 1972 for the groundwork upon which he has built his unlikely hypothesis, which, Gray says, is “actually, paradoxically, quite simple to prove.” He offers a list of cross-referenced verses in the gospels and two verses from the book of Acts and an epistle from the apostle Paul to Timothy to demonstrate that John, the son 0f Zebedee, a fisherman from Galilee, could not be the man named John responsible for the fourth gospel and the Revelation.

“A healthy awareness of the depth of Christian heresy,” he noted, is what gave Gray the advantage and the motivation to build his case for African John Mark of Cyrene as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” an advantage that other Bible scholars have apparently not possessed, dating back to the second century A.D. Casual interviews over thirty years ago with Ethiopian Christians provided Gray with the direction he needed “to line up the pieces of the puzzle.” He said Simon of Cyrene, also an African and an obvious acquaintance of Cyrenean John Mark, was the man who was grabbed “at random” by Roman soldiers to help Jesus carry his cross. “Simon of Cyrene, who was minding his own business, was grabbed to share in Jesus’ suffering, because he was obviously a man of color, and the Roman soldiers were racists.”

The newspaperman turned Bible researcher said the courageous Christians in Africa’s only Christian nation “have been made wise by their resilience to withstand persecution and invasion for hundreds of years” from radical Muslim factions, “which is ongoing,” and from Fascist Italy during World War II. The Coptic church in Ethiopia, which John Mark founded, is “firmly entrenched,” the writer said, “and keenly aware of the efforts of heretics to distract them from Jesus.

“My gracious hosts knew heretics,” he said. “They know heresy. They’ve always suspected that it was one of their own who was the disciple whom Jesus loved and the writer of John’s Gospel, but who had been hidden.

“John Mark, Christianity’s most unsung hero, faced down and apparently embarrassed the Gnostics in Alexandria, which he evangelized,” Gray said. “Time and time again, whenever the Christian faith came up during my tour in Ethiopia and Eritrea, the admiration for their patriarch, who happened to have been Jesus’ best friend, was always very apparent. I just built from there, with a little encouragement from that code book and film, based on Leonardo’s ‘The Last Supper,’ which has nothing to do with any sort of code.

“It’s a botched repainting job by racist heretics,” he asserted, “which accounts for the hand gripping a knife floating in midair behind Judas’ back, a glaring error that the Italian Renaissance master, who was perfectionistic to a fault, would never have produced.” Gray said Leonardo’s patron for the 15th century painting on a wall in the Santa Maria delle Grazie chapel in Milan was a Milanese duke with African features, Ludovico Sforza, whose nickname “il Moro” means “the Moor,” a term synonymous with “African.”

In addition to that “heretical boo boo,” the writer said, “anyone and everyone named John in the painting is missing, which is problematic, because the scene that the painting depicts revolves around a man named John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who asks Jesus who is going to betray Jesus. And that also leaves us with only eleven male disciples.”

The most apparent New Testament tamperings, the writer says, which are “undeniable evidence” that Zebedee’s John has been used to obscure the African scholar John Mark and John Mark’s mother Mary, are found by comparing John 19:25,27, the famous scene involving people named John and Mary at the foot of Jesus’ cross, with John 20:1,4, where “the other disciple” appears at the empty tomb, and yet is already supposed to be on his way to Galilee with Jesus’ mother Mary if John 19:25,27 is true — and, by comparing John 19:27 with Acts 1:14, which indicates that Jesus’ mother Mary is in Jerusalem after Jesus’ ascension “being attended by all her own sons, Jesus’ real half-brothers!”

“How much attention does one mother need?” Gray quipped. “If Mary, the mother of Jesus, has gone to be the new mom of Zebedee’s John at his home in Galilee, what is she doing in Jerusalem … surrounded and being attended by all of her actual sons? Besides,” Gray added, “Jesus wouldn’t have asked Zebedee’s John, who was likely Jesus’ cousin and Mary’s nephew, also to be Mary’s new son. And why would Mary need to be John’s mother, when she was already his aunt?

