Transcipt

Who Was John the Baptist?

(00:01) our lecture topic this evening is who was John the Baptist all of this year we have been kind of going through figures uh in the New Testament and we've kind of looked at what we can know about them are we talking about someone who we can identify as an actual historical figure if so what is what can we say about them in terms of the historical figure and then what is known from the different accounts the biblical accounts and so forth and kind of legacy and Legend and so forth and John the Baptist is one of the figures

(00:38) we could say pretty assuredly is it does have an actual historical figure underneath the character so John's there are as we've seen all year long when we've been talking about the New Testament there are a lot of people named John and there are a lot of people named Mary there's too many Mary's too many Johns numerous people in the New Testament have that name John Johannes in Greek from the Aramaic johannan um John my name too Jesus disciple John uh that we talked about one of the historic disciples is often conflated with a character an

(01:21) anonymous character unnamed character called the disciple whom Jesus loved the Beloved disciple that is a character in the fourth gospel The Gospel called The Gospel of John and then that character is often conflated with the true author or authors of that gospel and altogether then created that character John the Beloved um he is then conflated with a very different uh author John the Revelator the author of the book of Revelation who has a different ideas and Theology and certainly a very different kind of Greek than what we read in the Gospel of John so anyway there's all kinds of Johns in

(02:04) a lot of cases they're lumped together into that figure John however there's a completely different John who stands out John the Baptist separate individual who is actually not usually or regularly confused with any other individual John the Baptist is associated uh most with the ritual of baptism that's where he gets his epithet John the Baptist and he is most famous by far for having baptized Jesus of Nazareth however John the Baptist also had Disciples of his own he had his own Ministry separate from Jesus actually as

(02:45) we'll see a Ministry that predates Jesus's Ministry and then beyond that there are all kinds of other ideas associated with John the Baptist and legends and we'll review some of those tonight as well so for example John the Baptist is thought to be a cousin of Jesus a person who is a forerunner who predicts Jesus's Ministry that that was the point of what he was doing uh the last Apostle Prophet I'm sorry of the Old Testament era as far as the um Christians are concerned in the first of the new he is also a desert ascetic so kind of a

(03:25) a monk-like character Franciscan friar-like character who is essentially going off and living in the wilderness who's mortifying the flesh essentially by eating living on honey and locusts and wearing skins in other words a wild man of the desert some people argue or he sought to be of the Jewish second temple Judaism sect of the essenes so there's this sect that we're maybe less familiar with we know about the Pharisees and the Sadducees with the essenes or one of these other sects that uh this historian Josephus

(04:02) talks about and he's also thought to maybe be from the community at qumran which most Scholars assume is an essene Community this is the community the place at the shore of the Dead Sea which became very famous in the 20th century with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and so is John the Baptist and essene who is even from Curb Ron or an escapee from there or you know maybe started there and went off and did his own thing he's also revered in a number of religions as a saint and indeed his head is said to be held

(04:42) by two at least two different churches and at least one major mosque all have shrines of John the Baptists that include his head he is also the founder of a religion or said to be by that religion well they say that Adam was the founder but anyway the last they Revere him essentially as the last and greatest prophet and that religion endures to this day so we'll look at all of those things although baptism has become a Central Christian Sacrament it's essentially the initiation ritual that has a Christian be uh you know being put into the water and coming back out their

(05:29) old life is dies away and they are born again to New Life in the body of Christ so it is essentially the initiation ritual that causes you to enter the body of Christ to become a Christian which is then added to with the Sacrament of Confirmation that would confirms you as a member of the Christian church um even though that is so Central it seems like to Christianity um it doesn't seem that Jesus is the person the historical Jesus is the person who introduced this ritual rather it seems like the character John John

(06:04) the Baptist is the one who took what had been an earlier Jewish ritual and repurposed it to have a new spiritual meaning so we'll look at that so baptism as it's called in Greek that neologism it's a word that is first found in the New Testament and so it doesn't exist in previous sources it's derived from existing Greek words to dip bapto and it's similar to a word Hellenistic text used to describe Jewish ritual washing so a precursor type of ritual that predates the thing that John the Baptist and then later Christians are doing so that precursor is called mikva

(06:52) bathing so after coming into contact with something that is understood to be ritually under unclean like for example if you have been in the presence of a dead body or something like that Jewish priests at the time and also some observant Jews in some of those different sects during the second temple period so the Sadducees in some cases well that some people in the qumran the essenes they practice washing in mikvabass as a way then to achieve ritual purity and we say this is kind of ritual Purity because it's kind of a washing that doesn't necessarily

(07:38) um make you actually clean because in a lot of cases so there are various rules about how the mikva bath is able to be a font is able to be filled and so on it has to uh it can't just be pumped the water in it has to actually be kind of Living Water and has to kind of go uh go there through rain and through Aqueduct and all this kind of thing in order to fill the thing up and so in a lot of cases if you are in a desert like the qumran community that The essenes Have and practicing these baths it may well

(08:08) be that the bath is sort of sitting around for a very long time and is being used by many many people and the water therefore isn't particularly clean in a a non-ritual way is said to be clean ritually and you are becoming um purified ritually ritually clean as opposed to being actually clean so one of those Dead Sea Scrolls from qumran has a text called the rule of the community which talks about some of their rules for Mikvah bathing and in the course of that it talks about how they do that washing and it also talks about those Waters as being kind

(08:52) of waters of repentance and so some of that phrasing that the qumran community the essene community there uses does also kind of tantalizingly seem to be similar to John's kind of purpose repurposing of this as kind of a spiritual practice a one-time cleansing of sins as opposed to a way of causing ritual Purity so we'll see that so Josephus has an account of John the Baptist John the Baptist is one of the very few New Testament figures he was mentioned by Josephus Josephus will remember is the Jewish historian writing uh commissioned by the

(09:37) Roman emperors writing at the end of the century who is our most important source for first century CE coming here A.D Judea in history so Josephus has a stand-alone passage about John the Baptist in other words a standalone one one that doesn't um just associating with Jesus or doesn't mention Jesus at all he's just talking about John the Baptist in this so in his book Antiquities of the Jews after describing the defeat of the army of Herod Antipas herodentipus the tetrarch and tetrarch here means ruler over a quarter of the Judean Kingdom he's the ruler of Galilee and the perea

