If the baptism theory is true then it tells us where “dying with Christ” begins: when Jesus is betrayed and taken to the High Priest. This may add light to the reference to Jonah (Matthew 12:40): “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Counting Thursday night as one night, and Sunday morning as day.
Perhaps too esoteric, but Simeon’s prophecy in Luke 2:35 [the thoughts of many hearts revealed, a sword through the soul of Mary] can relate to Christ’s trial “in the heart of the earth”. (Especially with John 19:26-27 hitting home the importance of pitying Christ as if his mother, and pitying Mary as if her son.) The baptism theory may also help to explain why early Christians were obsessed with fish imagery. Not just the ichthys, but consider our friend Abercius, who extols “the Fish of exceeding great size and pure whom the spotless virgin caught from the spring.” If baptism had a more expansive meaning than simply the washing of past sins, if it meant being born into Christ from above / anew [John 3:3] and identifying with his death and rebirth, then the fish makes perfect sense: the water was both the deepest and the highest realm [“great deep” vs fermament], fish live in water, the fish was already a potent religious symbol (Jonah), and the activity of fishing is phenomenologically similar to the activity of faith (hence the miraculous catch and so on). Christ is the Great Fish because he fulfills all the roles of the Old Testament figures, and the Little Christ identifies *within him* like Jonah transported within the Great Fish, that messenger of mercy.
I wonder if there is also a connection here to the nakedness of Adam. Upon sinning, Adam flees and later realizes he is naked; here, a follower of Jesus flees and becomes naked. In 1 Cor 15:42-45, you see a connection made between resurrection and Christ the new Adam:
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power […] Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
Last but not least, perhaps there is a connection to Mark 2:20-21:
The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them [the Passion, beginning when Christ is taken away from them], and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of new cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.
