The Separationism is in Proto-Mark only if the Baptism episode is original in proto-Mark

[Giuseppe]

In another thread, I have found clues of separationism even in the Fourth Gospel.

This surely increases the probabilities that proto-Mark was separationist, too.

But at this point, sic stantibus rebus, the only objection against the idea that the separationism was the original christology of proto-Mark is that the separationism finds a raison d'etre uniquely and only in virtue of the Baptism episode.

Remove from Mark the baptism episode, and proto-Mark ceases to be eo ipso a separationist gospel.

If John the Baptist and the baptism episode was all interpolated in Mark, then proto-Mark had probably a Docetic christology.

[Giuseppe]

The reasons to remove the Baptism episode (and with it the Separationism) from proto-Mark:

• the story of the Death of John the Baptist is demonstrably an interpolation.

• it is not a Markan thing the explicit quote of mixed prophecies to introduce John the Baptist in the incipit. Note the contradiction:
  whereas Malachi 3:1 has
  
  I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me
  
  the interpolator introduced:
  
  
  “I will send my messenger ahead of you,
  who will prepare your way”
  
  It is too much evident that the interpolator wanted at any cost to introduce John. In other terms, it was the extreme (Judaizing) need of John in the incipit to move him to change the prophecies, not the prophecies to move him to introduce John in the incipit.

• the story of the Temptation in the Wilderness is too much caricatural: the interpolator did copy and paste from late gospels.

CONCLUSION:

The original incipit of Mark was the following:

Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God:

Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has fulfilled,” he said. “And the time of the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

And they [the people of Galilee] were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

[Giuseppe]

Definitely, proto-Mark is not separationist.

If John the Baptist had really existed, how to explain that Justin, in his Apologies, where he had inevitably to report, ignored John
(as he does not know Paul). If John the Baptist was a real person, if what he says about him in the Gospels was true and was in the Gospels of Justin's time, there is
in the Apologies a passage where it is impossible for Justin not to speak of it.
It is the one that relates to the "prophets who announced Jesus, our Christ, and who succeeded one another from generation to generation "(I Apol., 31).

In short, by Justin's time, John the Baptist was not yet invented.

But, then, without John, proto-Mark ceases to be a separationist gospel.

But then the Christology of proto-Mark is DOCETISM.



Hence, this explains why all that crazy will of having Jesus thrown down (in proto-Luke), of having him stoned again and again (in proto-John) and of having him touched again and again (in proto-Mark).

All vain efforts.

[Ben C. Smith]

But then the Christology of proto-Mark is DOCETISM.



Hence, this explains why all that crazy will of having Jesus thrown down (in proto-Luke), of having him stoned again and again (in proto-John) and of having him touched again and again (in proto-Mark).

All vain efforts.

Sometimes your posts make me feel like I am sitting in some sort of heretical Sunday School.

[Giuseppe]

Sometimes your posts make me feel like I am sitting in some sort of heretical Sunday School.

do you think that the original readers were worthy of an Universitary School rather than something like a Sunday School?

[Ben C. Smith]

Sometimes your posts make me feel like I am sitting in some sort of heretical Sunday School.

do you think that the original readers were worthy of an Universitary School rather than something like a Sunday School?

Probably not very many of them, but I am worth a University rather than something like Sunday School. And I am not alone.

[Giuseppe]

Hence the challenge for you: if you accept willingly that Jesus was (without success) threatened with stoning in the Fourth Gospel to make the point that he was without a body and only as such he could escape to the his enemies, what prevents you from applying the same corollary on Markan passages as:

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “ and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

(Mark 5:30-31)

Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him. 10 For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him.

(Mark 3:9-10)

And wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch at least the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it (note: not the Jesus's body, as absent) were healed.

(Mark 6:56)

[Ben C. Smith]

Hence the challenge for you: if you accept willingly that Jesus was (without success) threatened with stoning in the Fourth Gospel to make the point that he was without a body and only as such he could escape to the his enemies....

I do not recall having commented on that passage in such a way.

[Giuseppe]

Hence the challenge for you: if you accept willingly that Jesus was (without success) threatened with stoning in the Fourth Gospel to make the point that he was without a body and only as such he could escape to the his enemies....

I do not recall having commented on that passage in such a way.

the my point is that you would be probably more disposed a priori to see docetism in action in GJohn.

[Ben C. Smith]

Hence the challenge for you: if you accept willingly that Jesus was (without success) threatened with stoning in the Fourth Gospel to make the point that he was without a body and only as such he could escape to the his enemies....

I do not recall having commented on that passage in such a way.

the my point is that you would be probably more disposed a priori to see docetism in action in GJohn.

No, I would not be a priori more likely to see docetism in John than in the other gospels.