I don't know if people at home can follow my argument for the authenticity of 'Secret Mark.' What I am trying to say is that it is only our inherent assumptions about what Christianity IS and ISN'T that limits our understanding. If we go beyond Irenaeus, beyond what would later become the Nicene tradition, we see a convergence of 'Mark' traditions in Alexandria. Let's make clear that Samaritans remained in Alexandria to the seventeenth century. They were there in great numbers down to at least the sixth century.
Where all roads cross is the idea that the original gospel written by Mark (and specifically identified in the Samaritan form of his name - Marqe - in the acrostic at the beginning of various 'Diatessaron' texts) was developed around the time of the destruction of the Jewish temple IN ORDER TO INTRODUCE A NEW RITUAL - BAPTISM - WHICH WOULD FORM THE BASIS OF A NEW CULT TO REPLACE THE OLD SYSTEM OF SACRIFICES.
I can't believe that anyone accepts that Christianity was engineered 'from heaven.' This is theology not science. A man named Mark clearly reshaped the Samaritan cultus in the same way that a man named Mark can be seen establishing the Christian cultus in Alexandria. I know this statement is very vague. I know that it lacks the specificity needed for an academic article but all good things begin somewhere.
I think it has the ability to initiate a new understanding of the origins of Christianity and in specific the purpose of a Gospel of Mark WHICH INCLUDED LGM 1, one of two reported 'additions' found in the Alexandrian autograph of the Gospel of Mark in Clement of Alexandria's day.
As my good friend Rory Boid of Monash University - and a man who happens to be greatest living expert on the Samaritans - noted to me in an email:
I think the name John either derives from or represents what is said in John I:16-17. So John is a TITLE of Mark. The original Gospel MUST have started “The Gospel of Jesus the Son of God. In the beginning was the Word …..”This is because the essence of the Gospel is in the start of the later John.
Dositheus was called “father” and his followers were called the children of Dositheus. They were empowered to become children of God by Dositheus. “They said the dead would rise soon as children of Dositheus the Prophet of God”. “They said the dead would rise soon as thanks to Dositheus and his sons and daughters”. John I:12 “… he gave POWER TO BECOME children of God”.
All four later gospels are called after the same two persons, the second Moses and his Apostle = Anointed Prince AND THE EVENT OF THE GIVING OF THE SECOND TORAH.[opinion cited]
I can't get over the fact that Jerome identifies the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4 as a Dosithean. Only the Dosithean tradition provides an explanation for how an 'Old Testament' tradition could develop into Christianity.
Let everyone else speculate about Essenes and their rites. The Dositheans provide a launching pad for the central ritual in Christianity.
Now the real question of all questions - one which Boid will answer in a forthcoming monograph is whether Mark (Marqe) was a Dosithean. I know from personal correspondences with him that it is highly likely that he will say yes. This will only cement the relationship between messianic Samaritanism (for Marqe was once recognized as the 'Samaritan messiah') and Christianity.
Indeed I have shown that the writings of Marqe witness THE EXACT SAME UNDERSTANDING as the Apostle of the Marcionite churches (a name which as Boid has also pointed out to me is an Aramaism meaning 'those of Mark'). The Samaritan Mark says in no uncertain terms that the ancient Israelites were baptized in the cloud and in the sea on the seventh day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. What is even more unmistakable is the fact that the baptism involved the angelic glory hypostasis - the cloud - purifying, glorifying and magnifying the ancient Israelites.
All of this seems remarkably similar to me to the 'redemption' baptism of the Marcosians (another name which really only means 'those of Mark'). Here initiates were baptized in order to be transformed into the equal of angels. While we can't prove yet that the initiation took place over seven days there are remarkable parallels between the 'redemption' of those of Mark and the seven day initiation in Secret Mark referenced in the Letter to Theodore of Clement of Alexandria.
As I have noted over and over again at this site I am not the only one to identify Clement as a Marcosian based on verbatim parallels between his writings and Irenaeus' original report on the Marcosians in Against the Heresies.
I would like to go one step further in 'squaring the circle' on this argument and go back to the passage I just cited in my last post from the Mimar Marqe and compare it to what appears in the parallel writings of the Marcosians and Clement of Alexandria. First the Mimar Marqe:
At the time God said to him "Come up to me on the mountain" (Deut x.1 Targ) when he went up to Him and the cloud covered him for six days, his body was holy and holiness was (thereby) increased. He ascended from human status to that of the angels. He was making supplication during the six days and prostrating before the King of all kings; he saw the Sanctuary of the Unseen spread out in the fire within the cloud. He called on the seventh day from the midst of the cloud and he saw the ranks of the angels in their array. [Mimar Marqe V.3]
And now the parallel passages in Clement and Irenaeus' report on the Marcosians:
that the fruit of this arrangement and analogy has been manifested in the likeness of an image, namely, Him who, after six days, ascended into the mountain along with three others, and then became one of six (the sixth), in which character He descended and was contained in the Hebdomad, since He was the illustrious Ogdoad. [AH i.14.6]
thus the Lord, who ascended the mountain, the fourth, becomes the sixth, and is illuminated all round with spiritual light, by laying bare the power proceeding from Him, as far as those selected to see were able to behold it, by the Seventh, the Voice, proclaimed to be the Son of God; in order that they, persuaded respecting Him, might have rest; while He by His birth, which was indicated by the sixth conspicuously marked, becoming the eighth, might appear to be God in a body of flesh, by displaying His power, being numbered indeed as a man, but being concealed as to who He was. [Stromata vi.6]
Am I the only person who sees this as the ultimate proof for the authenticity of To Theodore? Am I the only one who sees this as nothing short of AN EXPLANATION as to the whole purpose for ALL OF MARK'S WRITINGS in Greek AND Aramaic.
Of course my detractors will say that both the Samaritan Mark and the Alexandrian Mark are only referencing the same narrative in Exodus:
and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud. [Ex. 24:16]
Yet haven't I already shown that the parallel goes beyond this. With the addition of the Letter to Theodore (and the uncanny parallels in Irenaeus' identification that the Marcosians connected their 'redemption' ritual with the same section in Mark chapter 10 i.e. the very place where LGM 1 appears) aren't we beginning to see that the Samaritan Mark AND the Alexandrian Mark conceived of a messianic INTERPRETATION of the transformation of humanity from being 'made after the six' to that of being 'refashioned after the seven or eight'?
I certainly thinks so but it will take me YEARS to explain these Jewish (and Samaritan) mystical concepts to those unfamiliar with these principles.
Have to go take my family out for some fun ...
