Kingdom of God – a return of Paradise.

This article could be compared to a very fine but very different piece of research done by David E. Aune, The cultic Setting of realized Eschatology in early Christianity, 1972.
Religionsphänomenologie,1969,pp.328-39. Der Mandäismus,1982,pp. 7; 60f.
On the second morning of Tabernacles "the glory of the Lord" would enter his temple through "the primordial gate" of the sun, later called the Nicanor-gate, i.e. the gate for "him who has victory". To the vocabulary of this theophany belongs not only doksa, "glory", but also pleroma. "fullness", Hez 43,5, the roaring sound , Hez 43,2, the presence of the Spirit, 43,5 and the believer being raised up before the presence of God, 43,3+5, 3,23f, cf. Acts 2 where the glory are flames resting over the heads of the disciples. Characteristic of New Testament Christology is that this epiphany-tradition and its enthronement symbolism is transferred to Jesus. See the important article of Julian Morgenstern: "The Gates of Righteousness", Hebrew Union College Annual VI, 1929,pp.1-37. The sunrise it the great symbol of world order recreated.
Per Beskow, Rex Gloriae 1962, pp.221f.
Ibd, p.188.
Ibd. p. 166
Beskow, pp. 166f.
Cecilia Wassén, Visions of the Temple, Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 76,2011, pp.41-59: the metaphor of the Qumran community as a temple is "a root metaphor from which a system of metaphors emerge" and "it had a deep impact on the construction of the identity of the sect",p.41. The community as a temple is also the Garden of Eden, "a sanctuary of Adam", 4QFlor 1-2, where the original glory of Adam will be regained, i.e. the glorious state of Adam before the fall,1QS,4,22f.
"You did bring your world to corruption: that everything might be dissolved, and then renewed, and that the foundation for everything might be your rock, and on it you did build your Kingdom; and it became the dwelling place of the saints", Ode 22,11f. "and I was established on the rock of truth, where He had set me up…and I drank and was inebriated with the living water that doth not die", Ode 11,5-7 (transl. J.H.Bernard, The odes of Solomon, 1912).
The raising up "explains what happened in baptism (and masiqta, the mass for the deceased). The soul, when raised up, set up, has reached its goal. It stands between the manas of Light and this soul, together with those of the faithful fathers and teachers who are departed and those who are still in the flesh shall be established there." Eric Segelberg, Masbûtâ, p.90. This word "raise up" (qayyam) is more or less synonymous to saba`, "baptize". The West-Syrian word for baptism is `md, cf. Hebrew `amad = "stand", in Qumran used about the standing among angels: "My standing is from you", 1QH X,22, cf. 25;29. "On a place of standing…in union with the community of sons of heaven", XI,21f. Widengren tries to explain the baptismal phrases "raise up", "make stand firm" as going back to a Sumerian custom of erecting the king's statue in the temple, but the Qumran texts show that it has to be interpreted as raised up among the angels eternally standing in praise before the throne of God.
2.Sam 7,12f.+16+24, the promise of the prophet Nathan, uses the word cwn ="erect, making firm, standing firm". The theophany "makes (Mt. Zion) firm" after chaos. This and the above mentioned (n.8) provide the background for the symbolism of "standing".
quoted after The Dead Sea Scrolls, vol 4B: Angelic Liturgy: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, 1999, ed. James Charlesworth.
"these songs aim at transforming the regular mundane world into a sacred sphere in time and space, where the human and divine can meet", Wassén,p.59.
Cf. Is 61,3: They shall be called "trees of righteousness planted by the Lord to his glory" and be given "the oil of joy" and "a garland (p'er)". Ps. 92,13: "the righteous will flourish like the palm tree, grow like a cedar on Lebanon. Those who are planted in the house of Yhvh, they will greatly flourish in the courts of our God." "This metaphor first of all adopts the idea of the fullness of life associated with Zion as the paradisiacal mountain of God" (Frank-Lothar Hossfeld & Erich Zenger, Psalms 2 (Hermeneia), 2005,p.440f.) Yhvh is this firm rock at the centre of the cosmos securing stability and right order, i.e. righteousness: "Righteous is Yhvh, he is my rock",v.16. Hossfeld-Zenger brings as illustration a relief from the palace of Ashurbanipal (ca.600 B.C.) showing a sanctuary on a mountain, surrounded by a park full of trees, divided by canals of water and a via sacra with an altar standing on it. This relief "combines the motifs of the paradisiacal garden of the gods and the temple as the realm of fertility and life."
