Why Origen Was Called 'Adamantius'?

The question has never been answered adequately by modern scholarship. I mean - why was Origen called 'Adamantius'? It wasn't like this was a 'neighborhood nickname.' It wasn't like he was called 'Fonzie' or something of that nature. There must have been some ritual significance to the name. Just think about it. 'Adamant' was reputed to be the hardest substance in the world; unbreakable like a diamond.

I believe if we piece together this mystery we can not only tie together our argument regarding Origen as the (occultated) Pope who sat on the throne of St. Mark in the cemeteries of Boucolia but also advance our over all case for the authenticity of To Theodore. The problem has always been that scholars don't THINK enough about the facts they regurgitate in academic papers. Above all else, they should understand what they signify and maybe - just maybe - a door will open for them and they will truly understand some wondrous things about our ancient past.

So let's ask the question again - what was the original source for Origen's alter ego 'Adamantius.' No, he wasn't into eighties pop music. It is clearly from Ezekiel's vision comparing the enthroned king of Tyre to Adam. So we read:

You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
Every precious stone adorned you:
Ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold,
On the day you were created they were prepared.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created
Till wickedness was found in you.
Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.
Your heart became proud, on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings. [Ezekiel 28 13 - 19]

In other words, Ezekiel envisions Adam as 'adamantine' in the beginning, created of the hardest elements in the universe - viz. diamonds, precious stones etc (the very stones interestingly enough Moses and the elders see when they behold God's enthroned presence at Horeb).

Is this why the high priests of the Jewish temple had precious stone embroidered into the breast plates of their ritual attire? Yes I certainly think so.

It all goes back to the central Judeo-Christian idea of the restoration of humanity after the fall of Adam. What we fail to realize tucked away in the comfort of our modern ideas is that this was a very real problem for the religious minds of antiquity. It is the very reason people entered the Christian mysteries, why they took part in the flesh and blood of the heavenly man. They wanted to restore themselves to the state that Adam was in before he fell from grace.

Is it at all obvious why grace is such a central concept in the Christian religion? Yet does the reader 'get it' when I say that the Alexandrian Church thought the problem had been solved with Christ?

In any event let's move on. I hope my regular readers will see - Origen was called 'Adamantius' NOT ONLY because he was a 'second Adam' but because his Adamantine nature - his hardness - was an EXAMPLE of the restoration that had been promised since the Fall and realized in the Church of Christ.

In short - he had become an angel thanks to his completion of the Alexandrian mystery ritual established by St. Mark because of his special status as Jesus 'beloved disciple.'

This was the whole point of establishment of the gospel.

In any event, I am not going to convince most people that the 'Marcionites' were really 'Markites.' Most New Testament scholars can't act PRODUCTIVELY with their knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic. Yet the idea that the Marcionite gospel was really a longer version of the Gospel of Mark which would appear to us now as more of a 'gospel harmony' has already been developed by me at length in my book.

Let's move on to the central Marcionite concept - the idea that the Apostle who wrote those letters in the canon was also the author (or receptacle of the heavenly revelation) of the gospel.

The Catholics have brainwashed us into thinking that the author's name was 'Paul' but there is another possibility - the Markites thought his name was 'Mark.'

In any event, let's imagine the Marcionite canon - a longer gospel which began with Mark 1:1, which ended with Mark's enthronement of Christ 'on the right hand' of God and lots of bits and pieces from our familiar four canonical gospels (although heavy on the western readings of Mark wherever possible) AND those apostolic letters of that guy who wrote the original gospel of Mark (call him whatever you want).

Origen being called 'Adamantius' - Adam before the fall - sounds rather suspiciously like what we read in the closing words of 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

Again the Marcionites said that our apostolic letter to the Ephesians was really 'to the Laodiceans' and that our deutero-Pauline letters were forgeries. The Muratorian canon makes explicit that they also had an apostolic letter to the Alexandrians.

I have always strongly, strongly, strongly believed that the renamed Marcionite letter to the Alexandria in our canon was ...

... the first letter to the Corinthians.

I won't get into WHY I think this. I'd just like to move on and - if my readers trust my instincts - let's start to put some big pieces to our 'early Christian puzzle' together.

When you start thinking about the kind of person described at the end of first letter to the Corinthians it is impossible not to imagine that just this 'type' - variously described as a 'second Adam,' 'Christ,' 'the perfect man' was envisioned not only as the 'restored Adam' BUT THE RESTORED ADAM SITTING ON THE THRONE OF GOD.

Just read Ezekiel 28 again if you need context. We'll sit here and wait until you're done ...

I know this takes imagination to see this properly (and I know that imagination is deemed a 'dangerous' - even an heretical quality in modern scholarship) but it is not hard to see how the closing words of 1 Corinthians (1 Cor 15:45 - 49) might have been applied to this 'Adamantine' Origen of Alexandria in the mystery rituals of the Markan tradition.