(10:24) he's one of the sons then of Herod the Great so the Romans divided herod's Kingdom after herod's death and one of his sons is the ruler over up fourth of that herodantipus so after his army is defeated Josephus writes now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod antipas's Army came from God and that very and that very justly as a punishment of what he did against John that was called the Baptist for Herod slew him who was a good man and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue so in other words John was a good man he commanded the Jews to exercise virtue both as to righteousness towards

(11:13) one another and piety toward God and so to come to baptism for that the washing with water would be acceptable to him if they made use of it not in order to the putting away or remission of sun some sins only but for the purification of the body supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness so now when many others came and the crowds about him for they were very greatly moved or pleased by hearing his words so in other words there's a big crowd that gathers around John the Baptist to partake in this ritual baptism that he's doing

(11:56) Herod Antipas who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion for they seemed ready to do anything that he should advise Herod then thought it best by putting him to death to prevent any Mischief he might cause and not bring himself into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it would be too late accordingly he John was sent a prisoner out of herod's suspicious temperer temper to macarus that castle which I before

(12:33) mentioned and there he John the Baptist was put to death now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of Herod antipas's Army was sent as a punishment upon Herod and a mark of God's displeasure to him so that's the account that Josephus has of John the Baptist so this is a non-Christian source and it's not one that is contaminated by later Christian scribes so we've seen in our lecture on the historical Jesus that one of the problems with the account of Josephus at least where he's talking about Jesus is that some later Christian copyists have gotten a hold of the text

(13:15) and they just can't they don't like how Josephus was talking about it we presume and so they just can't help but write notes and say no he was the Christ he's the Messiah all these kind of things they want to have their their testimony and they want to change what had been written and then ultimately through the course of copying that becomes included in the text and so that portion of the text is contaminated this doesn't show any of those signs at all because none of this is has anything to do with anything Christian it's just essentially

(13:45) a story that where it's nestled into a story about Herod Antipas the tetrarch so the story of John the Baptist by Joseph is here is presented as an aside not as something thing that's super important like it would be to a Christian scribe and in the course of this passage as we just read it there's no mention of Jesus and really no indication that John is associated with Jesus so for Josephus then John the Baptist was a good righteous man who was Pious towards God he called upon people to practice baptism for the remission of some sins

(14:28) but he also you know expected them to be according to Josephus anyway expected them to have gotten to a condition of righteousness ahead of time and so forth nevertheless he was popular enough to draw huge crowds that worried the political leader at the time Herod Antipas and he was then as a result taken prisoner by Herod and executed by him for his presumed potential anyway to lead a rebellion and so for Josephus then he is a person who it's not not an important person in his own right but was only important to kind of show

(15:06) that herod's rule was potentially unstable that he had to continuously rule as a as a tyrant and had to kind of preemptively eliminate potential Rivals for who might have had greater popular support than he himself had over his tetrarchy okay so that's what we got from Josephus our other major source for John the Baptist comes from the New Testament itself the gospels and indeed all of the canonical gospels tell stories of John the Baptist and um I would say that they do so with an ever increasing concern about how they

(15:49) want to portray or how they want to spin his relationship with Jesus and so I want to look at the accounts in Mark Matthew Luke and John as we know Mark is our earliest of the narrative gospels and Scholars are pretty clear that it's the earliest one in Matthew and Luke both used Mark's text as a source as as they expanded it and changed it to make their own and the other place the other source that Scholars hypothesize is a lost sayings Gospel called q and in fact actually John is also in that the Reconstruction Scholars have of that source so we want

(16:34) to look at kind of these earliest versions of How It's exists in Mark Hugh how Matthew and Luke edit and use make use of change what they got from Mark and Q and then the very different version or the version that John is given in the Gospel of John so we'll start with Mark the earliest narrative gospel written around the year 70.

(17:04) Mark's gospel as we know does not begin with a Christmas story it doesn't have a Nativity Story instead it begins by quoting Isaiah 40 30 and then by presenting John the Baptist as the Fulfillment of Prophecy calling him a forerunner of Christ and so we read beginning in Mark 4 I'm sorry chapter one verse 4. and so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the Forgiveness of sins the whole Judea and Countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him confessing their sins they were baptized by him in the Jordan River John wore clothing made of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist and

(17:47) he ate locusts and wild honey and this was his message after me comes the one more powerful than I the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie I baptize you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit at that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan just as Jesus was coming up out of the water he saw heaven being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove and a voice Came From Heaven you are my son whom I love with you I am well

(18:25) pleased at once the spirit sent Jesus out into the Wilderness and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan Jesus was with the wild animals and Angels attended him after John was put in prison Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God so after that whole thing Locus goes together at that point Mark's narrative shifts and then entirely shifts entirely to focus on Jesus and it only returns to John in order to tell the story of John the Baptist's death so that occurs five chapters later chapter six of Mark so after Jesus and his disciples have been

(19:07) going around and healing many sick people and driving demons out of them and all that sort of thing then we hear again about King Herod King Herod Antipas the tetrarch it's not really a king but he's cold King in in the uh Mark's gospel here uh Herod heard about this for Jesus name had become well known some were saying John the Baptist has been raised from the dead and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him others said he is Elijah still others claimed he is a prophet like one of the prophets of long ago but when Herod heard this he said John

(19:45) whom I beheaded has been raised from the dead so we hadn't heard that detail so now there's a flashback or an aside for Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested and he had had him bound and put in prison he did this because of herodius his brother Philip's wife whom he had married for John had been saying to Herod it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife so herodias in other words another member of the herodian dynasty here she nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him but she was not able to because Herod Herod Antipas feared John

(20:23) and protected him knowing him to be a righteous and a holy man so when Herod heard John he was listening to him in his court while he was in prison he was greatly puzzled yet he liked to listen to him finally the opportune time came on his birthday Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and Military commanders and the Leading Men of Galilee and when the daughter of herodias came in and danced she pleased Herod and his dinner guests and the King said to the girl presumably as he's drunk at the end of a banquet ask me for anything you want and I'll give it to you and he promised her