Wolfgang Fauth has shown the role of the paradeisos-garden in the sacral kingship ideology of the Near East (Der königliche Gärtner und Jäger im Paradeisos, Persica 8, 1979,pp.1-53). Xenophon Anabasis 1.2.7-9 tells us that Cyrus had a palace (basíleia) and a large paradeisos full of wild animals which he used to hunt. "The river Maeander flows through the middle of the paradeisos, and its springs are from the palace… The Great king also has a fortified palace…at the springs of the Marsyas river." The wellspring coming out of the royal palace is recalling the mountain of El enthroned by the double wellspring. The Hellenes encamped at Sittake by the Tigris "near a large and beautiful paradeisos with all kinds of trees" 2.4.14. Theophrastes Hist Plan. 5.8.1 writes that "in Syria in the mountain the cedar-trees reach an exceptional height and thickness, some are so large that 3 men cannot join hands around them". (Here quoted after John Pairman Brown, The Legacy of Iranian Imperialism, III, 2001,pp.122ff.) The cedar forest of Lebanon was the "garden of the gods", Hez 31,8 (Fritz Stolz, Die Baüme des Gottesgartens auf dem Libanon, ZAW 84, 1972, pp.141-56). In the Gilgamesh-epos Huwawa is the highgod the guardian of the Cedar mountain (originally the giver of life but here changed into a demon) and Gilgamesh the killer of life, the "hunter", cutting down the cedar and killing the highgod. His late descendant, Kombabos (Lucian, de dea Syria), stands for androgynous ecstatic unity.
The Jewish Temple, 1996,p.45.
Geo Widengren, Psalm 110 och det sakrale kungadömet i Israel. UUÅ, 1941.7.1.
Das ewige Leben, 1914, the chapter "Das typisch johanneische Lebensideal" is pp.213-43.
Ibd.,p.227. Those born by God are changed into divine nature and live by the Spirit and not by the flesh and "in all eternity he shall not see death", 8,51.
Ibd.,p.221.
Die Vorgeschichte der christlichen Taufe, 1929, pp.1ff.
The Secret Adam, 1960.
"Himmlische Speise", Kurt Rudolph, Die Mandäer, II, 1961,p.115;"Himmelsbrot",p.118. Mambuha is "himmlische Wasserquellen", p.119.
The Son of Man in Myth and History, 1967,pp.182f.
In: The Savior God, E.O.James Volume, ed. S.G.F.Brandon, 1963, pp.205-17.
An unexpected support for the theory of Geo Widengren and Frederic H. Borsch that Adam in Gen is the primordial sacred king and that the early baptismal ritual makes the initiated one with this primordial heavenly figure is presented by Ethel S. Drower in her book The Secret Adam, 1960 where she draws our attention to the esoteric gnosis imparted only to the initiated few, the so called Nazoraeans, i.e. the inner circle of Mandaean priests. This secret teaching, Nazirutha, was the deeper esoteric understanding of the baptismal ritual and the masiqtah ("the mess for the deceased") and it was explained in the secret scrolls not given to a layman (The thousand and twelve questions, The Great "First World", The Diwan of "Celestial Kingship" are the 3 most important). In ordinary baptism and in the baptism of the newly deceased man is reborn as the Primal Man, Adam "the hidden", of cosmic dimensions, "the ultimate expression of Humanity perfected and spiritualized" as "crowned and anointed King-Priest". (A Pair of Nazoraean commentaries, 1963,p.IX, The secret Adam, p.xv.) This secret teaching goes back to the first or second centuries. Nazoraeans the name the Mandaean priests call themselves comes from the root "natsar" "to keep, observe, guard", cf. Is 48,6 netsurot, "secret things", 65,4 netsurim, "secret places" (ibd.,XIV and n4). "Every priest is a king (malka), crowned and anointed as microcosm of the macrocosm Adam Kasia ("hidden", i.e. secret), the crowned and anointed Anthropos, Arch-priest" (ibd., p.XI). At death when leaving the material body it is vital that the soul and the spirit is united and is given a new body, the great and glorious body of Adam Kasia.
