NEWSWEEK BOOK EXCERPT: 'JESUS OF NAZARETH' By Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI

Newsweek Writes: With 'Jesus of Nazareth,' Pope Benedict XVI Fights Back

Against The 'Dictatorship of Relativism' By Showing the World His Vision of

the Definitive Truth of Christ

On the Baptism: 'The Real Novelty Here is Not the Fact That Jesus Comes

From Another Geographical Area, from a Distant Country, as it Were. The

Real Novelty is the Fact That He -- Jesus -- Wants to be Baptized, That He

Blends into the Gray Mass of Sinners Waiting on the Banks of the Jordan'

    NEW YORK, May 13 /PRNewswire/ -- "Baptism itself was a confession of
 sins and the attempt to put off an old, failed life and to receive a new
 one. Is that something Jesus could do?" How could he confess sins? How
 could he separate himself from his previous life in order to start a new
 one? This is a question that Christians could not avoid asking, writes
 Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI in 'Jesus of Nazareth' releasing this
 week in the U.S. and Canada by Doubleday. "The whole significance of Jesus'
 Baptism, the fact that he bears "all righteousness," first comes to light
 on the Cross: The Baptism is an acceptance of death for the sins of
 humanity, and the voice that calls out "This is my beloved Son" over the
 baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the Resurrection. This
 also explains why, in his own discourses, Jesus uses the word baptism to
 refer to his death. Only from this starting point can we understand
 Christian Baptism. Jesus' Baptism anticipated his death on the Cross, and
 the heavenly voice proclaimed an anticipation of the Resurrection,"
 Benedict writes in an exclusive excerpt in the May 21 issue of Newsweek (on
 newsstands Monday, May 14).
     (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070513/CLSU002 )
     The Pope explicates Jesus' baptism by John -- a story that appears in
 all four Gospel accounts and that modern historians believe is at least
 partially grounded in fact. Benedict starts by describing the social and
 historical backdrop, the common use of ritual ablutions among first-century
 Jews. His picture of John the Baptist reflects the scholarly consensus in
 most respects; the Baptist was an ascetic who likely spent time with the
 Essenes, a group of Jews who lived in the desert awaiting the imminent
 arrival of the Messiah, Religion Editor Lisa Miller writes in her
 introduction of the Pope's excerpt.
     "And yet the Baptist's appearance on the scene was something completely
 new. The Baptism that he enjoined is different from the usual religious
 ablutions. It cannot be repeated, and it is meant to be the concrete
 enactment of a conversion that gives the whole of life a new direction
 forever. It is -- connected with an ardent call to a new way of thinking
 and acting, but above all with the proclamation of God's judgment and with
 the announcement that one greater than John is to come. The Fourth Gospel
 tells us that the Baptist "did not know" this greater personage whose way
 he was to prepare. But he does know that his own role is to prepare a path
 for this mysterious Other, that his whole mission is directed toward him,"
 Benedict writes.
     "We can imagine the extraordinary impression that the figure and
 message of John the Baptist must have produced in the highly charged
 atmosphere of Jerusalem at that particular moment of history. At last there
 was a prophet again, and his life marked him out as such. God's hand was at
 last plainly acting in history again. John baptizes with water, but one
 even greater, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, is already at
 the door. Given all this, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that
 Mark is exaggerating when he reports that 'there went out to him all the
 country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized
 by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins'," Benedict writes in the
 book. "John's baptism includes the confession of sins. The Judaism of the
 day was familiar both with more generally formulaic confessions of sin and
 with a highly personalized confessional practice in which an enumeration of
 individual sinful deeds was expected. The goal is truly to leave behind the
 sinful life one has led until now and to start out on the path to a new,
 changed life."
     Also in the excerpt, Benedict writes, "the actual ritual of Baptism
 symbolizes this. On one hand, immersion into the waters is a symbol of
 death, which recalls the death symbolism of the annihilating, destructive
 power of the ocean flood ... Immersion in the water is about purification,
 about liberation from the filth of the past that burdens and distorts life
 -- it is about beginning again, and that means it is about death and
 resurrection, about starting life over again anew. So we could say that it
 is about rebirth."
     George Wiegel, Newsweek contributor and papal biographer, writes in his
 essay in the May 21 issue, that "In 'Jesus of Nazareth,' Ratzinger (Pope
 Benedict XVI) reveals the core of his personality as he invites readers
 into a master teacher's classroom -- a teacher who has absorbed the best of
 modern Biblical scholarship and has emerged from that encounter with his
 faith enriched." "'Jesus of Nazareth' is a great summing-up of a lifetime
 of learning, refined into insight by decades of praying the New Testament
 as well as reading it. If there is a new chord struck with particular
 force, it is Benedict XVI's insistence that the Christian Church cannot be
 a Church of power," Wiegel writes.
     In the excerpt, Benedict writes "Looking at the events in light of the
 Cross and Resurrection, the Christian people realized what happened: Jesus
 loaded the burden of all mankind's guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it
 down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by
 stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an
 anticipation of the Cross. He is, as it were, the true Jonah who said to
 the crew of the ship, 'Take me and throw me into the sea.' The whole
 significance of Jesus' Baptism, the fact that he bears 'all righteousness,'
 first comes to light on the Cross: The Baptism is an acceptance of death
 for the sins of humanity, and the voice that calls out 'This is my beloved
 Son' over the baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the
 Resurrection. This also explains why, in his own discourses, Jesus uses the
 word baptism to refer to his death."
     (Read excerpt at www.Newsweek.com)
 
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SOURCE Newsweek