Toto

What are the indications of embarrassment in Mark? Your statement is convoluted, but it appears that you agree that you are reading Matthew back into Mark and you don't see anything wrong with that?

Matthew and Mark followed two different theologies within Christianity. That's probably why Matthew felt the need to rewrite Mark. Why should they be conflated?

Why is the "extreme humility" of John the Baptist something that needs to be explained?

ApostateAbe

I know that I catch flack for interpreting and explaining Paul in light of the gospels, but I think it is much more forgivable to interpret and explain Mark in light of the gospels that immediately sourced Mark. As Michael Turton reflected, the gospel of Mark was for a long time believed by the church to be merely a condensed version of the gospel of Matthew, a belief that is certainly not too outrageous, since the two gospels came from roughly the same religion of roughly the same time and place and they tell roughly the same story. It should not be presumed that Matthew agreed with Mark on everything--a close study of the two gospels show that they didn't--but they do contain considerable agreement on many elements. If Matthew is used to clarify Mark, would that not be at least much like an accepted historical practice, using similar texts to clarify interpretations? If the two gospels are much too different for such a practice in your opinion, then, well, OK. Do you think maybe Matthew saw embarrassment in the baptism by JtB but Mark didn't? Is there good reason to think that?
Because the humility seems to be unusually over-the-top, the sort of evidence that other explanations do not seem to require. "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie." If that does not require an explanation, then, well, maybe nothing in the gospels requires an explanation.

Toto

You are not clarifying anything. You are importing ideas into Mark that are not there. (And who says they came from the same time and place??)

Yes - developing Christian orthodoxy held that Jesus was divine from birth, as opposed to having the spirit descend on him at the baptism. Later developments extended this divinity to his mother, and made her a perpetual virgin, then made her born without sin - which turned Mark's references to Jesus' brothers and sisters into an embarrassment. Do you see a pattern?

In our modern, democratic society, this sort of obsequiousness is unusual. It offends our senses, and we think it reeks of insincerity. It leads to jokes, like Monty Python's take on it.

But in the hierarchical middle east (and in other cultures today) this is the normal way a commoner refers to the nobility, or a lesser noble refers to the king. The explanation is not hard. The writer of Mark wanted to identify Jesus as the equivalent of royalty, and Christians as his slaves / subjects. Paul continually refers to himself as a slave (doulos) of Jesus, although the word is sometimes translated as servant. This is a common Christian theme.

I refer you to A rabbinic commentary on the New Testament: the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (or via: amazon.co.uk) on Google Books p. 45

bacht

Yes, in my mind the NT books are mixtures of 1st C ideas and 2nd C apologetics. The historical characters in Acts I suspect are caricatures of real people, though the gospels read more like dramatized scripture to me (Isaiah, Psalms, Kings etc).

There are four versions of various things in the canonical gospels. Mark supposedly gives us a gentile-friendly story, Matthew plays up the Jewish angle, Luke is focused on post-apocalyptic catholicism and John is a co-opted gnostic.

JtB seems to have been a character that Mark either wanted to use or couldn't ignore. Baptism seems to have roots in Judaism so may not have been invented. As to why Mark and the others retained this character I would guess that he was useful to proto-catholic apologists, either as a source of potential members or as a justification for the ritual being used in catholic circles (maybe they stole it from John's people).

dog-on

You assume quite a bit Abe. Let's step back for a moment.

Do you think that Mark knew Matthew?

If not, what relevance do Matthew's particular beliefs have for Mark?

You see, you are using your interpretation of a Matthean view of the baptism and reading this into Mark.

From my perspective, while Mark appears to be an adoptionist, Matthew does not. So they are, in fact, two separate religions, for the purposes of this particular discussion.

Steven Carr

The baptism ,per se, does not show the result of 30 years of Christians explaining it away.

It is simply a McGuffin to get John the Baptist and Jesus together, so 'Mark' can have his Elijah proclaim his Messiah.

Matthew and Luke had wise men and prophetesses announce Jesus, so had less need of a John the Baptist for their story.

spamandham

I think you are using it *too* loosely, just as you are endlessly abusing variants of the word "probable". What you've done is to select a position you prefer that is nonetheless riddled with difficult issues that you pretty much ignore. Do you not know that there is consensus among Biblical historians that Jesus actually rose from the dead? I'm not saying all scholarship in the field is worthless, but rather, caveat emptor.

