Was the baptism of Jesus historical?

[Jagella]

Question for Debate: Was the baptism of Jesus historical?

Yale professor of religious studies, Dale Martin, answers "yes!" He reasons that John baptizing Jesus demonstrated that Jesus was inferior to John. The early Christians would never have made up such a story, so it must be historical.

But let's take a look at the passage from Matthew 3:11 (NRSV) in which John the Baptist predicts the arrival of Jesus:

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

So the story does clearly portray Jesus as superior to John, something that Christians would make up.

I'd like to make two points. The first is that almost everything in the New Testament suffers from being unlikely to be historical. The second point is that Bible scholars seem unable to tell! Why trust such sloppy scholarship?

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[1213]

WHY is it unlikely for you to be writing here?

It is unlikely for example because:
- Finland has about 5 million people, and apparently only I am here writing. So, it is not very common.
- I was really bad in school, and had much trouble in English and in writing. Anyone would have expected me to do something else.
- My native language is not English, which I assume is quite obvious, still I am here writing English.
- This whole debate forum has apparently about 30 active writers. World has several billion peoples, what are the odds that I am here writing?

[1213]

The Superbowl is very likely, but people write about it all the time.

But it happens only once in a year. If it would be everyday matter for all people, like for example sun rising, I don’t think it would not be interesting topic and news.

I assume you believe the story of Jesus baptized by John is historical. Why is it probable that Jesus was baptized by John?

How would we calculate probability for that event? Usually it includes some information about how many people are baptized, how many of them would be possible Messiah candidates. And how many can actually show they are something more than ordinary man. Or, how many people are believed to be Messiah, how many people get the same credit that is given to Jesus.

If Jesus would have been imaginary, why wouldn’t the one who imagine take credit of the wisdom to himself, why give the credit to someone else? By my experience, people don’t normally give credit to others even if it would belong to other. That is why I think it is very improbable that Jesus would be just imaginary. If he would be imaginary, there would be someone who asks money because of what he imagined.

I believe what the Bible tells, because by my experience people are too evil and stupid to make such thing without God. If the book would be from humans only, atheists would not have any problems to show a mistake in that book. And they would not have any problem to understand what it says. But now, I don’t think here is even single atheist who understand the book, therefore it is not probably from humans only.

[Yahwehismywitness]

Long after his death, Paul/Saul and accomplices picked him as icon for a new religion splintered from Judaism, 'deified' Jesus with tales of supernatural feats, and pitched their religion to Gentiles living far from Judea. Eventually the splinter group was refined it enough to be acceptable to Roman officials and it was adopted as official religion of the empire.

From Rome it was spread by conquest to much of Europe and with further conquest to other parts of the world -- competing with other religions for dominance regionally.

There was a church in Jerusalem founded in 33 AD
https://www.atlantaserbs.com/learnmore/ ... church.htm
The First Church
From there entered Constantine and Marcion favoring Paul's Jesus that Roman's accepted. Just added to your post

[Jagella]

"The story" does not exist; there are four different stories. That's a pretty basic factoid which is highly relevant, as anyone familiar with the topic should know: Reading them each in turn makes it painfully obvious that the later authors were indeed uncomfortable about Jesus undergoing a "baptism of repentance for the remission of sins" (Mark 1:4). According to Mark, John says that someone much greater will be coming along shortly, but there's no recognition of Jesus specifically and no explanation of why he'd come to be baptized. In Matthew, "John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You...�" (Matt. 3:14) and Jesus explains that he's only doing it "to fulfill all righteousness," whatever that means. Luke's innovation lay in explaining the relevance of John rather than explaining Jesus' baptism itself; he claims that Jesus and John were actually cousins and both births had been part of God's plan all along. And in the fourth gospel Jesus isn't baptized at all, and rather than John coming before Jesus both the prologue and John himself say that "He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me."

I don't see how you've demonstrated that any of the gospel-propagandists were in any way ashamed of the baptism of Christ. All you've accomplished is to show that the gospel writers were incapable of writing one, consistent story. They added or omitted anything they wished to.

As such, they should not be trusted to provide us with historical accounts we can trust, and therefore the story of the baptism of Christ cannot justifiably be said to be historical.

[Jagella]

Perhaps because then you will have opened up an entirely new can of worms, stating that the person (Christ) and all the events surrounding Him are fictional, and the witnesses all got together and lied. You would need evidence to support such a thing, but there is no evidence to support this conspiratorial fiction.

I agree with Bible scholar Robert Price and historian Richard Carrier that essentially every gospel-story is very historically problematical. I plan to examine the historicity of many of these stories and make my case in this forum that they are unlikely to be historical events.

We also have multiple attestation for Bigfoot, ETs, ghosts, and even mermaids! Are any of these things historical?

I'm not sure these are on the same level, Jagella.

There are differences, of course. You might argue that Bigfoot is much hairier than Jesus ever was, and therefore they just don't compare!