Paradis-sekten, 2007 pp.54f.
The Odes of Solomon, 1912.
Evangelium Veritatis – a confirmation homily and its relation to the Odes of Solomon, Orientalia Suecana VIII, 1960, pp.3-42. Segel berg has a very good discussion of the problems in detecting an early baptismal praxis in the terminology of devestio/investio, unction, sealing, stêrizô/confirm, invitatorium. See also Charles Gieschen, Baptismal Praxis and Mystical Experience in the Book of Revelation, in Paradise Now, ed. April DeConick. 2006, pp.341-54. It is quite common among scholars to imagine a development in the baptismal ritual from a very simple rite only consisting in a ritual "dipping" to a more elaborate ritual created under the influence of Hellenistic mystery-religions. This being the case we have to interpret the devestio/investio and the unction/sealing (2.Cor 1,21f.;1.John 2,27) as mere symbolic language later changed into concrete acts and the same goes for the drinking of both wine and milk (Odes of Solomon) and water (1.Cor 12,13) in the first communion after baptism. But this assumption seems a bit awkward to me.
Odes of Solomon, 2009, pp.41-3.
Lattke,p.31.
The phrase "every knee shall bow", Phil 2,10, seems to indicate that this hymn has drawn its imagery from a worship setting.
Acc. to 1.En 46,5f. the Son of Man will "hurl down the kings from their thrones and kingdoms because they neither exalt nor praise him…because they do not exalt the Name of the Lord of Spirits". 47,2: "In those days, all the holy ones who dwell above…with one voice – glorifying, giving thanks, and praising the Name of the Lord of Spirits." 39,9f.: Enoch joins the angels that "stand before the Glory" singing the qedushah, and he is "established in blessing and glory" (trans. Daniel Olson, Enoch, A New Translation,2004).
John Gray, The Biblical Doctrine of the Reign of God, 1979,p.1: In the enthronement-psalms the "Reign of God" was experienced "sacramentally". The same can be said about the early church.
Ethel S. Drower, The Secret Adam,1960,pp.8ff. The secret teaching based upon the mystic Adam is found in the priestly commentaries. Rudolf Macuch defends Drower against the allegation of Jonas Greenfield that this secret teaching is late, Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic, 1965,p.LXVI.
Its leaves are precious stones and its fruits are pearls, Book of John, Lidzbarski 129,19ff. The wreath of myrtle used as crown in the baptismal ritual is a symbol of the Tree of Life and its "flaming leaves", Canonical Prayerbook, no 5: The prayer for the turban. Living water comes out underneath this vine, Book of John 232,19ff. It is called "the vine which is all Life, the great tree which is all healings", Ginza, Lidzbarski 191,1-4. Can.Prayerb. 9. When the soul is "sealed with the pure oil which has come from the house of the great Life" he will see the vine of Taurel ("El the bull") resting in the Jordan river…the vine Rwaz…all 'utras are sending out its sweet smell…he will see the two pure mountains" (see below) Ginza 326,19ff.. The messenger from the light world Hibil says: "I am a gentle vine, planted at place of splendid glory… the Great Life was my planter" Ginza 301,10-3. The messenger Manda dHiia is also called a "vine", Ginza 181,27f. Ryan, pp.54-86.
Ryen, pp.6+8f.
S.Parpola, The Assyrian Tree of Life, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52, 1993, pp.161-208.
Byron Shafer, Temples, Priests, and Rituals: An Overview, in Temples of Ancient Egypt, ed. Byron Schafer, 1997, chap 1,pp.1ff.
Kingdom of God – a return of Paradise (The cultic Setting of realized Eschatology.)
