Amaleq13

I agree that Mt and Lk could be argued as embarrassed about Mk's baptism account but I don't think you can say the same for Mark's account. The voice from heaven and the claim that John identified Jesus as "the coming one" are not due to embarrassment but should be understood as part of the reason for the scene (see below).

You keep repeating this but I've yet to see a coherent explanation why this requires an historical baptism. Christian baptism came from Jewish baptism, not from the "fact" that Jesus was baptized. It is not until the church fathers that this connection is ignored/downplayed/replaced.

Justin's dialogue with Trypho provides the plausible motivation with the stated belief that the Messiah would be unknown, even to himself, until he was anointed by "Elias". Mark has taken this belief and turned it into a narrative.

Vinnie

You need to come up with a plausible consideration of why it was created with at least a pinch of consideration for what the texts actually say.

Vinnie

the_cave

Fascinating--I'll give that some thought. But be careful; I'm saying that others have suggested to me that the baptism is an interpolation in Mark. In other words, Mark didn't originally write it. It was added later. So the claim goes.

So, should I assume that no one here thinks Q had a baptism passage? Or that if it did, it originated with the passage in Mark (whenever it was added)?

Doctor X

Vinnie:

You have done well, my son. . . .

I agree with much of your analysis. Vork asks:

Let me explain what I mean by "embarassing." This is a tradition that someone could use to question the story. Lk and Mt both recognize this in the Mk narrative--they change the ending of the baptism story.

Of course, Lk places a nice long genealogy to separate this from the baptism. Basically, you cannot have Junior "driven" by anyone!

This is "embarassing" in Mk. "How come he could be driven by someone else." "Well, no, he was not actually driven, you see he. . . ."

Mk then Mt-Lk and then expecially Jn make a big point in subordinating J to B to Junior. In fact, Jn goes into great detail. I think one can wonder whether or not there was competition from a J the B tradition--a tradition of competition--or, finally, it could just be a problem.

Does it mean it happened. No, not necessarily.

Another "embarassing tradition" is the "I Will Like Destroy this Temple!" Okay . . . cool, we all know the Temple was ultimately destroyed . . . by the Romans. They also failed to do it in time--waited about forty years. One mentor speculates that the historical Junior did make this claim and, obviously, failed! "Hey, didn't your guy claim he would destroy the Temple? What happened?" "No . . . it was the 'Temple of the Body' . . . which . . . like . . . he rebuilt!"

The same process of apologetics and mythmaking occurs to this day whenever anyone reminds a fundamentalist that Junior mispredicted the end of the world.

Now, does that mean the historical Junior did claim to destroy the Temple? Cannot prove that, only that likely the tradition existed and the Synoptics had to account for it.

--J.D.

Vorkosigan

It's basic logic, Dr. X and Vinnie. You cannot argue from embarrassment because Luke and Matthew cannot tell you what Mark thought about this "event." What neither of you have done is come up with a plausible consideration of why this is embarrassing, with at least a pinch of consideration for what the texts actually say. Instead, have you backread other, later texts in Mark and assume something about Mark. That is sloppy methodology. Nowhere in Mark is there anything to suggest that Mark found this event embarrassing. It only became embarrassing later when the competition between the JBap crowd and the Jesus cult became tight.

Yes, Mark heavily subordinates Jesus to John. But the way you are reading this, you have backread Mark into the orthodox tradition.

The account does not make Jesus lesser than John. That is a backreading from later texts and later ideologies into Mark. One could just as well argue that the Markan account clearly subordinates JBap to Jesus in no uncertain terms: not fit to tie his shoes, and restricts his role to announcing the coming of Jesus.

This argument about "subordination" is entirely subjective. The application of Meier's criteria is simply too subjective, and here is a good example.

Again nowhere in Mark does anything suggest that Mark is embarrassed by this account. Indeed, the fact that Mark included it is prima facie evidence that he was not embarrassed by it. Further, Mark reports many positive things about John -- that the pharisees feared to condemn him because the people thought he was a prophet, that he was held in high esteem by Herod, that he spoke fearlessly against the marriage that got him killed, and he had disciples. In other words, there does not seem any reason to suspect that Mark would have been embarrassed by an association between the two. Far from it.

