Another Curious Passage from Origen

If you still live to sin, you cannot be buried with Jesus or laid in his new tomb because your old self still lives and cannot walk in the newness of life. Therefore the Holy Spirit was careful to hand down through the Scriptures that it was a new sepulcher in which Jesus was buried and that he was wrapped in a linen cloth. He did this so that everyone who wants to be buried with Jesus by baptism might know nothing of the old state should be brought into the new tomb, nothing of uncleanliness to the clean linen cloth. [Commentary on Romans 5.8.4]

I know how scholars would like to interpret this passage - i.e. that Jesus is still the guy that was buried in the tomb and who was ultimately resurrected on March 25th (the traditional date of the Resurrection for the Alexandrian tradition). However let me say that these people aren't familiar with the nuances of the Alexandrian school. Peter I is cited in Tim Vivian's book as arguing that Jesus took another body, another form when he emerged from the tomb. When you start actually thinking about Origen's interpetation of the Apostle's words in Romans (and the emphasis of a figure wrapped only in a linen cloth) you start to realize that there is a strong possibility that the Alexandrians identified that the neaniskos who was baptized in LGM 1 (forget Brown's ridiculous assertion to the contrary) must also have been buried with him and resurrected AS CHRIST. This is the basis to the Alexandrian Papacy (through John Mark) and moreover the meaning of gnostic baptism rituals generally (see Clement and Origen on the idea that God was 'wedded' to the flesh of the catechumen).

If you are interested in reading how this observation fits within my greater understanding of the workings of Secret Mark WITHIN the contemporary Alexandrian Church please go here

If you want to read more about how Alexandrian Christianity was rooted in the Jewish traditions of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria and more feel free to purchase my new book here