Vivisector

Because, I think, Mark might have been superstitious, but he wasn't stupid. If, in the process of creating the scene out of whole cloth, he was smart enough to have connected Jesus's adoption to a rite securely connected to a historical person (as some of us might think), it seems a small step to suppose that he was similarly capable of anticipating some of the potential difficulties of this particular approach.

Cheers,

V.

dog-on

Hmmm, now I read the same text and see a very coherent story, even in it's details. Everything seems to have a specific purpose. Clearly, the writer was not stupid.

However, even granting your "small" assumption, is it your contention that Mark could see the future? As in some kind of super power?

2-J

Even if Mark could have, or should have, anticipated directions future redactors might take his story - why would he care? Assuming he was an Adoptionist, his story makes internal sense and the Baptism is just fine for his purposes. This was his definitive statement, fine for his purposes.

aa5874

The Markan baptism story does NOT make sense when the actual story is read.

Look at the actual story. It occupies 3 verses.

Mark 1 The story is FICTION as described and explains NOTHING.

Why must gMark be writing history?

There is NOTHING embarrassing in the story and the author gave NO clues at all that he was embarrassed by the Baptism and claimed a VOICE from some kind of CLOUD was PLEASED with "MY BELOVED SON".

It is VIRTUALLY impossible to use the information found in gMark to answer the question "Why was Jesus baptized" when the story as found in gMark itself is FICTION.

2-J

It makes internal sense, in the story he wished to tell.

Plot elements in fiction may make internal sense, and work together to form the overall message / idea of the work, even if there are no facts behind the fiction.

aa5874

Are you claiming to know the INTERNAL Sense of three dis-jointed verses?

Mark 1
Mark 1Mark 1 We have THREE statements. There is NO Baptism story. Please tell me what is the INTERNAL sense and the credible historical source of antiquity that can corroborate that internal sense?

It is ONLY when we read the actual passage that it is REALIZED that there is NOTHING at all embarrassing about the Baptism of Jesus by John in gMark. There is really no baptism story.

The author SIMPLY made a statement that Jesus of Nazareth was Baptized by John. That is all. One verse and that's it.

Vivisector

Heaven forbid, so to speak. I only suggest that Mark's adoption scene was not without baggage - and furthermore, that he knew this not because of some super power, but because the scene's future was Mark's present.

If Mark's only agenda was to portray an adoption, then there are many ways he could have done this while avoiding the package of issues involving JtB and even baptism (e.g, white dove descends as Jesus prays, Jesus is walking down a Roman road and the clouds part - perhaps as he's healing a leper - and many more). But Mark connects the adoption to baptism, and baptism by JtB.

One might suppose that, given an infinity of choices in generating a cut-from-whole-cloth story, a non-stupid person would be most likely to select from the set of adoption scenarios that incline toward the less contentious end of the spectrum.

Cheers,

V>

jgoodguy

Unless as far as aMark was concerned, there was no contention. This seems to be the simplest position. The baptism accomplished connecting Jesus to Jewish practices, to a historical person and adoption by God. Sounds like a winner to me. Only subsequent writers were concerned and their concern may have been more with establishing Jesus' Godhood at birth and not as a adopted son that JtB.

dog-on

Doesn't this assume that there was a spectrum, at the time Mark wrote his story, to begin with?

Vorkosigan

The writer of Mark does not have an "infinity of choices."

He's working with extant documents -- I am fairly sure that his story of the Jesus has two major sources, the OT and Paul. Paul speaks frequently about baptism and Xtianity, so the writer of Mark begins there.

Jesus in Mark is a stand in for the new Christian/Christian recruit, who begins with baptism and ends with "crucifixion" of the old self and rebirth as the new Christian convert.

The writer of Mark had several guides for his fiction-construction. First, GMark follows the Elijah-Elisha cycle. GMark opens with a comparison of Elijah and JBap in v6:

• 6: Now John was clothed with camel's hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey.
  
  Mark has presented John as an Elijah figure with a leather belt (zonen dematinen) around his waist (peri ten osphyn autou), using the same language the Septaugint uses to describe Elijah, a hairy man, girt with a leather belt (zonen dematinen) around his waist (ten osphyn autou) (Helms 1988, p35). Zech 13:4 states that a hairy mantle is the sign of a prophet.

The writer of Mark's choices are actually quite constrained, once he had chosen to use the Elijah-Elisha cycle as the backbone for the first half of his story. This is because in Hellenistic Historical Romance conventions, one source for GMark, the main character of the tale wanders around the landscape meeting famous people. In this case the EE story and convention of using historical figures and Pauline source suggest the obvious choice of someone famous for baptizing in the area of northern Judea where EE cycle begins: John the Baptist.

As for clashes between GMark and Josephus, the author of Mark is writing fiction, and doesn't care.

Vorkosigan