sotto voce

That doesn't mean that JoeWallack's ideas are suitable for this forum.

jdboy

Jesus was sent by god to fulfill all righteousness. That's the explanation given in the gospel.
God sends his prophet lawgiver jesus who passes thru water then delivers his sermon on the mount the new law. Moses passed thru water went up the mountain came back with the law. was righteous for god to fire a warning shot and then the judgement.

If people were just reading the NT they would be confused like john the baptist

No it's not historical it's a fiction used to show god's position on events and what his actions were.

Diogenes the Cynic

Josephus' experience with Banus is not described by him so much as a pursuit of a permanent monastic commitment, but a three year training which he underwent as a teenager.

John's immersion was not supposed to remit sins, repentance did that. The immersion was only to wash the body afterwards. The actual remission of sins was a de facto result of repentance. Josephus takes pains to make that clear.

The Dead Sea Scrolls also tell us that there was kind of a whole subculture in the wilderness which was rejecting Temple sacrifice and turning to repentance and baptism instead. In the Qumran community this was a closed process, only for members, but John is presented both in the Gospels and by Josephus as somebody who was making this ritual popularly available and free. This is what made him popular. He was offering a free substitute for Temple sacrifice.

Diogenes the Cynic

There is a ton of it. Are you familiar with the word "mikvah?" That's all John's immersion was.

jdboy

"The word mikveh makes use of the same root letters in Hebrew as the word for "hope" and this has served as the basis for homiletical comparison of the two concepts in both biblical and rabbinic literature. For instance, in the Book of Jeremiah, the word mikveh is used in the sense of "hope," but at the same time also associated with "living water":
O Hashem, the Hope [mikveh] of Israel, all who forsake you will be ashamed ... because they have forsaken Hashem, the fountain of living water"

John 4:10
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

outhouse

LOL no kidding :constern01:


yeesh, even the sheep and goats were washed before entering the temple


everybody and everything alive got dunked ritually back then

anointed or dunked, it was a huge part of their theology

JoeWallack

JW:
BaS lost all credibility with the James Ossuary Scam (did it ever have any credibility?) and the latest disgusting effort to make money off of gullible Christians is here (ironically what actually puts us Jews in a bad light is not the Christian Bible's portrayal of us because even though it is fiction it is believed by them whereas BaS fiction is proferred by the knowing for profferit):

Machaerus: Where Salome Danced and John the Baptist Was Beheaded By Győző Vörös

Sad.


Josephus

ErrancyWiki

JoeWallack

JW:
I'm going to add here more evidence against The Baptism being historical:

Marcion

Marcion was an adult by the early 2nd century and my best guess is that this is when the original Gospel "Mark" was written. Per the orthodox Marcion was a significant religious competitor who apparently fired the first Canon Bull. Marcion's star writing was his Gospel:

The Gospel of Marcion

So per Marcion, no Baptism. Jesus just falls out of the sky, so to speak, and gets to works. Fortunately for Christianity there were no Republicans back than or he would have been deported back to Heaven amid taunts of "Get a haircut and job bum".

Reading AA's god-awful related Thread:

You wouldn't know there was any Gospel without The Baptism. Marcion is the first identified user of any Gospel (by the orthodox!). So now you have a Textual Criticism issue, is The Baptism story original? Uncertainty. Trying to convert the disagreement here between Marcion and the orthodox into historical witness for The Baptism, you have mainly non-Jews, not in Israel, not speaking Jesus' supposed language arguing about whether there was a Baptism. Jews in Israel speaking the language did not know or care as far as we know for the most part. Not inspiring confidence in a supposed historical fact.

Another amazing part of AA's post is that while he confesses that "John" does not show The Baptism he proffers this as solid evidence of The Baptism. Everyone would agree that "John's" oMission of The Baptism is deliberate. So the simple explanation is that "John" did not believe The Baptism was historical since he contradicts his source rather than a sophisticated Argument from Embarrassment where omission is evidence of inclusion. Where is AA's "Best Explanation" now?

And another issue is AA's "For almost all scholars, the best explanation is plain: Jesus was a follower of JtB.". Most of these scholars are Believers. Could they be a Believer without believing in The Baptism? The poll of this Thread, consisting mainly of Skeptics, shows overwhelming conclusion that The Baptism was likely not historical. Suffice it to say that degree of belief in the supposed historicity of The Baptism may be better related to degree of belief in Christianity than degree of belief in the evidence.

Again, there are 2 qualities that make for a good witness:

1) Credibility

2) Location

We have no identified witness here that has either one. Literary Criticism is exponentially weaker evidence than Source Criticism and specifically for The Baptism measures hugely for evidence for Fiction.


Joseph

ErrancyWiki

dog-on

Isn't the use of JtB by Mark kinda like a two-for-one?

An historical anchor and an Elijah figure in one easy to use package?

spin

What's interesting is that John gets the Elijah identification, the expected prophet from Malachi 4:5. That leaves Jesus getting the mantle from John and his baptism, putting Jesus into the role of Elisha (Eli-sha ~ Ye-shua).

Once John already has the "Elijah" connection as a given, hitching Jesus in writes itself with the Elisha ~ Jesus connection. And if Elisha can feed a hundred (2K4:42ff), then Jesus can naturally feed thousands. Healings. The raising of the dead (Elisha's bones! 2K13:21).