Amaleq13

Vinnie,


Thanks for the welcome. Glad to be here. I couldn’t figure out how to maintain the built-in quote separations while addressing individual portions of your post. Any tips via email would be welcome.

“Can it be established that the author of Mark considered Jesus to be sinless prior to his baptism?”


Vinnie: If Mark was "inventing" Jesus' baptism by John then yes he must have believed this.

I don’t follow your reasoning. You seem to be saying that, if Mark invented the baptism scene, he must have considered Jesus to be sinless prior to that scene? How does that necessarily follow? Please explain. Whether we assume a mythicist or historical perspective, it seems to me that the way Mark writes the story suggests that he accepted that Jesus was not sinless prior the baptism.

First, Mark tells us that John performed baptisms for the remission of sins. Then, he tells us that Jesus travelled all the way from Galilee to be baptized by this same man. The obvious conclusion is that Jesus intended to participate just like anybody else and Mark tells us nothing to prevent us from making this obvious connection.

Vinnie: If Mark thought Jesus was sinless and WAS really baptized by JBap then he could have thought him sinless after the fact.

You meant “Mark thought Jesus was not sinless” before the baptism, right?

It seems to me you are you suggesting that the only way Mark could have believed Jesus was sinless after the baptism is if he believed it was historically true. If that is what you are claiming, I would need to see your argument. I see nothing inherently unreasonable about suggesting this same scene could be written within a mythical context.

Vinnie: Did Mark not know he was writing fiction when he was inventing the baptismal story or not?

In my opinion? None of the Gospel authors considered their efforts to be lies but I don’t think any of them considered them to be historical records, either. I have no problem accepting that the Gospel authors devoutly believed that reinterpreting Scripture, writing under the assumption of prophecy fulfillment, and allowing the Spirit to guide their individual efforts were legitimate methods capable of producing theological truths.

Vinnie: But now if Mark was not inventing Jesus' baptism by John then it predates his Gospel and he received it elsewhere. The adoptionist point is moot. Here are the verses I cited on Jesus being sinless:

I’m going to treat these verses as rebuttal to my earlier comment above since they would probably be what you would offer anyway:

“...we have no evidence that this was something Christians before Mark even thought about”

Vinnie: 2 Cor 5:21 21God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Paul, like the author of GJohn, appears to have believed that Christ existed in heaven with God before being incarnated. Is there any reason I should not understand “him who had no sin” to be a reference to this pre-existent Christ?

Vinnie: Heb 4:14 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin.

The temptations took place after the baptism so this doesn’t inform us about his state prior to the event.

Vinnie: 1 Pet 1:19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

This seems to be a reference to the blood shed during the crucifixion which would also have been after the baptism.

Vinnie: 1 Pet 2:22 "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth."

This could possibly be considered to include the pre-baptism Jesus but it really isn’t specific enough to carry the entire weight of your claim, in my opinion.

Vinnie: Further, John has Jesus saying, "Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me?" I realize this reference post-dates Mark but the large number of references serve to show that this basic idea was widespread.

The basic idea was widespread EVENTUALLY but you haven’t presented anything nearly sufficient to carry the claim that it was held by Mark, IMHO.

Vinnie: But at the same time if these early Christians who viewed Jesus as sinless and the source of forgiveness actually believed in the baptism by John the baptist, so much for Doherty and his silence.

You haven’t really established the existence of early (i.e. pre-Mark) Christians holding such a belief and Mark’s author makes no effort to “correct” the obvious implication.

Vinnie: I compared Mark's thought with that of other and earlier Christians and saw how it cohered with the grain of the story. It went against it.

What earlier Christians?

Vinnie: But I will grant that unless one takes an adoptionist point that Jesus was sinless after the baptism then all my above exegesis which implies embarrassment in Mark is correct.

Why should we assume that Mark did not hold an adoptionist view? His failure to prevent the reader from making the obvious connection between JBap’s activities and Jesus’ desire to participate seems to suggest that he did hold such a view or, at least, would have if someone had asked him about it.

Vinnie: But if one takes this POV mythicism abd baptismal skepticism is derailed at any rate.

I don’t see how this follows.

Vinnie: No matter how I look at the account Jesus is still being "subjected" to John. It was the goal of virtually all the evangelists and Christians to exalt the status of Jesus over everyone. Any subjecting of Jesus to anyone by default goes against the theological grain of the evangelists.

I think you are again imposing later Christian beliefs upon Mark without sufficient justification. Keep in mind that this same author had no problem describing Jesus making two attempts before completely healing a man (Mk 8:22-25). I have no problem believing that the authors of Mt and Lk held beliefs contrary to such a less-than-perfect portrait because both deliberately chose not to include this portion of Mark. A comparison between the three Synoptics suggests Mark had the most human conception of Jesus and that seems to be consistent with an adoptionist position.

Vinnie: I will grant that an adoptionist point resolves this but you can't claim Mark made it up. You are forced to claim the early church invented the baptismal account. This opens up its own can of worms and we are still left with historicity.

