Is the baptism (but not John) interpolated in Mark?

[Ben C. Smith]

No external hint that the baptism could be an interpolation.
Serious internal arguments that the baptism is not an interpolation.

So far I can see this applies not to the word „Nazaret“ in Mark 1:9. Imho it's not an interpolation, but there are no serious internal arguments against the hypothesis of an interpolation. The word is not related to other verses so that a case on internal arguments cannot be made.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. At both events something tears; at the baptism of Jesus it is heaven, and at his death it is the veil.

Giuseppe, trying to get rid of Nazareth in Mark by getting rid of the baptism is like trying to cut off a wart by amputating the entire finger (Mark the stubby-fingered, indeed). If Nazareth is a stumbling block, then just excise Nazareth (or "from Nazareth of Galilee"). This is what spin does, IIUC, and he makes some decent arguments for doing so.

[Giuseppe]

Ben, my "agenda" is against the Baptist in this thread, not against Nazaret.

My argument is that IF you consider the baptism as embarrassing for Jesus - as the historicists claim it be - then the clear (and relatively surprising) absence of apology in Mark is explained by the fact that his readers and author were already immunized by that potential embarrassment thanks to Matthew (and Luke)'s apology for it. Therefore, if the baptism is authentic in Mark, then Mark was written after Matthew.

The argument - I repeat - is strong insofar you require for the baptism an apology to cover his embarrassment. Therefore this a problem for historicists more than for mythicists.

[Ben C. Smith]

Ben, my "agenda" is against the Baptist in this thread, not against Nazaret.

My argument is that IF you consider the baptism as embarrassing for Jesus - as the historicists claim it be - then the clear (and relatively surprising) absence of apology in Mark is explained by the fact that his readers and author were already immunized by that potential embarrassment thanks to Matthew (and Luke)'s apology for it. Therefore, if the baptism is authentic in Mark, then Mark was written after Matthew.

I get that, but that makes little sense to me, especially compared to the alternative: Mark evinces no embarrassment because Mark comes from a separationist/adoptionist perspective.

The baptism in Mark has so many textual ties to other parts of the gospel that extracting it seems likely to kill the patient, so to speak. It is not a simple interpolation; it is integral to the text as it stands. This fits in with its lack of embarrassment being early, not late. Other gospels later than Mark fix the problem. Both Matthew and the gospel of the Ebionites say that it was done to fulfill all righteousness. John smothers the entire affair in layers of theological reflection and does not actually narrate the baptism itself. The gospel of the Hebrews has the baptism being predicted in advance. Philip says that Jesus perfected the waters of baptism. (Marcion and Luke are special cases which may be early or late, in my estimation.)

[Giuseppe]

This fits in with its lack of embarrassment being early, not late

Hence, if I understand you well, all what you are saying would may be reduced to : "No embarrassment at all about the baptism in Mark because the baptism per se doesn't require it, it was all folly of Matthew et others to become later embarrassed by it". In other terms, a perfect case of wrong "reading into the text" by Matthew and others? Is this your thesis?

[Giuseppe]

Mark evinces no embarrassment because Mark comes from a separationist/adoptionist perspective.

I knew that Mark is Pauline and therefore with a pre-existent Son in mind, not one adopted later.

[Ben C. Smith]

Mark evinces no embarrassment because Mark comes from a separationist/adoptionist perspective.

I knew that Mark is Pauline and therefore with a pre-existent Son in mind, not one adopted later.

I do not think that Mark envisions a pre-existent Jesus. Mark and Paul do not have the same Christology. I wish they did; it would make things easier; but they do not.

[Giuseppe]

Maybe there is an implicit apology for the baptism in Mark, since that:

1) John didn't hear the divine words : “This is my my beloved Son.” at the baptism.

2) Elijah did hear the divine words: “This is my my beloved Son. Follow him” at the transfiguration.

3) Jesus says that Elijah is already came, i.e. he was the Baptist.

The implication is that John, as “Elijah”, knew finally that Jesus is the Son of God and Messiah, therefore the embarrassment of the baptism is removed. The baptized one is more great than the baptizer.

And the certainty that John/Elijah will obey to the divine command “Follow him!” is given during the death of Jesus. Jesus calls Elijah (i.e. John) according to some seers. And surely it is implicit that John/Elijah will answer to his call.

Said this, I continue to suspect that an original Gospel was lacking of something about John.

Only as little experiment of mind, suppose, contra factum (since the arguments of Kunigunde and Ben are very strong), to have two versions of Mark, with and without the baptism.

1) Mark with the baptism: John predicts the arrival of a giant, but a small Messiah comes. Therefore John is a failed apocalyptic prophet.

2) Mark without the baptism. John predicts the arrival of a giant, and apparently a giant comes just as he promised. But he is persecuted, despised, fugitive, crucified, etc. Surely he is not a giant. Therefore also in this case John is a failed apocalyptic prophet.

What I conclude is that there is always at any rate an implicit contrast between John and Jesus. A contrast very well resumed by Matthew 11:3 (or Marcion?) :

“Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

Therefore my suspect (and I owe this suspect to prof Markus Vinzent: Kunigunde will forgive me ) is that John is not put there only as abbellishmnent, with something of the kind “It goes very well: there is perfect continuity between the last of the Prophets and the Son of God. No problem”. The suspect is that the our Mark is able - partially but not completely - to conceal this contrast between the two.

