49. Why did Jesus receive baptism from John? (Chapter 2. Baptism and Temptation of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

IN conformity with the Gospel view of the fact, the customary answer given by the orthodox to this question is, that Jesus, by his submission to John's baptism, signified his consecration to the Messianic office; an explanation which is supported by a passage in Justin, according to which it was the Jewish notion, that the Messiah would be unknown as such to himself and others, until Elijah as his forerunner should anoint him, and thereby make him distinguishable by all. The Baptist himself, however, as he is represented by the first evangelist, could not have partaken of this design; for had he regarded his baptism as a consecration which the Messiah must necessarily undergo, he would not have hesitated to perform it on the person of Jesus (iii. 14.).

Our former inquiries have shown that John's baptism related partly to The Coming One, its recipients promising a believing preparation for the expected Messiah; how then could Jesus, if he was conscious of being himself the The Coming One, submit himself to this baptism? The usual answer from the orthodox point of view is, that Jesus, although conscious of his Messiahship, yet, so long as it was not publicly attested by God, spoke and acted, not as the Messiah, but merely as an Israelite, who held himself bound to obey every divine ordinance relative to his nation. But, here, there is a distinction to be made. Negatively, it became Jesus to refrain from performing any Messianic deeds, or using any of the Messiah's prerogatives, before his title was solemnly attested; even positively, it became him to submit himself to the ordinances which were incumbent on every Israelite; but to join in a new rite, which symbolized the expectation of another and a future Messiah, could never, without dissimulation, be the act of one who was conscious of being the actual Messiah himself. More recent theologians have ^{P.243} therefore wisely admitted, that when Jesus came to John for baptism, he had not a decided conviction of his Messiahship. They indeed regard this uncertainty as only the struggle of modesty.

Paulus, for instance, observes that Jesus, notwithstanding he had heard from his parents of his Messianic destination, and had felt this first intimation confirmed by many external incidents, as well as by his own spiritual development, was yet not over eager to appropriate the honour, which had been as it were thrust upon him.

But, if the previous narratives concerning Jesus be regarded as a history, and therefore, of necessity, as a supernatural one; then must he, who was heralded by angels, miraculously conceived, welcomed into the world by the homage of magi and prophets, and who in his twelfth year knew the temple to be his father's house, have long held a conviction of his Messiahship, above all the scruples of a false modesty. If on the contrary it be thought possible, by criticism, to reduce the history of the childhood of Jesus to a merely natural one, there is no longer anything to account for his early belief that he was the Messiah; and the position which he adopted by the reception of John's baptism becomes, instead of an affected diffidence, a real ignorance of his Messianic destiny. Too modest, continue these commentators, to declare himself Messiah on his own authority, Jesus fulfilled all that the strictest self-judgment could require, and wished to make the decisive experiment, whether the Deity would allow that he, as well as every other, should dedicate himself to the coming Messiah, or whether a sign would be granted, that he himself was the e)rxomenoj. But to do something seen to be inappropriate, merely to try whether God will correct the mistake, is just such a challenging of the divine power as Jesus, shortly after his baptism, decidedly condemns. Thus it must be allowed that, the baptism of John being a baptism ei)j ton e)rxomenon, if Jesus could submit himself to it without dissimulation or presumption, he could not at the time have held himself to be that e)rxomenon, and if he really uttered the words "Let it be so for now," etc. (which, however, could only be called forth by the refusal of the Baptist a refusal that stands or falls with his previous conviction of the Messiahship of Jesus,) he could only mean by them, that it became him, with every pious Israelite, to devote himself by anticipation to the expected Messiah, in baptism, although the evangelist, instructed by the issue, put on them a different construction.

But the relation hitherto discussed is only one aspect of John's baptism; the other, which is yet more strongly attested by history, shows it as a baptisma metanoiaj a "baptism of repentance." The Israelites, we are told Matt. iii. 6, were baptized of John, confessing weir sins: shall we then suppose that Jesus made such a confession? They received the command to repent: did Jesus acknowledge such a command? This difficulty was felt even in the early Church. In the Gospel of the Hebrews, adopted by the Nazarenes, ^{P.246} the narrations directly convey no other meaning, than that the whole scene was externally visible and audible, and thus they have been always understood by the majority of commentators. But in endeavouring to conceive the incident as a real one, a cultivated and reflecting mind must stumble at no insignificant difficulties. First, that for the appearance of a divine being on earth, the visible heavens must divide themselves, to allow of his descent from his accustomed scat, is an idea that can have no objective reality, but must be the entirely subjective creation of a time when the dwelling-place of Deity was imagined to be above the vault of heaven.

Further, how is it reconcilable with the true idea of the Holy Spirit as the divine, all-pervading Power, that he should move from one place to another, like a finite being, and embody himself in the form of a dove? Finally, that God should utter articulate tones in a national idiom, has been justly held extravagant.

