Book 4, lines 199-238

[Previous: lines 146-198]

John narrates. John the Baptist has been baptising people in the river Jordan. Now read on!

“Talibus auditis, cunctis ex urbibus ibant
finitimi, qua Iordanes fluit agmine dulci,                       [200]
orantes pacem, atque ultro commissa fatentes;
quos vates puro nudos lustrabatin amne,
rite cavis capiti invergens sacra flumina palmis.

“Ecce autem Deus ipse etiam, ceu caetera turba,
lustrandi sese studio clam tendit ad amnem;                  [205]
nil ut inexpertum moribundo in corpore linquat,
mortali quod fas homini, et subiisse necesse est,
ne pigeat seros imitari facta nepotes.
Abstinuit primùm vates, tactusque refugit,
agnoscensque Deum palmas utrasque tetendit               [210]
supplex, accurvusque vadis mirantibus ipsis.
Paruit inde tamen iussus, divinaque membra
horrescensque tremensque liquenti perluit amne.
Protinus aurifluo Jordanes gurgite fulsit;
et superûm vasto intonuit domus alta fragore.               [215]
Insuper et cœli claro delapsa columba est
vertice per purum, candenti argentea plumâ
terga, sed auratis circùm et rutilantibus alis:
iamque viam latè signans super astitit ambos,
cœlestique aura pendens afflavit utrumque.                   [220]
Vox simul, et magni rubra Genitoris ab aethra
audita est, Nati dulcem testantis amorem.
Interea, aligeri iuvenes, gens incola cœli,
missi aderant liquido pendentes aere circùm;
carbaseosque sinus, mantiliaque alba ferebant,             [225]
iussa ministeria , ut nati membra humida herilis,
rorantemque sacro siccarent flumine crinem.
His actis, Deus evasit, fluviumque reliquit.
Quem vates longo ripam ordine circumfusis
ostendit, talique abeuntem est voce sequutus.                [230]
‘En, ego quem terris toties iamiam affore quondam
pollicitus, Deus, ecce Deus, qui crimina nostra,
thuricremas agnus veluti mactatus ad aras,
morte luet, superoque volens cadet hostia Patri.
Hunc optate ducem, hunc vobis optate magistrum.’       [235]
Ex illo vates, nemora et loca sola relinquens,
urbes per medias ibat, pupulisque canebat
advenisse Deum, promissum numen adesse.”

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“Hearing this, people flocked from all the cities
that bordered Jordan’s sweet flowing waters,                 [200]
praying for peace and confessing their sins;
Nude in the lustrous stream, they were baptized,
the prophet pouring water from cupped hands.

“But now, see! God Himself, come to the river,
with everybody else, to be baptised.                                [205]
He wished his mortal body to experience,
all that men undergo of necessity,
that future ages should imitate his action.
At first the prophet refused to do it:
recognising God, he held his hands out                         [210]
in supplication, the very waves marvelling.
Eventually he did it, the divine body
baptised by him as he trembled with awe.
Straight away the Jordan’s waters glowed gold
and high heaven above loudly thundered.                      [215]
Out of the shining sky a dove descended
through the pure air, its back gleaming silver
and the feathers of its wings burnished gold.
Circling down, it fluttered over them both
and breathed on them a celestial breath.                         [220]
Just then the Father’s voice was heard in the
bright sky, attesting his love for his son.
Meanwhile the winged race of heaven came
down to hang aloft in the liquid air;
they were carrying the white linen towels,                      [225]
as ordered, to dry their lord’s wet limbs, and
his hair, still dripping from the sacred stream.
With this done, God’s son rose and left the river.

The prophet pointed him out to the crowds
there, calling after the departing man:                             [230]
‘As I have so often foretold—there he is!
God, behold! God, who will take our sins away,
by his death, slaughtered like the lamb at the altar
of his free will to appease his Almighty Father.
Follow him as leader, choose him as teacher.’                 [235]
That was when the prophet left the wilderness
for the cities, spreading the word, singing out
that God had come, the promise had been fulfilled.”

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This account of John baptising Christ includes Vida’s explanation for why it’s even happening. After all: humans are baptised to ‘wash away’ their sin. But Jesus is without sin, born from an immaculate mother. Ergo he doesn’t need baptising. So why did he go to John? The argument that he did so in order to set the precedent for others to follow, which is Vida’s line, expands upon the only one of the four gospels to even hint at this question:

But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. [Matthew 3:14-15]

But it still seems to me to entail problems. It’s not just me. Indeed theologians have turned this around, as it were, and argue by the ‘criterion of embarrassment’ (that the early Church would not have deliberately invented something that made their saviour look odd, bad or contradictory) that this must mean the baptism is one of the (few) Gospel incidents very likely to record a historical fact.

