Jesus' baptism, and the events accompanying it, is a crucial introductory moment in Mark's gospel. Matthew and Luke spend a couple of chapters describing Jesus' conception and birth making his divine parentage and purpose abundantly clear long before he encounters John the Baptist. John's sweeping prologue also leaves no doubt about Jesus' unique, exalted position in all the universe.

Mark's "short form" gospel gives readers none of this personal history about Jesus. We have only Mark's introductory sentence proclaiming (without yet any evidence) that this is the gospel of "Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (1:1). The general prophetic utterances from Isaiah and Malachi are apparently about John the Baptist. The reader still has no clues about this "Jesus."

Not until verse 9 does Mark again me…