Peter Kirby

Several years ago I typed this out from a book checked out of the local city library, to use in discussion. Since the subject has come up here, I thought that this would be of interest to those who are following the discussion and would like to know more about the relevant scholarship. I hope it is helpful.

John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, Vol. II, pp. 100-105

It may strike many readers as strange that anyone should have to mount a defense of the historicity of Jesus' baptism by John. Not only is this dramatic event deeply ingrained in the religious memory of almost every Christian; usually without debate it also serves as the starting point of most scholarly reconstructions of the life of the historical Jesus. With the Infancy Narratives often declared unreliable sources, writers naturally gravitate to what they almost automatically consider firm historical ground.

Yet the matter is not so clear-cut as some would think. The narratives of Jesus' baptism is directly available to us in only one independent source, Mark's Gospel (followeed by Matthew and Luke). At first, glance, therefore, the criterion of mutliple attestation does not apply - though certainly a lack of more than one witness does not prove that a narrated event did not take place. This lack of multiple independent witness from the 1st century holds true outside as well as within the NT. Josephus gives us separate accounts of the ministries of Jesus and John in book 18 of the *Antiquities* without mentioning any connection or meeting between the two, to say nothing of the Baptist baptizing Jesus. Does Josephus' total separation of these two Jewish prophets from the first half of the 1st century reflect historical reality, namely, that Jesus and John never actually met?

There is another reason for doubting the historicity of Jesus' baptism: the narrative in Mark is obviously laden with Christian theological interpretation. In fact, the great theophany that follows the baptism (the opening of the heavens, the dove descending, God's voice declaring Jesus his Son) takes up most of the Gospel narrative of the baptismal event and is the main point of the pericope, with the event of the baptism itself being reported in one word. With this weighty freight of Christian theology overshadowing the supposed event of the baptism proper, one must wonder whether the Christian believer's experience of his or her own baptism, the beginning of Christian life, has not been read back into the beginning of Christ's own public life. Jesus would thus become a paradigmatic figure for all those Christians who had listened to some earnest preacher proclaiming repentance and salvation and who accordingly allowed themselves to be plunged into water by said preacher to obtain forgiveness of their sins.

. . .

[note - after discussion, this appears to be beyond what fair use would allow. The entire section can be viewed on line at the Amazon.com link below, if you search for a key term and find page 100.]

Vinnie

I don't think Q had baptimal account but I am not dogmatic as the article I wrote on this shows.

I tentatively include GJohn and GHrebrews both third stratum) as indepdnent witnesses to the baptsim but not a first stratum one.

The primary criterion here is embarrrassment.


Ma = We at least have this.

MA= I believe this as well but it is not 100% certain.

EC = Ding Ding Ding

FS = Nope

ID = Nope

CF = John is cast as the precursor to Jesus and the one leading the way. But if it is trully embarrassing the creative factor is nil. Yet one still cannot thoroughly rebut the possibility that someone in the early chirch connected Christian baptism with Jesus' baptism. I think Meier's comments on this are spot on but they are an argument from silence and that makes them less certain. So these weights in a little.

F&F Nope

DD = Nope

CT = Nope

CPD = Nope

CC = This could be argued after a detailed treatment of all Baptist related pericopes in Q and the synoptics.

This would fit three criteria (if one uses coherence) but two (coherence and MA? or Ma??? are difficult to defend. For example, if one were to invoke a judgment of non liquet for GHebrews amd see John as dependent on the synoptics what do we have? Embarrassment in a tradition appearing 30 to 40 years after Jesus' death.

In the end I would deem this highly probable (but not virtually certain as would many scholars!). But it could easily move into the "more probable than not" cateogry I have,

Vinnie

Toto

Mentor, Message, and Miracles (A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume 2)

Vorkosigan

It would be nice if a "historical scholar" would actually pay attention to history. The account of JBap's Baptism of Jesus was not written by the Church (which did not exist in Mark's time) but by the author of Mark.

Once again we see that this criteria simply discovers its assumptions. Meier argues: the Church could not have invented the story. But this stance assumes that the story was a tradition, not an invention of Mark's. First we have to demonstrate, not assert, that it must have been an extant tradition, then we can discuss the second problem of the embarrassment criterion, which is that it cannot be applied to traditions, but only to individual writers whose positions we know.

One needs to be very careful when working with fictive material. In the real ballads about Robin Hood, Robin engages in many things that one might consider "embarrassing." In fact, the later Protestant traditions of Robin wiped out the fact that he was a Most Catholic Hero in his original incarnations. Should we assume from the embarrassment of later tradition that former tradition must have been historical? No, but that is Meier's argument, and Vinnie's as well.

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

Didn't you procede to accuse Meier of making assertions after this?

Vorkosigan

I think you misunderstood. I meant that the account in Mark was written by the author of Mark. Unless you want to argue that it was interpolated, or copied word for word from another source who happened to write in Markan style.

Vorkosigan

Amaleq13

There is no evidence that this story created "enormous difficulties" for Mark only that it did so for later Christians. The "credible reason" for Mark to include such a story is the need for the Messiah to be identified via anointing by "Elias".

John is clearly depicted as "merely" the forerunner, proclaimer, prophet and witness of Jesus as the Messiah. That he is also depicted as the baptizer of Jesus does not appear to have been a problem for Mark. There is no evidence that Mark considered this to undermine John as forerunner.

Meier appears to be imposing later beliefs onto Mark. The fact that the author makes no effort to dispute the obvious implication (i.e. Jesus had sins to repent or at least believed he had sins to repent) suggests he didn't consider it theologically problematic. It suggests Mark considered Jesus ignorant of his identity as the Messiah prior to the baptism/identification.

Meier's unsubstantiated assertion aside, it would appear this is exactly what he is doing.

What "pre-Marcan" tradition? The primary reason for the story is the identification of Jesus as the Messiah. The baptism is only necessary given the requirement of an anointing by Elias. That the baptism is secondary to JBap's prophetic identification of Jesus is clear from Q and GJohn which only retain this feature.