Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended (Acts 23)

I should have made a joint post with Acts chapter 23 and the previous, as there's not much material in either one. Oh, well; I can do a quick recap here and comment on the SAB's comments. I notice right off the top that the SAB says Paul "claims to be a Pharisee". It's not just a claim, he was one before becoming a Christian, and arguably still is. I think there's a place in the gospels where the difference between the Pharisees and Saducees is enumerated, but we have it right here in verse eight: the Saducees don't believe in all the spiritual aspects of the Jewish religion, seeing it essentially as just a moral law, while the Pharisees believe in souls, angels, Heaven and an afterlife. A lot of people miss that the issue Jesus had with the Pharisees wasn't their theology, but their rigid legalism; theologically, they were entirely on the same page with the exception of believing that Jesus was the Son of God. So that's why I say Paul is arguably still a Pharisee, because they're on the same theological standing.

So anyway, after having some back and forth with the high priest, (and saying he's lived in good conscience his entire life, which is not the same thing as saying he's never done anything wrong, because Jews believe in being resolved of their sin through sacrifice) Paul realizes that he's talking to a mixed group of Pharisees and Saducees, so he points out that he is a Pharisee, and he's being put on trial because of his belief in the resurrection of the dead. This causes a fight to break out, as suddenly the Pharisees turn to defend Paul. The captain of the guard has to run in and rescue Paul again. That night Paul has a vision of Christ standing over him and telling him he is going to spread the gospel in Rome.

Forty of the Jews decide to make a vow that they will not eat until Paul is dead, and hatch a plan to kill him that day. (The SAB makes note of this as "The first hunger strike?" apparently forgetting that King Saul made his soldiers make a similar vow in 1Samuel 14:24.) They tell the Sanhedrin about their plan, and somehow Paul's nephew hears about it and alerts Paul, who has him go tell the captain. The captain takes this very seriously, and assembles a large company of soldiers to accompany Paul to Governor Felix in Caesarea. He sends a letter to Felix explaining the situation. When Paul gets there, Felix puts him in Herod's care.

Faith in his name hath made this man strong (Acts 4)

Acts chapter four has only one contradiction (who raised Jesus, which I answered in John chapter two), but there are a lot of other notes that I don't want to pass up.

Verse twelve has a lot of notes on it, because it's the controversial moment in which Peter says that only in the name of Jesus can one be saved. As always, the SAB marks such a statement as intolerant and unjust, and it's understandable! There is something fascinating to me about exclusivity claims by religions, because people find them intolerant, but most religions (including, as not a religion, but a religious classification, atheism) claim to be the one true religion. Yeah, there are exceptions, but think they are likely representative of less of the world population. Putting that aside and focusing on Christianity's exclusivity for the moment, I think there is something that can be said about it to soften the harshness. As I've discussed several times in both John and even earlier in Acts, it's largely understood that when Jesus died, he went to Hell and "set the captives free". It's pretty darn likely that the majority of people in Hell waiting for salvation had never heard the name Jesus of Nazareth, but they were saved anyway. I figure if people before the crucifixion could be saved without knowing Jesus, why would that change afterwards? So no, the name Jesus isn't "the password to heaven" as the SAB puts it; we are all saved by Jesus, but it isn't about any specific words or name that we know or say. I truly believe that Heaven will be full of plenty of non-Christians. (Should I say something about the side comment to Jehovah's Witnesses? I don't think I know JW theology well enough to comment on this. They don't believe that Jesus is God, I know, but does that bring up an issue with this particular verse? I don't know.)

So verse 13 brings up the issue of Peter and John being uneducated. The SAB says that if this is true, they couldn't have written the Bible books attributed to them. I don't think this follows, though, for a few reasons. First of all, it's not clear what is meant by "unlearned and ignorant". It doesn't necessarily mean that they were illiterate idiots; as obserant Jews they probably knew how to read and write Hebrew and Aramaic, and had some amount of teaching in the Hebrew Bible, but didn't have the sort of formal teaching a Rabbi would have had. More importantly, the fact that they were "unlearned" at this time is probably irrelevant because from this time forward, they stopped being fishermen and started being pastors, which probably involved a lot of time reading and writing, thus furthering and refining their knowledge. The time between Pentecost and the writing of John's books is actually many decades; I'm sure he had a long time to get as good as he did.

