Mark 1:9

PLUS
In the Jordan (ei ton Iordanhn). So in verse Matthew 10 , ek tou udato, out of the water, after the baptism into the Jordan. Mark is as fond of "straightway" (euqu) as Matthew is of "then" (tote). Rent asunder (scizomenou). Split like a garment, present passive participle. Jesus saw the heavens parting as he came up out of the water, a more vivid picture than the "opened" in Matthew 3:16 and Luke 3:21 . Evidently the Baptist saw all this and the Holy Spirit coming down upon Jesus as a dove because he later mentions it ( John 1:32 ). The Cerinthian Gnostics took the dove to mean the heavenly aeon Christ that here descended upon the man Jesus and remained with him till the Cross when it left him, a sort of forecast of the modern distinction between the Jesus of history and the theological Christ.