Epistole Genvine S. Ignatii Martyris.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

A unique 17th century book with historic magic overtones in which papers found within a sister copy suggested that Jesus had Eastern spiritual influence to prompt trance, hypnotism, and tantric practice with both men and women.

The provenance of this book is still being examined but there are reasons to believe that John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute acquired it during his European travels and from him the book transmuted into the later hands of the Frederick North (the Lord North family): Lord North being the English Prime Minister famous for the loss of the English colonies in North America.

As at September 21st 2023 it is proved that this book is similar to that which once housed the alleged ‘Clement of Alexandria’ epistle. That said, much greater enquiry is required to be definitive on any issue.

             Ignatius called himself Theophorus (God Bearer). A tradition arose that he was one of the children whom Jesus Christ took in his arms and blessed. The Apostolic Fathers, also known as the Ante-Nicene Fathers, were core Christian theologians among the Church Fathers who lived in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD who are believed to have personally known some of the Twelve Apostles or to have been significantly influenced by them.Their writings, though widely circulated in early Christianity, were not included in the canon of the New Testament. Many of the writings derive from the same time period and geographical location as other works of early Christian literature which came to be part of the New Testament.

Ignatius of Antioch (died c. 108/140 AD),also known as Ignatius Theophorus (Ἰγνάτιος ὁ Θεοφόρος, Ignátios ho Theophóros, lit. "the God-bearing"), was an early Christian writer and Patriarch of Antioch. While en route to Rome, where he met his martyrdom, Ignatius wrote a series of letters. This correspondence now forms a central part of a later collection of works known to be authored by the Apostolic Fathers. He is considered to be one of the three most important of these, together with Clement of Rome and Polycarp. His letters also serve as an example of early Christian theology. Important topics they address include ecclesiology, the sacraments, and the role of bishops.

Ever since the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, the authenticity of all the Ignatian epistles has come under intense scrutiny. John Calvin called the epistles "rubbish published under Ignatius' name." Some Protestants have tended to want to deny the authenticity of all the epistles attributed to Ignatius because they seem to attest to the existence of a monarchical episcopate in the second century. The Catholic Church has long held up the authenticity of the letters from past to present.

In 1886, Presbyterian minister and church historian William Dool Killen published an essay extensively arguing that none of the epistles attributed to Ignatius were authentic. Instead, he argued that Callixtus, bishop of Rome, forged the letters around AD 220 to garner support for a monarchical episcopate, modeling the renowned Saint Ignatius after his own life to give precedent for his own authority. Killen contrasted this episcopal polity with the presbyterian polity in the writings of Polycarp.

Some doubts about the authenticity of the original letters continued into the 20th century. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the scholars Robert Joly, Reinhard Hübner, Markus Vinzent, and Thomas Lechner argued forcefully that the epistles of the Middle Recension were forgeries written during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–180 AD). Around the same time, the scholar Joseph Ruis-Camps published a study arguing that the Middle Recension letters were pseudepigraphically composed based on an original, smaller, authentic corpus of four letters (Romans, Magnesians, Trallians, and Ephesians). In 2009, Otto Zwierlein took up the thesis of a fake, made around 170.

These publications stirred up tremendous, heated controversy in the scholarly community at the time, but in 2017, most patristic scholars accepted the authenticity of the seven original epistles. However, J. Lookadoo said in 2020 that "the debate has received renewed energy since the late 1990s and shows few signs of slowing."

The original texts of six of the seven original letters are found in the Codex Mediceo Laurentianus written in Greek in the 11th century (which also contains the pseudepigraphical letters of the Long Recension, except that to the Philippians), while the letter to the Romans is found in the Codex Colbertinus.

The Secret Gospel of Mark or the Mystic Gospel of Mark[ also the Longer Gospel of Mark, is a putative longer and secret or mystic version of the Gospel of Mark. The gospel is mentioned exclusively in the Mar Saba letter, a document of disputed authenticity, which is said to have been written by Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150–215). This letter, in turn, is preserved only in photographs of a Greek handwritten copy seemingly transcribed in the 18th century into the endpapers of a 17th-century printed edition of the works of Ignatius of Antioch. Some scholars suggest that the letter implies that Jesus was involved in homosexual activity, although this interpretation is contested.

In 1958, Morton Smith, a professor of ancient history at Columbia University, found a previously unknown letter of Clement of Alexandria in the monastery of Mar Saba situated 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-east of Jerusalem. He made a formal announcement of the discovery in 1960 and published his study of the text in 1973. The original manuscript was subsequently transferred to the library of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, and sometime after 1990, it was lost. Further research has relied upon photographs and copies, including those made by Smith himself.

In the letter, addressed to one otherwise unknown Theodore (Theodoros), Clement says that "when Peter died a martyr, Mark [i.e. Mark the Evangelist] came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book [i.e. the Gospel of Mark] the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge." He further says that Mark left this extended version, known today as the Secret Gospel of Mark, "to the church in Alexandria, where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries." Clement quotes two passages from this Secret Gospel of Mark, where Jesus in the longer passage is said to have raised a rich young man from the dead in Bethany, a story which shares many similarities with the story of the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John.

The revelation of the letter caused a sensation at the time but was soon met with accusations of forgery and misrepresentation. Although most patristic Clement scholars have accepted the letter as genuine, there is no consensus on the authenticity among biblical scholars, and the opinion is split. As the text is made up of two texts, a handful of possibilities exist: both may be authentic or inauthentic, or one may be authentic and the other inauthentic. Those who think the letter is a forgery mostly think it is a modern forgery, with Smith being denounced the most often as the perpetrator. If the letter is a modern forgery, the excerpts from the Secret Gospel of Mark would also be forgeries. Some accept the letter as genuine but do not believe in Clement's account, and instead argue that the gospel is a 2nd-century Gnostic pastiche. Others think Clement's information is accurate and that the secret gospel is a second edition of the Gospel of Mark expanded by Mark himself. Still others see the Secret Gospel of Mark as the original gospel which predates the canonical Gospel of Mark, and where canonical Mark is the result of the Secret Mark passages quoted by Clement and other passages being removed, either by Mark himself or by someone else at a later stage.

There is an ongoing controversy surrounding the authenticity of the Mar Saba letter. The scholarly community is divided as to the authenticity, and the debate on Secret Mark therefore in a state of stalemate, although the debate continues.