THERE WERE TWO INTERPRETERS OF PETER!

WHICH ONE WROTE MARK?

On the blog of Steven Carlson of 5/18/2008, his guest blogger, Andrew Criddle, pointed out that in one writing, Clement of Alexandria wrote something that the Gnostic, Basilides, had said, involving an interpreter of Peter by the name of Glaucias who was a contemporary of Basilides -- circa A.D. 120-140. Here is the quote, from Book 7 of the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria:

It was later, in the times of Adrian the king, that those who invented the heresies arose; and they extended to the age of Antoninus the elder, as, for instance, Basilides, though he claims (as they boast) for his master, Glaucias, the interpreter of Peter.

However, elsewhere Clement wrote, as relayed by Eusebius, that [John] Mark was in Rome with Peter, acting as his literary aid, and Papias also wrote of Mark being Peter's interpreter in Rome. This was circa A.D. 50-60.

This fits in nicely with the TJ's chronology, its mention of the first chronicling of Jmmanuel's ministry by Judas Iscariot that was abruptly halted when it was stolen at a point corresponding to Matthew's 12th chapter, with the order of Mark versus Matthew following Matthew very closely only from Matthew's 12th chapter on, and with it having become serious heresy by the time of Irenaeus (circa A.D. 190) for a Christian to believe anything other than that the Gospels were written by their namesakes.

The solution seems to be that:

a) Mark in Rome was Peter's interpreter there, and the two had with them the stolen writing of Judas, which one of them had recovered and taken with them to Rome. It was not the Gospel of Mark! Call it Ur-TJ. It contained rough equivalents of Mt 8-11. It could receive very little circulation, being contrary to certain beliefs being espoused by Paul. So the Ur-TJ languished in some house-church in Rome.

b) Much later, circa 117-120, Matthew was written. It came to the attention of a gentile Christian in Rome, Glaucias, who knew about the Ur-TJ, and who was sufficiently upset over Matthew's anti-gentile tone as to write his own Gospel, which he attributed to (John) Mark, since he utilized the Ur-TJ in writing the Gospel of Mark.

c) Clement of Alexandria, in writing briefly about these matters circa 195-200, knew that the Gospels had to have been written by their namesakes, in keeping with that branch of orthodoxy, and so wrote about John Mark in Rome being Peter's interpreter and the author of Mark. Now Basilides had apparently mentioned Glaucias as being the writer of Mark, and so Clement could only refer to this as Glaucias being Peter's interpreter. But this could be a backhanded way of acknowledging that Glaucias had written Mark, while allowing believers to assume that by "Peter's interpreter" Clement or Basilides had meant a later disciple of Peter.

d) Glaucias can be assumed to have moved to Alexandria not too long after writing Mark, perhaps to escape criticisms from Jewish Christians in Rome who did not care for Mark's anti-Jewish comments relative to Matthew. There Basilides met him, and could later boast of having been a student of his (Glaucias was his master), after he had gone his gnostic way.