No, Nomad. The presence of the story in Mark is evidence that he could live with it. That's a simple fact. It may well have been embarrassing to other Christians later. What you need to demonstrate is that it was embarrassing to Mark/those Christians. This you have failed utterly to do. I am happy to accept that it was embarrassing, if you can supply evidence of Mark's state-of-mind.

However, even if you demonstrated that it was excrutiatingly embarrassing, it would still not make it true. I have already argued that embarrassing stories are frequently used to cover other embarrassing stories. However, in each case I can demonstrate that the story is embarrassing, because I have a parallel tradition of history against which I can measure the myth-tradition, or because the embarrassment is obvious (such as Lancelot's betrayal of Arthur by sleeping with his wife). In Jesus' case all is myth; so recovering history is difficult.

Once again, can you demonstrate that it was embarrassing for Mark?


Michael

Why? Have you never read a book or a story that was embarrassing to the author, yet was recorded anyway?

I have done this by showing that the vast majority of Jews rejected the Messianic claims made for Jesus on the basis that he did not fulfill their expectations for the Messiah. Being baptized and crucified were not a part of what the Jews believed would happen to their Messiah.

Now, if you do not believe that the first Christians were Jews, then such is your right, but the evidence is rather strongly in favour of the belief that they were.

Yes, I have seen you do this, but wild conjecture about what Mark and the other evangelists might have been hiding (by telling us about the baptism of Jesus) is an interesting game, but has no supporting evidence. I would rather address the stories that we do have, and the evidence that is available for those stories.

Since you begin with the assumption that the Jesus is all myth, you are simply question begging.

Can you please prove that Jesus is all myth?

Thanks,

Nomad

Toto

Nomad - would you agree that the Jews expected their Messiah to be 1) a human, not God, and 2) anointed at some point by God? If so, why should a baptism that functioned as an anointment by God be an embarrassment?

Michael: No, Nomad. The presence of the story in Mark is evidence that he could live with it. That's a simple fact.

Nomad: Why? Have you never read a book or a story that was embarrassing to the author, yet was recorded anyway?

Of course. Is that the case with Mark? That's what we're discussing.

I have [built a case for Mark's JtB story being embarrassing] by showing that the vast majority of Jews rejected the Messianic claims made for Jesus on the basis that he did not fulfill their expectations for the Messiah. Being baptized and crucified were not a part of what the Jews believed would happen to their Messiah.

That's interesting, because later Christians objected to the Baptism on theological grounds, mainly that the supposedly sinless Jesus did not need to be baptized for his sins. By your argument, every aspect of the gospel should fall under the "embarrassment" criterion, which would render the whole "embarrassment" criterion meaningless. We already know that some jews did not consider Jesus to be the expected messiah. But also know that there were some jews who already had an idea of baptism as a way to be purified and enter the community. They were called Essenes. They also had a legend of a Teacher of Righteousness…..so indeed there were jews out there who baptized, and expected it of members of their community. So it may not have been embarrassing for whoever put together the story Mark set down.

At most, your "embarrassment" criterion would be evidence that the story is old, since later periods found it embarrassing, but were unable to change it. But we knew that anyway, since we know 'Mark' is first-century.

Yes, I have seen you do this, but wild conjecture about what Mark and the other evangelists might have been hiding (by telling us about the baptism of Jesus) is an interesting game, but has no supporting evidence. I would rather address the stories that we do have, and the evidence that is available for those stories.

It is interesting to speculate on what Mark might have been covering up, but that's not what I was doing. Rather, I was showing that embarrassment itself does not indicate truth, since embarrassing stories occur in myth and history often to cover even more embarrassing stories. Thus, even if we accept that Mark's tale is embarrassing, that in itself proves nothing.

Can you please prove that Jesus is all myth?

By 'myth,' as I have said a thousand times, I mean a mixture of facts, truths, theology, invention, tradition, symbol, archetype, and so forth. Since it is myth, retrieving the nuggets of history is going to be very difficult, as it is with any other mythical/archetypal figure. "Myth" does not mean "lie," as I have explained a million times, and will no doubt have to explain another million. It simply refers to a particular type of narrative. To ask me to prove that the gospels are myth -- narratives or stories that draw on history, tradition and creative inventiveness to create order and meaning for people's lives -- is like asking me to prove that War and Peace is a novel. Can you show that they are history? Nope. You have to pre-suppose it.

Michael

Excellent points and question Toto. Thank you.

Yes, although they did anticipate that he would be very nearly supernatural (or at least superhuman) in his nature. I believe that they still do believe this.

