Why We Should All Be Suspicious of What Irenaeus Tells Us About the Heresies

I have been demonstrating the implication of the original Alexandrian Christian tradition celebrating the Resurrection on the eighth day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Let's try to dig a little deeper now.

By the end of the second century the Alexandrians 'agreed' (i.e. were coerced) by the Romans to not only abandon this original understanding but (a) fix the date of Easter on whatever date Sunday fell on between the 14th and 21st of Nisan and (b) identify that date as 'the third day' (i.e. in the manner that the Roman Church promoted Jesus resurrected).

It is plainly evident that traditions which placed the Resurrection on the eighth day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread COULD NOT have originally thought that this was a 'third day.' It was an 'ogdoad' - i.e. the eighth day. Moreover their gospels must have reflected this understanding.

That means NOT ONLY is it HIGHLY IMPROBABLE the gospel of this Alexandrian community shared our inherited notions about Jesus promoting his 'third day' resurrection BUT ALSO that familiar parables were also interpreted in different ways.

For instance 'the sign of Yonah' COULD NOT BEEN INTERPRETED TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE PROPHET JONAH BEING IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE FORETOLD JESUS 'THREE DAY' RESURRECTION. I never bought that interpretation in the first place and there a number of alternative explanations to consider when we get around to it.

But let me first take a moment to refute the central objection of Irenaeus to the 'heretical' interest in numbers and letters. Irenaeus says it is all nonsense. I counter that whether or not WE should believe in the significance isn't the point. The question rather is did the first Christians SEE GREAT SIGNIFICANCE in arguments based on kabbalistic interpretations of numbers and letters.

I think the answer is yes.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

When Victor managed to get the Alexandrians to give up their original system based on calculating the ogdoad of Easter on the day following the last day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Alexandrians clearly assigned the Resurrection to the third day of that Feast which was a Sunday. The eighth day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread clearly fell on a Friday in the year of the Passion.

We know what date that 'third day' Easter Sunday was for the third century Alexandrians - March 25th.

I have demonstrated in a number of previous posts that this date fits the date of the Jewish Passover in the last year of Tiberius' reign. But that isn't the point of this particular post.

If the 25th represented the third day of Passover then the eighth day of that same Passover (or the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the terms are interchangeable) would be the 30th of the Roman month of March.

Irenaeus tells us that the 'followers of Mark' (the Marcosians) had a fixation on the number thirty. One of the ways that they found deep significance in that number is by taking the number of letters in the alphabet and adding a number associated with Jesus to it.

Because the Marcosian community that Irenaeus reports on transposed the original kabbalah of Mark into the Greek language, we hear a great deal about their adding 24 to the number 6 to get 30. Nevertheless the original Alexandrian system undoubtedly employed Hebrew letters to arrive at its numerological calculations.

There are twenty two letters in the Hebrew alphabet not twenty four as with the Greek language so THEY WOULD ORIGINALLY HAVE DEVELOPED THEIR ARGUMENTS in relation to the addition of 22 and 8.

Should it be taken as 'mere coincidence' now that the eighth day of Passover/Unleavened Bread was also the 22nd of Nisan? And what's more that if - as we have suggested in our last post - this Alexandrian system was developed from Samaritan sources can Jerome's testimony be ignored that:

among the ancient Hebrew letters, which the Samaritans use up to this day, the last letter, 'tau', resembles the cross which is drawn on the foreheads of the Christians (at baptism), and is often formed with the gesture of the hand. (Comm. in Ez.9.4)

In other words, how could this deeply mystical Alexandrian community NOT HAVE NOTICED that the original date for the Resurrection - the eighth day of Passover/Unleavened Bread, the 22nd of Nisan - happened to correspond to the 30th of March in the year of Passion?

Even people who were NOT ALREADY INCLINED to think in terms of numerology and kabbalah would take a second look. As it was, every time the Alexandrians made the sign of the cross on their initiates on the Holy Ogdoad, they couldn't help see a mystical confirmation of this date - the 22nd letter on the 22nd day of the first month. Indeed it would only have been natural to take this one step further and see the Holy 'Eighthness' on the Holy Twenty Second confirming the holiness of the number thirty - the age of Jesus at his crucifixion - AND also the date according to the Roman calendar.

This doesn't mean of course that WE SHOULD BUY INTO THIS SYSTEM. The point is that it gives us insight into the manner in which the earliest Christians undoubtedly KNEW that there was holiness in the religious system they were being initiated into, this as they stood in the waters of the ogdoad having the twenty second letter mystically written on their foreheads.