So, Peter and John get threatened by the religious leaders, but since they haven't technically broken any laws, they get to leave the Temple without any punishment. They say a prayer of thanksgiving (which the SAB finds boring) and for some reason, after they pray, there's an earthquake. The SAB marks this with "science" but this was either a miracle or maybe even just a coincidence; there's nothing antiscientific about earthquakes happening. The last bit of the chapter again talks about the church and how they were essentially communists. This is marked with "politics", which is one I haven't seen before; I don't know if it was added or if I just haven't come across it before. I suppose the point of the marking is that you don't tend to hear a lot about Christian communists in the 21st century, although they do exist; I know a few. It's actually very interesting that modern conservative evangelical Christians have sort of made a marriage between Christianity and capitalism, when the Bible says a whole lot about the love of money being evil, and that a country is judged by how they treat the poor, and other such things that are really the antithesis of capitalism, in my opinion. I think it's a subject worth examining.

And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night (John 3:1-15)

John chapter three is mostly the story of Jesus having a conversation with Nicodemus. This conversation and Nicodemus himself are noteworthy, because in much of the Gospels, Jesus is seen in situations being in opposition to the Pharisees, but Nicodemus is "a man of the Pharisees". It's not commonly noted, but not all of the Pharisees were against Jesus, and at least two of them (Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea) performed actions indicating that they believed in him to some extent.

Did Jesus perform many signs and wonders? Yes, Jesus performed a lot of signs and wonders, he just refused to do any just for the sake of showing off. All of Jesus's miracles were performed because there was a need for them, but there were a few times when the Pharisees demanded that he do something on the spot to prove himself, and he refused. Of course, it's understood that the "sign of Jonas" was a reference to the prophet Jonah being three days in the belly of a whale; similarly Jesus would be three days in the grave. (Yes the latter "three days" is questionable, but I don't think this is the place for that subject.)

Must someone be born again to be saved? These discussions are always convoluted because there's a lot the Bible says on this subject, and a lot of subjects that are closely related. The specific issue of being "born again" is a particularly sticky point because John 3:3 is the only place in the Bible where the term appears, at which point it's not very well explained, and yet you'll find a lot of Christians who are very hung up on it. (Ask a Christian like that what it means, and they'll probably say something like, "If you are, you just know!") Nonetheless, how I would respond to what is touched on on the contradiction page is that being born again is believing in Jesus, and the SAB seems to understand that the point here is belief, as they group it together. The thing that seems like a sticking point is when the Bible talks about salvation through words and deeds; the solution to the confusion is understanding that if you have the right beliefs, you will speak the right words and perform the right deeds. A pastor friend of mine told me he teaches this subject with an illustration of a coin, where faith and beliefs are on one side, and good words and deeds are on the other; while they are two different things, they are just two aspects of the same state of being. This does open up a whole can of worms theologically with the question of which may be more important, and there are scriptures that seem to support either side, but I'm not going to get that deep here.

The SAB makes an interesting note on verse 8 about Jesus's statement "The wind bloeth where it listeth, and thou ... canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth." I suppose in a scientific note, the SAB points out that it is quite possible to measure the wind. This is true, but I think what Jesus is saying still stands, even without the fact that methods of measuring the wind didn't exist in first century Palestine. Yes, you can tell what the wind is doing at a specific point in space and time, but just because that's possible, can you really tell where it's coming from or where it's going? Wind is very chaotic, and it's not visible, so you can't really have full knowledge of what the wind is doing in general. This article, which I just Googled and is very recent, talks about the technology used to measure wind, and how difficult it is.

"It's a demonstration of the feasibility for our future satellite mission we are pursuing where we hope to provide the 10-kilometer resolution," Zeng said.

The SAB has a lot to say about verse 12 in the footnote. it's a lot of science stuff linked to on other pages. Let's gather it up:

Jesus believed that Adam and Eve were created "from the beginning." But the universe is 13.8 billion years old, the earth 4.6 billion, and humans (depending on how you define "human") for a couple million years.

This comment is on a passage where Jesus is making a point about divorce by essentially quoting from Genesis 1. So, I'm guessing that the SAB is implying that Jesus is a young-earth creationist, which goes against modern science. Maybe, but just because Jesus is quoting Genesis doesn't mean you know what his view on creation is; Christians all accept Genesis as part of the Bible, but views on what it means vary greatly. Some believe in a literal seven-day creation that happened about 6,000 years ago; some believe that the seven days represent indefinite amounts of time that may be billions of years; some believe that Adam and Eve were not the first human beings, but the first ones to have a special relationship with God. I have a particular view that may not be widespread, but didn't originate with me, that I went over in Genesis 2. The point here is that I think the SAB is reading too much into Jesus quoting Genesis, and nonetheless, the first human beings in fact were male and female, which is what Jesus actually said in that passage.