“Jesus was telling his best friends, Africans John Mark and his mother Mary, who actually hosted the last supper, to lean on one another and encourage one another in his physical absence.”

Gray’s “favorite scholarly oversight” of tamperings by heretics comes at the point of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, which, he said, “sends Zebedee’s John and James hightailing it out of there,” while Peter follows Jesus from a distance. “The plot thickens,” he said, and the tamperings become more apparent, when “the other disciple,” presumed to be Zebedee’s John, the fisherman, “is inside the residence of the high priest Annas with Jesus, serving in effect as Jesus’ defense counsel, while Peter cowers and shivers in the cold outside.”

“The so-called ‘other disciple,’ who is John Mark, only got an audience with Annas and a chance to argue on Jesus’ behalf, because John Mark, a resident of Jerusalem, was a brilliant young scribe who worked for Annas and Caiaphas, and probably a priest, as well. What’s the chance the fisherman Peter is outside freezing and denying Jesus, while the other fisherman John is inside acting as Jesus’ legal counsel?

“And, besides,” the Bible researcher added, “the last time we saw the Zebedee boys, they were heading for the hills from Gethsemane, running in the opposite direction from where Jesus is being taken. With both brothers having been told by Jesus that they would become martyrs, at the first sight of Roman soldiers … they were outta there.”

Asked why heretics, “Gnostics,” have gone to such trouble to obscure the African John Mark as Jesus’ best friend for these many centuries, Gray replied stern-faced: “If we’re getting set for a neo-Nazi run at a world government controlled by Aryan master-race white supremacists … you tell me.”

EliOAtlanta (talk) 13:02, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

In a book published by Thomas Nelson in 1999, George R. Beasley-Murray said the following: "Everything we want to know about (the Gospel of John) is uncertain, and everything about it that is apparently knowable is matter of dispute." But Randall Carter Gray, a student of Coptology and Renaissance art, a former intelligence specialist assigned to Egypt and Ethiopia/Eritrea in 1973, has written extensively to the contrary since 2007. He is confident that he has definitively resolved the age-old mystery regarding the identity of the author of the Johannine writings, which include the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse of John (the Revelation). Gray said resolving the 1,900-year-old scholarly dispute regarding this elusive New Testament figure, a task which he undertook in 2006 following the release of the film The Da Vinci Code, was "relatively simple, with all the scriptural pieces falling into place" after studying Leonardo's "The Last Supper" and all other Renaissance depictions of the Passover meal shared by Jesus and his disciples on the night of Jesus' arrest.

Accepting "the heretical claim" that the person to Jesus' immediate right is a woman, and not "a failed attempt" by Leonardo accurately to paint a young man, i.e., John, he noted that there was no one named John left in the painting, and therefore no "disciple whom Jesus loved" to ask Jesus, at Peter's urging, who it was who would betray Jesus (Jn. xiii. 22,25; Mk. xiv. 20).

"In response to the question by the beloved disciple, Jesus responds in Mark's Gospel, 'It is one of the twelve' (Mk. xiv. 20). But in Leonardo's 'The Last Supper,' there are only eleven male disciples, and none of them are named John." Gray then, on the basis of his research of some thirty-five Renaissance portrayals of the biblical scene, weighed together three important findings and observations: 1) whose home it was with an upper room which likely hosted the meal; 2) the fact that every other depiction of the last supper by Renaissance artists "without exception" feature no women but rather a sleepy male youth, often shown with his head resting on the table; and, the intriguing identity of Leonardo's patron for the "dry-plaster" fresco, which began to disintegrate on the refectory wall of the Santa Maria delle Grazie chapel in Milan just years after Leonardo finished the wall-bound painting in 1498. That man is Ludovico "il Moro" Sforza, the duke of Milan, who was given the nickname "the Moor" shortly after his birth because of his pronounced African features.

Noting the perfectionism of Leonardo, which Gray says would have precluded him from using an "experimental" dry-plaster technique to paint the fresco (wet plaster is required), and noting the painting's other obvious errors, including "a hand gripping a knife, with no arm attached, floating in midair behind Judas' back," Gray concluded that the duke of Milan, called "the Moor," which is synonymous with the term "African," i.e., "blackamoor," must have made a unique request which caused someone to repaint "The Last Supper" after Sforza and Leonardo fled Milan when the French invaded in 1499.

