It's a lazy Saturday in Seattle. My wife is lying in bed upstairs reading her magazines, my son is sleeping in his room and I have about a half an hour to develop my revaluation of all values. The problem with most theories about early Christian origins isn't that they aren't informed. All scholars basically use the same recycled pack of cards. The problem is which texts and traditions we lay our emphasis. Any first year student of Christianity can tell you the story of the Acts of the Apostles. I won't because it's all bullshit. None of this stuff ever happened. It was developed in the late second century as a counter claim to the original story of Christian origins which I have spent a great deal of time developing here and elsewhere in my writings.
The fact that the Marcionites thought it was bullshit too and the fact that Alexandria is completely left out of the story of how Christianity developed lends me to think that's where I should develop my counter-history, the tradition that I believe the followers of Mark originally believed.
So where do you begin?
Well you start with the obvious - if the Marcionites were so hostile to Judaism (as most idiots think) how is it then that Tertullian makes it clear that they 'retained' not only Old Testament scriptural passages but references to Christianity as 'Israel' (or the 'true Israel' Rom 9:6 etc) and to the tradition possessing the 'true circumcision' (Col 2:11 - 12)?
Do you now see why I think scholars are so lazy?
They will run with the propaganda of Irenaeus and Tertullian when it says that we can write off the Marcionites as 'self-contradictory.' You can read it for yourself in almost any book on Marcion ever written.
Yet the reason they elect to do this is maybe not so clear. The answer is that they are essentially lazy idiots. Their only interest is to speak and be heard and say things in a clever way that gets approval from their peers.
They are like a bunch of nerds essentially developing fancy rhetoric about how they will bang the hot girl in high school when the closest flesh that their genitalia will grace is the warmth of their own hand.
These men operate in collective fantasy world where those of them who rise to prominent positions are envied - not because of their enlightenment - but their ability to 'work the system' better than the rest of the horde.
So let's get back to our original point.
The Marcionites somehow managed to accept the idea that they represented the true 'Israel.'
Check.
The Marcionites somehow thought they introduced to their members the true circumcision.
Check.
The Marcionite priesthood were all eunuchs who practiced self-castration before they entered the baptismal waters.
Check (or read it here).
How then can there be any doubt that on some level that the Marcionites looked to Genesis 38:25 - 32?
Is there any doubt that this is the explanation of the origin of how 'Israel' was made?
No.
Is there any doubt that on some level 'Israel' (i.e. Jacob renamed) lost the part of his thigh which was responsible for sexual reproduction?
Just read the #%^#% passage in Hebrew, people.
As such you have the embodiment of how the castrated priests of the Marcionite tradition saw themselves as the 'true Israel' BECAUSE THEY UNDERWENT the 'true circumcision.'
There is no other explanation, folks. The waffle that gets circulated about Marcionitism and early Christianity is embarrassing.
Now, it is very unfortunate that no literature survives from the Marcionites themselves (or at least texts which haven't been completely reworked by Catholic editors). Nevertheless I have written extensively here that I am certain that the original tradition of St. Mark in Alexandria was 'Marcionite' and people like Origen were only pretending to go along with the new rules of Christianity being developed in Rome because they wanted to live to see another day.
Origen was a eunuch and his patron Ambrose was a (reformed) Marcionite.
I explain how the name 'Marcionite' is a development from the Hebrew or Aramaic for 'those of Mark' here.
The point is that Mark - the real 'Marcion' - not only wrote the first gospel but also established Christianity as a replacement for the religion of the Jews which seemed - in the period in which he was writing (c. 70 CE) - to be going the way of the dinosaur.
With the Jewish temple razed and in ruins along comes Mark who says (at least according to the heretics in Alexandria and elsewhere) 'it's a divinely inspired thing that Judaism should disappear because thirty years ago I met God when he took the form of Jesus and he told me what was going to happen and ...
... he instructed me as to the 'true circumcision' and the 'true rituals' of the 'true Israel' which I just happen to be starting up now that the old rituals of the old Israel are passing away.'
By the way, this paradigm is the prime reason why I am certain that Mark was Marcus Agrippa (there are many others of course but I won't get into them now).
In any event the reader has to see that from a castrated eunuch like Origen - or Pope Demetrius for that matter - the idea that Mark had a 'mutilated finger' like them undoubtedly was the very reason that they chopped off their genitals.
Just read the Passio Petri Sancti to see how the leading members of the Alexandrian community actively imitated the 'father' of their Episcopal tradition.