(20:57) with an oath whatever you ask I will give you up to half my kingdom and this is always a a bad sign when a king says this kind of thing in the middle of a Hellenistic novel because you always are going to have the person's always going to say something that the person doesn't expect the king doesn't expect in regrets you know we have the story of of Helios making an oath like this to his son mortal son faith and who then says he wants to drive the Chariot of the sun across the sky and of course it ends horribly with

(21:30) fayetteson's death and all that sort of thing but he has to do it once he said once he's made the oath you've got to do it okay so she went out and said to her mother what shall I ask for and the mother said the head of John the Baptist at once the girl hurried into the king with the request I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist Anna platter the King was greatly distressed but because of his oasts and his dinner guests he did not want to refuse her so he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head the man went

(22:00) beheaded John in the prison and brought back his head on a platter he presented it to the girl and she gave it to her mother and on hearing this John's disciples came and they took his body and they laid it in a tomb okay so with all of that that's Mark's take on John the Baptist so in Mark's account we see John the Baptist is an ascetic living in the wilderness as we saw he's a righteous man he preaches baptism for the Forgiveness of sins he's extremely popular he pop he baptizes all kinds of people including Jesus he's then beheaded by Herod

(22:40) Antipas due to kind of courtly intrigue and ultimately then he is a leader who continues to have disciples after his own death or the disciples who come and they take his body and they bury it in the tube so Mark also then in the course of this is kind of commenting on Jesus's relationship with John the Baptist in Mark's account John the Baptist is made to say that he is less powerful than Jesus and he's actually unworthy to untie Jesus's sandal straps nevertheless Jesus is baptized by John and it's only after that it's only after

(23:22) John is actually imprisoned that Jesus begins to preach the good news so in other words Jesus's Ministry begins only after John is put in prison after Jesus has been baptized by John and just in terms of Association of the two Herod Antipas actually thinks that Jesus is John the Baptist raised from the dead because apparently he's doing stuff that's similar enough that that has uh is causing that Association so Mark is at Payne's to make it clear Jesus Superior authority over John the Baptist in terms of their relationship and yet obviously John comes first

(24:02) John baptizes Jesus and it's only after John is imprisoned that Jesus begins to go proclaim the news himself foreign so there's also John the Baptist sayings in that lost cue sayings gospel so Q as we know is a hypothetical sayings gospel used as a source the fella that's where the word q comes from obviously we have to deal with the fact that in the 2020s there's this conspiracy theory that has gotten control of the or has has taken the letter q for their own but anyway it has nothing to do with that um it's it's the German word for Source fella uh that is the a source that was

(24:47) used by the authors of Luke and Matthew so as reconstructed by Scholars this lost gospel composed around the same time or maybe even decades earlier than mark also begins with sayings attributed to John the Baptist because Q is early and has associations with Rural Life and also with towns in Galilee it also doesn't have stories of Jesus resurrection all that sort of thing some Scholars also think it may preserve Footprints of a pre-christian understanding of John and Jesus although in its ultimate form that we have it it's already gone through reject redactions and is already expressing

(25:33) Christian ideas but it's possible again that the sayings here have are preserving oral Traditions that go all the way back to the Jesus movement and maybe even the John movement although maybe so dupith is the same movement so let's look at these so this is Q as reconstructed out of the texts of Matthew and Luke as we have them by the international Q project so at first there's just fragments and we don't know so John they're talking about John the Baptist and all of the region of Jordan so he's in that kind of Wilderness Area we don't

(26:12) but without we can't they can't reconstruct this part and so he said John said to the crowds who come to his baptism brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming Wrath bear fruit worthy of repentance and do not presume to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our Father for I tell you God is able to uh to God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham even now the ax is laid at the root of the trees every tree therefore not bearing good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire

(26:50) I baptize you with water but the one coming after me is stronger than I whose sandals I am not worthy to remove he will baptize you with Holy Spirit and Fire whose winnowing Fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather the wheat into his grattery but the Chafe he will burn with the unquenchable fire and so then there is the baptism segment which also can't be reconstructed by the Q sayings group anyway Heaven's open that sort of thing then there is a night another passage a little later on that relates to John so

(27:29) John sent through his disciples sent to Jesus and his disciples John's disciples said to him are you the coming one or should we expect another and he Jesus answered and said to them to John's disciples in other words go tell John what you hear and see the blind Sea and the lame walk lepers are made clean and the death here and the dead are raised and the poor are given good news and blessed is the one who takes no offense at me and after they went away he began to speak to the crowds about John what did you go out into the Wilderness to see a reed shaken by the wind

(28:15) but what did you go out to see a person dressed in soft things behold those who wear soft things are in King's houses but then did you go out to see a prophet indeed I tell you even more than a prophet this is he about whom it has been written behold I am sending my messenger in front of you who will prepare the way before you I tell you among those born of women there has not Arisen one greater than John but the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he to what shall I compare this generation what is it like

(28:54) it is like children sitting in a Marketplace who are calling to others who say we fluted for you and you did not dance we wailed and you did not mourn for John came not eating or drinking and you say he is a demon or he has I'm sorry he has a demon he's possessed the son of man Jesus came eating and drinking and you say look a glutton and a drunk a friend of tax collectors and sinners but wisdom is justified by her children okay so that's a lot so what's the cue's source I'm sorry the Q saying gospels take on John the Baptist then so in the Q Source John is said to be

(29:41) greater than anyone born of women but still less than the kingdom of God that Jesus is declaring uh in his good news along with Jesus he's called a child of holy wisdom so holy wisdom here is the hajiya Sophia the feminine Divine she's Vindicated by her children Jesus and John uh he is an ascetic who fasted so it says John came not eating and drinking and you said he's possessed by a demon Jesus is then on the on the other hand here is uh you're calling a drunkard because he is not fasting and he's not uh not refraining from drinking alcohol

