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The author of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds Christians that they’re surrounded by a terrific “cloud of witnesses.” (NRSV) That “cloud” has continued to develop in measurement since then. In this month-to-month column we shall be enthusiastic about a number of the folks and occasions, over the previous 2000 years, which have helped make up this “cloud.” People and occasions which have helped construct the group of the Christian church because it exists immediately.
My church as soon as printed a New Year Motto Card that dedicated the group to “Prepare the hearts of the folks and the buildings of the church for the following nice transfer of God.” As a Bible-believing evangelical fellowship, we weren’t anticipating any radical new revelation. Rather we knew – as members of a 2000-year-old religion – that whereas core beliefs stand agency over the centuries, emphasis, buildings and techniques can change – and alter radically at instances. The key’s recognising the “transfer of God” in our explicit time. Which raises the topic of John the Baptist and his followers.
Today, John the Baptist (to not be confused with the Apostle John) is held in excessive regard in Christianity, in Islam (the place he’s recognized, in Arabic, as Yaḥyā ibn Zakarīyā), within the Bahá’í Faith, and in Mandaeism (traditionally primarily based in Iraq). All these faiths regard John as a prophet, and he’s honoured as a saint amongst many Christians.
However, among the many Mandaeans, John is revered as their best prophet and teacher; and their beliefs could be discovered expressed of their holy books, together with the Ginza Rba (Great Treasure) and the Draša d-Iahia (Book of John). This radical view of the Baptist could also be derived from gnostic beliefs that emerged from the second century onwards.
John the Baptist: the forerunner
As a part of the preparation for the account of the start of Jesus, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, introduces us to John the Baptist. We are informed that he was the son of a priest named Zechariah, and Elizabeth his spouse. Both, we’re informed, had been descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. In this fashion John is given impeccable Old Testament prophetic roots which set him within the context of the nice story of God revealing himself to the Jewish folks. The reference to Aaron takes us again to the Exodus of the Jewish folks from slavery in Egypt. We are, little question, meant to learn this as a reminder of the nice motion of God about to be revealed.
John’s standing throughout the historical prophetic custom (embodying the spirit and energy of the revered prophet Elijah) and his bridge to larger to return (to organize folks for the Lord) is obvious in Luke. Jesus himself later explicitly identifies John as “Elijah who’s to return” (Matthew 11:14 and in addition Matthew 17:11–13), though within the Gospel of John, the Baptist expressly denies being linked to Elijah (John 1:21), which is intriguing and will point out that Jesus and John differed of their interpretation of the Baptist’s position.
The synoptic gospels, although, insist on his standing as fulfilling the position of that Old Testament prophet in making ready the best way for the Messiah. In each Matthew and Mark, John’s uncommon clothes is described in a manner that remembers how Elijah is described in 2 Kings 1:8. There is, it must be clearly famous right here, no trace of reincarnation, which is kind of alien to Judaism, as later to Christianity.
In addition to the precise referencing of Elijah, the position of a prophet fulfilling Old Testament guarantees is explicitly linked with John. Mark (most likely the earliest gospel written) describes John as a fulfilment of a prophecy from the Book of Isaiah regarding a messenger despatched forward making ready the best way of the Lord and being “the voice of 1 crying out within the wilderness” (Mark 1:3).
In reality, the prophecy, as expressed in Mark, is a mixture of verses from Isaiah, Malachi and Exodus. Some manuscripts of this gospel recognise this by substituting the phrases “as it’s written within the prophets”. Matthew consists of the identical (modified) citation from Isaiah 40:3 – “In the wilderness put together the best way of the Lord, make straight within the desert a freeway for our God” – laying extra emphasis on the “voice of 1 crying out within the wilderness” (Matthew 3:3), whereas Isaiah places somewhat extra stress on the place through which the preparation will happen. However, the which means is clearly the identical. Matthew then strikes the verses from Malachi and Exodus to later in his account, the place they’re quoted by Jesus.
The location of John’s actions within the wilderness of the Jordan valley locations him throughout the austere custom of the traditional prophet, in distinction to the settled lives of nearly all of the Jewish group of their villages and cities.
According to Luke, John’s message was one in every of private non secular renewal, ethical transformation and social justice. It was a metamorphosis signalled by grownup water baptism. In this fashion John is offered because the forerunner of the particular Messiah. The baptismal occasions on the Jordan additionally echo the traditional exodus from Egyptian slavery which concerned crossing that very river into the Promised Land.
The later Jewish historian, Josephus, when recounting (in Antiquities of the Jews) the execution of John within the fortress of Macherus, within the Judean desert on the orders of Herod Antipas, signifies that the explanation was the recognition of John and the hazard that this may need given him a platform for riot. With a message to all Israel, proclaimed by himself and so circumventing the temple and its priestly hierarchy and sacrificial actions, John was an enormous problem to the Jewish institution of his day. He was dwelling on borrowed time.
The potential political radicalism of John’s message just isn’t totally explored within the gospels – which focus extra on his non secular position and message – and has been fully faraway from Josephus’ account, with its agenda of lowering concepts of political battle between Judaism and Hellenistic and Roman tradition. However, on the time, John’s message was each socially difficult and politically charged. His denunciation of Herod’s marriage undoubtedly offered Herod with the very actual hazard that (what he would take into account to be) radicalized Jewish topics would possibly mix together with his Arab topics in opposition to his rule. He acted to make sure that no such potential alliance may happen. The uncompromising ethical stance of the Baptist led to his arrest and eventual execution.
