aa5874

ApostateAbe gives me the impression that he is on some kind of personal mission for HJ.

ApostateAbe has ALREADY REWRITTEN the Gospel and GUESSED a version of HJ WHICH was called ABE'S GOSPEL.

But, he is just pedaling ERRONEOUS and MIS-LEADING INFORMATION in his RUSH to spread his GOSPEL.

First of all the Baptism of Jesus is NOT VERIFIED to be a Fact, ApostateAbe himself claims the NT Gospels cannot be trusted.

Next, ApostateAbe claims in a most absurd manner that the BEST explanation for the Baptism of Jesus in the NT is that Jesus was BAPTIZED.

Well, how nice!!! How simple was that???

But, when we EXAMINE the Gospels themselves ApostateAbe's "best explanation" may be one of the worst.

The evidence in the Gospels suggests the Baptism story of Jesus was an INVENTION or filled with fiction and certainly do not at all confirm the baptism of Jesus as an historical event.

The Baptism of Jesus is about the Holy Ghost, like a DOVE, and Talking CLOUDS with John the Baptist asking to be baptized by Jesus whom he met for the first time.

How absurd and downright nonsensical of John the Baptist to ask a possible NEW CONVERT or follower ,that he did NOT even know, to have Jesus Baptize John.

And would NOT John himself would have been ALREADY Baptized himself LONG BEFORE he met Jesus the supposed man?


Now, ApostateAbe seems to keep on forgetting that it was a GHOST or the Son of a Ghost that was BAPTIZED in the NT.

Sheshbazzar

The NT from beginning to end lacks credibility. All of its scenarios are contrived, most are utterly implausible under actual 1st century conditions, and much reflect the influence of centuries latter Xian theological innovations. Cooking the Books became the church's accepted mode of permanently settling its internal religious disputes.

Certainly it cannot be presented as a 'fact' that John ever baptized Jebus simply because such a story exists, there being exactly -zero- evidence for this alleged event outside of the myth filled tale that it appears in.
Shall we also accept as 'fact' that; 'Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jebus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased."?
From the same source, the credibility of the accuracy of the report is exactly the same.
You have no more, or not one whit better evidence that any actual Jebus was baptized than you do as to whether any 'Holy Spirit' decended in a bodily shape',
or 'a voice came from heaven...'.
If you are going to believe the first, then you may as well believe the rest.
And if you are going to discard the latter you may as well discard the former, as nothing trustworthy is to be found in either.


Composed before I saw your above reply aa, looks like we were on the same track.

dog-on

It's amazing how such a simple observation seems to escape some people...

avi

Thanks to all three, very well written....

avi

Sheshbazzar

That is another strange part about this story, as John the Baptist according to these same tales was Jebus's second cousin and their mothers were close friends.
Kind of peculiar that a pregnant Mary could make it over to Zacharias and Elisabeth's place and stay with them for three months, evidently until John was born (Lu 1:36), yet these precocious boys would remain strangers for some thirty years...especially when consideration is given to those fabled angelic visitations, perdictions, and the elaborate and excited conversational exchanges that allegedly took place between these two ladies at that time. (Luke 1)
They sure as hell would have had to have grown up hearing a lot about these amazing and supernatural events...but when they meet they are strangers?
smelly, again.


But I'm sure Christians can invent yet another contrived apologetic horse-shit story to 'explain' it all.




..

blastula

To say "it really happened" has good explanatory power, you and those scholars have to assume that the gospels were written with the intent of and the ability for accurately reporting history. It's a big assumption considering there are reports of people walking on water and zombies walking out of graves.

Toto

Abe is going to reply that the actual event is the best explanation of the story, because Christians would never have made this story up. This is because he rejects the idea that early Christians, or Mark in particular, were adoptionist, so only later (or other) Christians found anything embarrassing about this.

I don't know what is so problematic about adoptionism. We do have textual evidence that it existed.

ApostateAbe

The topic was covered earlier. On the contrary, it is not that I reject the theory that the earliest Christians were adoptionist--they may very well have been. But, it is not a theory that does very well to explain the baptism accounts, especially not the details of the baptism accounts. It explains only God alighting on Jesus like a dove in Matthew and Mark (not Luke nor John), but it does not explain the baptism by John the Baptist, the extreme humility of John the Baptist, the anonymization of the baptizer in Luke, and the omission in John.

Nor does such an explanation have explanatory power for the baptism itself. When this point was brought up before, you challenged my idea of explanatory power, and the debate was sidetracked. But, now I hope you do understand my idea and my justification of the criterion of explanatory power. If you have forgotten, then review again "Explanatory power" explained. My judgment in this case is that adoptionists did not need the baptism of Jesus in order to have Jesus be adopted by God, and a few other storyline alternatives would be much more expected to serve that same theological purpose.

For example, the transfiguration event is perfectly suited for that purpose. As another example, adoption by God could have been a reward for Jesus resisting the temptations of Satan. Such alternatives do not have the apologetic problems of such events seemingly conflicting with Jesus being sinless and Jesus being the superior of John the Baptist.

Explanatory power means that the evidence is what we expect given the theory, and we do not expect an account of the baptism of Jesus given the doctrine of adoptionism (though it is of course still possible). However, we strongly expect an account of the baptism of Jesus given the actual historical baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist and the rivalry with the John-the-Baptist cult, and all of the details very elegantly fit this explanation, as I described in detail in the OP.

ApostateAbe

Explanatory power is certainly an advantage, but it counts for little if it lacks plausibility. But, if the explanation has explanatory power, plausibility, explanatory scope, consistency and less ad hoc, and the rival explanation has none of those things, then you have a winning explanation and a losing explanation. One explanation is probable, and the other is not.

Toto

You must combine the early adoptionist character of Mark with a later shift, in Matthew and Luke, away from the adoptionist idea. The later gospel writers invented the birth scenes, and had Jesus born as the son of God, and then modified the baptism scene.

I still do not agree with your version of explanatory power. It looks to me as if you have rigged it to get the result that you want, so you can then claim greater explanatory power.