I Think I Have Found a Thread to Follow for the Perpetuation of the Original Baptism of Alexandria

I have been arguing that the Marcionite 'baptism of the dead' and the Marcosian 'redemption' ritual are developments of the first additional narrative (LGM 1) to the Gospel of Mark discussed in Clement's Letter to Theodore. The underlying logic would be that the Alexandrian Church of Mark was related to or identical with 'Marcionitism.' As my learned colleague and eminent Semitic language expert Dr. Rory Boid of Monash University worked out for me when Aphrahat the Persia employs the word 'Marcionite' in Syriac it is readily apparent that it is developed from a back formation of an Aramaic term meaning 'those of Mark.'

In other words, it is highly improbable that there ever was a figure named 'Marcion.' It was all based on a deception (or a misunderstanding) typical in the Church Fathers. Much like 'Ebion' the head of the Evionim or Elxai of the Elchasites.

In any event, the billion dollar question of course is that if there was an Alexandrian ritual based on LGM 1 one would expect (or hope) that despite the pressure over the centuries to assimilate the Coptic Church to the rest of the Christian world around it, something of this 'baptism of the dead' or 'redemption' ritual of groups identified or identifying themselves as being 'of Mark' would still exist with the Alexandrian tradition.

Like other Christian communities Copts now baptize their children quite soon after they born. There is nothing in this ritual associated and developed from the 'John the Baptist baptism' to suggest that it was ever connect with LGM 1.

Our instincts might tell us that we should look to see if there are any rituals associated with the ordination of Coptic priests that might bear some relationship with LGM 1 but here again the Egyptian tradition is very different from our own. Priests can marry in the Coptic Church but interestingly the bishops are drawn exclusively from the ranks of the monastic order who have a strange ritual associated with death and dying that might prove worthwhile investigating.

Here is how Lane describes how after a long period of training a special ritual is employed to confirm the monks into the order:

If after sufficient service, he perseveres in his resolution he is admitted. The prayers of the dead are recited over him, to celebrate his death to the world [p. 280]

This is very intriguing for if we remember that Eusebius and others identify St. Mark as the one who established the monastic order in Egypt and that Macarius of Memphis says that St. Mark established the sixth day for baptism - if as I have suggested earliest Alexandrian Christianity resembled Marcionitism more fully and - as we have noted there was no 'John the Baptism baptism of Jesus' narrative in the Marcionite gospel AND baptism was employed by Marcionites only on those who were either celibates or eunuchs (i.e. the pneumatic elite) then it would stand to reason to suspect that the 'prayers of the dead' now performed on the initiated monachos today represent only one part of the original ritual which must have included an accompanying 'baptism on behalf of the dead' which - as we have noted - could only be based on something like LGM 1 if not LGM 1 itself.

A number of Mormon sites have also taken great interest in the fact that the Copts maintain a 'baptism on behalf of the dead.' I wonder if the two lines intersect?

In any event its all worth following up. Yet if even some of this is true you can immediately are WHY To Theodore would have been preserved at a monastery AND why they wanted to keep it FROM US ...

Indeed just spend a second thinking about LGM 1, the mystical implications of the various heretical baptisms of groups associated with Mark and then contemplate why monks are called monachos in the first place. It will all come together I promise.