(January 4, 2022 at 8:23 am)Jehanne Wrote: Get an old red-letter version of the Bible (some new versions are still being sold) and read the Gospel of Mark, the first Gospel to be composed; little red. Matthew & Luke, a decade or two later, lots of red.
The dialogue in the OP almost surely did not take place; it is just a story, part of the epic, akin to all of the detailed narratives given by Homer in the Odyssey and Iliad.
Matthew echoes Mark in that passage.
Yes, none of it took place. It was written to give Jesus a fake place in history as the "true" John the Baptist and to place Cephas above Paul, who had the greater following.