I don’t follow you. Why couldn’t the story be mythical?

Vinnie: At any rate, Q is silent about a lot of early church issues isn't it?

Yes, it is almost as though the community it describes doesn’t even know Paul/Pillars/their beliefs about a resurrected Christ even exist.<g>

Vinnie: If the Christians believed Jesus was only the Christ after death or after baptism or after temptation then why is there so much embarrassment regarding John and Jesus in the Christian record?

Where is there embarrassment expressed when such beliefs are also claimed? Paul is certainly not embarrased. There is no embarrassment in Q. And, as I mentioned before, I see no evidence that Mark was concerned about any theologically problematic implications of the story. You only find embarrassment later when beliefs have changed.

I wrote:
“From Paul’s theology, he obtains baptism as an important rite of initiation where the Christian begins a new life. As a man trying to create a narrative description of Jesus’ ministry, these two pieces of information seem to beg for an actual baptism scene featuring both individuals.”

Vinnie: How does Doherty explain the huge silence???

Silence about what? And these are my thoughts, not Doherty's.

Vinnie: There is also no indication in Mark that connects Christian baptism with Jesus' baptism.

I never said he did but it seems ridiculous to suggest that his fellow Christians wouldn’t immediately make the connection, themselves, after reading the story. If Mark is a member of the same Christianity as Paul, we can assume that he and his entire audience had been baptized. It would certainly not be necessary for Mark to break out of his narrative to directly address his audience and remind them that they were baptized just like Jesus!

In addition to Paul, I’m also not connecting Christian baptism with Jesus’ baptism. I think Christian baptism is connected to the Jewish baptism John performed.

Vinnie: As I quoted Meier above:

"The surprising thing about all of the NT statements concerning Christian baptism is that no NT author ever directly and explicitly links Christian baptism with Jesus' baptism, and the latter is never explicitly presented as the cause, archetype, or model of the former.

The absence of any such references is only surprising within an historical context. I thought you were arguing against a mythicist position. <g> Within the mythical context, Christians were getting baptized before the story of Jesus’ baptism existed. Jewish baptism inspired Christian baptism which helped to inspire the story of the baptism of Jesus.

I wrote:
“The early presence of a baptism scene that became more theologically embarrassing over time does not appear to be significant as an objection to the mythicist position.”

<And we should think the baptism only became embarrassing later (I presume you mean after Mark) because?>

Because Christian theology had developed/changed such that the original story became problematic.

Amaleq13

I agree and I think this was true of Paul as well to an even greater extent. I’m not sure he cared when or even if Jesus existed on earth. His faith began and ended with a belief in the existence of the Risen Savior Christ. The technical details of the incarnation were irrelevant and unnecessary given the strength of this belief as his starting point.

Vinnie

Amaleq13, given the direction of your last post--which I COMPLETELY disagree with, I think we need to put this thread on stand-still for a pinch and work out some details regarding the Gospel of Mark.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=67421

Toto, you asked about my comment on the paucity of Gentile related material before. There is the article!

Oh yeah, quoting is pretty easy here:

[ quote ]Vinnie is a swell guy[ /quote ]

Now you have to remove the spaces between the brackets and the word "quote" for the code to work. When you do:

On that note I cordially invite you all to the other thread

Vinnie

Amaleq13

Hey, I'm even bolding it all up and stuff!!


Within a mythical context, the Jesus/John connection is only a mystery if you reject Q, the Q community, and the idea that Mark was at least familiar with the movement.

According to Q, JBap was predicting the imminent arrival of the Day of the Lord and the Coming One who would apparently be kicking butt and taking names OT-style!<g>

The Q community seems to have believed that Jesus was this promised Coming One and portray John as sending disciples to ask Jesus if this is true. Jesus essentially confirms this and then is depicted as explicitly informing his audience that John is, indeed, the messenger of Malachi 3. He follows this up with an interesting comment:

"...Among those that are born of women there is no greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he." (Lk 8:28, KJV).

Even without a baptism scene, there seems to have been a need to make it clear that John was important but nowhere near as important as the Kingdom of God (and, by extension, Jesus) that was the focus of the Q community.

Must this concern about getting the power structure straight reflect a potentially embarrassing historical setting? Not necessarily. If the Q community believed their Jesus to be the Coming One, they would have been forced by local awareness of John's preaching (or, perhaps, their former direct association with JBap's group) to include him in their written story. Even if Jesus and John never met, this group would have been forced to create such a connection. If I recall correctly, it may be relevant that the writings of the descendants of the JBap group do not speak favorably about Jesus.


PS regarding putting the thread on hold:

I'm not sure what "direction" you think I'm going but I'm in no big hurry. Are we supposed be clearing up whatever needs clearing in the other thread or here?

Rick Sumner

Probably because he wasn't a baptist. Josephus spent some time with him (Life.9-12), he emphasized purity through ritual bathing. There's no indication that he equated it with the remission of sins.



