But there are two types of coronation.
1) when who gives the crown is more powerful than who receives it. For example, Charlemagne's coronation.
2) when who gives the crown is less powerful than who takes it by force. For example, Napoleon's coronation.
Now, it is more expected that Mark (=or who wrote the first gospel) would have meant a baptism/coronation of the second type for Jesus, if he had introduced a baptism at all.
The Christian apologists are eager to apply the Criterion of Embarrassment on the baptism episode, to prove it as historical.
But pace the apologists, the point is that Ignatius (therefore someone rather similar to the author of Matthew) was really more embarrassed by who preached that Jesus wasn't baptized by John than the contrary. How could this happen?
Hence my belief is that the Ignatius's opponents preached yes a meeting with John in their heretical Gospels, only a meeting where John didn't baptize Jesus.
Question: could the Mark's gospel vehicle the heretical idea that Jesus was not really baptized by John, insofar there was only partially a baptism by John, but not a full baptism?
I think that the answer is a sound YES:
(Mark 1:9-11)9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved;[h] with you I am well pleased.”
The verse 9 may mean that John baptized fully Jesus. Period. Stop.
But the incipit of the verse 10:
...shows that the baptism ''by John'' was not realized fully by John. The divine intervention (God, the holy spirit or the spiritual Christ, if you want) prevents that baptism ''by John'' from being a real, normal baptism by John.And just as he was coming up out of the water,
Further indication that Jesus was not baptized by John in Mark, even if he met John, is found in the following words of Jesus addressed to John in Matthew 3:13-16:
Really, Matthew was more embarrassed by the fact that in Mark the baptism seems to be not fully done by John, than by the baptism itself by John for the remission of the sins of a potential sinner Jesus. Therefore Matthew would want to have the certainty that only after that a normal full baptism is done entirely by John, and only then, the divine intervention enters on the stage.13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.
In other terms, Matthew is really embarrassed by the implicit presence in Mark of a hostility, a secret conflict, between the baptism of Jesus by John and the baptism of Jesus by the holy spirit (or God or the spirit of Christ).
This confirms me in the belief that in Mark the baptism by John is only apparent because it was interrupted abruptly by another, more spiritual baptism: the baptism by Christ himself.
Ignatius couldn't accept this divine interruption of the baptism by John in Mark - an interruption that is dangerously a disapproval -, hence his insistence that ''really'' Jesus was baptized by John.