re: #338 Nyet

I think the probabilities of Jesus having existed and not existed are very close to each other, like 60/40 for existence. The evidentiary basis is just too poor to make strong conclusions. But yeah, it makes sense that some preacher guy existed.

There are some things we know from the Gospels that point to Jesus being a real person. One of them is the report that he was baptized by John the Baptist. As Jesus’ stature grew over the first century, this report apparently embarrassed the hell out of the Gospel writers. John’s baptism is described as a baptism of repentance, but what would Jesus, who was God’s representative and later God’s only begotten son, need of repenting?

Mark blandly reports the baptism, but Mark’s Jesus wasn’t God’s anointed until the spirit of God rested upon him right after he was baptized. Matthew has John trying to convince Jesus to baptize him, but gives in. Luke goes a slightly different direction and expands on Mark’s comment that the spirit of God rested upon Jesus in the bodily form of a dove. And then there’s John, where there is no direct account of Jesus being baptized by John, but rather John’s recollection that he heard from God that Jesus was the one “will baptize with the Holy Spirit” while he [John] was baptizing Jesus.

Based on these four different ways of trying to deal with what was probably an uncomfortable fact, scholars believe Jesus did exist and was probably baptized, otherwise, why all the need to retcon?