Albert Schweitzer and Johannes Weiss have interpreted the central theme of the Gospel of Jesus, "The Kingdom of God", as an earthly kingdom being realized in the very near future. This is to my mind a much too narrow understanding ignoring the fact that the kingdom of God is also a central theme in the Old Testament. In fact it can be seen as the main theme in the "Temple theology of Zion". The main room in the temple was the hekal, a word often used about the palace of a king Dan 1,4; Is 39,7; Ps 45,9, and the Holy of Holies originally contained the golden cherub-throne of the "Great King" fighting the powers of darkness and death. In the temple were all the symbols of "Life", the Menorah as the symbol of Life and Light, the Paradise-river Gihon, cherubs and palm trees and all the fruits and flowers of paradise as decorations. The most important cultic act, the only one involving the Holy of Holies was the Yom Kippur ritual with a ritual cleansing of the Holy of Holies. All the sins of the people of Israel were like dirt clinging to the temple and God had withdrawn his presence, but after the cleansing seen as a recreation, a rebuilding of the temple, the King would reenter the throne coming in the glory of the rising sun on the second morning of Tabernacles, after the nightly dance with torches in the courtyard of the women. This was also seen as a hierogamy and the huts of Tabernacles were as proved by Geo Widengren from the function of the ritual hut in Mandaean and Mesopotamian religion a symbol of the hut where the dark goddess of the earth and the city (the daughter of Zion, Shulamite) celebrated holy wedlock with the hero of the sun and Paradise. An Essene-Egyptian version of the theophany is the ritual described by Philo in de cont vit. After a nightly dance (wheeling and counterwheeling, 84) at sunrise they will "stand with their whole body turned east" stretching their hands towards heaven, 89: "Citizens of heaven and earth, established together with (systathénthes) the Father and Maker of all", 90.
Acc. to Clement of Alexandria and Origin the Kingship of Christ was made manifest in the entry of Jesus into the temple of Jerusalem from the Mt. Olives. Acc. to Origin this entry is an anticipation of the Ascension from Mt. Olives, his entry into the heavenly city. There is a parallelism between the heavenly and the earthly Jerusalem, Gal 4,26, Heb 12,22 Rev 21-22. In the testimonia tradition the entry into Jerusalem is seen as the fulfilment of Gen 49,11. In the writings of Clement and Origin Christ seldom appears as the eschatological King; instead, he appears primarily as the eternal Logos, the power by which God directs and reveals his law to the world. The features of the old cult-mystery from the epiphany of the divine King during Tabernacles and the Temple of Jerusalem as a place where heaven and earth meet are strong and constantly overshadowing the eschatological notion of kingship. In the Antiochene church the service lead by the bishop and the hierarchy of the Church reflects the heavenly service before the throne of God. "I exhort you, be zealous to do everything in godly harmony, with the bishop presiding as the type of God". God may be called the Bishop of all things (Ign. Magn. 3,1). "When the ecclesiastical hierarchy functions as a whole, each member has been given a role corresponding with the heavenly cult". Cf. Rev 4f.: On his throne at the centre of the heavenly sanctuary sits the Father, surrounded by the twenty-four elders; before the throne stands the Lamb, as sacrifice and servant. The elders are representing the heavenly council of "sons of God". The same idea that the earthly hierarchy is an image of the heavenly also occurs in Clement of Alexandria and the Syriac Didascalia II,26.
The "realized eschatology" in the Hodayot-psalms of Qumran has to be seen in the light of the temple-ideology. They thank the Lord because he has saved the singer from the abyss of Sheol and from sinking in the chaotic sea and placed him on a firm rock beside trees of life drinking from the "well of life". "The temple-community" at Qumran is the symbolic realization of Mt. Paradise at the cosmic centre on the even high grounds, where there is stability and eternal life and jubilation and praising of God together with angels. The same set of ideas and the erecting of the baptismal candidate to eternal standing are found in the Odes of Solomon and in the Masbûtâ, the baptismal liturgy of the Mandaeans.
Perhaps early Christianity must be seen not only as a looking to the future, but a communion already celebrating the wedlock of the Great King.
The phrase "Kingdom of God" goes a long way back. The fight for the "Kingdom of Heaven" is already in prehistoric time the victory of the king-god of early spring over the wintery typhoons and the roaring sea. In Jerusalem it becomes the victory of the Lord over the chaotic sea, bringing Life and Light and stability, firm standing to the centre of the world. At the time of Jesus the phrase is not so often met with.
An important exception are the Sabbat-songs found at Qumran. Here we find "the kingship of God" often mentioned:
2,19: "laud of your kingship".
