Why John the Baptist is buried in Mark 6:29: an anti-marcionite point?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Giuseppe
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Why John the Baptist is buried in Mark 6:29: an anti-marcionite point?

Post by Giuseppe »


While I agree with Nir (and most scholars) that John’s beheading in the Synoptics foreshadows Jesus’s crucifixion, one problem with her argument in this chapter resides in her discussion of John’s burial (Mark 6:29), which she understands “in terms of the promise for future resurrection” (255).

https://www.academia.edu/45103888/Natha ... n_Believer

Marcion would have no interest at all in the burial of corpses. Afterall, the bodies were property of the demiurge. Think about this verse in Marcion's hand:

1 Corinthians 15:50:
I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God


The burial of John the Baptist reveals very the hope in his future corporeal resurrection.

It is not at all an allusion to the fact that Jesus wins John (Jesus is buried and rises, John is only buried).

If John the Baptist works already as an anti-marcionite figure by his baptism of Jesus in the incipit of Mark, then even more so the burial of John works as an useful allusion to remember the faith in the resurrection "in the flesh", contra Marcion.

I agree with Rivka Nir on this specific point. The burial of John in Mark 6:29 is not anti-John: it is anti-Marcion.
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