We do not have multiple witnesses describing their 1-3 year long interactions with Bigfoot.

We have no such eyewitnesses for Jesus either. Paul only described his hearing voices and hallucinating Jesus, and the gospel writers were making up stories about Jesus decades after Jesus' presumed death never knowing him.

We do have multiple witnesses who claim to have seen BF (they could have seen anything), but separately, elusively.

You're moving the goalposts. Whatever happened to multiple attestation as a criterion for history? Is it no longer good enough now that I cited examples you don't agree with?

BF is in hiding and has not interacted with society...

Christ isn't known to show himself much either.

We also live in an age where we can record such things for anyone to see, and as far as I understand, any attempt at 'showing' BF has been debunked.

We're not seeing Jesus on YouTube either.

Seriously, Tam, if you would just go back and think about the case you made against not only Bigfoot but multiple attestation, then you'd see that you made a case against the historicity of Christ too.

To argue your case, you will need to present reasons why it probably did happen.

I was not making a 'case', Jagella, and I never said something is historical just because it is possible.

I accept this as a concession that as far as you are concerned, there is no "case for Christ" or at least for his baptism.

For what reason would his baptism be 'highly unlikely'?

It's primarily the baptism story that I think is baloney. As I've already posted throughout this thread from the OP, the story of Jesus' baptism featuring John praising Jesus as his superior is most likely propaganda made up to place Jesus as the number-one preacher. If Jesus existed, he may have been baptized, but we have no good evidence for it.

[tam]

Peace to you,

Perhaps because then you will have opened up an entirely new can of worms, stating that the person (Christ) and all the events surrounding Him are fictional, and the witnesses all got together and lied. You would need evidence to support such a thing, but there is no evidence to support this conspiratorial fiction.

I agree with Bible scholar Robert Price and historian Richard Carrier that essentially every gospel-story is very historically problematical.

I do not know Robert Price, but I am not impressed with Richard Carrier. His theories are dependent upon his personal interpretations of what is written (I only know this because you mentioned him once and/or posted a video that I watched. I was expecting something more concrete from him, from the way you talked, but there was nothing there).

I plan to examine the historicity of many of these stories and make my case in this forum that they are unlikely to be historical events.

Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?

You have not yet examined the historicity of these stories, yet you have already decided that they are unlikely to be historical events... and... you are already planning to make a case for that?

We also have multiple attestation for Bigfoot, ETs, ghosts, and even mermaids! Are any of these things historical?

I'm not sure these are on the same level, Jagella.

There are differences, of course. You might argue that Bigfoot is much hairier than Jesus ever was, and therefore they just don't compare!

I might... but I didn't.

We do not have multiple witnesses describing their 1-3 year long interactions with Bigfoot.

We have no such eyewitnesses for Jesus either. Paul only described his hearing voices and hallucinating Jesus, and the gospel writers were making up stories about Jesus decades after Jesus' presumed death never knowing him.

Big claim, Jagella. You have provided no evidence to support it, of course, and the evidence we do have contradicts your claim.

We do have multiple witnesses who claim to have seen BF (they could have seen anything), but separately, elusively.

You're moving the goalposts. Whatever happened to multiple attestation as a criterion for history? Is it no longer good enough now that I cited examples you don't agree with?

I did not move the goalposts... but you did when you brought BF into a discussion about historical methodology.

BF is in hiding and has not interacted with society...

Christ isn't known to show himself much either.

Christ is not on the earth right now so as to physically show Himself. He has not been physically on the earth for almost two thousand years (though we have many witness accounts and testimonial from those who knew Him and interacted with Him when He was physically on the earth). On the other hand, BF is supposed to be on the earth here and now (that is not historical, Jagella, that is here and now).

So there is no comparison.

We also live in an age where we can record such things for anyone to see, and as far as I understand, any attempt at 'showing' BF has been debunked.

We're not seeing Jesus on YouTube either.

See above.

To argue your case, you will need to present reasons why it probably did happen.

I was not making a 'case', Jagella, and I never said something is historical just because it is possible.

I accept this as a concession that as far as you are concerned, there is no "case for Christ" or at least for his baptism.

What dishonest tactics you resort to using, Jagella. Why?

For what reason would his baptism be 'highly unlikely'?

It's primarily the baptism story that I think is baloney. As I've already posted throughout this thread from the OP, the story of Jesus' baptism featuring John praising Jesus as his superior is most likely propaganda made up to place Jesus as the number-one preacher. If Jesus existed, he may have been baptized, but we have no good evidence for it.

I'm not sure why you're knocking this historical scholar then or accusing him of sloppy scholarship (something you either misunderstood or misrepresented). He agrees with you about what might have been made up due to embarrassment, but for the reasons and evidence already discussed, he and other historical scholars accept that the baptism itself is historical.



Peace still to you.