6,39 (& 6,48): "the exaltation of his kingship", 6,58: "praise the kingship of his glory (kabod)".
7,3: "in the splendor of lauding (is) the glory of his kingship".
The Kingship of God is here his being the mighty king over heaven and all the myriads of angels, carefully submitting to his statutes, 1,5-15. This kingship is experienced by man when joining the lauding and praise of the angels. The spirits/angels from the Inner Sanctuary are "perfect light, the mingled colors of a spirit…the appearance of the glorious form (tabnit kabod) of the chiefs of the kingdom" 7,24-26 (the mystic vision of many-colored light also contains the ideal forms and patterns of beauty). "And all their decorations…" 7,37. The kingdom of God is not only at the end of the road, it is the heavenly world seen in visions, John 1,51, and being open over baptism, Matt 3,16, and holy communion,
The sacral king was enthroned as primordial man in the Garden of Eden. Much later the sultan in Istanbul was enthroned beside symbols representing the Tree of Life and the Well of Life. The high priest Simeon is likened to Adam in the Garden of Eden, the garden of cedars and sweet smelling trees, olives and water filled willows, Jesus Ben Sira 49,16ff.: "Above every living thing is the beauty of Adam. Greatest of his brothers and the beauty of his people was Simeon". 50,10-13: "Like a green olive tree full of berries and an oil tree laden with branches. When he covered himself with the garment of glory and clothed himself in garments of beauty…Around him was the crown of his sons, like shoots of cedar trees in Lebanon and like willows of the brook surrounded him all the sons of Aaron in their glory." Cf. Aaron clothed with "perfection of beauty (tip'eret)",45,8. Acc. to Rabbinic writings Adam's garments were the high priestly robes handed down through successive generations until they reached Aaron, C.T.R.Hayward, who also mentions Jubilees 3,27 where Adam is presented as the first priest offering "a sweet smelling sacrifice – frankincense, galbanum, stacte, and spices – in the morning with the rising of the sun". The sweet smell of spices is the smell from Eden in the far east, where the nearness to the sun and Paradise creates these perfumes and the newborn sun rising out of Eden makes the setting perfect. Much later Adam Kadmon is made up of ten sephirot, the ten jewels adorning the high priestly garment and the cherub in Eden acc. to Hez 28. Tip'eret, Hod ("majesty") and Hokhmah ("wisdom") are already mentioned in Ben Sira as the main characteristics of the high priestly epiphany as primordial man. They later figure as 3 of the 10 sephirot.
Acc. to Paul man has fallen and lost his original glory (doksa, Rom 3,23) and his image of God but by the atoning act of Christ this is recovered in baptism. (Originally a bathing which, together with an anointing with oil from Paradise, being clothed in the robe of glory and drinking from the Paradise river, were the mains acts in the enthronement ritual.)
Johannes Lindblom has made a fine study of the "idea of life" in the New Testament and especially in the gospel and letters of St. John: eternal life is granted already as a present state in the faith in Jesus and by baptismal rebirth. Being born again as a divine child of God is the very center of the soteriology, John 1,13 & 3,5; 1.John 3,9 & 4,7 & 5,1+4: "Diese göttliche Geburt ist der Kernpunkt der ganzen johanneischen Frömmigkeit". This "eternal life" or "life" has a certain timeless character: it existed from the very beginning with God and has come to the world in Christ, 1.John 1,1f. and it extends into eternal future. Because eternal life was with God he is called "the living Father". And as the Father has life in himself so has he granted the Son to have life in himself. He is the "bread of Life" and has the "word of life", he is "the resurrection and the life" and he wants to give his followers "life and abundance", John 10,10, cf. 1.John 4,9: "God has sent his only begotten Son to the earth, that we should live by him." Eternal life is here seen as "eine überzeitliche, übermenschliche…übernatürliche Grösse, es gehört zur Welt des ewig Göttlichen".
