Gospel of Mark Readthrough : 1:4 - 1:8
Jan. 11th, 2012 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackText: John the Baptist Prepares the Way
4. And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Commentary
It's interesting what there isn't at the beginning of Mark. There's no complicated geanalogy of Jesus[1] being descended from Abraham or God. There's no complicated circumstance that someone to Bethlehem[3]. There's no stories of teenage Jesus and the superfriends doing minor miracles. He turns up from Nazareth, as yet (perhaps) not really known.
I find the existence of John the Baptist interesting too. Lots of mythological gods have some sort of forerunners, but it's interesting that Jesus needed to get his body baptised: it somehow doesn't feel like the sort of thing people would have invented if they were inventing stories, and Mark reports/asserts an explicit denial of John being an incarnation of Elijah, which would be an obvious plot twist if you were playing "lets make Jesus fit as many more old testament prophecies as possible". In fact, all that inclines me to think that this bit actually happened (?)
Am I right that baptism was known before John the Baptist amongst Judaism at the time, even if now its associated primarily (only?) with Christianity?
[1] Although, funnily enough, I don't accept the objection many people have that it's nonsensical to list the ancestors of Joseph. It's unfair that patrilineal descent was considered more important than matrilineal descent. And I don't think that being distantly descended from anyone gives anyone special spiritual rights. But everyone agrees children get something from their non-biological parents, so if there is anything you get from being descended from Adam, I don't see why Jesus can't get it from Joseph. After all, even if there were a miraculous parthenogenesis conception, I don't suppose God literally created a "god sperm", so who knows where the other half of the chromosomes came from if the people at the time didn't know enough biology to interrogate Gabriel in detail?[2]
[2] See also the old joke that "Jesus H Christ" stands for "Jesus Haploid Christ".
[3] When I was younger, I remember being confused between "Jerusalem", "Nazareth" and "Bethlehem". Everyone knew "Bethlehem" because young children are taught the nativity story. So why Nazareth? Mark is pleasingly straightforward: Jesus came from Nazareth. Later on, it just so happens that people suddenly rememebred that Jesus was born in the same city as King David. Eventually, he goes to the capital and raises hell.
4. And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Commentary
It's interesting what there isn't at the beginning of Mark. There's no complicated geanalogy of Jesus[1] being descended from Abraham or God. There's no complicated circumstance that someone to Bethlehem[3]. There's no stories of teenage Jesus and the superfriends doing minor miracles. He turns up from Nazareth, as yet (perhaps) not really known.
I find the existence of John the Baptist interesting too. Lots of mythological gods have some sort of forerunners, but it's interesting that Jesus needed to get his body baptised: it somehow doesn't feel like the sort of thing people would have invented if they were inventing stories, and Mark reports/asserts an explicit denial of John being an incarnation of Elijah, which would be an obvious plot twist if you were playing "lets make Jesus fit as many more old testament prophecies as possible". In fact, all that inclines me to think that this bit actually happened (?)
Am I right that baptism was known before John the Baptist amongst Judaism at the time, even if now its associated primarily (only?) with Christianity?
[1] Although, funnily enough, I don't accept the objection many people have that it's nonsensical to list the ancestors of Joseph. It's unfair that patrilineal descent was considered more important than matrilineal descent. And I don't think that being distantly descended from anyone gives anyone special spiritual rights. But everyone agrees children get something from their non-biological parents, so if there is anything you get from being descended from Adam, I don't see why Jesus can't get it from Joseph. After all, even if there were a miraculous parthenogenesis conception, I don't suppose God literally created a "god sperm", so who knows where the other half of the chromosomes came from if the people at the time didn't know enough biology to interrogate Gabriel in detail?[2]
[2] See also the old joke that "Jesus H Christ" stands for "Jesus Haploid Christ".
[3] When I was younger, I remember being confused between "Jerusalem", "Nazareth" and "Bethlehem". Everyone knew "Bethlehem" because young children are taught the nativity story. So why Nazareth? Mark is pleasingly straightforward: Jesus came from Nazareth. Later on, it just so happens that people suddenly rememebred that Jesus was born in the same city as King David. Eventually, he goes to the capital and raises hell.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 07:05 pm (UTC)Footnote 19 says "Ibn al-Tayyib, Tafsir al-Mashriqi, 2:83 which is (according to the bibliography) a 2-volume 11th-century Arabic commentary on the four gospels, edited in 1907. So it looks like there's some info on this but perhaps only in Arabic ...
I guess this implies a connection between baptism and anointing?
I know in Christian circles Moses leading the Israelites through the red sea can be seen as a foreshadowing of baptism, but I don't know how much of that is just projecting back onto that story. The other story that comes to mind from the OT is Naaman who had leprosy/some skin disease, asked the prophet Elisha for help, and was asked to dip in the Jordan 3 times and he would be healed (and after some grumbling did and was) but that didn't seem to have any religious ritual type implications.
I wonder whether Jesus' command at the end of Matthew 28 to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" was "as opposed to the other kinds of baptism that are around"?
Re [1] I agree. Joseph was obviously involved in Jesus' life (and was in Mary's life before she became Jesus' mother). Isn't it kind of clear that the story of the incarnation is not really about genes?
and [2] - I hadn't heard that one! :)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 09:55 am (UTC)Your first footnote is really helpful, it explains one of the things that I could never get my head round concerning the Incarnation. Nice reading!
Nazareth: I think some of what's going on is a confusion between Nazarene, a person who comes from the town of Nazareth, and Nazirite, a person who takes special vows and is dedicated to God, though without being a priest or a monk exactly (the most famous example is Samson). I don't know if this is propaganda on the part of the Gospel writers, or genuine confusion, or some combination. But the whole "Jesus of Nazareth" thing has connotations of Jesus being extra specially holy and dedicated to God, even if it's not explicitly stated.