Don't forget that it is ACTS that makes really a Jesus who baptizes “with fire”, at Pentecost. Therefore, if we are coherent, we should say that John becomes a True Prophet only with Acts.

...suggestions, suggestions...

[Giuseppe]

I was thinking about these clear parallels (presumed to be of the same author, ''Mark''):

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:

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 didn'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.

[Ben C. Smith]

I was thinking about these clear parallels (presumed to be of the same author, ''Mark''):

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:

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

I do not view the two cases as analogous at all. In the case of the Lucan birth narrative and the sayings in Luke 11.27-28; 23.28-29, the entire matrix (pun intended) of images (womb, breasts, blessing) boils down to a single idea: is motherhood blessed or not? The womb and breasts are little more than symbolic of motherhood. In Luke 1.41-45 the saying is clear that the mother of the messiah is blessed. In Luke 11.27-28 this sentiment is mitigated; it is not the messiah's mother who is blessed, but rather his followers. In Luke 23.29 no mothers are blessed at all because of the looming hardships. This is exactly the same saying or concept thrice repeated with different emphases and outcomes. The contrast between Luke 1.41-45 and Luke 11.27-28 is so severe that I immediately conclude different authorships for the two.

A modern analogy would be the stark difference between the two proverbs:

• Never look a gift horse in the mouth (= never find fault with a gift).
• Beware of Greeks bearing gifts (= gifts can sometimes come with ulterior motives).

The image is obviously the same in both sayings (the Trojan horse), but the conclusions are opposite one another. The same author probably did not come up with both sayings; one may actually be considered to be a corrective for the other (regardless of whether it originated specifically as such or not).

The parallels between the baptism and the death of Jesus, however, is several distinct images (Elijah, son of God, something tearing, something descending, the spirit/breath) all put together artificially. It is not a single saying or concept, and there is little or no crossover between the separate items. Something tearing is not symbolic of, say, the spirit in the way that the womb and breasts are symbolic of motherhood. It seems clear that a single author is responsible for the overall effect, even if s/he used raw materials (a baptism story + a passion narrative?) to formulate them. None of the items is even endemic to the story in which it is situated (that is, there is nothing about a baptism or a death which inherently calls for Elijah symbolism, or for something to tear, or for something to descend, or for someone to be called the son of God), the only possible exception being the concept of expiration (taking one's last breath) at the death; but even here the parallel at the baptism (the spirit entering Jesus) is not a natural extension of the concept of baptism.

In other words, the baptism/death parallels are much more likely than the motherhood parallels to be by the same author. Of course it is possible that one set of parallels (at the death?) was already in place and a clever interpolator went and added a set for the baptism, or rather constructed the baptism specifically to reflect the death. But there is nothing in the parallels themselves to suggest this, and the analogy with the motherhood saying fails on all levels, IMHO.

I do not buy your contrast of good and bad between the two incidents, either. The temple veil rending has often been interpreted as the barrier between God and man being removed (no more need for a priesthood, since now God and man can commune personally through Jesus). The entrance and exit of the spirit is neither good nor bad in my opinion; the kind of separationist adoptionism behind them both requires both in order to work. The centurion's confession may well be a good thing; I do not think it can be proven to be contemptuous. I do not see what is "bad" about the Elijah confusion at the cross; this is one parallel, incidentally, where it looks more likely to me that the one in the baptism scene came first, and the one in the death scene was somewhat awkwardly molded after it. (That is, the Elijah confusion at the cross feels like the sort of stretch someone might make if they had a compelling reason to get Elijah on scene for some reason, whereas Elijah passing his mantle on to Elisha, so to speak, at the baptism is a more natural way to go.) I think you are overinterpreting things along your good/bad lines.

[Giuseppe]

Wise words, as usual, Ben, but let me ask where my curiosity goes...

The centurion's confession may well be a good thing; I do not think it can be proven to be contemptuous.

And what about the past tense? The centurion could be sincere, but realistically sincere: that man was the son of god, therefore he - since he is on the cross -, is not more so, from how he is dead in the more miserable way.
I can say About Napoleon at Saint Helen: really he was a great conquerer!

to mean that he in his last exile became the shadow of himself:

I do not see what is "bad" about the Elijah confusion at the cross; this is one parallel, incidentally, where it looks more likely to me that the one in the baptism scene came first, and the one in the death scene was somewhat awkwardly molded after it. (That is, the Elijah confusion at the cross feels like the sort of stretch someone might make if they had a compelling reason to get Elijah on scene for some reason, whereas Elijah passing his mantle on to Elisha, so to speak, at the baptism is a more natural way to go.) I think you are overinterpreting things along your good/bad lines.

apart the fact that the rending of the veil points to the destruction of the Temple (a negative fact per se in terms of human lives), but more than a contrast good/bad, I would see a contrast between clear identity (projected in the future: Jesus from this moment IS the adopted Son of God) and dubious identity (projected in the past: in his last minutes of life, Jesus is NOT more the Son of God).

What about that?