In 1906, an Art Collector Found a Bible With a ‘New’ Scene of Jesus
By: Jonathan Poletti
Tags: LGBTQ, Bible, Religion, History, Art

Bible scholars wouldn’t know their benefactor was a syphilitic homosexual

But Freer was outrageous in many ways. He had little formal education. He knew nothing of early Christianity, the Greek language, or ancient manuscripts. Only from his extraordinary taste had he sensed there was something special about one book in a pile of books.

Examining it, unable to read the words, he saw they were ‘beautiful’.

Freer returned to Egypt to find out where the manuscript came from, but its origin remains unclear. All of his six manuscripts from the Bible went on display as ‘beautiful’ objects in the Peacock Room, the room decorated by Whistler, in green and gold, that was, to Freer’s temple, the Holy of Holies.

Freer monitored media discussion of his ‘Logion’. A curator at the Smithsonian later summarizes the newspaper file Freer had kept:

“The fact that it said that the reign of Satan was over seemed really potentially outrageous. People were in a tizzy over it.”

The Freer Logion comes just after the standard text of Mark 16:14. This passage was already a bit quirky. Different manuscripts end the gospel in a variety of ways. The version Freer had found has the ‘longer’ ending. Jesus in his resurrected form comes to his disciples, and “rebukes” them!

The women had told the disciples of Jesus’ return, and the disciples had disbelieved them.

Ordinarily, Jesus seems to let the matter drop, and instructs the disciples to go preach the gospel. But in the Freer Logion, the matter is hashed out. Why had they not believed the women?

The disciples “excused themselves”—that is, made an excuse for their failure by saying that Satan had blinded them.

The disciples then challenge Jesus—why didn’t he defeat the evil spirit, and make deceptions impossible?

Jesus’ response is typically complex:

“The term of years for Satan’s power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned I was delivered over to death, that they may return truth and sin no more; that they may inherit the spiritual and incorruptible glory of righteousness which is in heaven.”

Scholars of Christianity recalled that this scene had been alluded to by the fourth-century translator, Jerome. He’d seen it in some manuscripts, he reports, and quotes part of it. (The transcription of Jerome, in Christian history, had removed the ‘Satan’ part.)

Was it a sensitive matter? To say Satan’s power was ‘fulfilled’ might not be what a Christian cleric would like to hear. The religion was about the constant fear of demonic threats—from Satan to homosexuals?

But the Freer Logion was as shocking on many points. The presentation of the ‘Twelve’ is extremely negative. They had been expected to believe the women, and had not.

Were these men even followers? As Calogero A. Miceli notes:

“From the Freer Logion, it is clear that the apostles are not believers and that they are disgruntled with what has transpired thus far after Jesus’ death.”

This would not be welcome to traditional Christian readers. But in a close reading of Mark’s gospel, it’s not clear that such a conflict isn’t brewing. Jesus has chided them, over and over, for not grasping points.

As Leif E. Vaage notes, Jesus has “a growing sense of frustration at their unflagging failure to grasp what he embodies and displays before them.”

How much do the disciples ever really know Jesus? They mostly seem to misunderstand him, often while trying to elevate themselves. Many scenes in the gospels are essentially comic. Jesus does something unusual and unexpected, while the disciples are confused or horrified.

During his dark night in Gethsemane, they fall asleep. When he’s crucified, they flee—as the women stay.

Vaage thinks:

“By the end of the Gospel, the Twelve are effectively written out of the script of Christian beginnings, certainly as noteworthy disciples.”

In the tradition, however, the disciples are heroes, and models for the clerics of the faith.

A friend recalls visiting Freer in his last days

She writes later:

“Indelibly in my memory is impressed the figure in the twilight by the window, the wasted sufferer waiting for the call, the shadowy substance of the man we had loved and admired…”

He died in 1919, the papers report, “of a stroke of apoplexy.” His syphilis was noted on his death certificate, and in hints in personal papers—as examined a century later. His friends had kept up the fiction.

The Freer Gallery of Art opened in Washington D.C. in 1923, featuring some nine thousand objects, and the wish he’d left that “others will be served, well served, intelligently served by my slight efforts.”

His six Bible manuscripts, being fragile, were rarely displayed, and fell out of public consciousness.