• Sin and Justice from Mishna and Babylonian Talmud.
• Baptism: Water & Spirit from DSS, Josephus, Babylonian Talmud.

• "Baptize me, who am destined to baptize those who believe on me with water, and with the Spirit, and with fire: with water, capable of washing away the defilement of sins; with the Spirit, capable of making the earthly spiritual; with fire, naturally fitted to consume the thorns of transgressions. On hearing these words, the Baptist directed his mind to the object of the salvation, and comprehended the mystery which he had received, and discharged the divine command; for he was at once pious and ready to obey."

• "Christ consecrates our baptism in himself."

• "We may see heaven opened to us, when we perceive the Spirit descending and working upon us."

• "Coming up straightway out of the water. The Greek preposition translated "out of" is ek, which means out from within. This could only be true of immersion. Thus all great and candid Pedo-baptist scholars concede that Christ was baptized."

• "‘O that you would rend the heavens and come down!’ These words of Isaiah 64:1 may have influenced Mark’s choice of language here: Jesus ‘saw the heavens rent open’ (1:10). This a very graphic way of doing christology. In Jesus there is a meeting of the God sphere and the human sphere."

• "In our baptism, similar things happen to us as happened to Jesus when he was baptized: 1) The Spirit of God comes into us and remains in us. 2) We are declared to be a child of God. 3) We hear that God is well pleased with us."

• "This also leads to a distinction between John's baptism and Christian baptism. I think that Jesus' baptism ushers in a new baptism. Christian baptism is not just a washing away of sin as John's baptism was; but it is the baptism that brings the power of the Holy Spirit and a special relationship with God."

• "Malina - and other scholars - also point out that the title, 'Son of God.' was not uniquely used only for Jesus."

• "It is in the waters of baptism that the heavens are torn apart and a voice from heaven claims Jesus as God’s son. Although we rarely think of it as having such a dramatic flourish, baptism today still serves as a time when we recognize our being claimed as children of God."

• "Have you ever had a moment of clarity, when you could see things as they really were?"

• "Mark begins and ends his gospel with schism-a division, a parting, a rending-the schism of the heavens (chapter 1: 10); the schism of the veil in the temple (chapter 15:38)."

• "Into the wilderness where John the Baptiser is offering - what is it he's offering, a folk alternative to the Jerusalem cultus? A geographic political statement out on the very margins of society? A challenge, as John Dominic Crossan thinks, to Hebrews to symbolically re-enter the Promised Land & re-conquer it for God after baptism for a change of heart out there on the other (wrong) side of Jordan?"

• "Perhaps Jesus was tempted with the option of a normal life. Perhaps, like Goethe's Faust, he was tempted with adventure, beauty, economic power, endless excitement. The Gospel story seems to invite us to regard the final three temptations as a kind of final exam, covering all the other temptations that have been encountered in the course of the forty days."

• "The Jordan River played a significant role in biblical history..."

• "Teshuvá is the key concept in the rabbinic view of sin, repentance, and forgiveness. The tradition is not of one mind on the steps one must take to repent of one's sins. However, almost all agree that repentance requires five elements: recognition of one's sins as sins (hakarát ha-chét'), remorse (charatá), desisting from sin (azivát ha-chét'), restitution where possible (peira'ón), and confession (vidúi)."

"Conversion and Baptism: A cross cultural perspective in the light of the encounter between Judaism and Hellenism," William Loader, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia.

• "Making Christ palatable to everyone is almost by definition to deny him. But presenting him in an image distorted by unnecessary, unhelpful and sometimes negating clutter is also to deny him - to people. The issue at stake is as fundamental as the shape of Christian life in the future."

• "While we Christians positively eschew divisions based on caste, class, race, gender, and so on, we welcome the division that comes from radical commitment to following the Christ."

• "Mark did indeed imagine a link between the tearing of the heavens and the tearing of the temple veil-- since we can now see that in fact in both cases the heavens were torn-- and that he intentionally inserted the motif of the "tearing of the heavenly veil" at both the precise beginning and at the precise end of the earthly career of Jesus, in order to create a powerful and intriguing symbolic inclusio."

• Baptism of Our Lord, 2009