Yes. In fact, they see him as taking on two roles, one of High Priest, and another as King. Both would require an annointing.

As I explained to jm, baptism is not the accepted form of annointing for a priest or a king. The rituals given are very detailed, and most importantly, require the Temple to be both intact, and used in these rituals. Jesus is not connected to the Temple, and therefore did not fulfill the Messianic prophecies as the Jews understand them.

Nomad

Toto

Even so, that still doesn't make it embarrassing. It is only embarrassing if you believe that Jesus was god and born sinless. It appears that not all Christians believed that in the first 2 centuries.

Face it, Mark didn't think it was embarrassing. Matthew did, so he fudged it a bit, and had John protest that Jesus should baptize him. Mark didn't have to change the story - it was no problem to him.

No Toto, we are not talking about Jesus as God, but as the Messiah, the Christ. From Mark 1:1 we can see that convincing his readers of the truth of Jesus' Messianic claims are true. It makes no difference if Mark sees Him as God (and he does), since the fact that Christians saw Jesus as not only the Messiah, but as sinless makes the baptism even more problematic. This is why so much apologetic effort has been applied to this event by Christians at least since Matthew.

Actually, there have been people that have denied the divintity of Christ, as well as the physical resurrection, as well as those that denied that He was really a man. What none of them have ever argued about (until now) is that He actually lived here on earth. That has not been my point here. What I am saying is that the Jews did not expect their Messiah to be baptized, since there was no reason for him to do this. For Mark to tell his readers that Jesus was actually baptized, even as he was trying to convince them that He was the Christ was the embarrassing part.

Actually, Matt is very telling here, since he never missed an opportunity to try and link an event in Jesus' life with a Messianic prophecy. He did not do this with the baptism. As for Mark, he seemed to have little interest in whether an event was embarrassing or not, he reported the story as he knew it. Matt and Luke tried to omit some of the more troublesome and embarrassing events, but the baptism was one that they could not leave out. Matt had John submit to Jesus (although from Matt we do not know if John ever believed Jesus was the Messiah), and Luke mentions it in passing, but neither could leave it out.

What this means, is that if Mark was the one to have invented the story of the baptism, making it very new by the time it reached Matt and Luke, they would have left it out or modified it to better suit their theological agenda. Matt, in particular, would have kept the link of John to Jesus through the prophesy, but he would have dumped (or altered) the parts that did not fit with that prophesy, namely, the baptism.

Nomad

Toto

Nomad - what you wrote does not make sense.

It is embarrassing to have to baptize Jesus if baptism was for forgiveness of sins and Jesus was sinless (i.e., God). Remove either part of that statement and the embarrassment is gone.

If Jesus was Christ = the Messiah, a human (or at least not a God), he was not born sinless. So it is not embarrassing to have him baptized, and for this baptism to be the beginning of his ministry. (Especially a baptism attended by supernatural events like voices from God.) You say that the Jews didn't expect the Messiah to be baptized - but that doesn't mean they would be embarrassed by it, especially if they saw it as analogous to anointment. (And we are probably talking about Hellenized Jews here, since Mark is written in Greek.)

If baptism is a purification ritual, as it was for some groups at that time, there is also no particular embarrassment.

Mark was not embarrassed and had no reason to be.

I don't know how to put it more plainly or succinctly.

Forgiveness of sins is a sufficient basis for believing it to be embarrassing, but it is not the only reason. The other is that is shows Jesus in a subordinate position to John the Baptist, and the early Christians, including Mark, clearly believed Jesus to be a superior figure of John the Baptist. Indeed, it is John's baptism that marks the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

This is especially embarrassing when couple with the Q material which has John the Baptist actually questioning whether Jesus is the expected Messiah or not.

Originally posted by Layman:
This is especially embarrassing when couple with the Q material which has John the Baptist actually questioning whether Jesus is the expected Messiah or not.

Thanks, Layman, I'm glad you reminded me:

Burton Mack, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins, p. 155, writes:

According to the authors of Q2, John had never met Jesus (it was Mark who invented the story about Jesus being baptized by John).

We're heading toward 60 posts, and still no reason why we should regard Mark as seeing this story as embarrassing, especially in light of the fact that the earliest layers of Jesus-legend do not contain the baptism story.

Nomad has 2 problems here:

The local one of demonstrating that Mark personally saw the story as embarrassing (a story he may have simply invented); and,

the general one of demonstrating the worth of the embarrassment criterion as a useful tactic for recovering history out of myth.

So far we have seen no evidence for either.

Michael

[This message has been edited by turtonm (edited May 30, 2001).]