A follow up to this article from a few weeks ago.I promised my regular readers that I will do my best to develop an interest for them in the Samaritan tradition. If you want to actually know more about the tradition as it has survived to this day, I will pass you on to Benyamim Tsedaka or a number of prominent academics in the field.
My interest in the Samaritans is entirely theoretical in nature. I happen to see a basic similarity between the tradition emphasis in that culture of Moses being initiated by the angel of God or his Glory (kavod) and the original Alexandrian monophysite interest in Jesus as 'glory Lord' initiating St Mark into the mysteries of God so as to write the new Torah of God.
Again I want to emphasize that if you talk to a Samaritan or a Copt and ask them 'what about all this stuff that Stephan Huller is saying?' they will tell you either politely or emphatically that I am crazy.
I get the exact same reaction from many New Testament scholars.
The point however is there a number of things - the Letter to Theodore most notably - that I think draw the two communities together.
Let me give my readers another example.
I was out with Benny Tsedaka at the restaurant when he came to visit a few weeks back. He knows my theory and of course tries his best to be polite with me but basically has no interest in seeing a connection between his religion and Christianity.
I however avoid trying to bring up my theory but continually throw out things that my friend Rory Boid from Monash University has said to be as a way of putting him on his guard.
When I mentioned this - i.e. the clear understanding that Mark of the Samaritan tradition was indeed once held to be a 'second Moses' (and thus a messiah) - he starts to dance and put forward weak arguments like 'maybe Mark only became associated with Moses much later in Samaritan history.'
I respond by saying 'but the name Mark has the same numerological value as Mushi (the Samaritan pronunciation of Moses)?'
'That's true,' he says.
'And the business about 'Shilo coming' is just a way of saying that the one who is to come is going to have a name with the same numerological value as Moses?' I again ask.
'Well, yes you could say that,' he replies. Shilo, Mark and Moses all have a numerological value of 345.
'And Ben-Hayyim struggled with the Samaritan idea that this Shilo - the 345 who was to come - would manifest himself as the 'unsheather of the cross?' I add.
And then there is this pause and I have always known from past experiences with Benny that this means he's gotten an idea which supports my argument.
'All Samaritans have two names,' he mutters to himself, 'a Hebrew name and a name they use among their dealings with outsiders.'
'What was Mark's Hebrew name?' I ask.
'We no longer know,' he replies.
'Couldn't it be Ninna?' I ask giving a name that is associated with Marqe in the liturgy but which is now generally assumed to be his son.
Benny has no reaction.
'Rory says that Ninna is likely a diminutive form of the name John,' I say.
Benny changes the topic and pretends to concentrate on eating his grilled fish.
Of course I am thinking of the traditional Alexandrian notion of Mark having two names - a Jewish name 'John,' and his 'Gentile name' Mark. Benny wasn't going for any of it that day.
The point is that the Samaritan tradition is so very bizarre. It is wrongly identified by many as being a devotion to Moses. It is more properly explained as a devotion to Mark's understanding and interpretation of the Pentateuch as explained in the Memar Marqe.
As I see it, there is very little difference between Marqe's development of the traditional understanding of Moses being instructed by an angel to know things that will be and the Alexandrian understanding of Mark being instructed by Jesus the glory Lord to write the gospel.
It just happens to be two different ways of explaining the same idea.
Now I don't for a minute believe that the Samaritans ever called their angel Jesus. I also don't think that the text that now survives as the Mimar Marqe hasn't underwent a massive transformation any more than the gospel of Mark is not the same as the gospel which was known to Clement and his generation.
Nevertheless I have always seen a basic commonality in the idea of a guy named 345 being initiated into the divine mysteries by the Glory Lord so as to be the intermediary between this world and the heavenly world.
In my opinion this is the core revelation of the Secret Gospel - viz that the neaniskos being baptized on the evening of the seventh day is necessarily 'like Moses.' This because the Sabbath - i.e. the seventh day - is for the Samaritans 'like' the seventh day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
As Benny notes to me in a follow up email:
The Israelite Samaritan believe that the crossing of the Reed Sea started on Saturday night. Therefore we are starting the second part of Saturday evening prayer with the citation from Ex. 14:10, 13 by the next words:
וישאו בני ישראל את עיניהם ויראו והנה מצרים נסעים אחריהם וייראו מאד.
ויאמר משה אל העם אל תיראו, התיצבו וראו את ישועת ה'.
ה' ילחם לכם ואתם תחרישון:
14:10b: "And the son of Israel raised their eyes and they saw, and behold the Egyptians were driving after them, and they became very frightened."
14:13a: "And Moses said to the people, do not fear, stand by and see the salvation of Shehmaa."
14:13b: "Shehmaa will fight for you while you keep silent."
Note: all citations are from the Samaritan Pentateuch.
Of course the million dollar question is - why did Mark liken baptism to the 'washing in the cloud and in the sea'? [1 Cor 10:2] For that the reader has to actually pick up a copy of the Book of Exodus and read it from beginning to end with the question of - how does this connect to earliest Christianity? - at the front of his mind.
There can be only one answer ...
