Mark 1:9-13 -- Jesus' Baptism in Bible Studies

Mark 1:9-13 describes Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist. One of my open questions so far is whether there are places in the gospel of Mark that describe Jesus as the Son of God besides the contested first verse. Mark 1:10-11 may provide such a description, along with the first miraculous event in Mark.

Immediately after Jesus is baptized, a voice comes from heaven saying, "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." Now, Mark doesn't explicitly identify the "voice from heaven" as God, necessarily, but realistically, how else should that be interpreted? I guess it could have been aliens in a UFO with a loudspeaker, but even if it was, that's still a pretty notable event! Considering that, in verse 10, "the Spirit" descends on Jesus and, in verse 12, "the Spirit" sends Jesus into the wilderness, I think the context implies that the voice in verse 11 was spiritual in nature.

Of course, a spiritual voice isn't necessarily God. However, verse 13 says that Jesus was "tempted by Satan" in the wilderness, and that "angels attended him." Given the context in verses 10, 11 and 13, you have to work really hard to interpret the voice from heaven as something other than God.

In verse 10, Mark writes that "he saw" heaven opening and the Spirit descending, and the context suggests the "he" is Jesus, rather than John. One commentary makes it a point that the voice and the vision of heaven opening up and the Spirit descending like a dove were specifically for Jesus as encouragement as he began his ministry. Which raises the question, did anyone else see it? Mark doesn't say one way or the other, but verse 11 doesn't say that "he heard" the voice, it says "a voice came from heaven." The Gospel of John, chapter 1, makes clear that John the Baptist also saw the heavens opening and the Spirit descending on Jesus, and that it was John who told the story to his disciples, which included Peter's brother Andrew.

At this point, I think these verses offer some fairly clear evidence that whoever wrote them believed that Jesus was the Son of God. Even if the phrase "Son of God" was added later to verse 1, it is not inconsistent with the rest of chapter 1, at least not so far. While I am by no means an expert on ancient manuscripts, I can find no hint through my web searching that Mark 1:9-13 faces the same uncertainty as Mark 1:1. (Though I am, of course, open to being proved wrong.)

On a completely different topic, two commentaries on this passage mention that the baptism of Jesus was a showing of the Trinity. It's often said that the specific doctrine of the Trinity is never stated in the Bible, but this is one of the times when the Bible comes close. God the Father appears as a voice from heaven; God the Son appears as a man, Jesus, on Earth; God the Holy Spirit descends from heaven to Jesus appearing like a dove.

That second commentary also mentions that 40 as a number of "testing and judgment." Days and nights of rain for Noah, years for Moses with the sheep and the Israelites in the desert, days for Jesus being tempted. I was unemployed for 40 months. What does that mean?