teamonger

I think such historization would tend to create a Jesus with fewer theological problems than the one we have. The baptism by John would be highly embarrassing to the early church, would seem to imply that John was superior. Thus John is portrayed as practically groveling to Jesus and acknowledging his superiority. Yet later, he sends his own followers to question Jesus, to learn whether he is "the one to come". The groveling portrayal is thus considered largely fictional, as it serves the early church. However, the baptism itself did occur, as the church could hardly be the fabricator of such an embarrassment.

Likewise, Jesus being a Galilean from Nazareth is an embarrassment. If Jesus were started as a symbolic myth, why not make him Jesus of Bethlehem from the gitgo? Instead, two inconsistent birth stories portray why he could be Jesus of Nazareth, but was "really" born in Bethlehem.

Likewise, a mistaken Jesus, who predicts the end of the world within a generation, would also be an embarrassment, later to be glossed over by the likes of 2 Peter.
t

teamonger

Of course, this may have been a later smear against Paul by the Ebionites, an attempt to villainize his brand of religion. He was probably born a Jew, but one highly Hellenized. It appears to me that Paul was uneasilyl accepted by the Jerusalem church primarily for the money he could bring them from converts.
t

aa5874

"Embarrassment" has nothing whatsoever to do with history. You need evidence or information to support your claims.

spamandham

Let me preface by stating that I am playing devil's advocate here. I have not formed an opinion as to whether there is a historical core to Jesus or not.

All that's necessary, is that the baptism not have been an embarrasment at the time the story originated. There need not have been a historical Jesus for that to be the case - particularly if the baptism served a mythical or theological purpose at the time.

"And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled that he would be called a Nazorean" (Matt 2:23).

If Jesus started as a symbolic myth, then he need not have come from Bethlehem. The prophecy Matthew speaks of here appears to be based on something, but we don't know what.

It's only later on, when Jesus is dressed up as the return of David, that it became necessary to invent a birth story having him born in Bethlehem. Prior to that, it appears there was an expectation that he would be a Nazorean (or is that Nazarene? hmmm).

If the apocalyptic language was originally symbolic in nature, then the early church would not have expected a physical end of the world. None of the Gospels seem embarrased by this 'failed prophecy'. It's only much much later during the catholicizing stage of the church that it posed a problem.

teamonger

On the contrary, embarrassment is an important criterion for historians. Read E. P. Sanders.
t

teamonger

1. Okay, sound like you're comfortable with the idea of John (a historical person) baptizing a spiritual entity (Jesus). Seems a bit farfetched to me, compared to two guys in a river. Where would such a tradition come from, if not from reality? Nothing in Paul to suggest it, to my knowledge.

2. Matthew trying to work Nazareth into prophecy seems almost an act of desperation. There is no such prophecy. It may be that he misunderstood the passage from Judges 13:5, "the child shall be a Nazirite from birth". This is exactly the kind of mistranslation that Matthew is infamous for.

The "second David" aspect for Jesus appears early, in Paul and in Mark. But Mark has Jesus seem to deny that the Messiah needed to be descended from David! His being a Galilean was clearly an embarrassment early on. I suppose you can say that the myth kept changing, but there's nothing improbable about the simple existence of a charismatic Galilean preacher.

3. But clearly, the early church did expect the end of the world. Paul says "time had grown very short". 1 Peter says "the end of all things is at hand". 1 John says "we know that this is the last hour". I take this as evidence that most of those writings were from a few decades from the time of Jesus, at least in their original forms. Such certainty makes the most sense if we think Jesus held such views himself, as Mark indicates.

t

Rick Sumner

"even deliberately avoided by one?" My, how we romanticize things. Tell me, when you recall this in your mind's eye do you picture yourself in a loincloth screaming "I AM SPARTACUS!"?

Just curious.

I should probably say something now though, at this rate in a week you'll have quelled me with a single word. Or even just a stern look across cyberspace.

Your original list deals with a list on a blog that had nothing to do with how Mark intended to portray Jesus, rather it was about who the poster thinks Jesus was. That Mark intended to portray Jesus as apocalyptic is taken for granted by the blog post, so you'll have to forgive me for not realizing that that was what you were taking issue with.