One of the arguments in favour of the historicity of the baptism of Jesus by John is that it is a story which the early Christian Church would have never wanted to invent, typically referred to as the criterion of embarrassment in historical analysis. Based on this criterion, given that John baptised for the remission of sins, and Jesus was viewed as without sin, the invention of this story would have served no purpose, and would have been an embarrassment given that it positioned John above Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew attempts to offset this problem by having John feel unworthy to baptise Jesus and Jesus giving him permission to do so in Matthew 3:14–15.

Milton, in Paradise Regained, reworks Vida's passage, I think:

And he himself among them was baptiz'd;
Not thence to be more pure, but to receive
The testimony of Heaven, that who he is
Thenceforth the nations may not doubt; I saw
The Prophet do him reverence; on him, rising
Out of the water, Heaven above the clouds
Unfold her crystal doors; thence on his head
A perfect dove descend, (whate'er it meant,)
And out of Heaven the sovran voice I heard,
‘This is my Son belov'd, in him am pleas'd.’ [PR, 1: 76-85]

Not sure about Vida’s angels bringing towels, though, in line 225. That strikes me as, simply, bathos.

Reading around on this matter (I mean, baptism) has brought out an ambiguity in the process that never really struck me before. The Christian position, as I understand it, is that just as cleansing with water washes away physical dirt, so baptism by the holy spirit washes away the spiritual ‘dirt’ of sin, enabling the baptised person to live a new kind of life. Fair enough. But there's an issue with that, isn't there. Washing in a physical sense is something we have to do over and over (‘Bath twice a day to be really clean, once a day to be passably clean, once a week to avoid being a public menace’ as Burgess puts it, humorously but not necessarily ironically, in Inside Mr Enderby). Otherwise the dirt returns and builds up. Physical washing is a regular and ongoing process.

But why should this be any different for spiritual bathing? We know, after all, that ‘sin’ returns to us, or we to it, in the course of ordinary living, over and again. Shouldn't baptism be repeatedly weekly, or perhaps daily? It's not though. It seems that once is enough. Which is to say: in Christian doctrine, baptism is the beginning of something, a one-time indicator of a new orientation in life.

It seems scholars have wondered whether the historical John the Baptist didn't, himself, take a different view. There's a passage in Josephus which, since it isn't the Gospel account (and since Josephus can be presumed not to share the preconcpetions of the Gospel authors) is interesting in this context:

In The Beginnings of Christianity Dr Foakes Jackson and Dr Kirsopp Lake maintain that Josephus's version of the work of John Baptist has been generally misinterpreted by scholars, who have been misled by Whiston's translation of Antiquities 18. 5. 2. The passage is as follows κτείνει γὰρ δὴ τοῦτον Ἡρώδης ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις κελεύοντα ἀρετὴν ἐπασκοῦσιν καὶ τὰ πρὸς ἀλλήλους δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν εὐσεβείᾳ χρωμένοις βαπτισμῷ συνιέναι. Whiston translates the passage thus: ‘For Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue both as to justice toward one another and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism.’

The editors of The Beginnings of Christianity criticize this rendering on the ground that it would require the participles ίπασκονσιν and χρωμίνοις to be in the accusative instead of the dative. ‘[Whiston's] explanation’, they say, ‘seems to have been adopted by the Epitome which has emended the datives into accusatives. This cannot be the true text, but there is perhaps a possibility that the text found in Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 1. 11. 5 is right which emends χρωμίνοις into χρωμίνονs, but leaves Ιπασκονσι (p. 102 n. 2).

The editors themselves translate as follows: ‘For Herod killed him, a good man, and one who commanded the Jews, training themselves in virtue and practising righteousness to one another and piety towards God, to come together for baptism.’ [J M Creed ‘Josephus on John the Baptist’, Journal of Theological Studies 23:89 (1921), 59]

The difference there may look pettifogging, but it unpacks in an important way: because it is, precisely the difference between preaching baptism as the first step, and preaching it (as Jackson and Lake, here, believe the historical John did) as the last step, the culmination of a series of purifying modes of living undertaken by a small sect of ascetic followers: ‘the real difference between Josephus and the Gospels as a whole is that Josephus represents [John] as preaching to those who had especially devoted their lives to virtue, and offering baptism as the crowning point of righteousness, whereas the Gospels, including Luke, represent the baptism of John as one of repentance for the remission of sins.’ John's way (if this is right) retains the common-sense connection between actual washing and spiritual washing, where Christ's call to baptism breaks it, or sets it in some strange new, almost ironical relation. But perhaps that, actually, is the point.

Some scholars argue that the historical Jesus began as a disciple of John's baptising sect, and that he started his own ministry either because he came to disagree with some of John's dogmas (for instance, perhaps, on this very question of baptism) or else because John had been executed and the movement needed a new leader. It's interesting to speculate; although this is, obviously, very far from Vida.

At the head of this post: The Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan (1840) by Károly Markó the Elder, now in the Hungarian National Gallery.

[Next: lines 239-274]