Where do you see indication that Jesus being sinless was a problem for the later evangelists? We both agree that the baptism was a problem, the question is why. Matthew's rendering of the event, I think, makes the embarassment rather explicit--John, who baptized Jesus and never became a follower, comes off superior to Jesus. None of them, that I can see, seem to think that being sinless poses a problem.



There is grounds to doubt it, it's incredibly anomalous. Too anomalous. It's entirely without precedent. Not in the sense of "goes against the grain," a la embarassment, but in the sense of wholly without precedent and unnecessary to our understanding of John. It doesnt' fit his context, and context, as E P Sanders will tell you, is *everything.*



I'm aware that they thought Jesus was sinless. Why isn't this sinlessness a source of embarassment?

Besides which, this ignores the key issue--baptism for the remission of sins is wholly without precedent. It doesn't fit John's context. Nobody else shared his sentiments. Nobody else even indicates that they might. The Qumranites explicitly do not.



Ignoring, for the moment, just how many people were "alive and well" in a post-war Israel, one must wonder whether the argument has any merit anyway. Who, outside of Israel, would be familiar with the baptist? Did his reknown extend that far? You either need to establish that it did, or establish that Mark was written in Israel. If not, stories have a way of getting mixed up when they're brought to a bunch of people who don't know better.



Not at all. Equating baptism with the remission of sins could easily be considered a redactive tendency of Christianity at large. I think I've suggested grounds for it to be considered such--the complete absence of contemporary parallel, coupled with the plausibility of the suggested scenario, leave the ball in your court. You can't keep repeating "the gospellers said so" and think that suffices.



Would that general record have been spread to Mark's community?



Surely history is not benefitted if we accept prima facie that which we have grounds to doubt.

Here's the argument in a nutshell:

1) No other Jew on record equated water with the remission of sins, despite the presence of an entire sect, and additionally of Bannus, emphasizing water.

2) Jews did equate other things with the remission of sins, and water with purity.

3) Therefore any Jew who did equate water with the remission of sins would fly flagrant in the face of what we know of first century Judaism, water, and understanding of sin.

John is flying flagrant in the face of what we know. That, in itself, is grounds to question.

Regards,
Rick

Amaleq13

Should we also add that there exists evidence of Jewish belief that the Messiah would not even know himself until he was annointed by the forerunner (i.e. Elijah/Elias reborn)?

We find a reference to such a Jewish belief in Trypho's argument against Justin Martyr:

"But Christ -- if He has indeed been born, and exists anywhere -- is unknown, and does not even know Himself, and has no power until Elias come to anoint Him, and make Him manifest to all..." Dialogue, ch.8

If this was a Jewish belief when Mark wrote, it stands as a powerful motivator to depict a baptism of Jesus by an apparent Elias.

Rick Sumner

No it doesn't. A baptism in which John makes no identification (which he doesn't, in Mark--Jesus is never named the "one who is coming."), doesn't serve that purpose in the slightest. Were that the goal, why isn't Mark clear--why doesn't John identify him? Why does Jesus know who he is without John telling him? Why is there no proclamation?

It would make more sense to simply have the apparent Elijah proclaim him the Messiah. He doesn't--in fact, in Matthew and Luke (or Q, depending on who you ask) he needs to send people to find out.

Regards,
Rick

Amaleq13

My comment was primarily intended to address the question posed to the mythicist position: Why would Mark create a baptism of Jesus by John?

I suggested that the existence of a Jewish belief (described in Martyr's Dialogue) that the Messiah would not be known, even to himself, until he was annointed by a reborn Elias seems to establish a motivation to create exactly such a scene.

The only stated requirement of Elias is that he annoint the man who would then recognize himself as the Messiah. The belief stated in Martyr doesn't require us to assume that Elias recognizes the Messiah nor does it require us to assume that Elias makes any pronouncements. Clearly, Mark didn't think so as he portrays God and the descending Spirit handling that task. We can't even be sure the Spirit and Voice were perceptible to John. Subsequent rewrites of Mark's story suggest, by John's later questions, make it more clear that they were apparently not. If Mark held the belief expressed by Trypho, he did not assume the Elias character would do anything beyond annointing.

John annoints him, God identifies him. The Messiah now recognizes himself and, thus, the "goal" is accomplished. All that is left is for the Messiah to make himself known to others and, given Mark's "messianic secret" theme, there didn't appear to be any hurry on that.

We have no reason to assume Jesus believed himself to be the Messiah before the baptism. Afterwards, I think the experience of having the Spirit descend upon him would have been sufficient but hearing God's identification and declaration of approval probably would settled any possible doubts in his mind.<bg>

That might make more sense to you but it isn't required by the abovestated belief. You seem to be assuming this belief meant that Elias would be the one to identify the Messiah but that is neither stated nor necessarily implied by the text.

I read the belief to mean: At least some Jews believed the Messiah would not be recognized, even by himself, until after he has been annointed by Elias (a.k.a. reborn forerunner).