I quite agree. The NT writings are full of references to some kind of competition between John and Jesus for adherents. Obviously in that time period the two groups of believers were in tight competition, and the various gospels did their level best to attack the problem, all in different ways.

Yes, I know this is often asserted, but it is never demonstrated. It looks to me like GMark is written by a follower of John who became a proponent of Jesus, but remembered with approving nostalgia his life as a follower of John, and recorded many sympathetic traditions about John, just as Josephus firmly subordinates Jewish history to Vespasian's power, but also mounts an apologetic for the Jews. In which case, such as proponent would have a powerful incentive to create a story that links his old and new loyalties. In other words, you are confusing what I see as Mark's apologetic for John with Jesus' attitude toward John. Given the ignorance displayed by John in Q, and by John's disciples in Acts, it is more likely that John and Jesus never met.

Vorkosigan

Amaleq13

Vinnie wrote:
I replied:
You keep repeating this but I've yet to see a coherent explanation why this requires an historical baptism. Christian baptism came from Jewish baptism, not from the "fact" that Jesus was baptized. It is not until the church fathers that this connection is ignored/downplayed/replaced.

Vinnie responded:
You need to read my entire post because that has already been done (i.e. Messiah unknown to himself until anointed by "Elias").

You also need to provide support for your original assertion rather than try to distract with an illegitimate attempt to shift the burden of proof. You made the claim now back it up.

SPECIFICALLY, how does the fact that the baptism of Jesus is not explicitly connected to Christian baptism until "the church fathers" constitute evidence that the baptism is historical?

Amaleq13

I don't understand why it matters whether the scene is original to Mark or was added later. Either way, the belief attributed to Trypho appears to provide a reasonable motivation for the creation of exactly such a scene.

I don't think argument for it are credible. If there had been a baptism scene, why wouldn't we evidence of it from Mt/Lk?

the_cave

Well, if it was added later, and if Mark is an allegory about the early apostles of a heavenly Christ, then the baptism can't have been a part of Mark's original plan. And if Trypho's belief was the motivation for it, then presumably it is intended to represent a real earthly event.

Quote:

I don't think argument for it are credible. If there had been a baptism scene, why wouldn't we evidence of it from Mt/Lk?

Ah--but if it was added later, where did it come from? It could have come from Q--and found its way into Matthew and Luke from there as well. Of course, it could still have been added to Mark, and found its way into Matthew and Luke from there.

Vinnie

Because it would be a Mark//Q overlapp.

What evidence is there that there wasn't a baptism in Mark and that it was added later? This needs some serious arguments.

Need I remind readers of the diverging ways Matthew and Luke (our earliest witnesses to the text of Mark) both follow and diverge from Mark on this point after adding their own infancy narratives? Luke diverges more than Matthew but is not Matthew dependent upon Mark here?

Or was the interpolation in Mark dependent on Matthew? What is the evidence that backs up this assertion?

Vinnie

Amaleq13

And the problem with that is?

I don't see the basis for your "presumption". What compels us to assume a story based on that belief must be true? That makes no sense. The belief attributed to Trypho provides a motivation to create such a scene whether a baptism actually happened or not. Likewise, simply that a story exists that seems to match the belief we can't assume there was no historical reality.

I think the historicity of the baptism is dependent upon the historicity of the Jesus-JBap connection. If that could be confirmed historical, I think you could safely assume that JBap baptized Jesus. However, even assuming an historical Jesus, there are good reasons to suspect that the JBap-Jesus connection might have been a deliberate fabrication between competing sects.

I don't think there is enough evidence to suggest that Q contained a baptism scene and I don't know of any credible evidence/argument to suggest Mark's baptism scene is a later interpolation. If it could be shownt that it was, I don't see why it matters who introduced it or why except that the historicity of the event would seem to lose credibility.