Leavened and Unleavened Bread in the Gnostic Traditions Within Early Christianity

I have been trying to convince all of you that the original Christian baptism occurred at the very end of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This is especially important to make sense of the Letter to Theodore. I have cited a number of patristic writers who witness that there was a widespread understanding that Christianity itself developed from the mystical significance originally associated with this seven day festival. Here is Ptolemy's take on matters:

Finally, there is the allegorical (exemplary) part, ordained in the image of the spiritual and trascendent matters, I mean the part dealing with offerings and circumcision and the sabbath and fasting and Passover and unleavened bread and other similar matters.

Since all these things are images and symbols, when the truth was made manifest they were translated to another meaning. In their phenomenal appearance and their literal application they were destroyed, but in their spiritual meaning they were restored; the names remained the same but the content was changed. Thus the Savior commaned us to make offerings not of irrational animals or of the incense of this worldly sort, but of spiritual praise and glorification and thanksgiving and of sharing and well-doing with our neighbors. He wanted us to be circumcised, not in regard to our physical foreskin but in regard to our spiritual heart; to keep the Sabbath, for he wishes us to be idle in regard to evil works; to fast, not in physical fasting but in spiritual, in which there is abstinence from everything evil.

Among us external fasting is also observed, since it can be advantageous to the soul if it is done reasonably, not for imitating others or from habit or because of a special day appointed for this purpose. It is also observed so that those who are not yet able to keep the true fast may have a reminder of it from the external fast. Similarely, Paul the apostle shows that the Passover and the unleavened bread are images when he says, Christ our passover has been sacrificed, in order that you may be unleavened bread, not containing leaven (by leaven he here means evil), but may be a new lump. [1 Cor 5:7]

Thus the Law of God itself is obviously divided into three parts. The first was completed by the Savior, for the commandment, You shall not kill , You shall not commit adultery, you shall not swear falsely are included in the forbiding of anger, desire and swearing. The second part was entirely destroyed, for An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth interwoven in with injustice, was destroyed by the Savior through its opposite. Opposites cancel out, For I say to you, do not resist the evil man, but if anyone strikes you, turn the other cheek to him.

Finally, there is the part translated and changed from the literal to the spiritual, this symbolic legislation which is an image of transcendent things. For the images and symbols which represent other things were good as long as the Truth has not come; but since the Truth has come, we must perform the actions of the Truth, not those of the image.

The disciples of the Savior and the Apostle Paul showed that this theory is true, speaking of the part dealing with images, as we have already said, in mentioning The passover for us and the Unleavened bread; for the law interwoven with injustice when he says that the law of commandments in ordinances were destroyed [Eph 2:15]; and of that not mixed with anything inferior when he says that The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good [Rom 7:12]. I think I have shown you sufficiently, as well as one can in brief compass, the addition of human legislation in the Law and the triple division of the Law of God itself.

It remains for us to say who this God is who ordained the Law; but I think this too has been shown you in what we have already said, if you have listened to it attentively.

For if the Law was not ordained by the perfect God himself, as we have already thaught you, nor by the devil, a statement one cannot possibly make, the legislator must be some one other than these two. In fact, he is the demiurge and maker of this universe and everything in it; and because he is essentially different from these two and is between them, he is rightly given the name, intermediate.

This understanding of mystical significance associated with UNLEAVENED bread is preserved still in the Latin Mass. Yet I think that it goes back to the heretical idea of Christianity being a 'bread' free of 'Jewish leaven' - i.e. specifically Pharisaic interpretation of the meaning of the Festival. As we read in the Testimony of Truth:

For many have sought after the truth and have not been able to find it; because there has taken hold of them the old leaven of the Pharisees and the scribes of the Law. And the leaven is the errant desire of the angels and the demons and the stars. As for the Pharisees and the scribes, it is they who belong to the archons who have authority over them.

This is clearly the Marcionite interpretation too. However I am certain that this understanding is also at work in Clement's Alexandrian community when they distinguish it from the 'carnal' Church and the carnal gospel of Mark.

Clement knows that there is a Gospel of Mark in Rome. He is quite aware of the writings of Irenaeus and in those writings Irenaeus boasts of his connections with the Imperial court [AH iv.30.1] and - by inference - the Christian mistress of the then Emperor Commodus who clearly had a role in the (re)shaping of Christianity in the period.

I believe the understanding he develops of a 'spiritual' Gospel of Mark in Alexandria and a carnal copy in Rome. As Scott Brown notes:

Perhaps the best description [of Secret Mark] is Clement's own expression "a more spiritual gospel," by which he meant a gospel that concentrates on the interior, symbolic significance ('spirit') of the external narrative ('body'). [Mark's Other Gospel xi]

Yet what Brown and others haven't noticed - owing undoubtedly to their general ignorance of the mystical understanding of the Festival of Unleavened Bread within Judaism but more significantly Samaritanism - is the idea that Clement's understanding necessarily develops out of the idea of 'the adding of leaven' to unleavened bread.

Unleavened bread eventually has something added to it in Jewish tradition. In a number of Sephardic communities but especially those in Morocco the day that leaven is reintroduced to Jewish life is called 'the Maimuna' and one understanding of that term among the Sephardim is that the day after the seven day festival ends is in effect a 'day of Mammon.'

We needn't go too far in realizing that 'Mammon' is specifically referenced not only in the gospel but in the Testimony of Truth as the thing 'falsely added' to the Jewish service. For we read in what immediately follows in that text:

For no one who is under the Law will be able to look up to the truth, for they will not be able to serve two masters. For the defilement of the Law is manifest; but undefilement belongs to the light. The Law commands (one) to take a husband (or) to take a wife, and to beget, to multiply like the sand of the sea. But passion, which is a delight to them, constrains the souls of those who are begotten in this place, those who defile and those who are defiled, in order that the Law might be fulfilled through them. And they show that they are assisting the world; and they turn away from the light, who are unable to pass by the archon of darkness until they pay the last penny.

It is only because New Testament scholars and scholars of early Christianity are so absolutely ignorant of Jewish and Samaritan tradition that they can't see how everything 'fits' within the context of a Christian emphasis that Jesus INTRODUCED SOMETHING ELSE OTHER THAN THE LOVE OF MAMMON ON THE EIGHTH DAY.

Indeed the Testimony of Truth makes clear that Jesus introduced baptism on the Ogdoad instead of the tradition love of Mammon on that Holy Day. As we read in an especialy fragmentary section that follows:

... the Ogdoad, which is the eighth, and that we might receive that place of salvation." But they know not what salvation is, but they enter into misfortune, and into a [...] in death, in the waters. This is the baptism of death which they observe

The text becomes almost indecipherable in what follows but concludes reinforcing the the warning against Jewish dolos that begins the text:

... they do not blaspheme [...] them not, neither is there any pleasure nor desire, nor can they control them. It is fitting that they should become undefiled, in order that they might show to every one that they are from the generation of the Son of Man, since it is about them that the Savior bore witness.

The point then is that I am thoroughly convinced that the ritual context of the Letter to Theodore and Secret Mark is a pre-existing Alexandrian baptism of the catechumen at the very moment the seventh day 'goes out' into the eighth day - i.e. the day that the ancient Israelites were 'baptized in the cloud and in the sea.' [1 Cor 10:2]

For anyone who wants to read how this all comes together to prove Secret Mark is something approaching a Rosetta Stone for beginnings of Christianity read this.

Merry Christmas (my wife is going to kill me if I keep typing). This was very hurried but had to be said.