Why a Basic Cultural Ignorance WITHIN SCHOLARSHIP Has Prevented Us From Making Sense of the Gnostic Tradition of Alexandria

Irenaeus tried to convince his contemporaries that the heretics just 'made stuff up out of their own imagination.' Modern scholarship thinks it is 'rescuing' the beliefs of these 'faiths forgotten' when it tries to make sense of its rituals. But the efforts of these people are entirely misguided because they have no point of reference. They only know one model - that of the 'Judeo-Christian' tradition.

They received this idea at their birth (or perhaps more correctly - their baptism) and they don't want to change their point of view. They can't even conceive of an alternative model because of their inherited cultural prejudices.

I do believe that most scholars lack even a basic cultural awareness of the world around them let alone of religious life in antiquity.

How do you account for the fact that there isn't even a single American authority in all the universities of this great country who specialize in the study of the Samaritans.

All that matters is Judaism right? I mean everyone knows that Jesus was a Jew (yeah but tell that to the Pharisees of his day who thought he was really a Samaritan!).

Any way without getting too distracted my point is that we can't just try to read the Nag Hammadi texts and then what Irenaeus says and simply 'even out' or 'smooth over' the differences without putting the whole gnostic tradition in some sort of 'cultural context.' What kind of idiots would try and operate in any other manner?

Well, just look at all the idiotic scholarship gets produced on the subject of 'the gnostics' of Alexandria or Secret Mark for that matter.

It is absolutely imperative that we strive to find THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OUT OF WHICH - for instance - THE MARCOSIANS GOT THEIR 'REDEMPTION' RITUALS. All roads lead here, my friends. I have spent the last two months demonstrating this and apparently my arguments are catching someone's ear because the readership at this blog has just exploded over that same period of time.

I tell you, I have read countless STUPID treatises on the 'redemption' baptism. They always start with a basic observation - the word 'redemption' appears in various Nag Hammadi texts and this in turn corresponds with various things that Irenaeus says about 'the Marcosians' and things found in Clement's Excerpta Ex Theodoto.

So far we are in agreement.

But then because these scholars seem to think their work is done. They go out and have a hamburger and then when they finish their last french fry they think that because they have connected the Nag Hammadi writings to the Patristic writings they can just start making stuff up (or worse yet simple take Irenaeus' propaganda at face value) to make sense of HOW they fit together.

For God's sake people, in the same way that we think all our 'orthodox beliefs' go back to Judaism - i.e. some messianic form of Judaism that somehow believed Jesus was a kind of messiah that didn't have to do any of the things expected of a Jewish messiah - the gnostic beliefs HAVE TO GO BACK TO SOME PRE-EXISTENT EXPECTATION, SOME PRE-EXISTENT LITURGY, SOME PRE-EXISTENT FAITH.

Because these scholars can't find a pre-existent JEWISH tradition which could explain why - for instance - the Marcosians identified the baptism of their catechumen as a 'redemption' ritual where angels were thought to enter the water with the initiates, they give up and have another hamburger.

Of course, right within the present day nation of Israel - the land of the Jews - there is this people called the Samaritans who have as their most important book the Mimar Marqe. 'Marqe' is just the Samaritan way of saying (or spelling) 'Mark.' It was deliberately concocted (perhaps by Marqe himself) so that the name Mark has the very numerological value as Moses (i.e. 345).

You'd think any knowledgeable scholar would stop dead in their tracks at this point. After all many of the MSS of the Mimar Marqe introduce Mark as a prophet like Moses. But you have to remember again that these are ideas aren't as freely obtained as prizes in a McDonald's Happy Meal. You have to be capable of independent thought which is - apparently - a rarity in this nation.

The point is that when you read that Marcosians call their baptism ritual 'redemption' you'd think any scholar with half a brain would connect that to the Exodus narrative. Some perhaps have; I just haven't come across any of them.

Yet once you read in a study by Deconick, Pagels or whomever else you choose to read that angels were imagined to be present in the water with the initiate lights have to be going off in people's heads who have read the Mimar Marqe because that is exactly what Mark keeps saying over and over again in Book Two - the universally acknowledged EARLIEST PART of the Mimar Marqe.

Don't you see? What escapes these hamburger eating hordes is that the entire gnostic paradigm is attributable to a development from Samaritanism. I ask my readers just to witness what is clearly the basis for the whole gnostic understanding of baptism.

I won't get into the whole business of Clement of Alexandria being a Marcosian (something I proved a month ago), the idea that the Marcosians had 'hidden scriptures' including gospels which connected this 'redemption' baptism with something that appeared at or around Mark 10:48 (just read Irenaeus; it's there in black and white!!!!!).

The point is that this HAS TO BE the first addition of Secret Mark, the one where Jesus the glory Lord prepares his beloved neaniskos for his initiation into baptism. Notice that it happens on a seventh day. The Samaritans identify the crossing of the sea as taking place at the end of the seventh day as it 'goes out' into the eighth day. This is the time that every seventh day they sing a prayer developed from Exodus chapter fourteen.

The point is that I have already demonstrated that the Alexandrians at the time of Clement and his successor Origen baptized their catechumen at the end of the seventh day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. There can be no doubt of this. The fact that this contradicts 'when we think the catechumen should be baptized - i.e. Easter Sunday - is the real issue. It has nothing to do with 'problems' with Secret Mark. It is simply the egos of scholars who can't believe that the faith that established their shared world Empires might not have been the same as the faith of the apostles or at least the apostle who wrote the first gospel.

What I would like to do with my next book is explore the manner in which a Samaritan tradition developed by a Mark-who-was-like-Moses influenced the earliest Alexandrian faith of a Mark-who-was-like-Moses (just look at the implications of the neaniskos' 'redemption baptism' on the seventh day in Secret Mark). Yet I already wrote a book like this - the Real Messiah - and found that whenever I tried to explain the concepts to my contemporaries it was like talking to my dog.

They simply had no frame of reference.

Everything for them HAD TO BE based on a 'Judeo-Christian tradition.' Why? Well they never could give me a good explanation for that. It just 'was' supposed to be that way and they weren't interested in changing their minds or their habits.

That is why I have always argued for nothing short of projecting all my efforts into the coming era AFTER the decline of this present cultural paradigm. I have said it before, I will say it again, we will never get anywhere making sense of the origins of earliest Christianity, Secret Mark or the relationship between 'the gnostics' of Mark and the Samaritans of Mark until the Chinese or someone else takes over the world.

We simply have too much invested in the 'Judeo-Christian paradigm' which has ruled the world for the last two thousand years and - as long as things remain the same - CONTINUES TO RULE THE WORLD.

Just read ANY Islamic history of Christianity for some perspective people, PLEASE ...