Even in the early Church, the more enlightened fathers adopted the opinion, that the heavenly voices spoken of in the biblical history were not external sounds, the effect of vibrations in the air, but inward impressions produced by God in the minds of those to whom he willed to impart himself: thus of the appearance at the baptism of Jesus, Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia maintain that it was a vision, and not a reality. To the simple indeed, says Origen, in their simplicity, it is a light thing to set the universe in motion, and to sever a solid mass like the heavens; but those who search more deeply into such matters, will, he flunks, refer to those higher revelations, by means of which chosen persons, even waking, and still more frequently in their dreams, are led to suppose that they perceive something with their bodily senses, while their minds only are affected: so that consequently, the whole appearance in question should be understood, not as an external incident, but as an inward vision sent by God; an interpretation which has also met with much approbation among modern theologians.

In the first two Gospels and in the fourth, this interpretation is favoured by the expressions, "were opened to" "he saw," and "I beheld," which seem to imply that the appearance was subjective, in the sense intended by Theodore, when he observes that the descent of the Holy Spirit was not seen by all present, bu that, by a certain spiritual contemplation, it was visible to John alone; to John however we must add Jesus, who, according to Mark, participated in the vision. But in opposition to this stands the statement of Luke: the expressions which he uses, "it came to pass-was opened, and descended, and a ^{P.247} voice came," bear a character so totally objective and exterior, especially if we add the words, "in a bodily form," that (abiding by the notion of the perfect truthfulness of all the Gospel records,) the less explicit narratives must be interpreted by the unequivocal one of Luke, and the incident they recount must be understood as something more than an inward revelation to John and Jesus. Hence it is prudent in Olshausen to allow, in concession to Luke, that there was present on the occasion a crowd of persons, who saw and heard something, yet to maintain that this was nothing distinct or comprehensible. By this means, on the one hand, the occurrence is again transferred from the domain of subjective visions to that of objective phenomena; while on the other, the descending dove is supposed visible, not to the bodily eye, but only to the open spiritual one, and the words audible to the soul, not to the bodily car. Our understanding fails us in this pneumatology of Olshausen, wherein there are sensible realities transcending the senses; and we hasten out of this misty atmosphere into the clearer one of those, who simply tell us, that the appearance was an external incident, but one purely natural.

This party appeals to the custom of antiquity, to regard natural occurrences as divine intimations, and in momentous crises, where a bold resolution was to be taken, to adopt them as guides. To Jesus, spiritually matured into the Messiah, and only awaiting an external divine sanction, and to the Baptist who had already ceded the superiority to the friend of his youth, in their solemn frame of mind at the baptism of the former by the latter, every natural phenomenon that happened at the time, must have been pregnant with meaning, and have appeared as a sign of the divine will. But what the natural appearance actually was, is a point on which the commentators are divided in opinion. Some, with the synoptic writers, include a sound as well as an appearance; others give, with John, an appearance only. They interpret the opening of the heavens, as a sudden parting of the clouds, or a flash of lightning; the dove they consider as a real bird of that species, which by chance hovered over the head of Jesus; or they assume that the lightning or some meteor was compared to a dove. from the manner of its descent. They who include a sound as a part of the machinery in the scene, suppose a clap of thunder, which was imagined by those present to be a Bath Kol, and interpreted into the words given by the first evangelist. Others, on the contrary, understand what is said of audible words, merely as an explanation of the visible sign, which was regarded as an attestation that Jesus was the Son of God. this last opinion sacrifices the synoptic writers, who undeniably speak of an audible voice, to John, and thus contains a critical doubt as to the historical character of the narratives, which, consistently followed out, leads to quite other ground than that of the naturalistic inter- ^{P.248} pretation. If the sound was mere thunder, and the words only an interpretation put upon it by the bystanders; then, as in the synoptic accounts the words are evidently supposed to have been audibly articulated, we must allow that there is a traditional ingredient in these records. So far as the appearance is concerned, it is not to be denied that the sudden parting of clouds, or a flash of lightning, might be described as an opening of heaven; but in no way could the form of a dove be ascribed to lightning or a meteor.

The form is expressly the point of comparison in Luke only, but it is doubtless so intended by the other narrators; although Fritzsche contends that the words "like a dove," w(j peristeran, in Matthew refer only to the rapid motion. The flight of the dove has nothing so peculiar and distinctive, that, supposing this to be the point of comparison, there would not be in any of the parallel passages a variation, a substitution of some other bird, or an entirely new figure. As, instead of this, the mention of the dove is invariable through all the four Gospels, the simile must turn upon something exclusively proper to the dove, and this can apparently be nothing but its form.

Hence those commit the least violence on the text, who adopt the supposition of a real dove. Paulus, however, in so doing, incurred the hard task of showing by a multitude of facts from natural history and other sources, that the dove might be tame enough to fly towards a man: how it could linger so long over one, that it might be said, "it rested upon him," he has not succeeded in explaining, and he thus comes into collision with the narrative of John, by which he had sustained his supposition of the absence of a voice.