The argument from embarrassment in regard to JtB is silly. If early Christians found it embarrassing, they wouldn't mention it at all. Afterall, they don't mention that Jesus was a follower of JtB, but if John really did baptize Jesus, then certainly Jesus was at one time a member of John's cult! But the gospels never mention that. If his membership in the cult can be ignored, then so can the baptism.

There are better explanations for the baptism than the absurdly applied argument from embarrassment:

1. It is designed as a tool to convert members of the JtB cult over to Christianity.
2. It is an etiological explanation for the existence of Christian baptism - a practice that is otherwise puzzling.
3. Conveniently 1 and 2.

aa5874

So, this would mean that the walking on the sea by Jesus, the transfiguration and the resurrection were historical since they are using similar texts to clarify interpretations.

Your proposal is completely flawed since agreement within gMatthew and gMark may only mean that they copied one or the other or used some similar source.

Historicity of the baptism by John of Jesus is directly dependent upon credible external corroborative sources of which none can be found.

ApostateAbe

That is well argued, Toto. I would expect that the normal early Christian outlook is that any follower of Jesus would consider themselves like a servant or a slave of Jesus. Paul certainly calls himself a slave. Therefore, it can't be considered entirely out of the expected that Mark's John the Baptist would say that he is unworthy to unfasten the sandals on Jesus's feet, regardless of Mark's rivalry with the followers of JtB.

The extreme humility expressed by Mark's JtB still deserves some further explanation, and I will explain why. There is only one quote from JtB in Mark, and that quote is what contains the extreme humility. By contrast, the writings of Paul contain many pages of text, and Paul, as humble as he is, is never quite as expressive in his servitude to Jesus as Mark's JtB.

On top of that, I would like to express my opinion on your pattern versus my pattern. Matthew adopts the same quote from Mark, but Matthew adds to the humility of JtB, quoting, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" Luke, likewise, adopts the same quote from Mark.

Even the gospel of John adopts the same quote. And, the gospel of John is still more illustrative of the humility of JtB with respect to Christ:

(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’

Now, you claim to have found a pattern with Matthew finding embarrassment in the baptism that Mark didn't: "...developing Christian orthodoxy held that Jesus was divine from birth, as opposed to having the spirit descend on him at the baptism." I hope we can both agree that the gobsmackingly obvious pattern found in all four gospels is that JtB is exceptionally humble. Given that, would we not expect the same explanation for the humility in all four gospels?--all four gospels use the same quote to express that humility. Not for you. You take the humility of JtB in Mark as normal and expected for Christians, and then you turn around as you look at Matthew and take the humility as part of the embarrassment that Jesus was supposed to be divine from birth.

What do you think? Does it seem like I am making an effective argument, or am I blowing smoke as usual?

mountainman

The Papal archaeologist de Rossi has claimed to have found such external corroborative sources in the vicinity of the catacombs, but the real question is whether this external corroborative source is credible. It is being cited by the luminaries of "Early Christianity" such as Graydon Snyder:


Plate 13 -- "The sarcophagus located in Sta. Maria Antiqua, Rome

It is summarily described by the author as being "Likely the oldest example of Early Christian plastic art", and a full description is given is as follows:

"The Teaching of the Law stands in the center, with a Good Shepherd immediately to the right and an Orante immediately to the left. Continuing left is a Jonah cycle, first Jonah resting, then Jonah cast out of the ketos, and finally Jonah in the boat. To the extreme left side stands a river god. To the right of the Good Shepherd there is a baptism of Jesus with a dove descending. Jesus is young, nude, and quite small next to the older, bearded John the Baptist. A pastoral scene concludes the right end"

The Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist

Can everyone clearly see the magnificent evidence that adorns the "Lord God Caesar" and "Pontifex Maximus" Constantine's "Christian heritage" and the lengths that our planets apologetic academics have gone to to illicit this invaluable evidence in support of the existence of the "Early Church Dogma" ante pacem?