A similar notion of life and eternal life is found in the Odes of Solomon: "because I shall love Him that is the Son, I shall become son; for he that is joined to Him that is immortal, will also himself become immortal, and he who has pleasure in Life, will become living" II,9-11. "and they lived by the water of Life for ever", VI,17. "those who are kept in Him that lives", VIII,24. "For in the will of the Lord is your life, and His thought is everlasting life", IX,3. "and they walked in my life and were saved", X,8. "I was established on the rock of truth…and I drank and was inebriated with the living water that does not die….and my face received the dew; and my nostrils enjoyed the pleasant odour of the Lord; and He carried med to his Paradise", XI,7+13f. Eternal life is not so much the result of an end time resurrection as something achieved already here and now in baptism. "Fruits", a new and just life with the deeds of love, is the result of man being planted in Paradise: "Blessed, O Lord, are they who are planted in thy land and those who have a place in thy Paradise; and they grow according to the growth of thy trees",XI,15f. Like previously the temple on Mt.Zion, Paradise is here the great center of fruitfulness ritually made efficient for the believers. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the new temple, the bread of Life, the giver of water of Life, the true vine, the old doksa/kabod-theophany in the temple. "Bearing fruit" is here a matter of being one with the Tree of Life, the true vine, John 15,4-8.
Reitzenstein has stressed the similarity between the baptism of Jesus in Jordan and the Mandaean baptism. Acc. to the famous baptismal hymn No 30 in the Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans (ed. E.S.Drower, 1959) at baptism man is "planted" and given bread and a cup and "placed between the knees of the Father" i.e. given the bread of Life and "wellspring (mambuha) of Life" and adopted as a child of the Father, cf. the sonship proclaimed over Jesus by baptism. Acc. to Drower he also becomes incorporated into the heavenly Adams body, cf. how man acc. to St.Paul becomes the bearer of the image of the heavenly Adam, 1.Cor 15,49. Adam was tempted to be like God – in the Temptation in the Desert the second Adam renounces the use of his divine power and is finally, as Adam before the fall, served by angels and the wild animals.
The highest god in Mandaean religion is "First Life" in the "House of Life", "The Great Place of Life". At baptism you are "signed with the sign of Life", and "the name of Life and the name of Gnosis of Life" (the Mandaean savior/messenger) is pronounced over you and most of the baptismal hymns end with the words: "And Life is victorious". Some of prayers in the Canonical Prayerbook begin with the words "I am the white pitha" (CP 352-55). 352 continues: "From Life's treasure-house was I transplanted". It is the heavenly Bread of Life, cf. John 6. Reitzenstein mentions that just as in the earliest baptismal rituals the sacred meal was part of the ritual and followed just after baptism, so also in the Mandaean ritual. The reason was that baptism was an ascension to heaven and the meal was symbolic for a heavenly meal.
If the Lord's prayer is the prayer of the newly baptized who out of his newly acquired sonship calls God his Father, then the prayer for forgiveness of sins refers to the baptismal cleansing, the prayer "lead us not into temptation" refers to the temptation and fall of Adam, and the prayer for daily bread has to be seen as a prayer for the bread of heaven, the "hallowed be thy name" refers to the qedushah/trishagion as the great sign of the earthly community joining the heavenly one in submission under God's kingdom; it is the cultic realization of God's "will on earth as in heaven." The Lord's prayer itself is a praise of God as the Great King to whom belongs kingdom and power and kabod/honour.
Baptism as reentering the heavenly Paradise.
The Naassenes seems to be a Judeo-Christian Gnostic sect: The heavenly Adam is worshipped as a god. He fell into Adam below and is present in all his descendants, he is unrecognized and has no reputation, but he is "the god that inhabits the flood", and, acc. to the Psalms of David, "speaks and cries from many waters". His regeneration is his ascension and it is this ascension the Scripture refers to when it says: "Open the gates, ye who are your rulers; and lift ye up, ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in." Hipp.Ref V,8,15ff. Then follows a reference to Jacob, brother of Jesus, seeing the gate of heaven. The perfect man, imaged from "the unportrayable one above" must enter in through the gate and be born again. Frederick H. Borsch thinks that behind these combinations of texts and motifs lies a baptism and enthronement "even though the Naassenes probably no longer practiced or understood the language in quite this way any longer". The same old language from the Israelite royal psalms is employed in The Book of Baruch by the gnostic Justin in his description of the ascension of "Elohim". Elohim is brought before God and sees and hears secret matter and is addressed by God: "Sit you on my right hand", and Justin says that the pneumatic and living men are given ablution in the living water above the firmament. and Elohim drinks from this living water (ibd,V,26,14ff.). Borsch also mentions Origin who quotes Valentinian gnostics using the formula: "I am anointed with light-oil from the tree of life" Contra Celsum VI,27. (p.186) and the Marcosians who claimed that the Anthropos descended on Jesus in baptism and used a "bridal hut" where some mystical initiation took place, Irenaeus Adv Haer I,13,3,6. In the Ps-Clementine Recogn I,45 it is told that God anointed Christ with oil taken from the tree of life, and Christ anoints with similar oil everyone when they come to his kingdom. Geo Widengren, whose article "Baptism and Enthronement in some Jewish-Christian Gnostic Documents" has been the inspiration for Borsch, concludes that Primordial Man was also the Primordial King of Paradise with prophetic gifts and priestly functions and the typos of every man who has been anointed with the prepared oil.
