When Ephrem reports about the Marcionite understanding Jesus coming down from heaven to earth he says that a 'mountain' was used. Which mountain would an early Christian tradition have in mind? The only possible answer is Mount Gerizim. There are no other stories of mountains reaching up to heaven and the description as it appears in Ephrem leaves little doubt that Gerizim is intended.
But that's not the revelation.
In the Third Discourse to Hypatius Ephrem makes clear to the knowledgeable the origins of the Marcionite Esu (= Jesus) for he writes:
And if they say that he was far from him, infinitely far, if it was a mountain immeasurable and an endless path, and a vast extent without any limit, then how was that Stranger able to proceed and come down the immeasurable mountain, and (through) a dead region in which there was no living air, and (across) a bitter waste which nothing had ever crossed? And if they make the improbable statement that "the Stranger like a man of war was able to come," well if he came as a man of war-[though he did not come), (take the case of) those weak Souls whom he brought up hence, how were these sickly ones able to travel through all that region which God their Maker and Creator was not able to traverse, as they say?
The 'man of war' in Song of the Sea in Exodus is אִישׁ. It is pronounced eesh. A light should immediately go on the heads of knowledgeable people because the earliest manuscripts of Christianity do not have the name 'Jesus' or Ἰησοῦς but ΙΣ or ΙΥ. It is 'assumed' that this is supposed to be a 'shortened form' of Ἰησοῦς but the Marcionite make clear this is not so.
I will argue in the coming weeks and months that Pauline mysticism knew from the very beginning that the gospel began in the year 6000 AM with the Enochian figure of אִישׁ coming down from heaven. There isn't a lot of speculation about this understanding. Just read 1 Corinthians 15 ...
