Ezekiel 1:1

Hebrew Bible

1 In the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, while I was among the exiles at the Kebar River, the heavens opened and I saw a divine vision. 2 (On the fifth day of the month—it was the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile— 3 the Lord’s message came to the priest Ezekiel the son of Buzi, at the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. The hand of the Lord came on him there.) 4 As I watched, I noticed a windstorm coming from the north—an enormous cloud, with lightning flashing, such that bright light rimmed it and came from it like glowing amber from the middle of a fire.

Mark 1:10

New Testament

8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 9 Now in those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan River. 10 And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my one dear Son; in you I take great delight.” 12 The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness.

 Notes and References

"... Matthew's addition in chapter 3:13-15 indicates a certain embarrassment on the part of the evangelist over the fact that Jesus the messiah appears to have needed to have been baptized by a less important figure. In Matthew the experience of Jesus has been made a public proclamation of his messiahship, as is demonstrated by the way in which the verb 'he saw' is moved to a position after the reference to the open heaven (Mark 1:10, compare Matthew 3:16; Luke 3:21). The process is continued in Matthew 3:17, for here the heavenly voice no longer addresses the remarks to Jesus alone but to anyone who happened to be listening. Mark's description of the incident suggests that it was a private experience. Indeed, the language is remarkably similar to the intro­ duction of Ezekiel's vision of God: 'the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God' (Ezekiel 1:1) as well as other visionary reports in the New Testament and elsewhere in Jewish tradition (e.g. Acts 10:11; 7:56; Revelation 4:1; John 1:51). The addition in Matthew 3.13ff. and Luke's attempt to objectify the incident by making the descending spirit into a dove (Luke 3:22 'the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form as a dove', compare Mark 1:10 'the Spirit descending upon him like a dove') indicate that it is the Marcan version which is the least pretentious and most likely to preserve the original version of the story subsequently modified by the other evangelists ..."

Rowland, Christopher The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (p. 359) Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1982

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