One could argue that Jesus was also a eunuch - Tertullian certainly did. But one doesn't expect an angel to have a member dangling between his legs. In other words, such an argument is self-evident.
It IS something that one person - and indeed tens of thousands of believers after him - decided to emasculate themselves in order to transform themselves into a heavenly creature. We can immediately see how the whole Pauline obsession with being 'justified by faith' takes on a whole new - or indeed its old and original - meaning.
The point I am trying to get at here is that this neaniskos being taken by Jesus and initiated into a baptism mystery AFTER the youth 'does something' to himself (read the fragment of Secret Mark in the Letter to Theodore) has to be the original context for the Markan (Marcionite) ritual.
I have already demonstrated that the Marcionite gospel did not have any reference to a 'John the Baptist baptism of Jesus.' This is proved by references to this effect in the anti-Marcionite writings of Tertullian and Ephrem.
Then just look at how sloppy the first chapter of the canonical book of Mark is.
It is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way a voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'
No it's not. This is not a quote from Isaiah. How could Mark - a Jew - have developed such a jumbled, sloppy citation of scripture. The passage is cited by Marcionites to prove that Jesus was the angel (messenger) preparing the way for the messiah.
If the first two verses of this section were falsified by a later editor why couldn't we believe that the next nine verses which introduce 'John the Baptist' and his baptism were also falsified?
In any event, Morton Smith's discovery of the Letter to Theodore demonstrates at least that the Alexandrian community always had a baptism narrative IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GOSPEL or nearer to the end, the one which Jesus announces throughout the narrative that proceeds LGM 1 (the first addition to the Gospel of Mark mentioned in the Letter to Theodore) with words such as 'I have a baptism to be baptized in it' and 'no sign will be given to this generation other than sign of Johnny.'
Once you hear that the Aramaic concept of siman is introduced into the New Testament and explicitly connected with circumcision in the writings of the guy who wrote the gospel (Rom 4:11) at least according to the Marcionites it should be readily apparent that the ritual didn't just serve to 'wash away sin' but served as the very means of establishing individuals as members of the 'true Israel.'
As I noted in earlier post, the Marcionites called Jesus 'Chrestos' because the term was used in the LXX - the Greek translation of the Torah - to denote Israel. Here it clearly alludes to the fact that Jesus is the same angel - again according to Marcionite theology - who severed Jacob's sexual organs.
What we are suggesting then is that LGM 1 is the description of how John-Mark transformed himself into the Lord or Father of the Christian community. It is also undoubtedly why 'Jacob' is one of the names associated with the neaniskos of the gospel.
I don't see why it is so controversial to suggest that one was forced to remove one's sexual organs in order to appear 'angelic' and more importantly to begin a 'new life' in Israel. Aren't all the other rituals of Christianity even more barbaric - i.e. eating the flesh/drinking the blood of Christ?
Indeed if you look at the manner in which non-Jews are introduced into Judaism as proselytes you see the very same pattern viz circumcision first followed by ritual immersion.
All we are suggesting here of course is that the new covenant of the true Israel offered up the 'true circumcision' - i.e. the one which Jesus also called Chrestos (= Israel) performed on Jacob in the beginning.
Now because Jesus established this ritual on a neaniskos - and specifically a young boy (see the Orthodox tradition regarding the age of Mark during Jesus' ministry) the ritual aspect of this circumcision took on many of the aspects of the traditional Jewish circumcision for children.
Early Christians speak of baptism as 'being reborn.' This clearly reinforces the context of Pidyon Haben as does the language of the baptism ritual in the Apostolic writings (viz. 'an adoption as sons' etc.)
The point of our long discussion here is that symbolism of the Jewish Pidyon Haben rite is ever present in the gospel. Think for a moment about Judas receiving silver coins.
In the traditional Pidyon Haben ceremony, the father brings the child to the Priest (Kohen). The Kohen asks the father which he would rather have, the child or the silver shekels which he must pay. The father states that he prefers the child to the money, then he recites a blessing and hands over the silver coins. The Kohen holds the coins over the child and declares that the redemption price is received and accepted in place in the child. He then blesses the child and returns him to the custody of his family.
Can the reader start to see how this fits into the pattern of the Passion narrative?
Incidentally if you read the various statements of the Church Fathers about the Marcionite faith you will see that the idea of the initiate as a 'slave' comes up all the time. If one imagines that this extended to Jesus - viz. 'the suffering servant' - Judas' thirty pieces of silver matches exactly the price of a slave (Ex. 21:32)
I will continue to develop this understanding over the next few posts. I really have to go now.
