many others in response to the preaching of John and was baptized by him. We should be aware that baptism did not belong to the religious rituals practiced customarily by the Jews of the time. John’s baptism was a radical departure from Jewish practice and was therefore rejected by upper-class Jews and religious leaders (Mark 11.27–33). Baptism was only for proselytes, Gentiles who converted to the Jewish faith, except among a sectarian group known as Essenes where baptism was an initiation ritual for membership. John’s call to baptism was a demand that all Jews become like Gentiles before God. They too must through baptism be washed and cleansed of all sin in preparation for the eschatological judgment that was coming upon the world. The eschatological judgment was the final judgment marking the end of the age and the beginning of the reign of God through his Messiah, according to a current expectation among many Jews of the time. That Jesus accepted baptism by John indicates, according to Mark, that he accepted the premise and the requirements of John’s baptism. That is, he acknowledged his sinfulness before God and accepted God’s requirements for righteousness.
Baptism was a profound mystical and spiritual experience for Jesus. Mark’s statement, “he came up out of the water,” may be a recapitulation of the experience of Israel who had been delivered from destruction by God when he parted the waters of the Reed Sea. There may be some relatedness of ideas in this reference from Jesus’ baptism in Mark to Paul’s reference in First Corinthians, “our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (10.1–2). Just as the fathers had experienced a baptism of deliverance in preparation for their calling to be the people of God, so Jesus experienced deliverance through baptism from all that oppresses mankind, from all that separates from God, from all that frustrates God’s purpose for his creation. His life events—baptism, wilderness, ministry in the land of promise, death—encapsulate the life experience of Israel as the people of God; but with a difference, since God’s redemptive purpose that began with the patriarch Abraham and continued through Moses and the prophets is now finalized in this chosen one who came up out of the water to make salvation effective for all mankind.
Our English translation does not do justice to the expression, “the heavens opened.” The Greek word is much more dramatic—“the heavens were torn asunder.” In this way the author of Mark dramatizes the radical nature of the event for Jesus. It was indeed a most profound awakening, or awareness, for Jesus of God’s call to become the Messiah, the anointed of God. The authors of Matthew and Luke tone down the expression, since they have a different understanding of Jesus when compared to the author of Mark. For Mark, Jesus is the strong son of God, a man called by God out of his people Israel to be the deliverer and savior of his people. There are few, if any, overtones of divinity associated with the person of Jesus in this gospel. This is no longer true for the authors of Matthew and Luke. Sometimes Jesus is a man; at other times he is invested with divinity in an anachronistic way that belongs rightfully to the resurrected Jesus, as Paul sets forth in Romans 1.3–4: “the gospel concerning his son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” The experience of Jesus at his baptism therefore is perceived differently by these writers, for Jesus, being divine, cannot have had the kind of religious experience suggested by Mark.
The Dove as Symbol
The descent of the Spirit upon Jesus like a dove is symbolic and figurative. There is nothing visible, or audible, for anyone but Jesus. Yet there are profound religious implications in this reference. The author probably had in mind the passage from Genesis where the Spirit of God brooded over the waters in the beginning when the earth was without form and void. God’s Spirit is creative, bringing order out of chaos, not only the chaos and disorder of the earth, but also the chaos and disorder of human life. Man is not genuinely man until he is inbreathed by the Spirit of God and comes alive in a life that is oriented totally to the will and purpose of the Creator God. This was the experience of Jesus at his baptism. His life to this point could reflect many religious hopes and aspirations that were common to the people of Israel. But at this moment through a revelation from God, the call of God and his purpose become clear and decisive for Jesus. From this time on all his energies, his total life, were directed exclusively to the will of God. This, no doubt, is what Paul means when he writes, “he became obedient” (Philippians 2.8). Matthew and Luke are not as clear on this point, since in Matthew the Spirit alights on him and in Luke the Spirit descends upon him in bodily form. That is to say, the dove is no longer symbolic for these writers, since it is in some fashion visible even to others.
The Beloved Son
The clearest distinction is to be seen in the words uttered by the voice from heaven. In Mark the words are, “You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.” Luke agrees with Mark at this point, but Matthew alters them as follows, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” What is a personal and private experience for Jesus according to Mark, now becomes a public announcement in Matthew for the benefit of John or for anyone else who happened to be present and especially for the reader. Matthew has surely made the change here, since the words are a composite of two Old Testament passages, Psalm 2.7 and Isaiah 42.l It is important that we consider these passages in their original context, before we discuss them in the context of Jesus’ baptism.
Psalm 2 is identified by critics as an enthronement psalm; that is, a rubric used in the liturgy for the coronation of the king of Israel. God addresses the man to be enthroned at this occasion as his son. There are no implications of divinity in this address, since Israel had rejected the concept of divine kings common in Egypt and Mesopotamia at this period in history. A first rule of interpretation is that we understand New Testament usage according to the Old Testament meaning, unless we have clear indications of a basic change in intention by the writer. There is no valid reason to ascribe to Mark a difference in meaning for this passage. The only point of significance is the Christian interpolation of the word “beloved,” which, of course, gives the passage a Christological connotation. This should be viewed as an addition by Christian theologians and not part of the original citation. This was probably done during the period of oral transmission of the tradition and not an addition by Mark. The problem is why the entire passage was not quoted from the Psalm. The full address to the king in our Psalm is, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” This may have been the original reading in all the gospels, as we actually find in the Western text (Codex Bezae fifth century) of Luke, but, if so, it was expunged by all scribes and the quotation from Isaiah 42.1 substituted. There arose a teaching among some in the early Christian community at an early date called “the adoption heresy” that Jesus was a man adopted by God to become his son. Since this point of view was declared to be heretical by the orthodox, it could have resulted in the expunging of that part of Psalm 2.7 that was offensive, namely, the phrase “today I have begotten you,” and the substitution of Isaiah 42.1 in this passage.
The citation of Isaiah 42.1 is an adaptation of that passage to make it appropriate Christian tradition. This is one of the “suffering servant” passages found in Second Isaiah, the best known of which is Isaiah 53. It is strange that Jesus did not use this concept as descriptive of his own understanding of his mission, since the early Christian community interpreted and applied the title to Jesus, as is amply demonstrated in a number of passages in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles (compare Acts 3.13; 4.27; 8.30–35) and in numerous references by Paul to the death of Jesus as a vicarious and atoning sacrifice (Romans 4.25; 5.8; 1 Corinthians 15.3 et al.). Mark and the other gospel writers either borrowed this concept from the prophet and applied it to Jesus as the seal of God’s approval upon him at his baptism, or they are simply reporting an interpretation and application that was already widely used in the early Christian community; or, if our comments on Psalm 2.7 above are to the point, scribes expunged the offending portion of the passage from the Psalm that may have been the original text in gospel accounts of the baptism and replaced it with this citation from the prophet Isaiah. However the process by which this passage from Isaiah comes to be used in the baptism pericope, it is now interpreted and applied to Jesus as the one who is chosen and commissioned by God to be the Messiah.
Jesus’