(30:26) and so on uh and so in other words they're destroying a contrast between John who is an ascetic as opposed to Jesus and then we saw in a lot of that he is also an apocalyptic Prophet who is predicting a lot of Destruction and so there was a lot of stuff about the winnowing chaff and you know in other words being burned up separating uh The Good The Righteous from the unrighteous and also not um not just assuming because you are from the chosen people that you're a descendant of Abraham symbolically that you're somehow going to get a golden

(31:02) ticket in uh rather uh everybody is there's no there's no no end by right of inheritance God can make rocks into children of Abraham so that inheritance that you have is not not relevant in terms of your personal salvation you have to yourself be good not um uh not just Coast on on your Birthright okay so I went on now also now we saw what what got John the Baptist is like in mark we saw in queue we saw that there was some overlap because both of them had this uh one greater than I is coming and the sandals uh I can't I'm not going to stoop to um I'm not worthy to untie his sandals

(31:45) lines we also want to look now at what the authors of the Gospel of Matthew and Luke do so they always are taking their sources they make changes they make additions and even though they are both writing independently sometime in the 80s or 90s they both have access to these accounts and one of the things that's always interesting is when we see what they change that kind of shows us the author of these gospels own kind of individual editorial concerns right so if they don't like what Mark has written or or they change what Mark is written we might presume that they don't like it

(32:27) and that's why they changed it or we can see why what they changed it to and we can assume that they think that that is how the story should be understood and so forth so here's an additional little segment that is added into the gospel of Matthew so Matthew chapter 3 the beginning of chapter three combines Mark and q's account of John's baptism of Jesus but then in verses 13 through 15 the gospel of Matthew adds this detail or this story then Jesus Came From Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John but John tried to deter him saying I need to be

(33:08) baptized by you and you come to me so there's even another statement layering here of authority John is saying boy you should be the one doing the baptizing Not Me Jesus replied let it be so now it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness and so after he has that explanation from Jesus then John consented so in other words with this additional conversation John just gives another layer of authority to Jesus during an event where John is actually the one who's actively baptizing Jesus right

(33:45) so there's more changes in Luke so like Matthew Luke chapter 3 verse 1 to 20 combines the material from Mark and Q about John the baptism and Luke's account concludes and with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to him uh and then without even talking about the baptism scene he goes on Luke I'm sorry goes on to say but when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to herodias his brother's wife and all the other things he'd done Herod added to this uh added this to

(34:20) them all he locked John up in prison so in other words Luke's account here is anticipating the later story that Luke found in Mark about John the baptism's death and that story is included both by Matthew and Luke however it's only after Luke has mentioned that John has been thrown in prison after that happens then the text goes back and concedes when all the people were being baptized Jesus was baptized too and as he was praying heaven was opened and the spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove and a voice Came From Heaven you are my son whom I love

(34:57) with you I am well pleased so in other words Mark's original had Jesus was baptized by John and Luke changes that to Jesus was baptized too and only mentions that after John is already in prison so it thus avoids any appearance that John initially had any authority over Jesus at all in in the account here in Luke um Luke also adds another hole John the Baptist layer and stories so in creating the story of Jesus birth Luke's version of The Christmas Story the author of Luke includes a birth story for John the

(35:37) Baptist and in so doing characterizes Jesus as his relative a some kind of cousin related then by their mothers so Jesus's mother Mary is a relative of Elizabeth who is now said to be the mother of John the Baptist and so when Mary goes and visits Elizabeth while they're both pregnant the prenatal John leaps in his mother's womb as a further testimony to Jesus's Authority so although we have that story and so then people um you know just assume therefore that Jesus and John the Baptist are cousins that relationship between the two is

(36:20) actually not attested in any other source and most Scholars see that and indeed all of the uh Christmas Stories the narratives as we've had in our whole lecture on The Christmas Stories as invention uh as the inventions by the uh of Luke the author of Luke here okay so having gone now through the synoptic gospels Matthew sorry Mark Matthew and Luke and the missing uh Q source that are all read together we now look at the Gospel of John the first chapter of the Gospel of John the Fourth gospel as it's called is often radically

(36:56) different from the three synoptic gospels which are called synoptic because they can are similar and can be read together in this case however it does agree that Jesus ministry begins with John the Baptist and so at the beginning of John 1 we read There was a man sent from God whose name was John he came as a witness to testify to concerning that light so that all through him sorry so that through him all might believe he John himself was not the light he came only as witness to the light so the word became flesh and made his

(37:36) dwelling among us we have seen his glory the glory of one and of the one and only son who came from the father full of grace and truth one second okay John testified concerning him in other words John is testifying concerning Jesus the son of God he cried out saying this is the one I spoke about when I said he who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me now this was John's testimony when the Jewish leaders sent priests to him and Levites to ask him who he was he did not fail to confess but confess freely John

(38:19) this is John the Baptist saying I'm not the Messiah they asked him then who are you are you Elijah he said I am not are you the prophet he answered no then finally they said well then who are you give us an answer to take back to those who sent us what do you say about yourself and John replied with the words of Isaiah Prophet The Prophet I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness make straight the way for the Lord so the same Association of John the Baptist with Isaiah 43 this is actually kind of a a rare point of agreement that we have with Mark with q and John and then of

(38:54) course Matthew and Luke both also following Mark to have all of that together so now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him they're asking John why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah if you're not Elijah or the prophet and John replied I baptize with water but among you stands one you do not know he is the one who comes after me the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie in other words we have the same sandals uh testimony another point of rare agreement so this all happened at

(39:31) Bethany on the other side of the Jordan where John was baptizing the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said look the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world this is the one I meant when I said a man comes after me that has surpassed me because he was before me I myself did not know him but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel so then John gave this testimony I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him and I myself did not know him but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me the man on

(40:12) whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit I have seen and I testify that this is God's chosen one so after all of that kind of really uh self-depreciating testimony and also uh kind of lots of predictive and also eyewitness testifying that Jesus is the one God's chosen one and so forth uh then in The Following part of the account two of John's disciples people had been following John around uh switched their allegiances and instead become Disciples of Jesus and then Jesus goes on to have it call his own