Since none of the passages in question are really the stronger or more overt examples of Mark portraying Jesus as apocalyptic, I don't know that your list can really count as a solid argument against such a position. Certainly it isn't an argument that I have any obligation to address, given that I didn't take the position that, based on the points raised in the blogpost, Mark portrays an apocalyptic Jesus (neither, for that matter, did the blogger in question).

Indeed, I don't think I've ever even heard of such a reading of Mark, which would be why I just assumed you were taking the same position, and instead simply arguing that Jesus was wrongly portrayed as apocalyptic, a la Crossan. I'd be interested in seeing how such an argument would take shape, though unfortunately don't have the time to devote to a discussion of it at present. Can you recommend any commentaries in that vein?

I know, my lack of time is doubtlessly more of my deliberate evasion. You can wax lyrical in that vein again, if you're so inclined. The six day old baby in my house at present says otherwise, however.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

spamandham

As part of the baptism event, the Gospel records magical impossible aspects that we know simply didn't happen. The purpose of the baptism is to kick off Jesus' public life, and obviously not to simply record history.

I don't think it's necessary to identify what specific mythical, mystical, theological, political, or propaganda purpose might have been served to notice that the baptism is an important aspect of the gospel story, and not merely an attempt to record history.

If I were to wager a guess, I would say the reason it was included, was to try claim dominion over the John the Baptist cult and make them Jesus followers instead. That's just a guess of course.

I've had this discussion many times here before. We can't simply claim Matthew invented the prophecy. If his audience was not already familiar with it, he couldn't get away with doing that.

The prophecy he refers to need not exist explicitly within the modern canon. All that matters is that he and his audience thought it was a prophecy, and they clearly did. Since they thought it was a prophecy, then Jesus coming from Nazareth serves a theological purpose and need not be historical.

...isn't that exactly what we would expect if the gospel originated outside Judea? First century Judaism was not a cohesive reliogion, it was a conglomerate of competing cults each claiming authority.

There's nothing particularly probable about it either, and that's the problem.

I think it's important to keep the timelines in mind. 1 Peter is almost certainly a late 2nd century writing (by my estimates. scholars are all over the map, and I have strong reservations against accepting the obviously apologetic early dates) - part of the catholicising stage, whereas some of the epistles may be genuinely first century.

Paul's kingdom of god is, to me at least, clearly a kind of spiritual enlightenment rather than an end of the world scenario. If Paul did indeed write first, then this counters anything that sounds apocalyptic in the gospels or later canon. Even if Paul did believe in and end of the world scenario, it really doesn't argue for a historical Jesus.

After all, the end times nutters are still going at it today, and certainly no-one modern knew Jesus. For all we know this has been going on for 10,000 years.

bacht

Conservatives like the Sadduccees may not have acknowledged any sort of messianic speculation. They wouldn't have accepted a human incarnation of the God of Moses, though re-incarnated prophets might've been conceivable. The figure of Wisdom/Sophia seems to be on the angelic plane, beyond human mortality. She could have evolved into Philo's Logos, a non-eschatalogical spiritual mediator.

The Son of God idea comes from passages like Ps 2 or 72, the royal son of David. This was not a supernatural being, though possibly a humanly perfect messiah.

It's easy enough to see John the Baptist as following the apocalyptic tradition, heralding the Day of the Lord. If Jesus was the messiah, he didn't pursue the traditional military/political agenda, and his death didn't signal the Messianic age. Either he was conceived of differently from the start, or his followers had to re-interpret his career after Easter.

If the early believers weren't followers of Jewish eschatology then any sort of amalgam of ideas is possible. JtB's successors (Dositheus, Simon Magus) were seen as gnostics. These were contemporaries of Paul. Maybe the 1st C really was a time of religious innovation.

teamonger

Nothing in the gospels was simply to record history, but to glorify Jesus. But that doesn't mean that real history couldn't be mixed in. A historian needs to sift the words to find it. The baptism was clearly embarrassing to the early church, and each later gospel version glosses it over more and more, until in the 4th gospel it is not even mentioned at all, just the groveling.

The reason for portraying John's groveling behavior was certainly to claim dominion over his followers. But we have another tradition in Matthew which shows John, while in prison, sending followers to Jesus to ask "are you the one?". We can see that John was actually not certain about Jesus at all. Since that goes against the grain, that piece is likely authentic.

t