[Mithrae]

"The story" does not exist; there are four different stories. That's a pretty basic factoid which is highly relevant, as anyone familiar with the topic should know: Reading them each in turn makes it painfully obvious that the later authors were indeed uncomfortable about Jesus undergoing a "baptism of repentance for the remission of sins" (Mark 1:4). According to Mark, John says that someone much greater will be coming along shortly, but there's no recognition of Jesus specifically and no explanation of why he'd come to be baptized. In Matthew, "John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You...�" (Matt. 3:14) and Jesus explains that he's only doing it "to fulfill all righteousness," whatever that means. Luke's innovation lay in explaining the relevance of John rather than explaining Jesus' baptism itself; he claims that Jesus and John were actually cousins and both births had been part of God's plan all along. And in the fourth gospel Jesus isn't baptized at all, and rather than John coming before Jesus both the prologue and John himself say that "He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me."

I don't see how you've demonstrated that any of the gospel-propagandists were in any way ashamed of the baptism of Christ. . . .

That you don't see it can't be helped, perhaps. As I highlighted, your repeated comments about "the story" of Jesus' baptism already implied a very incomplete grasp of scholars' approach to the topic; others are able to provide that information for you (again, since I'm sure you'd already been exposed to it before) but no-one can make you internalize it.

As I've noted elsewhere, in my view the baptism of Jesus is probably among the top five most reliable conclusions about him (after the facts of his bare existence as a first century Jew; having a brother named James; starting or inspiring a new sect; and being crucified): Given a ~90% plausibility of his existence, his baptism might be somewhere in the order of ~80% likely to have occurred. Or put differently, while there is some chance that for reasons unknown Mark invented the apparently-embarrassing story of Jesus undergoing a baptism of repentance for remission of sins - and simultaneously baptism becoming a key early Christian ritual as per Paul - it seems far more likely that we have these reports because Jesus was actually baptized.

[Tcg]

- This whole debate forum has apparently about 30 active writers. World has several billion peoples, what are the odds that I am here writing?

Given that you are here writing, the odds are 100%. This is true of everything that was happened. No matter how unlikely they may have seemed before happening, once they happen, the odds that they would happen are 100%.


Tcg

[Mithrae]

Given that you are here writing, the odds are 100%. This is true of everything that was happened. No matter how unlikely they may have seemed before happening, once they happen, the odds that they would happen are 100%.

Sure, and Billy Bloggs has a 100% chance of winning the lottery. But using probability in that sense (propensity probability*) would mean that it is both unjustified and completely false to say that the events of the NT are "unlikely," which was the claim under discussion: False because the events would be either impossible or certain, never unlikely, and unjustified because the claimant really doesn't know which is the case. Given that they happened, the odds of events from the NT are 100%.


* At least, it's propensity probability under the assumption of strict determinism.

[Jagella]

I do not know Robert Price...

He's a Bible scholar and a mythicist who has written several books about why the evidence for Jesus is insufficient to conclude that Jesus ever existed.

...I am not impressed with Richard Carrier.

I was very impressed by Richard Carrier in his debate with Craig Evans regarding the historicity of Jesus.

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I plan to examine the historicity of many of these stories and make my case in this forum that they are unlikely to be historical events.

Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?

Let's just say I have foresight.

You have not yet examined the historicity of these stories, yet you have already decided that they are unlikely to be historical events... and... you are already planning to make a case for that?

Well, if I'm wrong, then I'm sure that you will be so courteous as to point out my errors.

There are differences, of course. You might argue that Bigfoot is much hairier than Jesus ever was, and therefore they just don't compare!

I might... but I didn't.

I was just poking fun at how real-Jesus apologists go to great lengths to differentiate Jesus from other legendary figures by citing differences that are completely irrelevant to historicity.

Paul only described his hearing voices and hallucinating Jesus, and the gospel writers were making up stories about Jesus decades after Jesus' presumed death never knowing him.

Big claim, Jagella. You have provided no evidence to support it, of course, and the evidence we do have contradicts your claim.

It's actually common knowledge in the scholarly community that none of the writers of the New Testament knew Jesus or were eyewitnesses of anything he did.

I did not move the goalposts...

You started out claiming that multiple attestation is a criterion for historicity, but when I cited examples of figures you do not believe existed who are multiply attested, you said that the eyewitnesses of those figures saw them "separately, elusively" presumably invalidating their attestation.

You moved the goalpost.

Christ is not on the earth right now so as to physically show Himself.

If only he would come around. He'd sure help your case, wouldn't he, Tam?

I was not making a 'case', Jagella, and I never said something is historical just because it is possible.

I accept this as a concession that as far as you are concerned, there is no "case for Christ" or at least for his baptism.

What dishonest tactics you resort to using, Jagella. Why?

For a dishonest guy, I divulge an awful lot!

You said you were not making a case for the baptism of Christ. I then concluded that you are incapable of making such a case, and you fear having your argument scrutinized.

There's nothing dishonest about that on my part. Now on your part, well...