According to the early church (Acts 1:21–22), the event that inaugurated Jesus’s ministry and endowed it with saving significance was his baptism (1:9–11). It is with this event that Mark commences the story of Jesus, rather than with his birth (Matthew and Luke) or preexistence (John). Mark’s wording (“Jesus . . . was baptized by John,” 1:9) portrays Jesus as the undisputed subject of the event, with John serving as mediator. Arising from the water, Jesus experiences three things that Jews associated with the advent of God’s eschatological kingdom:

1. The tearing apart of the sky: According to Second Temple Judaism, the Spirit of God had stopped speaking directly to God’s people after the cessation of the great Old Testament prophets. At the advent of the Messiah, however, the long-awai…