Freethought & Rationalism Archive

avi · 01-05-2011, 03:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

Just a bit of info re deaths from circumcision practices in SA.

Thank you very much for the link, I had forgotten that the mortality from adult circumcision was so extensive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

To the extent we can validly conclude that Matthew, Luke, and John were increasingly embarrassed by the baptism, the proper conclusion is that these later writers recognized an incongruity, either because it was originally there, or because their concept of Jesus had changed.
It doesn't tell us anything we don't already know about 1st century history. Instead, it tells us something about how theology was evolving in the early church. You can see Jesus transforming from a son of God in Mark to God incarnate by the time of John.

Thanks for that explanation, seems reasonable.
Could your hypothesis work as well, if we change from "1st century history", to second century history? I think it could.

Instead of embarrassment, could it be that M L and J discount or ignore the baptism ceremony, because of their Jewish faith? In other words, is it possible that Josephus' views of Roman Jewish practices (accepting baptism, in lieu of circumcision) represent an anomaly, while mainstream believers, centered about Jerusalem, considered circumcision to be the essential distinction between Jew and non-Jew?

The Christians began eating pork meat, when, perhaps about the same time as the push to accept baptism alone, without circumcision--> would that have been embarrassing? I doubt it. It would simply have been seen, by Jews, as an act of barbarism to eat the flesh of a pig. I feel the same way about people not removing their shoes upon entering the house. I am not embarrassed to visit my relatives who walk around the house wearing their street shoes. The custom seems primitive to me. Ditto for smoking cigarettes. Eating food without utensils. Throwing crystal glassware into the fireplace.

Are these embarrassing customs? I don't think so. Stupid, childish, thoughtless, yes.

Isn't it simpler to evoke an editorial lack of interest in baptism, rather than fear of embarrassment, to account for the progressive diminution in quantity of text in Matthew, Luke, and John, devoted to explaining (a) why a god would require human intervention to achieve purity, and (b) which imperfections of the deity could be ameliorated by bathing?

avi

bacht · 01-05-2011, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juststeve

We can know for sure that the young Christian movement found the baptism embarrassing by the sequential way in which the four canonized gospels treat it, beginning with a rather straight forward account in Mark to no baptism at all in John. If you think the author of Mark was part of that early movement then it is reasonable to assume, without knowing for sure, that he would have been embarrassed by the idea of Jesus submitting to the baptism of another. Why then did he include the story is the argument?

Steve

To the extent we can validly conclude that Matthew, Luke, and John were increasingly embarrassed by the baptism, the proper conclusion is that these later writers recognized an incongruity, either because it was originally there, or because their concept of Jesus had changed.

It doesn't tell us anything we don't already know about 1st century history. Instead, it tells us something about how theology was evolving in the early church. You can see Jesus transforming from a son of God in Mark to God incarnate by the time of John.

Right, it wasn't a matter of embarassment, it was a question of theology. Mark's baptism scene reinforces a docetic interpretation. Matthew & Luke added birth narratives to counter this. John seems to be a gnostic writer co-opted by the proto-Catholics.

And if Mark had an Alexandrian origin there was the political angle of making (catholic) Rome dominant.

Toto · 01-05-2011, 12:16 PM

Neil Godfrey on the Case of the Curious Criterion.

Quote:

More “strictly”, it is summed up by the incredulous claim: “I can’t see why anyone would make it up.” Surely claiming authenticity for any data on the grounds that one “can’t think of a reason it would have been made up by anyone” is the nadir of intellectual laziness. When taken to its extreme, it can be used to prove the most sensational claims of the miraculous.
...

Historians (not theologians) generally treat bizarreness as an indicator of fiction, and the more bizarre the more likely to be fictitious.

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