Читать книгу The Story of Jesus - Roy A. Harrisville - Страница 13

All the Gospels record Jesus’ baptism at the hands of the Baptist, though their narratives vary widely. In Mark and Matthew Jesus alone is witness to the events connected with his baptism. Luke records that while Jesus was praying, “the heaven was opened,” presumably in sight of all who had been baptized, and in John the Baptist is witness to the Spirit’s descent and remaining on him. In Mark the verb used to describe what occurs at Jesus’ emergence from the water is suggestive of a violent event. He writes that the heavens are “torn apart,” whereas in Matthew and Luke they are merely “opened.” Mark uses the same verb for the tearing of the temple curtain at Jesus’ death (Mark 15:38). In view of the voice from heaven at his baptism (“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” Mark 1:11: cf. Matthew 3:17; Luke 3:22), and the confession of the centurion at Jesus’ breathing his last, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” Mark 15:39), a revelation out of the ordinary suggests itself, as if a revelation were not such, in any case something abrupt, sudden, bursting from above and thrusting below, a rending or tearing, eliminating the distance between above and below. As noted earlier, in Matthew’s account, the Baptist demurs at Jesus’ coming to him to be baptized, and hears the reply, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). The meaning is obscure, unless Matthew intends to portray Jesus as shouldering human destiny, thus “sav[ing] his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21), and for this act gaining approval from the torn heaven. This might suit a Gospel often described as oriented toward obedience to commandment.

From earliest times, and by some of the most celebrated scholars such as Peter Abelard (1079—April 21, 1142), it has been argued that Jesus was adopted by the Son of God at his baptism, resurrection, or ascension. The view has been part of a long series of attempts at explaining the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth, Man and God, and God the Father. Some scholars see adoptionist tendencies in Mark and Paul. For example, they argue that though Mark refers to Jesus as Son of God, references occurring at 1:1 (“The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” but not in all versions); at 5:7 (“What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”) and at 15:39 (“Surely this man was the Son of God!”), are adoptionist in tone. Others suggest that while some early manuscripts of Mark 1:1 do not contain the title “Son of God,” neither do they contain the phrase, “Today I have begotten you,” allowing for the conclusion that Mark contains less adoptionist tendencies than supposed. Notably, the Gospel of the Hebrews, a Jewish-Christian gospel all but equal to Matthew in size, widely known to the early Church Fathers, but preserved only in citations or summaries, and like others of its kind relegated to the periphery by the canonical Gospels, displays distinctly adoptionist tendencies. One fragment referring to Jesus’ baptism as an event for which the Spirit waited in vain through all the prophets, but who now in Jesus the Son finds rest, reads:

And it came to pass when the Lord was come out of the water, the whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended upon him and rested on him and said to him: My Son, in all the prophets was I waiting for thee that thou shouldest come and I might rest in thee. For thou art my rest; thou art my first-begotten Son that reignest for ever.8

Though the view has long been abandoned, of the two contesting parties in earliest Christianity which Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) thought he detected, that is, the Ebionitic, adoptionistic, legalistic Jewish Christian party, and the Pauline law-free gospel party open to the Gentiles, he regarded Matthew’s Gospel as least affected by either faction and thus the best support for a life of Jesus. One thing is certain: from the historical perspective, an adoptionist interpretation of the vision and voice at Jesus’ baptism represents a challenge to what may be the one and only doctrine with which all Christian communities laying claim to the name agree: the doctrine of the Trinity, implicit in the doxologies of the New Testament epistles, heralded in the Fourth Gospel’s affirmation of the Word’s having become flesh (1: 14), and at Nicaea (AD 325) and afterwards made touchstone of Christian confession. From this point of view it is not because the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove or a voice was heard from heaven that he became the Son of God, but rather because he was the Son of God the Spirit descended and a voice from heaven was heard.

The Baptist’s question, recorded in Matthew 11:2 (“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”), suggests that he expected something from Jesus he did not get. In his initial proclamation he had given his portrait of the one to come apocalyptic, end-time features: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. . .the one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. . .His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:10, 14; Luke 3:9, 17). Had the Baptist shared the idea that Messiah would come to turn Israel’s enemies to ash, save the repentant remnant, and assume his place as ruler over all the earth? What else would have moved him to ask? Was Jesus ill-suited to the portrait he had drawn? Responding to John, Jesus lists his activity, hardly free of end-time intimations (“the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Matthew 11:4–5). According to the story line, John was in prison, and sent a delegation to put the question. Had he been in the dark respecting Jesus’ activity, but if so, why does Jesus conclude with a beatitude toward whomever would take no offense at him, what with all that giving sight to the blind, and on and on to raising the dead? John had to be the candidate for that beatitude. Did he see the activity of Jesus as a string of events loosed from any serious context, say, from the context three Major and seven Minor Prophets had furnished with their heralding the “Day of the Lord,” and in whose train Jesus himself had set him? (Matthew 11:11).

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come. (Joel 2:12)

Till now, there is little of Jesus in that.