Carsten Breengaard has rightly stressed that the baptism of Jesus in Marc is seen as Jesus being reinstalled in the status of Adam before the fall. Certainly acc. to Phil 2,6-11 Jesus in humility did the opposite of Adam's wrongdoings in superbia.
In old Assyrian palace art the king is the gardener of the Paradise garden, and together with the winged guardians he nurses the tree of life. The high priest Simeon is seen in a similar role in a surrounding compared to the opulence of the Paradise Garden in Ben Sira 49,16-50,12. This makes the temple to the dynamic centre of fruitfulness, and baptism was the introduction of the baptismal candidate into this sphere of life, eternal life and fruit bearing.
This is obvious from the way the mystery of baptism in praised in the Odes of Solomon. The baptismal setting of the Odes is not only stressed by J.H.Bernard, but also by Eric Segelberg (in an article comparing the Odes with a similar baptismal terminology in the "Gospel of Truth").
In the Odes of Solomon (Ode 6,8-18) we find an elaborate description of the River of Life reviving "paralyzed and the souls that were near to expiring… they lived because of the ever-living water". As shown by Michael Lattke (table 1: "Life" and "Death") the roots hy', "life" and mwt "death" are very commonly found together. The main motifs of the feast of Tabernacles were 1)"life-giving water/the River of Life", 2) living in huts as a reminder of the birth hour of the people, originally reenacting primordial Paradise, 3) God-given fruit bearing, 4) dance in the courtyard of the women: hierogamy between the Great King enthroned in the Holy of Holies and his people/the daughter of Jerusalem, 5) God's epiphany makes the created order stand firm.
Ode 11,6: "living spring of the Lord…I drank… living water", 8,16: "might live by holy milk". 30,1: "water from the living spring of the Lord", 15,9: "Death was destroyed", 11,7: "I drank immortal water". The paradise river is also flowing with milk and honey, 4,10: "open Your abundant springs which let flow milk and honey for us."
Ode 1,1: "The Lord is on my head like a wreath" 1,4: "and You have sprouted upon me. Your fruits are full and ripe; they are all full of Your salvation."
5) Ode,5,13: "Even if everything were to be shaken I stand firmly". 11,5: "I was established (aorist pass. of Greek stêrízô) on the firm rock" (transl. of the Greek text). The Syrian text says "the rock of truth": The Syriac noun shrara with the basic meaning, "truth", in the sense of "steadfastness" occurs 34 times. 31,11: "But I stood unshaken like a firm rock which is beaten by the waves and endures". (The attack of the sea of chaos – the motif so well-known from both the Hodayot from Qumran and the Psalms of David.)
