Who's the Ark?

Joan Taylor last December pondered the Gospel, according to Cerinthus' disciples.

For Cerinthus, Jesus in sarx was the Ark. His bodily form was entered-into by Christ; and then at the Crucifixion, Christ abandoned Jesus' flesh. Taylor deemed the Longer-Ending of Mark as a Cerinthist appendix, whether or not Cerinthus wrote it himself; albeit perhaps mutilated a bit in transmission. That Christ liberated from Jesus' form, now a shapeshifter, may have taken the form of the young boy at the tomb. (Brant Pitre will note this proteanism in Luke and could well add the Acts of John.)

I've brought this comment up from last June because we need to compare this against Scott Hahn's assertion that the Ark is, in fact, Mary; Christ within her being the shekina Itself, body and spirit. Hahn, as detractors noted, didn't footnote the assertion. But it did not take me long to find Orthodox - not Catholics, note - bringing Patristic evidence for this, starting (at least) in the AD third-century, namely Hippolytus and Gregory.

Brant Pitre's Case for Jesus brings John too... on the side of Cerinthus(!). John presents Jesus' body as the Temple, whose wounds at Golgotha issue water and blood like so much Passover effluent. Pitre by contrast does not read Mark as the Cerinthians will; when Mark's Jesus cites Psalm 22, Mark is asserting himself as the begotten son of God, maybe even on Psalm 110 terms as coëqual.

As to where these Church Fathers might have got the idea of Mary's tabernacular nature: I think Pitre is correct to assert that Mark allowed for it (which John didn't/doesn't). But that's insufficient. Two years ago, I implicated the reception of Luke. Luke concentrates (instead!) upon Mary's childhood in the Temple, and conceives Jesus without even Joseph's DNA (pace Matthew). Luke, for his part, was carrying the Priestly strain from "Hebrews", in citing Melchizedek and Psalm 110; but Luke goes further.