Another Clue as to the Meaning of Apolytrosis Among the Followers of Mark

I have been piecing together why the so-called 'Marcosians' called their baptism ritual a 'deliverance' (apolytrosis) and I think I stumbled across a big clue. I happened to found a copy of The Philo Index A Complete Greek Word Index to the Writings of Philo of Alexandria when I was at the book store today (it was on sale too) and immediately looked up all the appearances of words relating to 'deliverance.' The most interesting reference appears in the Third Book of Allegorical Interpretation where Philo says:

And what that prudence was he will proceed to tell us, for he adds, "And you have led away my daughters as captives; and if you had told me, I would myself have sent you away." {Ge 31:27.} You would not have sent away things which were at variance with one another, for if you had sent them away really, and had emancipated the soul, you would have removed from it all bodily sounds, and such as affect the outward senses; for in this way the intellect is emancipated from evils and passions. But now you say that you send it away free, but by your actions you confess that you would have retained it in a prison; for if you had sent it on its way with musical instruments, and drums and harps, and all the pleasures which affect the outward senses, you would not in reality have released it (apolytroo) at all; for it is not you then only from whom we are fleeing, O Laban, thou companion of bodies and colours, but we are also escaping from everything that is thine, in which the voices of the outward senses sound in harmony with the energies of the passions. [Leg 3.21]

Philo is often a difficult reader for those who aren't used to his allegorical method. Philo is clearly arguing that it is necessarily for the initiate to gain deliverance from passion (pathe). While this is clearly an idea that he took over from Stoic philosophy, Philo's use of the term within a Jewish theological framework was highly influential on Clement of Alexandria who in turn - as we have demonstrated over the last few posts - was a Marcosian.

Irenaeus goes one step further and actually connects the idea back to a community who 'preferred' the Gospel of Mark (like Clement's Alexandrian community in To Theodore) and says:

Those, again, who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible (apatheia), but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark.[Irenaeus AH iii.11.7]

The point of course is that not only is there a Christ who wasn't Jesus but he was apparently a human being who was somehow made 'impassable.'

Clement often speaks of Jesus 'instructing' or establishing ritual practices that made his disciples 'impassible.' We read:

But He (Jesus) was entirely impassible inaccessible to any movement of feeling -- either pleasure or pain. While the apostles, having most gnostically mastered, through the Lord's teaching, angel and fear, and lust, were not liable even to such of the movements of feeling, as seem good, courage, zeal, joy, desire, through a steady condition of mind, not changing a whit; but ever continuing unvarying in a state of training after the resurrection of the Lord. [Strom vi.13]

We must therefore rescue the gnostic and perfect man from all passion of the soul. For knowledge (gnosis) produces practice, and practice habit or disposition; and such a state as this produces impassibility, not moderation of passion. And the complete eradication of desire reaps as its fruit impassibility. [ibid vi.9]

If it is acknowledged that Clement and the Marcosians knew of or employed Philo's understanding of a deliverance (apolytroo) from the passions - and I don't see how it can't be accepted - then it would stand to reason that this figure established as Christ by Jesus went through the apolytrosis baptism ritual connected by the Marcosians to Mark x.38 as we see witnessed in Book One of Irenaeus' Against the Heresies and other Patristic writers (i.e. Hippolytus, the anonymous author of the Treatise on Baptism, Epiphanius and most importantly Ephrem the Syrian).

In case anyone at home has forgotten, the first 'addition' of Secret Mark - the one Morton Smith identifies as describing a baptism ritual - appears six lines earlier.

Now I don't present any of this as a 'final proof' as to the authenticity of the Letter to Theodore on its own. Yet I do think we are making headway demonstrating a powerful argument that at least one community - tied to Alexandria - employed a version of the Gospel of Mark which knew of a gnostic baptism ritual in latter parts of chapter ten of the same text.