Jesus believed the story of Noah's ark. He thought it really happened and had no problem with the idea of God drowning everything and everybody.

This is actually a pet peeve of mine. I hear a lot of Christians say, "Jesus says Jonah really happened!" just because Jesus mentioned Jonah being swallowed by a fish. Jesus knows his audience is familiar with the Old Testament, so it makes sense to use it as a common cultural reference; this doesn't mean that Jesus is necessarily saying it's all true. The SAB is doing the same thing here: if Jesus mentions Noah, he has to be signing off on the complete veracity of every single aspect of the complete story of Noah's flood! Again, this is a leap of logic that I don't think is warranted; at most, I'd say you can probably say that Jesus recognizes that Noah was a real historical person. It was my view going through that part of Genesis that the story is problematic scientifically and narratively; does that mean that Jesus, when making a point illustrated by the person of Noah, needs to pause to untangle all the problems of that story? Why would he? Jesus is making a point about urgency and danger, and illustrating it with the story of the flood; discussion of physics and meteorology would be a distraction.

Jesus is incorrect when he says that the mustard seed is the smallest seed. (Orchids have the smallest seeds.) And there are no trees in the mustard family (Brassicaceae).

The SAB is completely missing the point on two levels. Jesus's parable of the mustard seed is trying to make a point about something spiritual. His use of the mustard seed as "the smallest seed" is not intended as a scientific statement of fact, but simply that the mustard seed was likely the smallest seed any of his audience would have been familiar with. And it's important that his audience is familiar with the mustard seed, because they would have known that the idea of a mustard seed growing into a huge tree was absolutely ridiculous! Jesus doesn't think this is normal, he's implying that the kingdom of heaven defies expectations! So to sum up the footnote on verse 12, Jesus is only wrong about those things if you make entirely unwarranted leaps of logic based on things he said in passing in various places in the Gospels.

Has anyone ever ascended into heaven? You know, I'm inclined to give this one to the SAB. I mean, I could be nitpicky about the stories of Enoch and Elijah (the Bible doesn't actually say Enoch went to heaven, but if he didn't, then what the heck is the Bible trying to say?) and try to weasel out of this, but honestly, I'm at a bit of a loss as to why Jesus overlooked these two men. I guess I can say that Jesus is making a generalized statement that he failed to mention the odd exceptions to, but it feels like the wording should be different; it just feels so absolute. It's probable that his point is that no man has ascended into heaven and come back to talk about it, because that's certainly true, but his wording is technically a contradiction with other parts of scripture as the SAB notes.

This is getting long, so I'll break it at the famous verse 16, and finish this post with the footnote on verse 14. I'll say once again that just because Jesus uses an illustration out of the Old Testament, it doesn't necessarily follow that he takes the referenced story literally, however in this case, I don't see a reason why he shouldn't. The SAB marks the story in Numbers 21 as both absurd and having scientific issues, but we're talking about two miracles, so to a nonbeliever, any miracle is going to seem absurd and nonscientific. I suppose there is the issue of God making a miracle that hurts people and following it by a second miracle to fix the first; yes, that seems absurd, but I think the reason for what happened was to teach the Israelites something about faith. The snakes came because of lack of faith, and they needed to have faith in God's strange cure to deal with it. (The story has more issues, but I'll save them for whenever I get around to blogging Numbers.) The important thing here is that Jesus is comparing himself to the bronze serpent of Numbers 21, because like the issue of faith I described above, people of the world are subject to the effects of Original Sin because of the lack of faith of Adam, and need to be cured by faith in looking to Jesus lifted up on the cross to pay the price for sin. More on this in verse 16 next post.

And when he knew it of the centurion (Luke 7)

Luke 7 opens with the story of a centurion asking Jesus to heal his slave. The story here is told differently than it is in Matthew 8, prompting the SAB to ask "Did the centurion ask Jesus directly to heal his slave?" In Matthew's telling of the story, the centurion comes in person to talk to Jesus, while here, he sends some messengers. (Note that in neither version does Jesus go to the centurion's house.) While I couldn't say for sure, my guess on this matter is that Matthew left out details and simplified the story. Even though this transaction involved messengers, it's still essentially the centurion who's asking for help.

