Steven Carr

Have you told scholars like JP Meier who was under the impression that it had been 'erased' from John's Gospel?

'Quite plainly, the early Church was "stuck with" an event in Jesus' life that it found increasingly embarrassing, that it tried to explain away by various means, and that John the Evangelist finally erased from his Gospel. '

It is a bad mistake for him to have made as it now transpires that the baptism wasn't written out.

Of course, irony of ironies, as soon as the early Church had got away with saying there was no baptism, they were then taunted that there had been no Elijah figure anointing Jesus, and they had to put John the Baptist back into the story line.

Diogenes the Cynic

I don't understand what you're arguing here.

Diogenes the Cynic

The connection to JBap is still there. the story still has Jesus going to John the Baptist. It just elides the actual baptism, but the implication is still there.

Steven Carr

I see. The baptism story was erased, but not written out. That makes sense.

Steven Carr

CARR
As there were no historical facts, it was very easy for later Christians to change any bits of the story they did not like.

They could change John from an Elijah figure to not an Elijah figure, even if previous Gospels had had Jesus himself declare John an Elijah figure.

They were not constrained by any facts. They treated the story line as fictions which could be changed at will.

Diogenes the Cynic

But why would they not like John the Baptist as an avatar for Elijah?

Diogenes the Cynic

It's glossed, not really erased. It's oblique, but it's implied.

Furthermore, if JtB is explicitly denied as being Elijah in John, then why is he in that Gospel at all unless GJohn is addressing the baptism?

JonA

Well, that's one way to misrepresent your opponents' views I guess.

But let me lay out what the real argument is and then we can see if you have any other ways of twisting it into the crappier argument you wish it were:

The connection between Jesus and John the Baptist was too integral to the story to get rid of it. John the Baptist baptized; it is most likely that any connection between John and Jesus involved Jesus getting baptized by John—that's what John did, as I said.

Later gospel writers realized that such a connection (Jesus being baptized) posed a theological problem, but were remiss to erase all connections between Jesus and John the Baptist. All the gospels other than Mark have played down the baptism itself (up to the point of deleting the scene entirely),¹ while offering new spins on the theological significance of John the Baptist's connection to Jesus.

Okay... GO! We all await your completely irrelevant yet amusing caricature of the above position.

Jon
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¹ Notice, it doesn't say Jesus wasn't baptized in the gospel of John. It would almost appear that the actual baptism was too ingrained in the tradition to flat-out contradict, though it was possible to leave it out.

avi

While I agree with almost everything that Steven Carr writes, here and elsewhere, I do disagree on this point.

Where JC and JtB have some overlap, is in the assignment of their birthdates, by Lord Constantine.

JtB was given the summer solstice, the single most important holiday in the Pagan calendar.

JC was given the leftover, i.e. the winter solstice.

Evidently, irrespective of our extant documents, at the time of Lord Constantine, JtB was more highly regarded than JC.

avi

Sarai

It seems to me that I read somewhere in one of the early heresiologists of groups in the Tigris/Euphrates area that were followers of JBap who had never heard of Jesus. Mandaeans and/or Sabu'a of the Marshes sticks in my mind, but I don't have time right now to look through my notes to confirm. If such groups existed, it would seem to argue for a historical JBap.

Anyone know what I'm talking about right off the top of their head? I have an engagement this afternoon, but I'll see if I can find it after I return (if no one else has come up with it by then).

Regards,
Sarai