(40:51) disciples and to continue his ministry in the Gospel of John so therefore how does the Gospel of John view this the Baptist himself in this gospel clearly states you know he's not the Messiah he's not Elijah he's not a prophet he's only baptizing the only reason he's doing this at all is in order to reveal the actual Messiah Jesus to Israel and although John attests to seeing the spirit descend as a dove we've seen that in Mark and in you know Luke and Matthew follow Mark as this thing that happens when uh Baptist Jesus is baptized by John the text here in John the Gospel of

(41:32) John omits any mention that this version occurs as John baptizes Jesus so the idea whether or not there's no mention at all that John baptizes Jesus that's that's removed all that's left is the vision of the dove descending so there is no context given for that Vision in the Gospel of John so Mark Q Matthew Luke and John all Quote Isaiah to make John the Baptist a forerunner of Jesus and all four have John state that he is unworthy to untie Jesus sandals so while Mark and Matthew admit that John baptized Jesus Luke who had that

(42:18) information in Mark's gospel as one of Luke's sources merely acknowledges that yeah Jesus was baptized when everybody else was getting baptized and then finally when we had an Alaska of these gospels to be written when that incident is happening in that portion of the narrative the Gospel of John just fails to mention that baptism altogether um and so it's clear I think that Christian evangelists were concerned about this well-known Event John the Baptist baptized Jesus John the Baptist was baptizing people for the remission of sins and they

(42:56) baptized Jesus right that's a problem for early Christian evangelists so there isn't a bunch of agreement in all of these sources so what do we know about John the Baptist he led a popular movement that involved baptizing people to wash away their sins he gathered disciples before Jesus did he himself baptized Jesus he was executed by Herod Antipas and he continued to have disciples after his death so given the later first century CE Christian understanding that Jesus was the Christ and as the Christ Jesus had led a sin-free life these later Christian evangelists who

(43:46) are writing these texts that we just went through clearly felt the need to explain okay well why then did Jesus need to be baptized by John so when they try to make explanations when they try to explain things away like that that's called apologetics and so this early Christian apologetic strategies included things like making excuses so Matthew the author of Matthew creates this thing well I you know you should I should be baptizing you or you should be baptizing me and Jesus is like no no we have to do it this way for now for righteousness or whatever in other words we're going through the motions or

(44:25) something like that so there's excuses about why it has to be done um there are all kinds of statements diminishing John's Authority he's I am lesser he a greater one is coming I'm just the Forerunner I don't deserve to um you know untie his sandals and so forth um there are all kinds of uh additional testimonies where John is constantly saying things like he's the one he's the Lamb of God in other words those are all being put so it's on John's Authority that a testimony of Jesus as the Christ and then finally one final strategy is minimizing or ultimately even omitting

(45:02) um mentioning uh that Jesus is baptized by John so it's clear I think based on just reading those accounts that Christians these early Christians were worried that this well-known event in their um you know in in their Founders uh history backstory was sort of at odds with the emerging understanding that they had of Jesus and so because John's baptism of Jesus is not the kind of story Christians would choose to invent if they were just making up the life of Jesus almost all Scholars agree that John the Baptist baptizing Jesus is an actual event in

(45:48) the life of the historical Jesus so we've gone through when we had our our lecture on the historical Jesus this is one of the very few events like the crucifixion also where there really is a almost complete scholarly consensus so many scholars actually though then based on this and based on this this Criterion of embarrassment this is a story that the early Christians wouldn't have invented and they actually tried to minimize um based on this there's a whole lot of Scholars who conclude that the historical Jesus actually began his

(46:23) career as a disciple of John so in other words John the Baptist had a movement Jesus was one of his disciples he followed John around until John was imprisoned and then John's movement kind of broke up and one of the things at that point is Jesus kind of hadn't went and had his own kind of movement that differed from a lot of the ways that Jesus that John was doing so for example it wasn't about fasting and asceticism it wasn't about going off and and living in the wilderness but instead it was about proclaiming good news of of a

(46:57) kingdom to the poor and healing people in the communities where you actually lived so in other words it's not the same movement but it may have been the fact that Jesus was part of a movement that ended with John's imprisonment kind of launched him into this sort of Otherworldly kind of career as historical Jesus so that's a speculation but this is the one that um um is frequently cited among historians of the historical Jesus so what a historical at the Historical aspects that we can then say about John the Baptist so following along this view all of those testimonies

(47:37) uh put into John the Baptist's mouth about Jesus as the Messiah or as being greater and he's coming and he's going to baptize you with fire and all those sort of things those are Christian apologetics inserted into the story reinserted retro objected back into the story anachronistically so not something that would have happened in John's actual lifetime the criticisms of Jesus for eating and drinking for being a drunkard and so on in cue contrasted unfavorably with John's fasting and asceticism that

(48:11) likewise seems to confirm that the historical John was an ascetic prophet who was living in the desert denying physical Comforts and so forth kind of separating himself in that sense from the society kind of entirely by going off into the Wilderness and not being living by um essentially all of the Creature Comforts of society so the case has been made and it's a plausible case that hat John has some kind of links with the essene sect the qumran community so there's a lot of things to argue on behalf of this so

(48:51) proximity to the community at qumran is one of them so qumran is in the desert just Southwest of where the Jordan empties into the Dead Sea this is not that far from well anyway the Jordan River where depending on where John is actually baptizing in the Jordan the whole area isn't that big but anyway so this may be anyways quite close along with the qumran community interest with ritual washing that we already mentioned the mick the bass that they had and their rules about them that are preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls and also the community's own interest in

(49:30) asceticism so going off and founding essentially a monastic-like community in the desert on the shores of the Dead Sea they're also interested in asceticism in other words all of those things kind of together have tempted many scholars to plausibly speculate that John the Baptist either began his life as a member of the qumran community the essene sect or that he was an essene or that he was at least an offshoot of that Community made famous by the Dead Sea Scrolls and the only like I say I think that's a very plausible case it can't be

(50:11) conclusively made though only my hesitance about these sorts of things is um when you discover things like the Dead Sea Scrolls you want everything to be connected to something like the Dead Sea Scrolls because it's it's so exciting and it's such a such a neat thing and so sometimes uh in that kind of a case you have you know when you get a hammer then everything's a nail and so that may one that's just a Temptation that people have that we have to kind of just be wary of but it doesn't mean that this is