Knowing by researching a Coptic biography of St. Mark, or John Mark, that this man named John and his mother Mary were African, from Cyrene (Libya), who were forced to flee to Jerusalem due to persecution, Gray concluded that "the botched fresco which is so uncharacteristic of Leonardo" must have resulted from painting out an African John Mark, whom Gray reports, was an African scholar, the son of wealthy parents, skilled in Latin and Greek, as well as Hebrew. From there Gray proceeded to reread the "odd passages" in the gospels where "the other Mary" and "the other disciple" are used, the latter used to identify a man named John who serves as defense counsel for Jesus in the courtyard of Annas (Jn. iixx. 15,16), while Peter waits outside, frightened and shivering in the cold. "Zebedee's John and James have already high-tailed it from Gethsemane (Mk. xiv. 50), so Zebedee's John could not have been 'the other disciple.' John Mark was a scholar and a scribe, and very likely a priest, who lived in Jerusalem and must have been known Annas because he worked for him.

"Would Peter have been outside denying Jesus while Zebedee's John, a fisherman like Peter, was inside arguing on Jesus' behalf? It could only have been the African John Mark, because the only other John had fled. Heretics repainted the painting, so there is no code, and they altered the Bible to hide John Mark from us. Why? Because he was African? We have to ask ourselves ... why would that have motivated anyone to paint out John Mark or to hide his contributions to the ministry of Jesus? Peter probably relied on John Mark as personal scribe, because Peter was illiterate, as Zebedee's John must also have been, hence the constant asking of Jesus if he was going to succeed after all and be great. Peter could not have written 1 and 2 Peter, which are written so beautifully in classical Greek. The John and Mary at the cross of Jesus were not Zebedee's John and Mary, the mother of Jesus, which has always been viewed oddly by me and others, but John Mark and his mother Mary, an actual son and mother, Jesus' best friends, whom Jesus told to encourage one another and to lean on one another in Jesus' physical absence. It is not likely anyway," Gray said, "that Zebedee's John would have been 'the other disciple' with Peter at the empty tomb, because we know from John 19:27 that allegedly Zebedee's John and Jesus' mother Mary departed Golgotha 'at that hour' presumably heading to Galilee. If they did depart, Zebedee's John could not have been 'the other disciple' at the empty tomb. And he wasn't anyway.

"Zebedee's John, we have strong reasons to believe, was martyred anyway (Mk x, 39). He was not the disciple whom Jesus loved, and he never wrote anything. Why have we called him divine? John Mark is the only man named John put near Ephesus by Paul, we must also note (2 Tim. iv. 11).

"It further bears noting," Gray continued, "that in Acts 1:14, when Jesus' mother Mary is supposed to be in Galilee, that she is in Jerusalem for Jesus' ascension, being surrounded by and attended to all of her 'real sons!' Why would Jesus' mother have needed another son to attend to her, particularly if we're willing to suspect that Zebedee's John was already her nephew, and Mary, Jesus' mother, was his aunt?"

Gray makes one final point which further exonerates John Mark, portraying him in the favorable light that Gray says "he richly deserves," in light of St. Mark's founding of the Coptic church in Alexandria: "When John Mark left Paul to go home to Jerusalem when Paul, Barnabas and John Mark reached Perga in Pamphylia (Acts xiii. 13), he was not abandoning Paul, as so many have suspected, but rather most likely honoring Jesus' request to look after John Mark's mother, who was already a recent widow. I believe Paul was intimidated by 'the Hammer,' because John Mark, one of the' three pillars,' along with James, Jesus' half-brother, and Peter or Cephas (Gal. ii. 9), would have been trying to stay alive, having been Jesus' closest friend, while Paul was tracking down and murdering Christians. They wouldn't have called John Mark 'the Hammer' for nothing."

EliOAtlanta (talk) 00:11, 9 May 2008 (UTC)