Jesus as Noah

In trying to learn more about the historic interpretation of the Baptism of our Lord, I came across something that I had never considered before.  In the baptism of Jesus, many of the early church fathers saw Jesus being a new Noah. 

Christian baptism and the events surrounding Noah’s life being tied together is of course is not foreign to the scriptures.

1 Peter 3:20-21  …God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you…

This connection is so secure that it has be fashioned in every medium from which baptismal fonts are crafted, their eight sides bearing witness.

However, connecting Jesus’ baptism and Noah’s life was new to my thought.  The connection to Noah for the fathers was first and foremost not about the presence of salvation in the midst of water since John’s baptism was preparatory and not perfecting .  It was  about the form the Spirit chose for his descent.  The dove in their mind immediately transported them back to this verse:

Genesis 8:10-11  He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark.  And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.

Listen to Gregory Thaumaturgus:

[God] opened the gates of the heavens and sent down the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, lighting upon the head of Jesus, pointing him out right there as the new Noah, even the maker of Noah, the good pilot of the nature which is in shipwreck.

Or Chrysostom:

This dove does not simply lead a family out of an ark, but the whole world toward heaven at her appearing.  And instead of a branch of peace from an olive tree, she conveys the possibility of adoption for all of the world’s offspring in common.

They saw Jesus as the new Noah, beckoning people by his baptism to the new life offered in Christian baptism, the dove being the symbol thereof.

Perhaps we have become too familiar through the art we see with the Holy Spirit always being in the form of a dove that we assume it is his natural shape.  The form of the Spirit at Jesus’ baptism does not even seems like something to question.  But perhaps the form was intentional. The fathers certainly thought it was.  They believed it was chosen to connect our minds to the rebirth of the world after Noah.  Perhaps so should we.