(50:41) not a plausible case it's just not one that we can say conclusively so we heard then that the gospel accounts agree that John the Baptist had disciples that continued to Revere him after his death Luke also the author of Luke also wrote the book of Acts and in Acts 19 um that book text claims that the later Apostle Paul met with and converted a group of John's disciples John the Baptist disciples at Ephesus and so the implication of that is that at the same time that Christianity is spreading um John the Baptist disciple communities

(51:20) are also spreading according to acts anyway acts is not a particularly good source of Christian history but we have very little else and so I mention it uh the groups uh I might say good I just mean to say you not you can't be confirmed in most cases and a lot of it may well be an invention of the author the groups who held that John the Baptist was the Messiah are continued to be attested into the second century so there were an ongoing kind of John the Baptist movement there are tantalizing ideas that that continued on

(51:57) for centuries later and may even be connected to some of the descendant movements but we can't link them up with with total Surety so we'll talk about the mandelions so their origin can't be conclusively traced mandanes themselves claim that they go all the way back to Adam and Genesis which is not a historical figure but that's they see him as that and so therefore they think of themselves as the oldest religion but in an event mandelism the religion of an ethnic minority that has been based for centuries in Iraq maintains anyway a special reverence for

(52:36) John the Baptist and really Central to their practice is a type of frequent baptism that they use as ritual purification rather than the way Christians do as a one-time sacrament of initiation so mandelions here in the picture and uh from a mundane group in Iran they are undergoing masputa which is their word for baptism the way they do this is there's a full triple immersion then after that there's a triple signing on the forehead and then after that there's a triple drinking of water so it is a big more elaborate baptism ceremony and it's something that they can do even weekly and so forth uh as as essential to their

(53:23) practice so the various Wars in Iraq have been very bad for the mandaian population there was maybe 60 to 100 000 mandanes worldwide they were mostly based in Iraq I think they've mostly all fled except for a few thousand at this point there's a lot of mandaeans in in Australia and other places at this point as refugees and so they're around the globe as refugees um harder obviously when you're in that kind of circumstance to continue to practice your Traditions also though there is more and better and more recent

(53:59) study and so I'm only able to give you a little bit of tantalizing stuff about them because I really need to if there has been a really good book about them I need to get a really good book about them and read more because I'm I'm actually very interested in this group so like as I said the mandaians claim that Adam was the founder of their religion and they also revered John the Baptist as the greatest and final prophet their theology is monotheist so they're abrahamic religion but they're it's also Gnostic so we've had a whole lecture on

(54:33) gnostics and also um gnosticism as one of the major uh early branches of Christianity um that gnosticism comes with a dualistic worldview uh what we call they're called man mandaeans the word Manda and the Mandate is the mandelic word for knowledge which is just like for the gnostics the Greek word gnosis for knowledge and so knowledge is Central to their understanding of their faith and part of their gnosis part of their Amanda includes the idea that everything that is good there's a cosmic conflict between good and evil and good comes from the world of light and evil from

(55:11) the world of darkness and so forth so this sort of gnosticism and it's very interesting that this is a surviving Gnostic religion that again goes to Antiquity even if we can't trace it confirm confirm tracing all the way back to for example the Disciples of John the Baptist um there is a mandean book of John um and it talks about Jesus it is I don't have dates on when it was composed I'm not sure if it's known when it's composed my reading of it implies to me that it is uh man day and sometime and definitely post-dating the Christian

(55:51) New Testament and it is mandaean um apologetics an apologetic response to the Christian apologetics so the Christians have depreciated John the Baptist in their gospels and their text and the mandaians have turned that about and are are doing the opposite and depreciating Jesus and and elevating John in this book and so I'll read this to you because I think it's kind of interesting so uh the book of uh John The mandaean Book of John says who told Jesus who told Jesus Christ Mary's son who told Jesus so he came to the

(56:24) Jordan's Banks and told him John perform your baptism over me and pronounce over me the name you pronounce if I become your disciple then I shall mention you in my epistle if I do not become your disciple then erase my name from your scroll John spoke saying to Jesus Christ in Jerusalem you have lied to the Jews and you have deceived men the priests you cut seed off for men and labor and pregnancy from women you loosed the Sabbath that Moses ordained in Jerusalem you lied to them with a horn and played different things with a trumpet

(57:00) there's criticisms of Jesus who you know is doing things in the Christian gospels like healing people or or gathering you know little bits of flecks of Wheat and things like that in other words being much more concerned with the spirit of the law than the letter of the law and so forth and ultimately Christians do not unders do not feel themselves to have been the mosaic laws has to be part of their practice so Christians do not obey the law of Moses and so the mandaians here John the Baptist is opposed to that

(57:37) uh ceasing to honor the law so that goes back and forth and then after the after which the text continues A letter came from Avatar's House John baptized the deceiver in the Jordan bring him down to the Jordan to baptize him bring him up to the bank to confirm him the spirit took the form of a dove and made a cross in the Jordan she made a cross in the Jordan and lifted up the waters in every way she says Jordan you will make me holy and you will make my seven sons holy the Jordan in which the Christ is baptized I have made into a

(58:17) bank I'm sorry a blank of the font the morsel which the Christ takes I have made into a blank of the Eucharist the spring water which the Christ takes I have made into a blank of the Eucharist the turbine which the Christ takes I have made into a blank of the priesthood the staff which the Christ takes I have made into a blank of the Crozier beware for me my brothers beware for me my friends beware for me the Romans who are like offshoots of the cross that they fix on their walls and begin to worship the crucifix beware for me my

(58:51) brothers the god framed by a carpenter if a god framed I'm sorry if a carpenter framed a God then who framed the Carpenter and life is praised and life triumphs so so anyway I don't I am not an expert on this text or this religion in any means but I just hooked the picked that out because here is a John the Baptist and Jesus baptism scene and the spirit descending like a dove but the spirit is is essentially saying very very different things uh Jesus and his followers are seen as deceivers and the spirit essentially has given them all sorts of blank forms and so uh the Roman

