Baptism and Temptation of Jesus

(Gospel of Mark 1:9 - 1:13)
At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the River Jordan.  When Jesus emerged from the water, he saw the sky open up and the Divine Spirit fly down to him like a dove.  A voice from the heavens spoke to him.  "You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."

The Divine Spirit at once impelled Jesus to go out into the desert, where he would remain for 40 days.  There he was tested by Satan and exposed to wild animals -- but extraterrestrial guardians attended him.

Notes
1. Jesus is from Nazareth, now a large city in northern Israel and regarded as the Arab capital of the country.  In the 1st Century AD, though,  it was only a small, unimportant town of a few hundred people.  It was located in central Galilee, a separate country well to the north Judea, where most of John's converts were coming from.  At that time Galilee, technically a part of the Roman province of Iudea, was semi-autonomous and was ruled by a son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas.  Mark makes no further comment upon Jesus' origin.  That it was the first gospel to be written leads one to suspect that the Nativity stories recounted in Matthew and Luke (which are irreconcilably contradictory) are later embellishments and probably mythical.

2. After his baptism, Jesus looks up to the sky and sees the Divine Spirit fly down to him and then speak to him.  The voice is that of God the Father expressing his approval of his son.  It is unclear what he actually saw.  Did he see with his eyes or was it in his mind?  Was there a physical manifestation of some sort?  If so, was it seen by John the Baptist, too?  The Divine Spirit flies down to him like a dove, that is, like a bird; the text does not say that it took the physical form of a dove.  Was this spirit a disembodied form of God, or some separate entity.  The former seems most likely since the words spoken are from the Father.  It should be mentioned that the opening up or splitting of the sky is perhaps not meant metaphorically.  The authors of the Old Testament believed that a dome, the firmament, covered a flat earth and that above this dome was an ocean and, beyond that, Heaven, where Jehovah or Elohim lived.  The dome, the sky, would thus have to open in order for it to rain, or for someone or something to come down from Heaven.  The authors of the New Testament, probably not privy to the newfangled Greek notions of a spherical world, would have conceived of things similarly.

3. Some have believed that the descent of the dove-like spirit to Jesus after his baptism constituted possession by that divine spirit.  Before that time he was an ordinary man and only subsequently was his body inhabited by the Son of God.  This interesting and reasonably plausible theory is one of many suggested by early Christians and rejected by orthodoxy.  The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist is one of the few events generally conceded to be almost certainly factual by those who credit an historical Jesus.  There is no agreement, though, as to where exactly the event might have taken place.   

4. Jesus is sent out into the desert for 40 days, the 40 days being analogous to the supposed 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert.  Most text refer to "wilderness," but the contemporary impression of wilderness is boundless tracts of forests and perhaps mountains and streams.  What is referred to here are the desert wastelands removed from human settlement.  The apparent purpose of this desert exile is so that Jesus can be tested.  There is the implication that one cannot be good unless one is tempted by evil and is successful in resisting that temptation.  But if he is the Son of God, why should this be at all necessary?  The Satan, literally "Opposer" or "Adversary" is not a figure of evil bent upon tempting Jesus away from goodness and subverting his mission.  He is merely charged with testing Jesus, rather like a stern schoolmaster or drill instructor.  Even if Satan tempts Jesus to evil, there is no implication, here, at least, that Satan himself is evil or that he is doing anything contrary to the will of God the Father.  And it is not clear that Satan is even a specific individual or being.  This follows a traditional Hebraic view of "Satan," who is mentioned only a few times in the Old Testament and always in this context.  In the later Gospel of Matthew Satan is portrayed more familiarly, and as Christianity would develop, Satan would become an important figure, the author of evil, the tempter of mankind who would oppose Jesus Christ.  All good stories, even religious narratives, need an antagonist as well as a protagonist.  Jehovah and the Israelites had plenty of adversaries in the physical world, the Egyptians, the Canaanites, the Amalekites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the who's who of the ancient Middle East.  Until Christendom was established as a temporal power and could wage its campaigns of conversion against nonbelievers, it had to be content with an otherworldly adversary, Satan, or the Devil, who quickly evolved into a comic-book arch villain.      

5. Jesus was among the wild animals of the desert.  One wonders what animals would have posed a threat to him -- gray wolves, hyenas, Arabian leopards, maybe?  Were there still lions in the Palestinian deserts?  It seems rather wimpy that Jesus couldn't defend himself against them, whatever they might have been.  Wasn't the Son of God man enough to hold his own against the animal kingdom.   Wasn't he clever enough to fashion himself a weapon or two, a club, a staff, a spear to defend himself?  But cheating on the test like a rich man's son, Jesus was being protected by guardians sent by his father.  These guardians were presumably sent to ward off the wild animals. (If they were to protect him from the Satan, that would have defeated the whole purpose of Jesus' trial.)  Unfortunately, nothing further is said of them.  Were they spirit beings?  Did they manifest a physical form?  ("Angels" is the usual translation, but I have avoided the use of that highly ambiguous and misleading term.)

6. Jesus' time in the desert is similar to the periods of testing, fasting and deprivation that most prophets and shamans and inspirational leaders undergo or are expected to undergo.  (It is almost a hazing rite.)  Something special is supposed to occur during the experience; there may be communion with higher beings, the endowment of spiritual insights or cosmic awareness, or the conference of psychic powers.  The nature of Jesus' experience is undocumented.