All four gospels open with a reference to the beginning of Genesis 1.1, which says, ‘In the beginning God created’.
- Mark 1.1 says, ‘the beginning of the good news’;
- Luke 1.2 mentions those ‘who from the beginning were eyewitnesses’;
- Jn 1.1, ‘In the beginning was the Word’; and
- even Matthew 1.1 says, ‘The book of the generations of Jesus the Messiah’; compare Genesis 5.1, which begins ‘The book of the generations of Adam’.
So it seems that a ‘gospel’ has to start with a reference to the beginning of Genesis, just as a ‘letter’ has to start with ‘Dear So-and-so.’
But Mark does more than just start with Genesis. The other gospels follow him in making the first verse of their Prologues echo the first verse of the Genesis Prologue, but Mark lets the ending of his Prologue echo the last verse of the Genesis Prologue as well (Gn 3.24)— and that in turn anticipates something very important, which comes at the end of the Old Testament.
Genesis 2.8 tells us that ‘the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed’. We all know the subsequent story of Adam, which ends in 3.24 as the LORD God ‘cast Adam out and caused him to dwell over against the garden of delight’— the word ‘cast out’ here is exébalen / ἐξέβαλεν.
Mark uses this very word at the end of his Prologue: ‘And immediately the Spirit casts him out into the desert’ (Mk 1.12). Of course, Mark puts the word into the ‘narrative present’ tense (ekbállei / ἐκβάλλει), as he does whenever he wants to draw you right in to the action. But the verb is from Adam’s story, and by using it, Mark shows Jesus as a new Adam, cast out into Exile. Now, why do I say ‘Exile’?
Genesis 1–3 is the prologue to the whole of the Old Testament. We can read it as a story about a priest-king who is cast out of his garden/temple/kingdom and has to go into exile. Precisely in this way, Adam is a figure, or type (a typos / τύπος), as St Paul and the church fathers say, precisely of Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, the last kings of Judah, and hence of Israel itself, who were led away into exile in Babylon:
12 And Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign. . . . 15 and carried Jehoiachin away to Babylon; and the king’s mother, and the king’s wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land, he carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
At that time, Nebuchadnezzar made Jehoiachin’s uncle Mattaniah to be a petty client-king in his place, changing his name to Zedekiah (2K 24.17). But Zedekiah ‘did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that Jehoiachin had done’, and when Zedekiah finally rebelled against Babylon, the Lord ‘drove away (apérripsen / ἀπέρριψεν; lit. “threw away”)’ Zedekiah and the whole Judahite upper class, and indeed Israel, from his face (2K 24.19-20). And so, finally
4 . . . . [Jerusalem] was broken up, and all the men of war [fled] by night by the way of the gate between two walls, which is by the king’s garden. Now the Babylonians [were] against the city round about, and [the king] went the way toward the plain. 5 And the army of the Babylonians pursued the king, and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, and all his army were scattered from him. 6 So they took the king, and brought him up to Riblah, to the king of Babylon; and gave judgment upon him. 7 And they slew Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes, and put out Zedekiah’s eyes, and bound him with shackles of bronze, and carried him to Babylon. (2K 25.4-7)
So as Mark’s Prologue (1.1-13) ends, ‘the Spirit casts Jesus out into the Desert’ (Mk 1.12), just as God cast Adam out of the Garden— Adam the figure of Jehoiachin, Zedekiah, and Israel, who were cast out of Jerusalem 3563 years later* (2K 24.12— and note the mention of a ‘garden’ in 2K 25.4).
Christ = Adam = Jehoiachin/Zedekiah.
Jesus is the new Adam— we know that from St Paul, who is interested in Adam as the beginning of the human race. But Mark is interested in Jesus/Adam as the new Jehoiachin/Israel. Jesus is the faithful Servant Israel of Isaiah 40-55, who comes to deal with the Exile. And to do so, he has to pick up where the story began and where it left off— in Exile.
So the Spirit cast Jesus out into the Desert (Mk 1.12). Now, regarding the ‘Desert’, as for anything else in the New Testament, we have to ask what the biblical background is. And really, the one and only archetypal Desert story in Scripture is that of Israel’s 40 years’ wandering, after the Exodus. In fact that’s exactly what John the Baptist has in mind as he calls people out to the Desert, to repent and be washed (Mk 1.4-8). After that, they will re-enter the Land, and await the final fulfillment of the Promise. Exciting stuff!
Where is this ‘Desert’? Well, you don’t have to go very far. The ‘Desert’ is precisely Not-The-Land; it is Outside-The-Land (but also not Egypt or Babylon etc). You don’t have to travel very far to get there; it starts just on the other side of the Jordan. It’s where Israel wandered before entering the land; and they were in the Desert until the night before they entered. That’s the point that John the Evangelist is making when he tells us where John the Baptist was baptizing— ‘in Bethabara beyond Jordan’ (Jn 1.28). Beth-Abarah means ‘House (i.e., Place) of Crossing’. Anyone who read that would think, Oh, of course— he’s talking about where Joshua and the Israelites crossed over from the Desert to the Promised Land.
And they would get the point: John is calling people out into the Desert again, to repent, and to re-enter the Land, purified and ready for the arrival of God’s regime. This is about Israel coming into possession once and for all of God’s Promise of Blessing.
So Jesus comes to take part in John’s ‘Israel renewal movement’, and is baptized in solidarity with the faithful who trust what John is saying. And as he comes up out of the water, the Spirit comes down like a Dove into him. In the Old Testament, a Dove is a symbol of Israel— I’ll post something on that later— so in receiving the Dove, Jesus receives the vocation to be Israel, and as such he is cast out into the Desert for ‘40 days’. The Spirit casts Jesus out into the Desert to go and be Israel, to be tested as Israel, and then to come forth as Israel’s king, to announce at last the arrival of God’s regime.
The typology extends, of course, into our own baptism as Christians.
How much does any of this actually inform our understanding of our own baptism?
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* According to the Masoretic chronology.