Another Proof For the Authenticity of Secret Mark (At Least for an Idiot Like Me)

I have taken issue with Scott Brown's interpretation of the Letter to Theodore as NOT originally referring to a water baptism. I think the context is obvious - a naked neaniskos, an initiation - but Scott Brown can point to an obvious lack of reference to water in the passage.

So who is really correct here?

Well, let's not jump to conclusions just yet. Let's just acknowledge that the same passage can be read two different ways - as referring to a water immersion and NOT referring to a water immersion.

I still think that the fact that the initiation took place on the seventh day connects it to the Samaritan tradition. The Samaritans have a prayer as the Sabbath 'goes out' into the eighth day commemorating the ancient Israelites owing to the fact that their crossing took place as the seventh day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread 'went out' to the eighth day.

Now we all know that the Apostle of Christianity says that this crossing is the 'typology' for Christian baptism. However it is interesting that when you corner a surviving member of the Samaritan tradition they will push back against this interpretation - as I learned at an Applebee's last month - emphasizing that the ancient Israelites never actually touched the water.

Now it is equally certain that there were sectarian groups of Samaritans who stood 'praying in the water' undoubtedly because the ancient Israelites sang the Song of the Sea 'while in the water.' That's what makes the first addition to Secret Mark referenced in the Mar Saba document so interesting.

The specific word 'water' is never used.

What makes this even more interesting is that I have already done a pretty good job of connecting Clement and Secret Mark to the heretical sect called 'the Marcosians' - i.e. those of Mark who were originally centered in Egypt (and undoubtedly Alexandria).

Irenaeus' original testimony about the followers of Mark emphasizes that some kind of 'redemption baptism' took place in the narrative leading up to Mark 10:38 (i.e. exactly where the first addition to Secret Mark is located). They undoubtedly called it a 'redemption' ritual because it was connected with the narrative in the Book of Exodus (a story which is always identified as 'the redemption' by Jews and Samaritans alike).

Yet whatever this missing passage in the gospel of the Marcosians looked like it had to have been ambiguous enough that divisions within the community could have emerged which interpreted the ritual as either employed water for baptism or DID NOT employ water for baptism.

Listen to Irenaeus' original testimony once again about the varying interpretations which develop out of the 'hidden and bastard scriptures' [AH i.19.1] of the Marcosians:

some of them prepare a nuptial couch, and perform a sort of mystic rite (pronouncing certain expressions) with those who are being initiated, and affirm that it is a spiritual marriage which is celebrated by them, after the likeness of the conjunctions above. Others, again, lead them to a place where water is, and baptize them ... 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. They, too, are accustomed to anoint with balsam. Others, however, reject all these practices, and maintain that the mystery of the unspeakable and invisible power ought not to be performed by visible and corruptible creatures, nor should that of those [beings] who are inconceivable, and incorporeal, and beyond the reach of sense, [be performed] by such as are the objects of sense, and possessed of a body. [Irenaeus AH. i.21. 3, 4]

Clearly two distinct schools of thought emerge from his report on 'those of Mark' - i.e. those who employ water for their 'redemption initiation' and those who don't.

The point of course is that Irenaeus makes absolutely clear that whatever was guiding these 'heretics' associated with Mark, it was not the familiar gospel narrative of Jesus going to John to be baptized in the Jordan (a passage which Tertullian infers was absent from the Marcionite gospel).

No one could have been so stupid to think that water wasn't necessary for initiation into the Christian religion based on the Jesus baptized by John in the Jordan narrative. Even mentally challenged people couldn't have developed the idea that water wasn't necessary for Christianity if a liturgy was being developed around this passage.

Of course, the Marcosians of Egypt, Rome, Asia Minor, the south of France and Hispania were somehow developing a great variety of interpretation regarding ANOTHER BAPTISM, a narrative found in their gospel either instead of this Jesus baptized by John narrative or in place of it.

Whatever that gospel of the community of Mark looked like it had to have been ambiguous enough to facilitate two ritual interpretations - an initiation which involved water and one that didn't it.

That's one of many reasons why an idiot like me thinks that Secret Mark is a real historical document and not something invented by Morton Smith. He couldn't have made up something so ambiguous that it happened to explain the divisions with the heretical community of Mark.

In this particular case, both Scott Brown and I might be right about each of our interpretations of the material AND the authenticity of the original Mar Saba find ...