(59:31) religion Christianity um is is is simply Hollow and is not is not true in the mandaean apologetic understanding here okay so we'll look at also John in other a couple other places where he has Legacy so John is a character in the Quran and also in Islam so the Quran tells or retells John the Baptist's story of his parents that was taken from Luke so Luke creates um that story I mentioned about Elizabeth the relative of Mary who ends up being the mother of John the Baptist and also her husband the priest Zechariah so that story is retold and

(1:00:14) expanded in the Quran indicating John as a promised son uh and then when he's born and he becomes a kid his reading and his understanding while he's still a child of the scriptures is surpassing the greatest Scholars of all his day uh detail that doesn't exist in Luke's account actually it's Jesus that is um uh speaking as a child speaking with the scholars in the temple uh in that story so that might have been the source of that this idea in the Quran John becomes a prophet with disciples and when Muhammad is on the night vision

(1:00:51) of the Mirage he uh sees Jesus in the second heaven with John the Baptist and so John is one of the prophets then who is revered in Islam before the final Prophet Muhammad other claimed legacies and kind of an interesting story in the Latter-Day Saint tradition so Joseph Smith Jr and Oliver cowdry when they are kind of explaining the development of Mormon priesthood that occurs in the 1830s 1833 and 1835 Latter-Day Saint tradition priesthood is pretty elaborated where there's an aaronic priesthood and a Melchizedek

(1:01:31) priesthood and all sorts of offices that are Deacon teacher priest Elder 70 high priest high priest evangelist high priest bishop and so on Apostle Prophet and so on there's a bishop there's all kinds of different elaborate priesthoods and so it started out much much less complicated and so once once the elaborated version was happening Oliver cowder and Joseph Smith had to kind of retro actively explain where it all came from and they claimed that John the Baptist had appeared as an angel to them in 1829 in Harmony Pennsylvania and conferred upon them the erotic

(1:02:15) priesthood they later said that and they also said that and further angels of Peter James and John gave them the Melchizedek priesthood and so on and as always is the case whenever there's a a Visionary thing like this uh the LDS church which owns the Historic Site actually then will create big bronze literal statues to try to make this spiritual thing actually exist through that kind of artwork so anyway just another interesting um additional tradition within the John the Baptist tradition one of the other things that takes people's has

(1:02:56) captivated people's attention in the story is this idea of John the Baptist's head on a platter so the decapitation story has inspired a number of later Traditions to want to find the head of John the Baptist and so in the Orthodox tradition they found his head on multiple occasions you know the first finding of the head the second finding and so forth um and lots of people actually now have John the Baptist head artifacts so for example at amian Cathedral in France they claim to have this Relic this they do have this Relic which they claim to be John the Baptist's head

(1:03:32) and there is also a church in Rome Sansa Festival in capite which also has John the Baptist head a different head and just to round things out a really important mosque that you might add mosque in Damascus Syria has a third head of John the Baptist in its Shrine to John the Baptist so people have been worried about John the Baptist head and lots of people think that they have done the Baptist's head of course this is not um none of these go back obviously all the way so these are are traditional heads that's what we can say and artifacts

(1:04:11) and so that all together was kind of my summary of who was John the Baptist and kind of how we at kind of the end of this series for this year we'll do more of who was is next year I think we're going to probably uh open up some of the Old Testament and look at some of those figures as well and so I'll get a glass of water and maybe landro will find the questions that people have they're only partly filtered okay so there's a bunch of questions and and and here we are so uh synthetique writes we know that

(1:04:49) manichaeans appropriated Jesus in their religion did they integrate John the Baptist as well so yeah so one of the um so the religion of the manakees the manichaeans led by Manny it was one of these world religions we've had a whole lecture on it that uh essentially the world religion that didn't survive so it um uh spread all across Eurasia at different times and was the state religion in some of the Central Asian countries at different times did they integrate John the Baptist apparently uh apparently so

(1:05:25) so in fact there is some argument that um that mandaeans may have had there may have been a mundane or early mandaean community that influenced and was you know and was a source of information for the manichaeans um and so I don't know the details of that and and that for sure but it does seem like that yes John the Baptist and possibly through the mandaeans even got integrated into manichaeism atheist apostate asks could one call qnostic because of the view of John and the gnosis Sophia Thomas gets labeled

(1:06:12) Gnostic and has similar themes so [Music] um maybe so I think that people can see overlap between um uh the sayings gospel q and the Thomas sayings gospel Thomas does have similar themes and and possibly it's because there's an earlier sayings that have been have had additional layers of redaction and and addition and that some of the more Gnostic or proto-nostic sayings that occur in Thomas are are later versions that a protonastic community has been Gathering and adding into their into their document

(1:06:56) um what I would probably say is that um Sophia here though in the Q document rather than being gnostic is more probably going to be based out of um Jewish wisdom tradition and so uh the Sophia here is um like the wisdom that exists in the Book of Proverbs where wisdom is uh uh is kind of personified as a as a feminine Divine as as as a component of God in the Book of Proverbs and so Sophia here in the uh in this kind of brief little mention that we have in queue maybe more based on that although we can't say for sure because it's only

(1:07:41) you know one one mention there's less though of anything that is really you know like all of the kind of the light and darkness and and and and that kind of thing that that occurs in in Thomas in the form that we have it miscellaneous religion asks do you think early Christians before 590 A.

