Stefano Salemi: Rahab’s scarlet cord - Origen and the Cave of Treasures, a soteriological exegesis of ritual sacrifices and of the Cross

“…thou shalt bind this line of scarlet thread in the window” Joshua 2:18; “Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop” Leviticus 14:4.This paper aims to investigate how the scene of blood and water flowing from the wounded side of Christ at his Death (John 19:34) has been interpreted, with soteriological nuances, by Origen and a later text, almost unstudied and unknown, ascribed to Ephrem Syrus, called “The Cave of Treasure”, exegetically re-reading with parallelisms the story of Rahab and the sacrificial ritual for the leprosy.These exegetical reflections, well merged into the veterotestamental material, are actually the main soteriological reflections on blood and water imagery in the first four centuries CE, before the Christological positions of the Council of Nicaea (325) and the Christianization of the Roman Empire.Rich of 'mysterious' meaning and a very emblematic and representative episode of the Death of Christ in John’s Passion narrative the episode of blood and water find in Origen and in the Cave of Treasures, a common biblical ground, and their proof-texting methodology made of allegory, figural reading and a rich engaging of Scriptural references, offer a deep and diversified reflection which places the scene of the pierced side of Jesus into a central theological-Christological position not only in the Gospel of John itself but also in the Levitical system of sacrifices and in the history of Israel’s deliverance