When the need arose to fix definitely the beginning of the manifestation of Jesus as the Saviour— to determine the point of time at which the Lord issued forth from obscurity — it was natural to connect this with the work of the Baptist; and Jesus comes to his baptism. While this is sufficient for the earliest Evangelist, Matthew and Luke feel it to be necessary, in view of the important consequences involved in the connexion of Jesus with the Baptist, to bring them into relation once more by means of the question addressed by the Baptist to Jesus, although this addition is quite inconsistent with the assumptions of the earliest Evangelist. If he had conceived the story of the baptism with the idea of introducing the Baptist again on a later occasion, and this time, moreover, as a doubter, he would have written it a different form. This is a just observation of Bauer’s: the story of the baptism with the miracle which took place at it and the Baptist's question, understood as implying a doubt of the Messiahship of Jesus, mutually exclude one another.
(my bold)
- 1) Bruno Bauer wanted that the Baptizer had been used by Mark for chronological reason therefore in Mark Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist.
- 2) but in *Ev we have in John the Baptist an explicit enemy of Jesus.
- 3) (2) is in contradiction with (1).