@timtams - I eradicated the incomplete post, in which I learned to use a text editor like vim or emacs on Linux, cream on Windows, or Notes on Apple devices, rather than posting an incomplete post and hoping to finish it before anyone notices. And I nearly deleted the whole works anyway, so yeah, if anyone reading this is a ChristianForums n00b like me, don’t do that.
So here is the complete post, starting with
@timtams reply:
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Synaxis of the 70 from the Serbian Orthodox Church.
There are two separate biographies below the list:
II. Saint Mark the Evangelist (April 25)
Mark wrote his Gospel under the direction of Saint Peter and is mentioned by that Apostle in his First General Epistle. Peter writes, The church that is at Babylon saluteth you; and so doth Mark my son. Peter ordained Mark Bishop of Alexandria. The idolaters of that city bound him, dragged him over jagged rocks, and beat him; whereupon, the Lord appeared, summoned him to heavenly glory, and received his spirit.
LXI. Saint Mark, or John (September 27)
Saint Mark, the companion of Barnabas and Saul, appears frequently in the Acts of the Apostles, for example, in this passage: Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, when they had fulfilled their ministry, and took with them John, whose surname was Mark. This Apostle, whose shadow healed the sick, was Bishop of Byblus in Phoenicia.
Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles | Serbian Orthodox Church [Official web site]
Click to expand...
So the problem there is the Synaxis doesn’t contradict the OCA Hagiography’s assertion that John Mark is St. Mark of Alexandria. But this is kind of obvious; you knew I was going there, and it doesn’t matter in the end because you convinced me in a different way, by prompting me to reread the Prologue of Ohrid, reminding me of an Oriental Orthodox liturgical anomaly which seems easiest to solve if John Mark is someone else.
Many saints are commemorated on multiple days. For example, the Feast of St. Basil is January 1st (also the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord), but St. Basil is also commemorated with St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory of Nazianzus on the Feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs in late January. And St. Paul is commemorated on the feast of his conversion, and on the solemnity of his beheading, and on the upcoming Feast of the Holy Apostles at the end of the impending Apostle’s Fast. And I don’t even have enough time to enumerate the feasts and fast days of St. Mary or our Lord, which are numerous and extremely numerous respectively (Advent is six weeks in the Byzantine Rite, indeed in most rites, even in some Western rites like the beautiful Ambrosian Rite used in Milan and the surrounding countryside, so that’s twelve weeks of fasting for our Lord before a major feast in his honor, and then there is a roughly two week Apostles Fast ending in the Feast of the Apostles (namely Peter and Paul) and another two week fast, the Dormition Fast, in honor of Our Lady the Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, who I regard a devotion to as a key step in developing theological health, which concludes with the Feast of the Dormition, which corresponds to the Western Rite Feast of the Assumption.
So, having a feast for Mark the Apostle, also called John, does not meet the criteria I set out, because it is not contradictory to the OCA Hagiography, which states that St. Mark the Evangelist was also called John Mark.
Now, lest I be accused of raising the goalposts, I never said “find me an official hagiography that refers to John Mark on the 27th, but instead, I was very specific, when I said I would backtrack as follows.
“I have told you what will make me concede or backtrack: find me a hagiography or pair of hagiographies on the website of one of Eastern Orthodox Churches in North America, that establish John Mark as someone else.”
- Presbyter Eugenios, Teaching Elder in the Congregational Church, 21st June 2021
John Mark has not been established by these hagiographies as someone else. Indeed, even the Greek Orthodox hagiography fails to meet the bill, because St. Mark having been an idolater and a nephew of Barnabas are not incompatible positions. Indeed, it does not even refute the Syriac Orthodox tradition that St. Mark owned the house in which the Cenacle was located, since St. Peter could have introduced him to our Lord, and thus he would have been among the seventy on their dominical mission, and on the periphery of our Lord, and St. Peter introducing people to our Lord before His Holy Ascension is by no means inconceivable, for indeed St. Andrew the First Called introduced Simon who is called Peter to our Lord, according to the Gospel of John.
However, your admirable scholarship and work ethic prompted me to reread the relevant sections of the Prologue of Ohrid, and it attributes the house in which the Syriac Orthodox believe the Cenacle existed, to John Mark, or rather his mother (Acts 12:6-17).
This takes us to a major liturgical curiosity in the Oriental Orthodox Churches, which I think could be the key to validating your position, namely, the oldest attested liturgy in continuous use is the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, an ancient variant of which is sometimes called the Divine Liturgy of St. Serapion, because it is found in the oldest intact liturgical service book, the one used by St. Serapion of Thmuis (a fourth century Christian bishop who was an ally of St. Athanasius against the Arian cult), and which is also known as the Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril of Alexandria, because the great champion against Nestorius also ordered the translation of the liturgy into Coptic, an act greatly appreciated by the ethnic Egyptian majority outside of Alexandria and the more Hellenized parts of the Nile Delta.
Now, the Miaphysite Church of Antioch, which became the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch in the Chalcedonian Schism, which for several centuries had a Greek speaking contingent that like that of the Coptic Church, switched to speaking Arabic over time after the Caliphate conquered the lands in which the two churches exist, took with it the both tje Hellenic and Syriac liturgical talents that characterized that city (at least the majority which had not left with Nestorius), with the likes of Saints Ignatius the Martyr, who introduced antiphonal singing while Bishop of Antioch after a vision of two choirs of Angels, Saint Chrysostom and Saint Severus* among the Hellenic liturgical prodigies, and Saints Ephrem, Jacob of Sarugh** and Mar Dionysius bar Salibi*** among their Syriac Aramaic speaking counterparts.
