What if there was really emb. about the baptism of John?

[Giuseppe]

Assume that Matthew was really embarrassed about the baptism of Jesus in Mark.

What is a possible explanation of it that doesn't appeal to a historical "embarrassing" episode?

The fact that a baptized Jesus in Mark is a paulinized figure? How and Why?

[Giuseppe]

According to Josephus the baptism of John required as premise the spiritual purification and NOT as effect.

IF Mark did know it - and he did, in my opinion, even without reading Josephus - then why did he reverse the effect with the premise?

Only apparently the Spirit descends on Jesus AFTER the baptism but really Jesus was possessed by the Spirit BEFORE the baptism.

In other terms Mark is saying that the prophets (John in primis) predicted the SON OF GOD even without know to do so. The Son was entirely hidden in the scripture.

[Giuseppe]

The Gospel of Mark: A Liturgical Reading
of Charles A. Bobertz

Finally, readers of Mark, both ancient and modern, have puzzled over why Mark would have Jesus Christ, Son of God (1:1), baptized for repentance and the forgiveness of sins (1:4). Yet if the ritual of baptism in Mark is part of this larger struggle between creation and chaos, then Jesus in the act of baptism is both beginning the struggle against death and chaos and completing that same struggle (rising out of death and chaos). This is in fact the struggle which the gathered community of Mark's say has both begun and completed in their own rituals of baptism and the Lord's Supper. And here is the tricky part that is central to Mark's purpose: in Mark the resurrected Christ must die on the cross in order to be the resurrected Christ. On one level of the narrative the character Jesus of Nazaret has to move through ordinary time and be crucified by the Romans in AD 30. On another level the character Jesus in Mark has already been crucified and resurrected. He has been baptized into his own death and rises into the story as the divine voice of God, proclaimed as beloved Son (1:11).

Maybe this author is saying the same thing. Under a mythicist paradigm, Jesus was already died and risen even before the invented earthly Jesus had to be killed and risen. Therefore the Christian baptism is already there even before the invented Jesus had to move his first step from Nazaret.

[Giuseppe]

If I understand well from a first reading, this scholar argues that Jesus in Mark is symbol of the collective pauline Body of Christ who is baptized, preaches the pauline Gospel and finds hostility among his false brothers and false followers (the judaizers), is persecuted by not-Christian Jews (therefore where Paul says that he persecuted and was persecuted would be not a late interpolation) and put to death by the rulers of this age.

It sounds interesting.

[Giuseppe]

This may explain the strange paradox of an anti-pauline Matthew who corrected the baptism by John in Mark by removing the "embarrassment" even if Matthew would have all the interest in using the Jew JtB against the traitor of-the-Torah Paul.

It was the pauline Church to be baptized, to mean that the Son is already died and risen BEFORE JtB put Jesus into the Jordan.

[Giuseppe]

I wonder:
If the scribes and pharisees become the enemies of the invented Jesus in Mark only in virtue of their hostility against the Christian sect, then are the Romans the innocent killers of the invented Jesus in Mark only in virtue of the Roman persecution of Christians in Rome under Nero?

In this way the invented Jesus in Mark becomes entirely the symbol of the pauline Church from the origins until to 70 CE.

This may explain why the Golgota alludes to Rome in a possible meaning of the term.

[Giuseppe]

I have always seen the Spirit abandoning Jesus on the cross as a negative fact (the poor carnal Jesus would be abandoned by Christ to mean that that Jesus is only a mere passive tool) but I am wrong.

Now I can realize that that Spirit is the same Spirit predicted by John the Baptist: the Spirit by which the Messiah will baptize all the Church by his death.

I like a lot the book of Bobertz and I wonder why it is not been read.

[Giuseppe]

If Jesus dies simbolically in the waters of the Jordan then he was already dead in a letteral way BEFORE that symbolic death.

Maybe Matthew is not really embarrassed by the baptism of Jesus by JtB but more solito he wants to put in evidence the same point of Mark via violation of only the his Messianic Secret.

Therefore the point is that Jesus is ALREADY dead and risen - i.e. he has already enabled the Christian baptism - even before that he is baptized by JtB in a "Christian" way.

The Mythicist knows where the previous crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus happened: in the realm of the Myth.

Therefore what is described in Mark would be the repetition and not the allegory of what is already happened in heaven.

[arnoldo]

Why would John question if Jesus was the One after baptising Him?

http://biblehub.com/luke/7-20.htm

[Giuseppe]

That is relative to the marcionite nature of Luke.

I see that in Mark JtB's function is uniquely to baptize Jesus (= simbolically to kill and to make risen Jesus). This assumes that the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus is mysteriously already happened at the beginning of Mark.

The problem is: is it already happened in virtue of a circular structure of Mark (the verse 16:8 continues with Mark 1) or in virtue of his celestial precedent?