Just listen to what is said of the 'second Adam' here:

The first man Adam became a living being; the last Lord, a life-giving spirit ... The last man is of the earth, earthy: the second is the Lord from heaven. As is he who is from the earth, such also are the earthy, as is the man who is from heaven, such also are the men who are from heaven. As we have borne the image of him who is earthy, so we shall also bear the image of Him who is heavenly. [1 Cor 15:45 - 49]

Don't you see it finally? Isn't it all coming together? I have talking about it for weeks and now with the recognition developing that Origen was undoubtedly sitting on that throne of St. Mark I discovered in Venice - the original Episcopal throne of Alexandria (which resided in the Boucolia outside of the main Greek population and outside of any 'comfort zone' they might have set for themselves for fear that bandits and robbers might attack them here).

Let's take a look at my throne again:




Clearly the imagery of the seraphim which adorn the throne is part of the understanding of the 'father' who sat here was a 'second Adam.' Yet I want the reader to think about the physical layout of the Church of St. Mark again and the universal recognition among Coptic scholars that the Episcopal thrones original resided beside the altar in the hekhal BEHIND the curtains which separated the inner sanctum (the adyton) from those hadn't yet consecrated themselves (with ritual castration).

It all starts to make sense. Those who were not 'refashioned after the angels' could only see the shadows of heavenly things, the images which flickered on the back of the veil for outsiders.

So the apostle undoubtedly speaking to the Alexandrians says:

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a glass; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. [1 Cor 13:10 - 12]

If my instincts are right, we just have to think back to the scenario mentioned in the letter to Theodore namely that the gospel itself established the paradigm behind the Marcionite redemption ritual (i.e. baptism and castration).

Clement says there that Mark established the gospel to "lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils." The very same place where "he left his composition 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."

The pattern repeats itself over and over again. You just have to know a little about the physical structure of the earliest Coptic churches.

We just have to think about that imagine in the original Marcionite letter to the Alexandrians (which was DELIBERATELY renamed 'to the Corinthians' and filled with a lot of crap to prevent people from seeing the original context).

There is this veil that physically 'screens' what is going on in the hekhal (the inner sanctum). The outsiders can only see shadows flickering on the curtain. They are interested in discovering the 'heavenly paradigm' behind the veil. It is then that the individual decided to 'take on the image of Christ' for this he was baptized in the waters at the far end of the church.

So it is that the apostle then reminds the initiates that they are about to re-enact the most holy part of his gospel:

Brothers, I make known unto you the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. [1 Cor 15 Marcionite recension]

I have never understood why people have never recognized that 'the Apostle' HAS TO BE identified as Mark. I have brought this up a number of times over the last month of posts.

The Apostle draws the attention of his hearers to the Passion narrative and emphasizes that:

So I preached and so you believed that Christ died, was buried, and was raised on the third day when this mortal clothed itself with immortality and this corruptible clothed itself with immortality bringing to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in everlastingness.[ibid]

It seems obvious to me that the Apostle is saying that he is the one who emerged from the tomb with Jesus 'wedded' to his flesh. This argument - for the moment at least - is wholly dependent on my reconstruction of the original Marcionite recension.

What really matters for the moment is that the Apostle's argument naturally transitions from the redemption of Jesus offering to the throne of the Apostle which lay on the other side of the veil which blocked off the hekhal from the view of the uninitiated. Notice of course that this baptism is framed as a baptism 'of the dead' or 'on behalf of the dead'

if the dead are not raised is not Christ raised? If Christ be not raised our preaching is vain and our faith is vain, and we are found false witnesses against God that he raised up Christ if so be that he raised him not up. If the dead rise not at all why are they baptized for them? [ibid]

The only explanation of 1 Cor 15:29 that has come down to us from the ancients is Theodotus' explanation cited in Clement.

As Ferguson notes:

Theodotus explanation is that 'the dead' refer to human beings who are now dead in their present existence. 'Those who are baptized' are the angels of whom humans are a part and who are baptized for us ... In order for humans to enter the divine realm, the angelic counterpart must also enter. The angels baptism has a benefit for humans and in a way corresponds to human baptism. [Everett Ferguson Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy p. 280]

As Theodotus himself notes:

[The angels are baptized for us] in order that we too have the Name and may not be hindered and held back from entering the Fullness by the Limit and the Cross. Therefore at the imposition of hands they say at the end 'into the angelic redemption' that is the redemption which also angels have, so that the person who has received the redemption may be baptized. [Excerpts of Theodous 22

Is anyone surprised that 'redemption' is connected with the idea of the 'baptism on behalf of the dead'? In other words, the baptism that we have identified with LGM 1 - the one just before Mark x.38 - was certainly a part of the Marcionite baptism too.