Thus it should come as no surprise that this church, which before the schism had implemented the Ethiopian Orthodox Liturgy, contributed two liturgies to the Coptic church, refined its oldest liturgy, the exquisite Divine Liturgy of the Twelve Apostles, into what became the primary liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church and an important Anaphora (Eucharistic Prayer) in the Syriac Orthodox Church, after the schism developed more of the Armenian liturgy, produced much marerial used in the Byzantine and other Chalcedonian liturgies, and contributed greatly to the Coptic liturgy, and the Copts in turn made sure the Syriac Orthodox developed an Antiochian adaptation of what was at the time their most important liturgy, that of St. Cyril, known to the Greeks as St. Mark. After all, the most popular fraction prayer in the Coptic Church came from the Syriac Orthodox liturgy (and I believe Antioch also inspired the vestments of all churches, because if one looks at any Eastern presbyter’s vestment or even a traditional Roman Rite presbyter’s vestment, everything one will find in any of them a counterpart in the Syriac Orthodox vestments, which no other liturgy can boast; the same is true for the stoles of deacons, and the vestments of the Coptic Orthodox Church were restored to their former pre-Islamic glory by using Coptic designs adapted by the Syriac Orthodox Church, such as the Helmet of St. Anthony, in recent decades, under Pope Shenouda (memory eternal).
But, given that the Syriac Orthodox liturgy has the Anaphora of St. Cyril (St. Mark the Evangelist), why is another one of their most popular anaphoras also dedicated to St. Mark? This Anaphora of St. Mark is completely unrelated to the Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril/St. Mark, and indeed is similar only to other Syriac Orthodox anaphorae. I have always assumed it relates to the monastery in Jerusalem, and the Prologue of Ochrid, in suggesting that the Cenacle was associated with John Mark, combined with the fact that there are effectively two anaphoras of St. Mark, inclines me to suspect you are in fact correct and John Mark could indeed be a different person.
And even if this extremely circumstantial evidence does not pan out (which will depend on what information I can glean from my Syriac Orthodox and Syriac speaking friends about the history of the monastery and why there exists an apparently superfluous Anaphora of St. Mark in addition to that taken from the Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril (St. Mark)****
So,
@timtams , you did a splendid job, and have convinced me to lean towards your opinion based on the excellence of your scholarly dilligence interfacing with my pre-existent knowledge of the otherwise extremely obscure field of Syriac Orthodox liturgics.
*Saint Severus of Antioch was Hellenophone member of the Miaphysite church who wrote the hymn Ho Monogenes, which is in my opinion one of the two best creedal hymns ever written, the other being Te Deum Laudamus composed by Saints Ambrose and Augustine on the occasion of the latter’s baptism by the former, which Emperor Justinian mandated be included in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, and it remains there, and in the Armenian and Coptic liturgies, and is the opening hymn in the Syriac Orthodox liturgy, and I believe the Maronites and Ethiopians also use it, among others.
** While Saint Ephrem the Syrian is universally venerated as the Harp of the Spirit, the Syriac Orthodox venerate Saint Jacob of Sarugh as the Flute of the Spirit, which is apt, because the two wrote some of the most beautiful hymns in existence, which to this day resonate through the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Indian Orthodox Church in traditional melodies, preserved through the centuries in two styles, those of Damascus and Tikrit, and in eight modes, like Byzantine, Gregorian, Ambrosian, Mozarabic and Armenian chant.
*** Mar Dionysius was nor only among the greatest liturgists who ever lived, his Anaphora being the most popular of the 86 in the English speaking world, and dominating the Western US Diocese, but also one of the first great liturgiologists, whose commentary on the Syriac Orthodox Liturgy is pioneering in many respects.
**** The Anaphora of St. Cyril was probably translated from the Greek version named for St. Mark and later translated into Syriac, although the church did have plenty of scholars who could read and write Coptic, Arabic, Latin, Armenian, Ge’ez and other languages relevant at the time, such as that spoken in Caucasian Albania, a Christian country conquered by Muslims and now called Azerbaijan, and Numidian, for what is now the Sudan was also a Christian land with its own Oriental Orthodox church, and indeed, speaking of Coptic translation, the Syriac Orthodox had a monastery in Egypt at the invitation of the Coptic Church, the fabled Syrian Monastery, which together with the Monastery of St. Matthew in Iraq, 20 miles from territory recently occupied by ISIL, both miraculous survivors, which were responsible both directly responsible for igniting the Renaissance by translating Aristotle, Galen, the treatises on the mathematics of Pythagoras and Archimedes, and other important Greek scholars, into Arabic, facilitating the rise of philosophers, physicians and mathematicians like Averroes, Avicenna, and Al-Kwarizmi, and also the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides, and when the writings of the “Golden Age of Islam” in which it was still barbaric but at least there was a flourishing intellectual scene that did cutting edge work. reached Europe, and were translated into Latin along with Aristotle, et cetera, this set off the Renaissance, starting with the Scholastics in the Roman Catholic Church like Thomas Aquinas and spreading out into art, architecture, and music, one Italian city at a time, and I would argue that Renaissance Humanism of the sort associated with Erasmus did help facilitate the success of the Reformation of Luther, Calvin and Cranmer (whereas the two older Protestant churches, the Waldensians and the crypto-Orthodox Moravians whose founders are venerated in Eastern Orthodoxy, barely survived, and the Lollards and followers or Wycliffe in England were wiped out and likened by the corrupt Avignon Papacy and the Borgias to the dreadful Gnostic heretics, the Albigensians, Cathars, Bogomils and Paulicians, who were not even Christian; the ultimate insult to a Christian is to deny the Christianity of his denomination.
