I had my lunch with Benyamim Tsedaka today. Benyamim is one of the last living members of the formerly glorious Samaritan people, the descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel. Almost every year Benny comes to my neck of the woods (Seattle) around this time. Every time I meet him he tries to pretend that he 'just came to see me' (even though I know he has other reasons for coming).
I brought my son and we went to Applebee's (not my choice). My son ordered apples, undoubtedly owing to the fact that he thought they were a house specialty. He always calls Benny 'Santa Claus' even though he does not wear a red suit nor does he have a white beard.
My son is not yet three years old.
In any event, Benyamim had news to tell me. He is apparently going to be honored at the White House in November 2010. For what I don't have the foggiest idea. Something about James Charlesworth recognizing the Samaritan Pentateuch as the oldest recension of the Torah.
I really wasn't clear about how this all came together but I just went along with it.
In any event, the reason I was there was to help develop a paper I am working on to explain the symbolism of the Letter to Theodore using Samaritan sources (Samaritan sources which were completely unknown to Morton Smith and 99% of New Testament scholars out there). As such when we got our small talk out of the way and the time came for me to ask him questions about 'Samaritan tradition' I got him to acknowledge the following:
1) John MacDonald's translation of the Mimar Marqe is a joke. I already knew that from my friend Rory Boid of Monash University. MacDonald wasn't familiar with Samaritan Aramaic so one has to be suspicious of every sentence. I read to him all the citations which appear at this cite and he found fault with a number of renderings in MacDonald's translation. Nevertheless, THE GENERAL SENSE of what I had seen in the Mimar Marqe is accurate.
2) Benyamim acknowledged that Mark (Marqe) assigned the crossing of the sea on the seventh day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread but added that it happened towards the end of the day so that in effect BY THE TIME IT WAS OVER IT WAS THE EIGHTH DAY. This is very significant for my theory of a connection with Christianity.
3) Benyamim resisted my connection between Mark's (Marqe) identification of the seventh day crossing of the Red Sea with the parallel Christian idea in the First Letter to the Corinthians chapter 10. His reasoning came down to a two thousand year old antipathy for all things Christian. 'That's Christianity' he kept saying. Yet I reminded him that the Church Fathers testify to numerous Samaritan converts to Christianity. The line between what was Samaritan and what was Christian was clearly blurred for these converts.
However Benny persisted. The Samaritans, he argued, emphasized that the Israelites never touched the water when they crossed the sea. I acknowledged this reality but reminded him that the Jews thought the same thing. Nevertheless, the Apostle clearly got his idea from somewhere. I also cited the passages cited at this blog where the specific terms 'purified,' 'glorified' and 'magnified' in association with the Israelites after they crossed the Red Sea.
'Mark (Marqe) says that they were accompanied by the glory (kavod) of God?' I asked.
'Yes,' Benny acknowledged.
'Mark says that they were changed because of that crossing. Purified, glorified and magnified.'
'Yes,' Benny again acknowledged.
'Mark says because of the sea one kingdom was destroyed (Egypt) and another kingdom was established (Israel),' I added.
'That is all in Exodus,' he answered. 'There is nothing new.'
Benny's objection that BECAUSE the Israelites never touched the Red Sea when they crossed it IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CHRISTIAN BAPTISM is ludicrous. The Apostle of Christianity clearly made the connection and what's more various Christian traditions developed the same idea for Jesus (cf. the Testimony of Truth 'He came to the world by the Jordan river, and immediately the Jordan turned back').
At last Benny relented. 'Maybe this is from the Dositheans,' he said referring to a Samaritan sect who are reported to have always prayed while standing in water.
4) Benny also didn't know what to say when I asked him if the crossing of the Red Sea was the moment when Israel was 'redeemed.' I first asked whether there was any proof that the Samaritans identified this as 'the redemption' of the Israelites. When he waffled, I read them the passages in MacDonald's translation that applied this terminology. He checked the original Hebrew of Ben Hayyim and went quiet.
