Is there anything in the Gospels to support such an extraordinary view?
One of the few hints I can find of baptism as an ordeal is in Mark 10, and the parallel passage in Matthew 20. James and John have just asked to sit on Jesus' right and left hand in his glory.
But Jesus said unto them, "Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"And they said unto him, "We can."
And Jesus said unto them, "Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: But to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared" (Mark 10:38-40).
The clear import of Jesus' question is, "Are you prepared to endure the ordeals that I will have to endure?" -- and the metaphors he chose to convey this are those of drinking from a cup and submitting to baptism.
The cup metaphor appears to have been a common one. Several Old Testament prophecies portray the Lord as punishing people by figuratively making them drink from a cup. (See, for example, Isaiah 51, Jeremiah 25, and Jeremiah 49.) Just before his betrayal and execution, Jesus famously prayed, "O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done" (Matt. 26:42). When Simon Peter tried to defend him with a sword, Jesus said, "Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" (John 18:11).
Baptism as such was something relatively new and could hardly have become a stock metaphor like that of the cup of wrath. Nevertheless, Jesus knew that James and John would understand his meaning; it was natural for them to connect baptism with the idea of an awful ordeal.
John's "baptism of fire" metaphor also suggests baptism as an ordeal.
And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire (Matt. 3:10-12).
The meaning of this fiery baptism is disputed, but at least in Matthew's version, the context strongly suggests that "baptize you with fire" means "burn you up," like chaff or like a barren tree.
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Against this idea that baptism was traumatic, we have the fact that it was so enormously popular. Luke 3:7 says a "multitude" came to be baptized. According to Mark 1:5, "there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan." We might imagine an extraordinary person like Jesus submitting to a death-defying ordeal -- after all, he followed up his baptism with a David Blaine-like 40-day fast! -- but the entire population of Judaea and Jerusalem? There have admittedly been occasional "crazes" for self-flagellation and the like (see the Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard), but nothing on this scale.
And, speaking of that 40-day fast, Matthew tells us that "Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water" and then marched out into the wilderness to fast for 40 days and be tested by the devil. Whereas, if Jesus' baptism had actually been a drowning, John would have dragged his unconscious body out of the water and resuscitated him, and Jesus would have lain gasping on the shore, coughing the Jordan up out of his lungs, and certainly in no condition to set off on a 40-day camping trip with no food.
More to the point, though, the whole idea of John drowning people in order to produce near-death experiences is ridiculous. NDEs are not at all common, and in fact are essentially a modern phenomenon, made possible by modern medicine's ability to bring people back from deeper and deeper states. You have to bring someone very, very close to death for an NDE to occur, and obviously if you deliberately try to do that, you're going to end up killing the person more often than not. Can you imagine wanting to have an NDE of your own and asking a friend to hold you underwater until you seemed almost dead and then bring you back up and resuscitate you? Isn't it obvious that this would be a criminally insane thing to do -- that you would be very unlikely to experience an NDE and very likely to just die, in which case your friend would be guilty of murder?
John had enemies, and he eventually ended up in prison -- but only for the crime of criticizing the marital irregularities of the Herods. When he was finally executed, it was not for any capital crime he was accused of, but to satisfy the whim of a vengeful woman. If John had really been doing what Sheldrake suggests, he would have had victims, lots of them, and it would have been trivially easy for his enemies to have him put to death for murder. That they did not do so -- and that the Pharisees were afraid even to criticize him because of his popularity with the people -- strongly suggests that he wasn't doing anything like that.
6 comments:
@Wm - Your reasoning seems solid to me.
But you may perhaps be puzzled as to why Rupert Sheldrake could even have conceived of such an apparently bizarre notion?
The answer is that there is an idea prevalent in esoteric circles, that there was in the ancient past a process of ritual initiation, which some regard as leading up to a 'near-death' state, or at least an hallucination of death; and the experience of crossing the threshold into death - after which the initiate was revived and henceforth was an initiate - with special deeper wisdom.
I'm not sure where this originated - perhaps with Helena Blavatsky and Theosophy - but it is found in Rudolf Steiner (referenced multiple times over many years, indeed ad nauseam); as well as mainstream New Age circles especially in relation to ideas of shamanism (and how shamans were trained).