It is not very likely that Jesus when calling himself the Son of Man has actually read the Book of Parables (1.Enoch) or 4.Ezra 13, but the baptismal movement initiated by John has its background in a similar milieu as the texts mentioned, in a Jewish theology of the Temple:
The Messiah is as the high priest like Adam before the fall, he is the gardener of the Paradise Garden, the "image of God", identical with the theophany in Hez 1 of one "who looked like a Man" or a "Son of Man". He will be enthroned in a cosmic act, angels and kings have to bow before him, Phil 2,6-11, and he bears the name of God on his forehead. He is baptized and anointed with oil from Paradise. The temple is a symbol of Paradise with the "living water", the "tree of life", giver of eternal life and eternal standing before God serving him in praise and in a white garment. This "new song" is the cultic realization of the "Kingdom of God". The temple theophany is "Glory" (doksa, kabod), it is God returning and taking up his abode in the cleansed/rebuilt temple, the theophany is realized in Acts 2 with the fire, the roaring like a mighty wind, the filling Is 6,1+3, the Holy Spirit Hez 2,2, the praising of God's great deeds, Acts 2,11. The death of Jesus is the Yom Kippur sacrifice cleansing the new spiritual temple with blood. The "temple setting" of all the above mentioned motifs means that also the "Kingdom of God" has to be interpreted as the epiphany of God as King in the temple-liturgy of Tabernacles, the old New Year's festival.
This Paradise-symbol is also the key to the Mandaean theology with the "Secret Heavenly Adam" and "Life" as the first divine principle and the savior Manda d'Haije called "Knowledge of Life". Yawar is here the YHWH-name (cf. Yu-rba, "the Great Yo, whom the Jews call Adonai", Ginza 381,11f.), and the divine and cosmic marriage between the "First Datepalm" and the "First Wellspring" is the union between Tree of Life and Well of Life. In his dissertation The Tree in the Lightworld, 2006 Jon Olav Ryen has given a very thorough description of the "Tree of Life"-motif in Mandaean texts. And he agrees with Ernst Percy, Rudolph Bultmann and R.Schnackenburg in finding the same Tree of Life symbol behind John 15,1ff. In Ginza Manda dHiia is called "Vine of Life", just like the Assyrian king can be identified with the Tree of Life. The Well of Life and "Living Water" is a well-known motif in the Gospel of John and in Revelations and is also quite common in Gnostic texts, e.g. the Nag Hammadi treaty Disc. 8-9; 57,31ff.: "I have found the beginning of the power that is above all powers…I see a fountain bubbling with life…the entire eighth (heaven), O my son, and the souls that are in it, and the angels, sing a hymn in silence."
Temple Theology
In the temple rituals chaos was bridled and cosmic order renewed. At creation the Garden of Eden came out of the dark, limitless ocean, and creation, cosmos, existed in perfect harmony, the state Egyptians called ma'at. This state of paradisial order was present in sacred space where one is "immersed in primordial order" and comes close to God and experiences truth and renewal of life. The high priest or the anointed king becomes the receptacle of an atemporal power that first fell upon the primordial king tilling the Garden of Eden. The eastern gate represented the mountain peaks that flanked the eastern horizon at the mouth of the cavern of Sheol from which the sun rose each day. Jesus is identified with the renewed temple, he is "the stone rejected by the masons, becoming the main cornerstone".
In the letters of Paul divine order has to rule over the community when it is assembled, for God is the God of order, not chaos, 1.Cor 14,32f.+40. But not only that: There is a great cosmic order that man has to submit to. Children have to submit to their parents, wife to her husband, slaves to their masters, and citizens to the authority. And finally the whole cosmos has to submit to God, 1.Cor 15,28. When we read the Greek word hypotassô we often put the whole stress on sub- hypo, but we have to put the stress on taxis, "order". Cf. how 1.Enoch 1-5 describes the great world order meticulously followed by the stars and the changing seasons, only man has rebelled against the order of cosmos. The same description of divine world order is used in Clement's First Letter 20 as an important argument against the rebellious elements in the Corinthian community. The word used to describe the order is homonoia ("unity in mind"), and this same word is used by Ignatius to describe how the local church by its orderly assembling under the leadership of the bishop becomes a reflection, almost an epiphany, of God surrounded by his council of angels, and thereby destroys the disorder of Satan. The epiphany of Christ Ign. Eph. 19 ("A star shone from Heaven brighter than all the stars") recreates cosmic order ("all the other stars together with sun and moon became a chorus for the star") and destroys chaos ("thence was destroyed all magic… the old kingdom perished, God being revealed as human to bring newness of eternal life…the destruction of death was being worked out"). The trishagion of myriads of angels is the great paradigm of homonoia in church assembling, 1.Clem 34. In Ign Eph 2 and 4 we have first hypotassô/hypotagê two times and then homonoia two times in the description of the community's praise of God.