I then noted that Irenaeus when speaking about the Marcosian baptism emphasized that many of them felt that water was utterly unnecessary for their rite - "But there are some of them who assert that it is superfluous to bring persons to the water, but mixing oil and water together, they place this mixture on the heads of those who are to be initiated, with the use of some such expressions as we have already mentioned. And this they maintain to be the redemption." [AH i.21.4] This should prove decisive in overcoming Scott Brown's objection to LGM 1 representing a baptismal initiation owing to the lack of specific reference to water.
5) The next thing I tackled was the question of the dating of Marqe. I mentioned that our mutual friend Rory Boid was working on an article which would date Mark (Marqe) to the early second century at the very latest. He said then Rory is following his friend Stenhouse (the intentional irony on Benny's part as he explained was that the two men despise one another). I said no that his lines of reasoning would be very different and then I proceeded to develop an argument of my own.
I read him this passage I found in Book Three Chapter Two of the Mimar Marqe where Mark openly speaks of proselytes being allowed to partake of the Passover meal if they were circumcised. I asked him how could anyone assign this information to a period AFTER the bar Kochba revolt?
'Samaritans have always made proselytes and their conversion doesn't have to occur on Passover,' said Benny.
I argued that from the time of the bar Kochba revolt Jews and Samaritans couldn't circumcise non-believers. Origen reports that in his day the ban was still in effect on Samaritans with the penalty of death. I happen to possess the Amnon Linder's compilation of legal codes restricting Jewish and Samaritan proselytism. The ban was still in place from the time of Constantine and continued up to the Islamic period.
'The Samaritans continued to circumcise albeit in caves and other secret places,' said Benny.
But I argued that we weren't talking about the ban on the circumcision of their their sons (which likely only appeared for limited historical periods) but specifically about the conversion of outsiders. That Marqe would OPENLY refer to this practice necessarily implied a date before the bar Khochba revolt especially when taken into account with some other arguments to support this dating developed by Kippenberg and now Boid.
I felt Benny's stubbornness had everything to do with the fact that his mother was not Samaritan but a Jewish convert to the tradition. To argue that Samaritans stopped accepting outsiders was to question his legitimacy as a Samaritan.
6) I next asked him whether it was possible to argue that Samaritans established the proselytes on the seventh day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Benny said again that proselytes could be established at any time.
7) Then Benyamim gave me some useful information. First he said he would look into whether there were any hymns for the seventh day of the Unleavened Bread which referenced the 'purification,' 'glorification' and 'magnification' of Israel. Then he noted that it wasn't just on the seventh day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread that Samaritans sang about the crossing of the sea BUT EVERY SABBATH EVENING.
This is very important for my argument with regards to the seven day baptism ritual in To Theodore.
The Samaritan's Benny noted didn't just think that the crossing of the sea occurred on the seventh day but on a Sabbath. In other words, like the story of Creation 'the seventh day' was specifically the SEVENTH DAY OF THE WEEK.
As such EVERY SEVENTH DAY OF THE WEEK became a remembrance of the Sabbath upon which the kingdom of Israel was established (Marqe's words).
The question that I have been pondering for some time was how this event:
And after six days Jesus told him what to do, and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God.
was connected by the Alexandrian community with the seventh or eighth day after Passover. One possible solution was that this seventh day WAS ALSO A SABBATH. In such a scenario, if the Alexandrian community developed out of a tradition which paralleled the liturgy of the Samaritans, the seventh day of the week was already linked to the seventh day of Passover/the Festival of Unleavened Bread owing to the ritual remembrance of the events of the שביעי של פסח every seventh day of the week.
Perhaps this explains 'the teaching of the kingdom of God' - i.e. that this was the day that the kingdom of God was established through the Red Sea 'redeeming' Israel and destroying Pharaoh's army.
I have all of this on a small portable video recorder. Maybe I will put it up on Youtube if the demand is there.
In the back of my head I remember something about baptism on Saturdays which would be pertinent to this discussion. I will likely remember it by the time I put my head on the pillow in a few minutes ...