Indeed in the same way as Irenaeus employs Luke xii.50 AND Mark x.38 against 'those of Mark' (Gk. 'Marcosians'):

And to this [redemption] he refers when He says, "And I have another baptism to be baptized with, and I hasten eagerly towards it." Moreover, they affirm that the Lord added this redemption to the sons of Zebedee, when their mother asked that they might sit, the one on His right hand, and the other on His left, in His kingdom, saying, "Can ye be baptized with the baptism which I shall be baptized with?" [Irenaeus AH i.21.2]

So we see Epiphanius use the very same passage against the Marcionite understanding of baptism on behalf of the dead:

He [Marcion] says that after the Lord's baptism by John he told the disciples, 'I have a baptism to be baptized with and why do I wish to if I have already accomplished it?' And again, 'I have a cup to drink and why do I wish to if I have already fulfilled it?' And because of this he decreed the giving of more baptisms [Epiphanius Panarion Section III Marcionites]

Don't you see people? Your guides have been leading you around telling you that 'those of Mark' in Greek and 'those of Mark' in Aramaic were two different sects when in fact all they represented was one tradition TRANSLATED into Greek and Aramaic with different names attributed in each language - viz. 'the Marcosians' and 'the Marcionites.'

The Marcionite tradition clearly did not just use a Gospel of Luke as the latter quote does not appear in Luke. Notice also that the reading is made WITHOUT the addition of 'I have another baptism to be baptized with' - this was added by Irenaeus to Mark in order to deny the presence of LGM 1 in the original text.

In other words we have taken great strides to show that Secret Mark was indeed the gospel of the Marcionites - or that the Marcionites had a text with a similar structure - i.e. an 'angelic baptism' right before Mark x.38 where Jesus transformed his beloved disciple by 'making him like an angel' - i.e. chopping his balls off (see Tertullian's arguments to this effect viz. that Jesus was a eunuch.

I can't help but think that the Apostle was originally using the 'first person' throughout this narrative and then it subsequently 'corrected' in order to deny what is now obvious to anyone familiar with the letter to Theodore - namely that 'the Apostle' is the dead one who was baptized by Jesus as part of a ritual process of gnostic 'perfection.'

As we noted the enthroned Patriarch was sitting as the living representative of the Father during the initiation process - an initiation process which ultimately mirrored the contents of the original 'secret' gospel of Mark. We must never forget that Rom 3:8 already identifies Jesus with the mercy seat - viz. the throne. The man sitting on the throne HAD TO HAVE BEEN CASTRATED in order to represent the androgynous state of both Adam before his fall and the 'bisexual' Father in heaven (the words attributed to the Naasenes by Hippolytus not my own).

So it is that the Apostle explains the central mystery of the Alexandrian community as beginning with the fact that he and his successors (the various bishops of Alexandria) are the living embodiments of Christ, the second Adam:

For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive ... then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. [ibid]

Clearly then this is a throne reference because - the Apostle or his representatives - sat enthroned for the culmination of the mystery rite. Yet as I have emphasized throughout the individual had to be 'prepared for the reception of the Holy Spirit' by ritual castration and baptism - 'redemption' if you prefer the original Markan language.

Yet notice the emphasis on 'death' as the ritual starting point of baptism throughout the last chapter of what MUST HAVE BEEN the epistle to the Alexandrians. Jesus wasn't 'dead' when he went to John the Baptist. The idea of 'being baptized into the death of Christ' CANNOT BE CONNECTED TO THE EXISTING GOSPELS.

The point again is that only LGM 1 provides the proper CONTEXT for 'the baptism of the dead.' The fact that theologians have made up nonsense to make the statements of 'Paul' sound reasonable has nothing to do with the fact that it can't work.

So it is here that the Apostle goes on to emphasize 'death' as the starting point of the Alexandrian mystery ritual by saying:

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined. [ibid]

Indeed as we all know two different 'types' are mentioned in what follows:

There are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another ... The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. [ibid]

The one who goes 'all the way' through this mystery ritual - i.e. being baptized, having his sexual organs removed and 'recreated' after the image of the 'second Adam' enthroned in the inner sanctum will become a 'second Christ.'

So it is that we are back to our original place in the letter:

The first man Adam became a living being; the last Lord, a life-giving spirit ... The last man is of the earth, earthy: the second is the Lord from heaven. As is he who is from the earth, such also are the earthy, as is the man who is from heaven, such also are the men who are from heaven. As we have borne the image of him who is earthy, so we shall also bear the image of Him who is heavenly.

Now my friends you know the original ritual of Alexandrian Christianity, the means by which Mark established the line of Popes which continue to this day in the Coptic Church. You also know that LGM 1 HAD TO HAVE BEEN an authentic part of the original gospel of Mark removed because of its association with ritual castration.

Indeed the clearest proof is the statement in the Dialogues attributed to Adamantius where the Marcionite representative says that all bishops are established from the original bishop Mark(ion). Scholars are far too comfortable swimming around in 'texts' divorced from physical reality.

What they should have asked is where was the physical place where the Marcionite bishops were originally consecrated? The answer has to be Alexandria. It was PHYSICAL pressure from the Imperial government that was forcing changes upon Markan Christianity ... and Origen was fighting back by finding creative ways to preserve the original doctrine WITHIN the artificially established canon.

You just had to be initiated into the great mysteries to SEE what Origen was talking about ...

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