The awkward fact of the baptism of Jesus
Offline In my other thread, I made a case for the historical Jesus based on evidence contained in the Christian gospels. I will do so again, focusing this time on the accounts surrounding the baptism of Jesus. Keep in mind that it is about explaining the evidence (early Christian beliefs reflected in the gospels). It is not about trusting the evidence. In this case, we can actually make the best sense of the gospels if we conclude that they contain outright lies.
A critical reader of the Christian gospels should wonder: why was Jesus baptized? Baptism, according the gospels, was for repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus was supposedly sinless (2 Peter 2:21-22), so why would he be baptized?
The basic conclusion among critical historians has been that the synoptic gospels record that Jesus was baptized primarily because the historical Jesus really was baptized by John the Baptist (e.g. The Silence of Jesus: The Authentic Voice of the Historical Man, by James Breech, pp. 22-24), and the doctrine that Jesus was sinless was only a later development that didn't exactly jive with the well-known fact that Jesus was baptized.
The gospel authors themselves apparently realized the problem. The gospel of Matthew offers this explanation:
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’ (Matthew 3:13-14)
Seems like Jesus had a flimsy explanation, right? Does Jesus really need to be baptized to "fulfil all righteousness"? Is there even a logical connection?
The gospel authors seem to be haunted by the problem of baptism, and the washing of sin problem was not their biggest concern. There was an even bigger problem: Christianity in the first century competed strongly with the cult of John the Baptist for adherents. The cult of John the Baptist in the first century was possibly more popular than Christianity, at least among the Jews. The historian Josephus spent twice as much ink writing about John the Baptist than he did writing about Jesus (Wikipedia on John the Baptist and Josephus). And the gospels themselves acknowledge the popularity and doctrinal overlap with the Christian religion (Mark 8:28, Luke 9:19, Acts 18:25, Acts 19:3-4). Given that the two cults existed alongside each other and competed for the same adherents, the followers of John the Baptist would remind Christians every day that "Jesus was baptized by John, so who is truly sinless?"
Christians, therefore, made the very best of this otherwise embarrassing reality in their own accounts. In all of the Christian gospels,
- John the Baptist is consistently presented as the most reverent and humble character with respect to Jesus, showering Jesus with praise at his own expense. He is quoted as saying, for example, "I am not worthy to carry his sandals." (Matthew 3:11)
- In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, after Jesus is baptized, the Spirit of God alights on Jesus (not John), and God himself speaks from the heavens, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased," in the presence of John the Baptist. (Matthew 3:17)
- In the gospel of Luke, John is sent to prison, and only after that is the baptism of Jesus mentioned (the baptizer being someone anonymous).
- In the gospel of John (the latest canonical gospel), John the Baptist has a prominent role, but the account of the baptism of Jesus is completely omitted!
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I think you answered your own question earlier. Christianity was competing for converts. So they appealed to John's followers by having Jesus baptized. Of course, that only requires that Jesus actually was baptized by John if you assume that Jesus actually existed. The Gospels were written long after Jesus' supposed life. They could have him do whatever specific acts they thought should be necessary to make his history sound plausible. Later, when John was written and the doctrine that Jesus was the only authoritative way to God, they downplayed the earlier stories of his baptism. Propagandists re-write their history all the time. Nothing new.
But there is no evidence that Jesus actually even existed, and the baptism story in the comic book gospels doesn't lend any evidence to his existence. Again, it requires an assumption that Jesus existed to make the baptism 'awkward' in the first place. It all fits just fine if he was always just a myth anyway.
Just like the Problem of Evil and all the other problems with gods, the 'problem' evaporates when you realize that the source of the problem never actually existed.
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OK, thanks. You have an alternative explanation for the evidence of the baptism accounts, and I would like to examine it. You say, "So they appealed to John's followers by having Jesus baptized." Presumably, then, by telling of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, they could win converts away from the cult of John the Baptist. Let me tell you what I find insufficient about that explanation. There are two problems: explanatory power and explanatory scope.
It does not have explanatory power, that is--prediction or strong expectation of the evidence. If potential converts are given a choice between the baptizer and the baptizee, then it would be much more expected that the baptizer wins. The baptizer is the one who is in the position of religious authority, whereas the baptizee could be anyone willing. The baptizer is the one more likely to be sinless, who doesn't need to be cleansed. Therefore, it would make much more sense if Christians fashioned the story of Jesus by making him someone who baptizes thousands, much like the myth of the cult of John the Baptist.
It does not have explanatory scope. "Explanatory scope" is the explanation of many pieces of evidence at the same time. In the OP, I listed four sets of evidence that are best explained by the baptism of Jesus beginning as an embarrassment to the Christians. How much evidence does the proposition of appealing to John's followers explain?
I wrote this thread as a way to help demonstrate how the hypothesis of a historical human Jesus best follows from the evidence. I certainly do not see how I am assuming the existence of Jesus. All we really need to assume is that the gospels represent beliefs that were present among Christians who lived close to the beginnings of Christianity. Then, we put all explanations for the historical evidence on the table, and we choose the explanation that fits best. If there is an explanation that involves a merely-mythical Jesus or a comic-book Jesus that fits the historical evidence best, then that is the explanation we choose. If you choose the merely-mythical-Jesus explanation, it does not follow that you are assuming a merely-mythical Jesus. If you choose the historical-human-Jesus explanation, it does not follow that you are assuming a historical human Jesus. Other mythicists I have known have also repeatedly claimed that I am assuming the existence of the historical Jesus, and I think it may be because they are accustomed to arguing with dogmatists. To be fair, I often return the accusation that they often argue as though the mythical-Jesus position is the default conclusion that they believe wins when all of the evidence is deconstructed. There really shouldn't be a default position--we just go with the explanation that is most probable.
I will address this issue next. However, in the mean time, let's focus on a little ground-work, if you don't mind. Please check out this new thread: The Bible, History, and Bayes' Theorem
When you let me know you've read that, I'll respond to the point you made here.
Well, I happen to know for a fact that that is not the reason I've said that to you, so how do you account for that evidence?
This is an extension of Occam's Razor. The hypothesis that explains the same evidence, but that requires an additional non-tautological assumption, is automatically less probable than the simpler hypothesis.
If the hypothesis H has a probability p, then the hypothesis "H and A" has a probability < p, as long as the probability of A is less than 100%. Imagine H is "The man is a doctor" and A is "Pixies are living in my nose". The hypothesis "The man is a doctor, and pixies are living in my nose" is automatically less probable than "The man is a doctor" because it's possible that pixies aren't living in my nose.
That's not a direct analogy to the Jesus thing, but it illustrates the principle. We'll return to this later.
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