The first is that, per Carotta, Courtney, and Oder at least, an early proto-Mark was formed out of decades old garrison paeans (as perhaps a play) to Julius Caesar...
FWIW, I agree with Carotta and Courtney, that such a text probably existed. Perhaps
the lost history of Gaius Asinius Pollio served this purpose, as Carotta suggested.
If Chrestianity dates back at least to the time of Mark Antony and Cleopatra (as per Bartram) and if its central deity was Julius Caesar, then it makes sense that the liturgical or theatrical basis would date back to that time. Mark Antony would have been the Flaven Dialis (High Priest) of Caesar's imperial cult, and thus a very likely candidate to be the 'producer' and 'director' of the Gospel play, even if he was not the author of the text.
But if this document ever existed, surely it would have been fundamentally different from the Gospel of Mark as we know it today? Presumably, it would have been easy to identify that this document was written about Julius Caesar the Roman Emperor, with no possible confusion that some itinerant Jewish peasant was the main protagonist.
Mark is said to have founded the church in Alexandria and the Platonic conception of 'Christ' comes from Philo.... My guess is Alexandrian evangelism led to the establishment of 'Chrestianity' ...
Charles, would you say that Stephan Huller's book "The Real Messiah" is compatible with what you're saying here? I've posted some relevant remarks on the forum in the
Cleo-to-Christ thread.
It seems to me that Oder's hypothesis also fits into this general category, if the Flavians can be viewed as tightly allied with the Alexandrians and Herodians. From
Oder's website:
In The Two Gospels of Mark: Performance and Text, Danila Oder proposes that “Mark” was a playwright in Rome in 90–95 CE. He wrote a play in which his Judean congregation’s heavenly Jesus comes to earth on a mission to die, then return to the heavens. Satan, the heavenly antagonist, tries but fails to prevent Jesus from carrying out his mission.
and...
It is speculative to identify Flavia as Mark’s patron, but her participation is consistent with a scene of the play: the anointing at Bethany. There, Jesus promises the anointing woman eternal fame, an anomaly in the world of the play. (The woman never appears onstage again!) But in the world of the audience, the promise of eternal fame fits as flattery of Flavia: she played the role and anointed the Jesus actor onstage. She was then applauded by the congregation for her donations to them.
Leaving aside the admittedly speculative identification with Flavia Domatilla, Oder is placing the original Mark into an Alexandrian Jewish milieu, albeit much later than the one proposed by Huller. At a minimum, the protagonist messiah figure in Oder's hypothesis is Jewish, and not a Roman Emperor.
Oder thinks that Hermes was an influence on the text, but not necessarily a central aspect, as discussed in
this blog post at her site.
I don't see why both documents (a Roman sourced 'Gospel of Mark Antony' and an Alexandrian / Flavian sourced 'Gospel of Marcus Agrippa') couldn't have been among the texts feeding into our Gospel of Mark.