Amaleq13

Mt and Lk disagree with regard to the time of Jesus' birth.

Mt and Lk disagree with regard to how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem.

The "prophecy" of the virgin birth of the messiah is a Christian fabrication. The passage clearly has nothing to do with the messiah and the birth is not depicted as miraculous but as a time marker for the plainly stated prophecy about the king.

Even Christian scholars like Crossan recognize that the passion narratives were created from Scripture rather than fulfillments of it.

The lack of consistancy with regard to the claims mentioned above is clear evidence that the concept of "Divine Authorship" is without any rational basis.

The fact that the author of Matthew relied so heavily on the earlier work attributed to Mark has caused even the Catholic Study Bible to recognize that the author could not have been an actual disciple. The attributions of the Gospels is a 2nd century development.

Vinnie

The opening of the Gospel (1:1) John message in vv7-8 (groveling before Jesus), the heavenly voice and so on. Mark may have even taken an adoptionist standpoint but this is by no means clear. This also certainly does not mean he created the baptsim of Jesus. Given his views on Jesus, the sayings amterial we have, the continued existence of JBap's followers, all the other gospels which retained this tradition in some form or suppressed it and the Lukan infancy narratives we have no reason to suppose he did so.


The point of John baptizing for the remission of sins in Mark is that it is preparing the way for Jesus who John was the precursor to. If you notice Mark's hyperbole in v.5 this becomes somewhat clearer. Also you also forget that Jesus forgives sins in Mark 2. The actual historical Jesus may have made such pronouncements under the guise of "by God!" but that is not how Mark frames it. I do not as readily see Jesus being baptized for the remission of his sin in Mark. This is certainly how it originally occured but Mark is rying to work around that in the best way he can. If we was creating from whole cloth he probably would not have come up with such a story.

Neither you nor any skeptic has ever offered comments of substance on the baptism of Jesus. Its certainly not as certain as Crossan and others suggest. It is at least much more probable and than not.

Vinnie

Amaleq13

Groveling? You are reading into the text.

The heavenly voice is how Jesus' identity is made known after he has been anointed by "Elijah".

I realize you are busy with your debate but none of the above seems to require that the baptism scene be historical.

No, that is the point of depicting John as an "Elias" figure.

How is that relevant to the fact that Mark unapologetically portrays Jesus as deliberately going to a man who baptized for the repentance of sins?

It requires no effort except to simply read the text. Mark tells us what JBap was doing and then tells us Jesus was going to him to be baptized. There are no complex exegeses involved. The author leaves the clear implication to be embarrassing to later rewriters.

You seem to me to be reading this effort into the text.

Nonsense. The story provides everything he needed with no indication he felt any of it required an apology.

Given the consistent absence of substantive support for your repeated claims of "embarrassment", I wonder whether you would recognize substance if you saw it?

NOGO

Vinnie,

I forgot one thing in my last post.

David started a new role (King) after being anointed.
Clearly Mark also meant Jesus' baptism to be the start of a new role for Jesus.

I know it is contrary to Christian beliefs but I think that it is quite obvious that Mark meant Jesus' baptism to be some form of anointing.

Matthew and Luke however, do have some reason to be embarrassed.
They both have Jesus being born of a virgin and the holy spirit. Luke declares him to be the son of God. With such a start the baptism is redundant. Jesus was already selected (anointed) by God at his birth.

John does not have this problem. John uses the scene as the start of Jesus' new career.

I would appreciate a reference discussing the embarrassment evidence you are talking about.

Thanks