Marcion - Keramion in Mark 14:13

[Giuseppe]

καὶ ἀποστέλλει δύο τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς Ὑπάγετε εἰς τὴν πόλιν, καὶ ἀπαντήσει ὑμῖν ἄνθρωπος κεράμιον ὕδατος βαστάζων· ἀκολουθήσατε αὐτῷ,

So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.

(Mark 14:13)

κεράμιον is anagram of Markion.

So Couchoud:

The strange command given by Jesus to his disciples to follow a man carrying a keramion of water, and the rather mysterious manner in which he gives them to understand that they are to follow this man—i.e., Marcion, whose name is a sort of anagram of keramion—instructs the Christian to observe the Marcionite rite in which water only was drunk in the eucharist (R. Stahl).

(Creation of Christ, p. 188, n. 369)

[Ethan]

Herodotus 3:6 (484 BCE – 425 BCE)
I am going to mention something now which few of those who sail to Egypt know. Earthen jars (κεράμιον) full of wine are brought into Egypt twice a year from all Greece and Phoenicia besides: yet one might safely say there is not a single empty wine jar anywhere in the country. What then (one may ask) becomes of them? I shall explain this too. Each governor of a district must gather in all the earthen pots from his own township and take them to Memphis, and the people of Memphis must fill them with water and carry them to those arid lands of Syria; so the earthen pottery (κεράμιον) that is brought to Egypt and unloaded or emptied there is carried to Syria to join the stock that has already been taken there.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... g=original

[perseusomega9]

Mark 14: “This is my blood of the[a] covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. 25 “Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

[Giuseppe]

Mark 14: “This is my blood of the[a] covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. 25 “Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

are you quoting it as presumed confutation of the argument's described above ?

The point is that the same anagram is found in Luke/Marcion 22:10:

ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ 22:10 Greek NT: Nestle 1904
ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς Ἰδοὺ εἰσελθόντων ὑμῶν εἰς τὴν πόλιν συναντήσει ὑμῖν ἄνθρωπος κεράμιον ὕδατος βαστάζων· ἀκολουθήσατε αὐτῷ εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν εἰς ἣν εἰσπορεύεται

So Mark would derive from Marcion here.

[perseusomega9]

No, I just thought it was interesting that your point was the anagram and the marcionite eucharistic water and later at the supper Jesus says he won't be drinking wine again until the kingdom

[Giuseppe]

Water is not wine and surely the difference would be not banal from a theological marcionite view: the wine seems to remember too much the Creator (particularly, his kingdom to come). But rightly you ask a good question: in this point could "Mark" be secretly a marcionite (assuming the possibility that Jesus was addressing the disciples secretly and vainly towards Marcion)?

But I follow Jean Magne's view about the Eucharist as an evolution of the Original Sin of Genesis read positively as a Revelation of the Gnosis by a Supreme God. The water becomes rightly the symbol of the Gnosis (see also the Gnostic meaning of baptism as per Detering's book on the interpretation of Exodus).

So yes, the possibility is concrete.

[Giuseppe]

Could the same anagram be used as a polemical anti-marcionite pun, alternatively? Against Marcion who preached the need of the water/Gnosis, the judaizer "Mark" invented the following episode:

13 So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. 14 Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 15 He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”

16 The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

The point of the anti-marcionite Jesus would be: firstly follow Marcion but then follow not more him, but the true "owner of the house" as someone who is distinct from the bearer of the jar, i.e. the Demiurge. So the Demiurge will prepare the last eschatological banquet in the "large room upstairs", the celestial Jerusalem. The banquet of which the new judaizing Eucharist is symbol in opposition to the Gnostic Sin (really: a Revelation of the Gnosis) of Adam and Eve.

[Giuseppe]

The banquet of which the new judaizing Eucharist is symbol in opposition to the Gnostic Sin (really: a Revelation of the Gnosis) of Adam and Eve.

In this way the "carrier (not Richard) of the jar of Gnosticizing water", Marcion, was made against the his will a precursor of the true judaizing Wine of the Demiurge, just as...

...just as John the Baptist by water was made - against the his original will???? - a precursor of the true baptism "by fire".

But was then John the Baptist a Gnostic figure?