I was thinking about these clear parallels (presumed to be of the same author, ''Mark''):
Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2017 1:46 pm
Elsewhere, too, I pointed out David Ulansey's list of parallels between the baptism and the death:
http://www.mysterium.com/veil.html. The connections are:
- At both events something descends; the holy spirit descends as a dove at the baptism of Jesus, and the veil rips in two from top to bottom at his death.
- At both events the spirit is moving; at the baptism the spirit enters Jesus, and at his death the spirit exits him (the word for expire or exhale in Mark 15.37, ἐξέπνευσεν, literally means "expire" or "spirit out" in etymological terms).
- At both events somebody claims that Jesus is a son of God (υἱὸς θεοῦ); at his baptism it is a voice from heaven, at his death a nearby centurion.
- At both events the eschatological figure of Elijah is symbolically present; at the baptism of Jesus it is in the person of John the baptist (whom Jesus himself affirms as Elijah in Mark 9.9-13), while at his death the bystanders mistake his forlorn cry for a call to Elijah.
- At both events something tears; at the baptism of Jesus it is heaven, and at his death it is the veil.
What I observe is that these parallels are there and are clearly deliberate.
But did they come from the same hand ?
Note that in another thread, Andrew noted an
analogous case where the incipit of Luke about Elizabeth and Mary has clear parallels with a episode about the adult Jesus. In that case, the certainty that the incipit is a later (anti-Marcionite) interpolation is so strong that we are moved to consider the parallel (found by Andrew) as a deliberate
part of the interpolation (of the incipit). The goal of the interpolated parallel is surely anti-marcionite: the carnal birth is not so evil, after all, if it gives origin to the fulfillment of prophecies and not to an antithesis between carnal and spiritual).
I wonder:
can this be the case even here?
I am assuming that only the Baptism Episode (+ the Fast into the Wilderness) is an interpolation (and not the Baptist figure
per se).
At both events something descends; the holy spirit descends as a dove at the baptism of Jesus, and the veil rips in two from top to bottom at his death.
Note that the rending of the veil is a negative sign. While in the mind of the interpolator of the Baptism Episode the descending of the Spirit is a good thing.
At both events the spirit is moving; at the baptism the spirit enters Jesus, and at his death the spirit exits him (the word for expire or exhale in Mark 15.37, ἐξέπνευσεν, literally means "expire" or "spirit out" in etymological terms).
Again a contrast between a good thing (in the Baptism Episode) and a negative thing.
[*]At both events somebody claims that Jesus is a son of God (υἱὸς θεοῦ); at his baptism it is a voice from heaven, at his death a nearby centurion.
But the voice of the centurion is often interpreted as words of contempt (hence a
negative thing). While the voice at his baptism can only be a
good thing.
[*]At both events the eschatological figure of Elijah is symbolically present; at the baptism of Jesus it is in the person of John the baptist (whom Jesus himself affirms as Elijah in Mark 9.9-13), while at his death the bystanders mistake his forlorn cry for a call to Elijah.
Here the contrast between positive and negative is strongly evident : the John/''Elijah'' is a positive identification (made by Jesus himself) while in the Death Episode there is a false identification (Jesus really did
n't calling Elijiah). At any case, this contrast may be fruit of the same (first) author of Mark since what I am putting in doubt is the authenticity of the only episode of the Baptism by John (
and not the incipit with the parallel JOhn/''Elijiah'').
[*]At both events something tears; at the baptism of Jesus it is heaven, and at his death it is the veil.[/list]
The ''rending'' of the heaven is surely a
positive fact. Not just so the rending of the veil.
Why did the interpolator insert these
positive deliberate parallels to the corrispondent original
negative points of the Death Episode ?
I think that he did so for a precise, embarrassing reason: the words of the centurion.
''Truly this man was the Son of God!"
The centurion doesn't say: ''Truly this man
IS the Son of God''.
If the his words are full of contempt, then the his exclamation is equivalent to a negative thing per se.
But even if the his words are not full of contempt, the fact remains that he used the past tense:
this puts a doubt about the identity of the Jesus on the cross. Is he really the Son of God? Or, was he
only before,
much time before, the Son of God (an now he is not more so)?
The
doubt is worse than mere
contempt since the former has no possible irony as justification, differently from the latter.
The interpolator recognized this and he inserted the parallels above by making
ex novo the Baptism Episode (more than
ex novo, by copying it from proto-catholic Gospels).
Therefore, under the heretical hypothesis that:
1) the man on the cross was
not Jesus, or...
2) the man on the cross was Jesus,
but not more the Son of God (as if he was really abandoned
forever by the Spirit of Christ),
then it is possible to find more plausible the reasons for an interpolation of the (only) Baptism Episode in Mark.