Thursday, April 18, 2024

Joel Marcus on Acts 19 and the Baptism of the Disciples at Ephesus

  

The logic of Acts 19:4, rather, seems to be that Paul is informing the Ephesians of three facts:

 

(1) John’s baptism, which they have experienced, is not self-referential but only a baptism of repentance preparing people for something else.

(2) That “something else” is a person in whom John wanted his baptizands to

believe.

(3) The name of that person is Jesus.

 

The words τοῦτ’ ἔστιν εἰς τὸν Ἰησοῦν (“that is, into Jesus”), in this context, imply the unveiling of a previously unknown name; it is upon hearing this name, and into it, that the Ephesians are immediately baptized. If Luke calls these baptizands “believers” and “disciples,” terminology that he elsewhere reserves for Christians, this is because he has refashioned the image of the Ephesian adherents to fit his own Christian theology, in which followers of the Baptist of course believe in Jesus too. Although this superimposition introduces a narrative inconsistency into

Acts, that is a small price for Luke to pay for being able to assert that followers of John are naturally followers of Jesus as well—and that, if any are not, they will quickly become so on hearing the good news. (Joel Marcus, “Appendix 6: Knut Backhaus’s Interpretation of Acts 19:1-7,” in John the Baptist in History and Theology [Studies on Personalities of the New Testament; Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2018], 137-38)

 

Commenting on the immediate baptism of those at Ephesus:

 

For Backhaus, Die “Jungerkreise” des Taufers Johannes, 207, this immediate baptism is evidence that the Ephesian “disciples” have a previous history of adherence to Jesus, since the proclamation about him in 19:4 is so short, in contrast to missionary proclamations elsewhere in Acts (2:14–36, 3:12–26, 4:8–12, 10:34–43, 13:16–41). But the Phillipian jailer is converted after hearing only the exhortation, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31), and the Ethiopian eunuch is converted in a similarly quick manner (8:35–38). Such conversions may not be psychologically plausible, but they fit Luke’s narrative style. (Ibid., 227 n. 4)