Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I can't believe it, really?

The gospel is about Jesus, and you have bluntly the Baptist (!) before Jesus.

Why not Jesus before? Was it why, otherwise, his (of Jesus) entry would have been too much abrupt? As an alien from a foreign world?

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:04 am I can't believe it, really?

The gospel is about Jesus, and you have bluntly the Baptist (!) before Jesus.

Why not Jesus before?

Maybe you should read more widely, then. Any genuine surprise here is the product of a narrowly circumscribed point of view.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:10 am

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:04 am I can't believe it, really?

The gospel is about Jesus, and you have bluntly the Baptist (!) before Jesus.

Why not Jesus before?

Maybe you should read more widely, then. Any genuine surprise here is the product of a narrowly circumscribed point of view.

really? Accordingly, then, what should make "more wide" your point of view is the mere assurance:


First and last case where the OT is quoted explicitly in all Mark and moreover with a particular naivety.

Isn't it more simple to concede the obvious: that the entry of the Baptist is blunt once the first verse has already made it clear that the subject is Jesus Christ, not a different guy?

My point is that Mark wanted that the entry of the Baptist was blunt, in order to eclipse the blunt entry of a different guy (let you guess who).

Now, what I have said about the intention of Mark above (that he inherited the "blunt" feature from Marcion, only he attributed it to John the Baptist) is true, continues to be true, even if Mark wrote before Marcion.

Afterall, what was necessary for the belief of a blunt descent of Jesus from heaven is not a man, Marcion, with the his Evangelion, but merely the myth of a Jesus descending already adult.

Also the Greek gods descended already adults, and bluntly, for that matter (only think how Zeus inseminated bluntly various mortal women).

So I have nailed my reader between the two horns of the beast:

He is obliged to believe that

• 1) before Mark there was only the belief of a Jesus descending bluntly already adult (beyond if on earth or in outer space) or

• 2) he is obliged to believe that Marcion comes first.

Why is (2) more probable than (1)?

Because Mark has not eclipsed entirely Marcion: Mark has remembered Marcion insofar in Mark the blunt entry is still found, only in relation to John the Baptist, not more to Jesus.

Corollary:
Which is the reason why John the Baptist is partially an enigmatic figure: part of the mystery of John the Baptist is his being having come out of nowhere bluntly, to eclipse the original coming out of nowhere bluntly of Jesus.

Once a human figure shares a divine arcangelic feature (in the case in exam: the blunt apparition out of nowhere), that human figure becomes ipso facto enigmatic.

This was indeed the case of the Baptist.

My point is that a pattern can be seen in action here twice:

• "Luke" (editor) remembered the Marcionite incipit only he attributed it to the public entry of an adult John the Baptist.

• "Mark" (editor) remembered the blunt entry of the Marcionite Jesus only he attributed the blunt entry to John the Baptist.

The effects are both a failure:

• In Luke, the chronological reference to the 15° year of Tiberius becomes entirely vain and anachronistic, once it is referred to the public entry of the Baptist.

• In Mark, what is the lesson for the reader, when he/she learns about the blunt entry of John the Baptist? Nothing. The reader doesn't learn nothing at all.

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:04 am I can't believe it, really?

The gospel is about Jesus, and you have bluntly the Baptist (!) before Jesus.

Why not Jesus before ?

Because Mark had an agenda :

Using the Messianic Jewish beliefs of the Second Temple to demonstrate that Jesus:

1/ Fulfills all Jewish expectations
2/ Therefore, he is the Messiah

Why not Jesus before JOHN ?

Because of Malachi 3:22-23 LXX

Malachie 3
22 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

23 And he will restore the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.

—> Mark 9
11 And they asked him, “Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?”

12 Jesus replied, “To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected?
13 But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him.”


This explains Mark's careful intention in Mark 1 to present John as Elijah and to include John in the narrative before Jesus.

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:04 am I can't believe it, really?

The gospel is about Jesus, and you have bluntly the Baptist (!) before Jesus.

Why not Jesus before? Was it why, otherwise, his (of Jesus) entry would have been too much abrupt? As an alien from a foreign world?

Unless the gospel (Mark and canonical copypasta) isn't so much "about Jesus," but rather more about "the interactions between Jesus and the people around him." That perspective is a big help in explaining why there are about 60 speaking parts and another 40 or so special business parts in a work of only about 11,000 words.

Some of those people, but not all by any means, come to believe, as Sinouhe puts it,

Using the Messianic Jewish beliefs of the Second Temple ... that Jesus:

1/ Fulfills all Jewish expectations
2/ Therefore, he is the Messiah

The plot is driven by the conflict between those who believe that and those who disbelieve it. It is perfectly reasonable, therefore,

1. To open the performance with somebody interesting for Jesus to interact with, and
2. Present the issue upon which the key conflict will center.

Even at the level of basic storytelling craft, there are excellent reasons for delaying the main character in order for them to make a dramatic entrance, which requires something to have happened, somebody to have done something, before the main character enters.

Sinouhe wrote: ↑Sat Jun 10, 2023 1:22 am 1/ Fulfills all Jewish expectations
2/ Therefore, he is the Messiah

how do you explain the embarrassment of having Jesus baptized by John? Was such embarrassment worthy of being tolerated, under the Markan priority?

Under the marcionite priority, surely yes!

Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Sat Jun 10, 2023 2:20 am Even at the level of basic storytelling craft, there are excellent reasons for delaying the main character in order for them to make a dramatic entrance, which requires something to have happened, somebody to have done something, before the main character enters.

I don't question the delay of the principal hero of the story (you are right on that). What I am considering as an anomaly, under the Markan priority, is the blunt entry of John the Baptist, ex abrupto.

Are you, or Sinouhe, or Peter, able to explain it? I can explain it only as a survived trace of the blunt descent of Jesus from above in Marcion.