More important perhaps is the issue of slavery here. As the SAB rightly points out, if Jesus was against slavery, this would have been a good time to say something, but he doesn't. The SAB has a page on whether God approves of slavery, but I think there needs to be a distinction made between slavery in ancient Israel (which I addressed here) and slavery in Roman times. That being said, just as when I covered this story in Matthew 8, I have to admit that I know very little about Roman slavery and so I can't say much about it. Maybe if I ever get to the book of Philemon (which is about a runaway slave) I'll have to force myself to do some research.

Did Jesus know everything? While a case can be made that Jesus did not know everything, I think the fact that Jesus "marvelled" at the centurion is more of a statement of Jesus' emotional reaction than genuine surprise.

Next in the story, Jesus raises a man from the dead, prompting two questions from the SAB: Is death final? While I'm sure I've dealt with this before, let me do it here. In general, death is a final thing, but there are occasional exceptions of people who are revived from death, and that doesn't even require a miracle; sometimes a knowledge of CPR is enough. That being said, there is that matter of the concept of the resurrection of the dead, which is always supernatural. In this case in general everyone will resurrected at the end of time to be judged in a new, perfect body. When Jesus died on the cross, he was the first to be resurrected, which leads to and partially answers the second question, Was Jesus the first to rise from the dead? The two verses in the yes column are referring to the resurrection, and not to people who were revived, nor to people whose spirits sent messages from beyond the grave.

In verse 19 we see "And John [the Baptist] calling unto him two of his disciples sent them to Jesus, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?" The nature of this question is mostly a rhetorical one. John the Baptist already knows that Jesus is the Messiah, but he's confused about what Jesus is doing because like many other in that day, he expected the Messiah to revive the Israelite monarchy. Since Jesus seems to be just doing spiritual stuff, a lot of people are confused about his mission. (In other Gospel tellings of this event, John is in prison, and is confused as to why Jesus hasn't come to bust him out.)

In verse 28, the SAB asks, Who was the greatest prophet? Well, look at what those verses actually say: the Deuteronomy passage says there was never a prophet like Moses, not that Moses was the best. The verse in Hebrews says that Jesus was worthy of glory, but doesn't say that he was the greatest prophet (and really, even if it did, it would be fairly reasonable to assume that when Jesus praised John as the greatest, he was excluding himself from the comparison. So in short, John the Baptist was the greatest.

Were the Pharisees baptized by John? I don't think that the verse in Matthew 3 is saying what the SAB is claiming it's saying. When John said "I baptize you..." I believe he was speaking in general to the crowd, whether or not any one of them in particular were getting baptized, and the Pharisees were not.

The question Is it OK to use perfume? is, in my opinion, really one of the silliest that the SAB poses, and I'm not going to answer it again.

Judge not, that ye be not judged (Luke 6)

Luke 6 does open with a bit of odd wording, as the SAB notes, but it quickly develops into a story that's a common one for the Gospels: arguments between Jesus and the Pharisees over the technicalities of the Sabbath. It's good to note first of all that what Jesus and his disciples were doing was not considered stealing in that culture. When a person passed through a field of grain or an orchard, they were allowed to pick whatever they could eat as they walked. The Pharisees however still considered the picking of grain to be an act of harvesting, which would be work, and therefore unlawful on the Sabbath. Jesus brings up the story of David taking some bread from the Tabernacle in a time when he was desperate, the point being that when you're hungry and desperate, you shouldn't let tradition stop you from eating. (The idea that picking a few heads of grain to eat was harvesting was not part of the Mosaic law, but rather Jewish tradition.)

The SAB asks regarding this story, Was David alone when he asked for the holy bread at Nob? I think this is a misunderstanding of the passage in 1Samuel, as you can see in verse 21:4 that the priest says "...if the young men have kept themselves at least from women." If David is alone, then who are "the young men" being referred to? David was not alone, although he may have come into the presence of the priest alone.

The SAB marks Jesus' act of healing a man's hand with the "science" icon. I'm never sure if I really need to comment on such things. Jesus did a lot of supernatural things, which are of course going to go against science. What is there to say about it?

The SAB asks Who were the apostles? and shows that in each of the four Gospels, there's a list, and none of the lists are completely identical. The most likely explanation for the discrepancy is that many of the apostles had more than one name, and so Jesus may have given a secondary name to Judas the brother of James, and that name was apparently Lebbaeus Thaddeus.