Indeed - this has become almost a trope: the idea hat a holy man 'will have' undergone some kind of harsh initiation ritual providing an 'experience' (of some sort) of being-dead, or the world of the dead.
It would seem natural to one with such a perspective that Jesus (as a holy man) 'must have' undergone *some such* initiatory process; and this is read-into/ found-in various aspects of the Gospel accounts (or inferred as having happened "when Jesus was an Essene"... or some such).
This could therefore be regarded as a classic example of Gnosticism (except that the term is used to widely as to be meaningless) in a fairly strict sense of assimilating Christianity into pre-existent pagan mystery religions, often derived from Pythagoras and Plato.
But then, the same could be said (I mean Gnostic elements) - albeit with a different theme (i.e. monotheism, the omni-God...) - for mainstream orthodox (non-Mormon) Christian theology...
As someone who has studied real shamanism in some detail, would you say the New Age conception of shamanic initiation has any basis in historical fact? (I assume not, given that you speculate that the idea originated with Mme Blavatsky.)
If Jesus must have had some such near-death initiation, wouldn't fasting for forty days be sufficient? Alternatively, one could see the temptation to throw himself off the roof of the temple, and Jesus' refusal to do so, as a rejection of this whole idea. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
If Sheldrake wanted to explain Jesus' special "holy man" status, though, shouldn't he have chosen something unique, rather than an experience he shared with all Judaea and Jerusalem?
"mainstream orthodox (non-Mormon) Christian theology"
Some Mormons use "credal Christianity" for this, which I think is as good a term as any, seeing as how "Orthodox Christian" already has a well-established, more specific meaning.
@Wm - "would you say the New Age conception of shamanic initiation has any basis in historical fact?" - making necessary provisos about definitions etc - yes. I would say it probably does have some partial basis in the sense that probably some shamans had some kind of individual spiritual/ physical crisis, before taking up their role.
But there seem to be plenty of exceptions eg the Kung San (Kalahari Bushmen) seemingly had several 'shamans' in a group (of both sexes), and it was not necessarily a stable or distinctive role. In 'simple' hunter gatherers there do not seem to be specialist long term roles.
Maybe a formal severe initiation was more likely found in agrarian societies where the priests were also magicians - Ancient Egypt and perhaps the South American societies like Aztecs.
"shouldn't he have chosen something unique" - well, the effect of such an explanation - whether intended or not - is certainly to make Jesus *non* unique - and I think Sheldrake does sometimes discuss Jesus as an example of a type (including the Buddha and others), rather than unique.
New Agers work very hard to avoid saying that Jesus Christ is in any way essential - he tends to be regarded as one of several or many *helpful* spiritual guides, perhaps one well-suited to the Western Culture, perhaps even uniquely well-suited - but only quantitatively, not qualitatively.
When I mention Blavatsky or Steiner - or Jung as another very influential conduit - this is because they are the path by which most mdern people have derived these ideas; and the modern-derived ideas tend to projected back onto (some of ) the anthropological evidence (which is, in itself, derived from 'modern' examples projected back onto Paleolithic times).
"wouldn't fasting for forty days be sufficient?" - Yes, clearly it would be more than sufficient! If one fasted from water as well as food, then after 40 days in a desert (without supernatural aid) one would be long-since dead.
wrt "credal Christianity" - well, not many would understand the phrase. Plus, it seems to me that most active Mormons have - de facto - adopted both a creed - https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/a-of-f/1?lang=eng , and also the surface attitudes and behaviours of credal Christianity.
It is the 'deep' theology and metaphysics of Mormonism (e.g. pluralism, evolutionary nature, polytheism etc) that distinguishes it qualitatively from traditional-orthodox-mainstream Christianity; but maybe not many Mormons actually believe in that, and fewer seem to derive their faith and practice from it.
(...At least, not when the deep philosophical assumptions come into conflict with the here-and-now doctrines and rules-for-living coming from current church authorities.)
When I was baptized it was by immersion and I did get a lot of water up my nose. I have had aquaintances from the Baptist faith alone kind of churches who never got baptized tell me they fear the pastor will hold them under and drown them too long.
Or the emphasis on the possibility of Near-Death Experiences in connection with John the Baptist and Jesus is yet another attempt by materialists to explain away a Biblical event as a neuro-physical phenomenon.
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