Jesus and the Baptist
Exactly what the connection was between Jesus and John, within the context of the time, has led to hypothesis. This has been fuelled by the truth that John’s ministry preceded that of Jesus and Jesus accepted baptism (which for everybody else was an indication of repentance) by the hands of John. Yet the gospel writers insist that Jesus (not John) is the Messiah and the Son of God. And later believers asserted Jesus’ sinlessness – a core Christian perception – which makes that key level of his baptism extra complicated and requiring clarification.
It is probably vital that in John’s Gospel there is no such thing as a point out of the Baptist having an Elijah-anointing and there’s no point out of Jesus’ precise baptism by John. The Baptist turns into extra of a “voice” than a character and, consequently, any questions in regards to the which means of Jesus’ baptism are prevented. This might properly have been a product of the emphasis of this gospel on the exalted nature of Jesus the Christ, together with a want to defuse issues (potential or precise) brought on by persevering with adherents of the Baptist who had been nonetheless working on the finish of the primary century. More on this final level shortly.
For the primary technology of Christians, as they compiled the gospels within the second half of the primary century (as for contemporary Christians), John the Baptist is the dramatic forerunner to the ministry of Jesus. He is the austere, uncompromising prophet who declares the approaching of God’s kingdom and the approaching arrival of the Messiah. And then the Baptist quickly fades from view.
The afterlife of the ‘John the Baptist Movement’
However, it’s potential that we now underestimate the unique dynamism after which the later potential rivalry between rising Christianity and what we’d name the ‘John the Baptist Movement.’
The gospels reveal that, even after John was imprisoned, his followers constituted a recognizable sect in up to date Judaism, throughout the context of Galilee. And they appear to have been ascetic and puritanical. When criticising the (obvious) relaxed behaviour of Jesus’ disciples, when it got here to socializing with these thought of outcast “sinners,” a grievance was addressed to Jesus by the Pharisees and the lecturers of the regulation that “John’s disciples, just like the disciples of the Pharisees, regularly quick and pray, however your disciples eat and drink” (Luke 5:33). This provides an intriguing perception into the social, in addition to theological, dynamic of Jesus and his followers. But you will need to additionally be aware it as an perception into the sort of group related to John. This was a group that didn’t dissolve on the arrest and execution of the Baptist.
There is proof {that a} sophisticated relationship between the 2 teams ran on into the center of the primary century and even past that. The New Testament Books of Acts refers to disciples of John energetic lengthy after his loss of life. At Ephesus, the Alexandrian Apollos, “had been instructed within the Way of the Lord; and he spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught precisely the issues regarding Jesus, although he knew solely the baptism of John” (Acts 18:25). Also at Ephesus, Paul met “some disciples” who had not heard concerning the Holy Spirit however had earlier been baptised “Into John’s baptism” (Acts 19:1–7). There had been most likely many others like them, whose actions haven’t been recorded and who diverse in how they considered the connection between John and Jesus. The ‘John the Baptist Movement’ clearly had an afterlife and it had unfold from its Judean and Galilean heartlands, simply as Christianity had.
As late because the third century, paperwork recognized immediately because the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Pseudo-Clementine Homilies report garbled traditions suggesting the continuation of a sect of “each day baptizers,” energetic lengthy after the loss of life of John the Baptist. We know little extra about such folks or their beliefs, but it surely appears as if a radical group continued to reference John as its founder. And it preached some sort of baptism-based ideology lengthy after John had been executed. It might even have been seen as a possible rival to the Christian group till the tip of the primary century and even later. This appears mirrored in some gnostic communities and locally of the Mandaeans, with their exalted beliefs about him and their Draša d-Iahia (Book of John).
This pressure might clarify the specific emphasis within the Gospel of John that, within the phrases of John the Baptist, “He [Jesus] should improve, however I [John the Baptist] should lower” (John 3:30). Recorded in a gospel, accomplished maybe as late because the 90s and possibly acutely aware of continued competitors between the 2 teams of followers, it was decided to set out theological priorities clearly. The message was clear: John was the honoured however passing prophet; Jesus is the Messiah, the saviour, the revelation of the everlasting nature of God. Interestingly there may be, on this gospel, no trace of John’s doubts that we hear of elsewhere, when he asks from jail: “Are you the one who’s to return, or are we to attend for an additional?” (Luke 7:19 and Matthew 11:3).
The Gospel of John additionally particularly refers to disciples of the Baptist leaving him (John 1:35–37) to observe Jesus, after John has declared that Jesus is “the Lamb of God.” However, the ‘John the Baptist Movement’ clearly didn’t simply go away. For a few of those that had invested within the ‘transfer of God’ that he embodied, it might have been fairly difficult to simply accept {that a} larger ‘motion’ had occurred.
No such stark dilemma faces orthodox Christianity, dedicated as it’s to the idea within the full and last revelation of God embodied in Jesus. But in different methods the problem could also be value reflecting on. There generally is a hazard of clinging to the final ‘transfer’ when a brand new ‘transfer’ is happening. It could also be useful to sometimes replicate on that, when reviewing one’s personal churchmanship, emphasis and theology.
Martyn Whittock is a historian and a Licensed Lay Minister within the Church of England. The writer, or co-author, of fifty-six books, his work covers a variety of historic and theological themes. In addition, as a commentator and columnist, he has written for a number of print and on-line information platforms and been interviewed on TV and radio information and dialogue programmes exploring the interplay of religion and politics.
His current books embrace: Daughters of Eve (2021), The End Times, Again? (2021), The Story of the Cross (2021), Apocalyptic Politics (2022), and American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America (2023). The afterlife of the ‘John the Baptist Movement’ is one in every of many areas explored in his co-written e-book, Jesus the Unauthorized Biography (2021).