Did Jesus preach his first sermon on a mountain or a plain? This appears to be the so-called "sermon on the mount", but Luke clearly states that this is happening on a plain. There are a couple possibilities. First, this may have been one of several similar sermons that Jesus gave in a few different places. Second, the way the sermon is described in Matthew's Gospel seems to set up the acoustics all wrong; if you stand on a mountain with people below you, it's going to be hard for them to hear, so it would make more sense that Jesus found a place with a mountainside near a plain to set up a sort of natural amphitheater. In that case, the answer would be "both".

In verses 24-26, the SAB has a series of questions that I'm going to answer as one. I don't think that this section of the sermon is suggesting that these people are going to Hell. What I do think is going on is that like the things before Jesus said one would be "blessed" for, Jesus is suggesting that there is going to be a reversal of the status quo. Why he's suggesting this, I'm not really sure, but I've heard it said time and again that the "sermon on the mount" isn't about salvation issues, but rather about earthly issues.

Verse 27 is marked as "Good Stuff", but is also marked as contradicting other passages. In the issue of How should enemies be treated? I think one needs to see that the verses in the second column are, for the most part, not commands about how to treat enemies, but rather individual instances of people having less than charitable reactions to enemies. The exception to this is the very last verse given, but I think that verse fits in better with the second question, How should nonbelievers be treated? In this case, and on that page, there are a few different issues being dealt with. In the first verse, this is a specific law given to Jews with respect to their fellow Jews. Yeah, it seems pretty harsh, but its purpose is to keep religious purity within the nation of Israel. In the second case, I think "shun them" is an overstatement of what's being admonished here. Most people that I know of interpret this verse to mean that it's best to not enter into business partnerships with unbelievers if possible.

Verses 29-30 have Jesus suggesting some rather extreme acts of kindness, taking "Love thy enemy" to its full extent. The SAB marks the passage as absurd, and really, it is. I think it's a difficult passage that the Christian has to decide whether it was meant to be taken literally or whether it may have been hyperbole, but Jesus appears to be sincere.

Is God merciful? It's hard to sugar-coat this one; the SAB comes up with a lot of verses that seem to show God being unmerciful, some of them even saying outright that God is not showing mercy. The fact is that while God called merciful several times, this is not an attribute of God that He displays all the time. It's a common theme of Christian sermons that we can see that God is merciful because every single one of us is a sinner, and yet God doesn't simply send us all to Hell right this moment. That's certainly a matter of perspective that I don't expect too many skeptics to buy into unless they really understand the issue of sin and how it effects our standing before God. It's probably not something I can really explain, but would be willing to try in the comments so as not to make this post twice as long as it already is.

To judge or not to judge? I think most unbelievers are familiar with the Bible verse, "Judge not," but miss that there is more to the phrase. Here in Luke, the full verse goes, "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged." In any case, the verses in the Bible that warn against judging are not saying that a person cannot judge, but rather are warnings that when you become a judge, you are going to warrant others, including God, to judge you in return. While this may not rule out judging completely, it should give one pause. As Jesus goes on to say here, you may be judging someone for a little speck of sin when you have an entire log in your own eye. That's not a good place to be.

Doth not your master pay tribute? (Matthew 22)

Matthew 22 opens with a parable of a marriage feast, and it's a pretty strange parable once again. It almost makes sense (well as much sense as you can expect from a parable) until you get down to verse 11, at which point there is some guy without a "wedding garment" which I'll venture to guess meant that he wasn't dressed up properly for the occasion. But then, these guests were just a bunch of random people called in from off of the street, if we're to understand the story, so...? I have to admit, this one has always stumped me on the face of it. There's a symbolic aspect that almost makes sense, but it involves reading in a lot that really isn't there. See, there's this theological concept that when we are saved, our unrighteousness is removed from us, and we become clothed with the righteousness of God, and so it might seem that perhaps this guy accepted the invitation, but thought he could get into the party on his own merits, despite being just some guy off the street. See, it only just barely makes sense of it, and it involves bringing in a lot of theological baggage; it probably was a waste of space and I should just left it, but that's the luxury of blogging I guess: waste as much space as you care to, and just move on. (I've addressed the existence of Hell in Matthew 10 as deeply as I care to, so I'll drop that link and move on.)

After this parable comes the famous story of Jesus being asked whether or not one should pay taxes. There's a lot of interesting material here. Note that the Pharisees and the Herodians (who usually hated each other) were working together to trick Jesus. Note that it was a trick, and that a simple answer of "No" would be considered insurrection against Rome, while a simple answer of "Yes" would be denying the authority of Jewish nationalism. Also, although I'm pulling this from vague memory, note that the "image and superscription" on the coin were enough to make Roman coins quintessentially tiny pagan idols. Like the SAB, I think Jesus' answer is not only saying pay taxes, but that one should keep church and state separate (although it's not very clear as to which is which overall, but the concept stands, I think.)

Now the Sadducees--who were a religious group who didn't believe in an afterlife as the text says--come up to Jesus with a bizarre question that, while clearly made up, was also within the realm of possibility of Mosaic Law. Jesus skips over the whole question to point out that in the afterlife, there is no marriage. (It doesn't say no sex here, but it's not outrageous to imply it.)

Finally after all the tricky questions, someone simply asks him to name the greatest commandment, to which Jesus replies "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." and adds on the second-greatest, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." which the SAB is happy to get on board with as being great, but asks then how should nonbelievers be treated? I may have skipped this before, but I think it's pretty straightforward most of the time. The section that says "Shun them" is not a problem, in my estimation. First of all, I think "Shun them" is an overstatement of what this verse it really saying, which is that you should avoid entering into legal contracts with them, but you can still love them while keeping yourself disentangled legally. It's the "Kill them" section that's clearly harder to deal with, duh. First of all, I don't think that this verse is saying that anybody who is an unbeliever should be treated this way, even in ancient Israel (which this is another verse that I think applies mainly if not only to that context). I think this is particularly for a person who believes in a strange religion and tries to convince others to follow him into that belief. So how does this fit into loving your neighbor? I suggest this: if following after strange gods is going to lead to ruin, then it is best that this sort of theological swindling should be dealt with the same way that purely physical swindling is dealt with. You have ways that you deal with a thief. You have ways that you deal with a murderer. Someone who is enticing people after false gods is a thief and a murderer of people's souls, and should be dealt with seriously, at least in ancient Israel. Yeah, it sounds harsh, and it is, but I think it's for a reason.

The last issue on this chapter is whether Jesus is the son of David. (Remember in Biblical language, this meant ancestor; Jesus was certainly not the actual son of David.) I think that the two verses in the "No" column are not Jesus saying "No", but rather pointing out to those within hearing that the actual relationship between the Messiah and David was a complicated one, and not as simple as just a mere ancestral one. Jesus may be the son of David, but he's greater than David all the same.

And was baptized of John in Jordan (Matthew 3)

Just to keep things in order, in case anyone tries to read this blog straight through rather than jumping around, I'll insert a short note here that I've already analyzed the rest of Matthew 1 here, and Matthew 2 here (with verse 11 in particular addressed here). Merry Christmas and all that. So, on to chapter 3.

The first issue that the SAB has with this chapter is whether or not John baptized any Pharisees. I think this isn't a problem; in verse 11 I don't think John is addressing the Pharisees in particular, but the crowd at large and saying that baptism is something he's offering whether or not any particular member of the crowd is taking him up on the offer. As for calling them "O generation of vipers...", yes, I'd agree that this is harsh language, but I'd note that the word "generation" may be somewhat questionable in meaning, so I'm not sure what the SAB is insinuating about "an entire generation". He may not even be talking about the Pharisees as a whole.

I think marking verses 10-12 with violence may be a bit strong, but I don't have a major issue with this. The point that John is making is a metaphorical one. If a fruit tree doesn't bear fruit, then what good is it, and why not just use it for firewood? So if you're someone who isn't doing something worthwhile with their life, then what good are you? It's food for thought, in my opinion.

Now the SAB thinks that Jesus coming to John to get baptized is absurd, and as they note, John himself seems to be of the same opinion. It is rather odd, and for the very reasons that the SAB points out. If baptism is is about repentance and sinfulness, and Jesus is sinless, then what the heck is going on? I've heard it suggested that Jesus is getting baptized in order to be an example for generations of Christians to come, which might be possible, but I think that it's a mistake to assume that everything Jesus ever did was intended to be an example to follow. I suppose it does make some slight sense out of verse 15, of which the SAB wonders as to the meaning.

The last issue in this chapter is a question concerning the wording used by the voice of God, which here disagrees with the parallel accounts in Mark and Luke. Make what you want of this sort of thing; slight differences in wording in the Gospels don't bother me personally, and this is only the first of many of this sort. I figure if the gist of the wording is the same, why should it bother me?