(1:08:07) D viewed John as related to Jesus biologically or otherwise yes so before 590 is that everybody after they got a hold of the Gospel of Luke and started reading it that's when they assumed that Jesus is a relative of Jesus because the Gospel of Luke says that he is and so Christians fairly quickly understood those texts the canonical texts uh the four gospels especially to be authoritative and even though they weren't aware of of the kind of historicity arguments and the um under the kind of extreme understanding of historicity that we're aware of in modern times they just largely assumed

(1:08:49) that things written in text happened uh and incorrectly assumed that the text therefore were history and so they um it said it in Luke and so they believed it yes uh atheist opposite um do you think rights do you think Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist and took over his movement at John's death some of Jesus's followers were originally John's so yeah so I did present that as as one of the arguments that many scholars suggest and I think that that is myself I I'm I think that that's um uh pretty persuasive and so I would say

(1:09:29) uh Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist I don't know that he took over his movement he certainly launched his own movement after John's death and certainly some of the people that he'd known in when he was a disciple of John would have come along with him um you know not all Scholars agree with that because obviously that um the Bible does not say that Jesus was John's disciple um and in fact it's a pains to try to say the opposite but I think that that is because of the uh concerns of early Christians as opposed to what the actual historical Jesus would have been

(1:10:09) um George asks is there any link between baptism and bathing in the Ganges um I don't think that there is a connection there I think that um the except for in as much as uh that also involves I presume I'm actually not a totally familiar with I know that I know about the bathing in the Ganges but I'm presuming that that is going back to Priestly uh stuff within Hinduism where they are concerning themselves with with ritual Purity and so in that sense it maybe is coming back to that same kind of very ER ancient Origins but it wouldn't have been something that is uh

(1:10:48) related to baptism in other words the uh it would be related to that Priestly under level uh in the in the Proto the Pagan religions that predate Hinduism and predate Judaism uh Palmer McMath writes in mandaean scriptures I forget which John the Baptist has a long list of sayings similar to Q do does their text prove the Q Theory as it's a surviving antique version of Q agree or no and so Palmer I don't think it's a I don't think that any of the Mandan scriptures that I'm aware of at this point are are independent witnesses to cue that'll be

(1:11:33) wonderful if we found that I think certainly the one that I was just reading in the in the uh um The Book of John um it's it's I would say it's dependent on the Christian New Testament so in other words the uh the the midday in scripture is written after the Christian New Testament and is aware of the things the Christian New Testament is saying in order to make a counter argument and so if there are a long list of sayings that are similar to Q in one of the texts the most likely scenario is is that it's then dependent on either Luke or Matthew where where the Q sayings are preserved

(1:12:09) Stephanie ceresi asks would you say Jesus ministry started after John the Baptist's death rather than after his baptism didn't Jesus go into hiding after John the Baptist's death and almost um Miss lazarus's burial so that's how it goes in the in the gospel accounts um so it's a Jesus ministry at least begins after John the Baptist is in prison so but but because we can't we you know we can't um deconstruct this too much the con the confu the confirmation that uh that Herod Antipas executes him uh is had in Josephus and Josephus also goes through

(1:12:50) and points out that there's an imprisonment and so maybe Jesus's Ministry is starting you know as it says in the gospel accounts after John is imprisoned and therefore can't actively be leading a movement right and so people who are still devoted to John are off kind of doing their own movement you know some of his disciples like Jesus are essentially now doing their own movements because um John isn't able to be leading a movement from prison and ultimately he then is actually executed as well um Tracy poster writes uh does Mark imply Herod was looking for Jesus

(1:13:27) because he was claiming to be the resurrected John interesting um I don't think so um I think that I don't think that he actually then goes on a hunt for him or anything like that uh in in this kind of a text it's it's just a way um that the author here Mark is using to compare um kind of the movements that John and Jesus had and then also to kind of tell the story of John's death but it's actually um a Lucan addition to the the later the Easter story the um the trial of Jesus Luke is the one that kind of adds Herod into the story and I don't think that if I recall

(1:14:17) anyway I don't think that that is actually in um Mark's Herod account or I'm sorry passion account but I have to go back and look at that it's interesting uh NADA Kravitz says do you think that some um version of The Lord's Prayer goes back to John the Baptist um I don't necessarily think that I don't know that we have any evidence of that um so I don't know I don't I don't I it's it's kind of uh it does seem kind of central to Jesus's movement as opposed to what we know about John the Baptist movement but what we know about John is is so little but you know just thinking of things like

(1:15:02) um you know by Kingdom Come Jesus is all about the kingdom which I don't necessarily see in anything that we have from the John sayings um Jesus is saying you know give us this day our daily bread Jesus is seemingly leading a mendicant movement to kind of a movement of people that are rejecting uh the world and living life of voluntary poverty John is a kind of a ascetic living off in the desert which is has some similarities to it but it isn't necessarily necessarily the same thing he's living off of the natural produce of the of the Wilderness as opposed to

(1:15:42) begging for food so I don't know that that immediately um just as you've never heard of this idea before I don't know that immediately resonates um as a as a kind of a John the Baptist thing Palmer McMath says as James Tabor noted John the Baptist was killed at a fortress far away from any of his supporters so he didn't write letters so also is Mark's story of this trivial execution historically inaccurate um so there's no yeah there's no so I would say that would defer probably to um Josephus I think in terms of the the execution here of John because it is a

(1:16:26) disinterested source I would say the mark and sources I kind of read it about you know being killed at a banquet and so forth with this it's almost a it's almost like a romance novel um I would not immediately think of that as being a let's say a historically accurate story it sounds to me more like a um a Literary story where Mark the author of Mark doesn't have the details of how um how John was killed he knows that Herod killed him but um uh but wrote that or composed it that way for more uh traumatic effect

(1:17:10) all right do we have any more or sorry they're keeping me busy oh they're keeping there's more questions so landra's gonna forward more questions I just wrote The Palmer McMath one yeah the second one has James Tabor so all right Mike Rogers writes what role did John the Baptist play in the Christianity of the hijaz and the uh rise of the early Islam it's a good question so um so so we've talked um was it just last week we talked about how um uh the kind of Christianity that Muhammad was aware of so Muhammad has relatives and and there are Christians that are living outside of the Roman Empire in

(1:17:58) hijaz in Arabia um that are a different kind of Christian than the Nicene Christians and so these are um and we did talk about last week when we were talking about the gospels of the Hebrews so these are Jewish Christians ebionites or nazarenes or whoever it is who is out there and it's completely possible that you know as these Christians have a different christology they don't see Jesus as the Son of God they see him as a as a prophet um there's you know reason to believe that in that tradition in that kind of uh the poor of Jerusalem the

(1:18:40) James the brother of Jesus tradition um that as Jesus is kind of diminished in their understanding that other leaders like John the Baptist and James and Jude the brother of Jesus that all of them have more Authority in that role and so therefore that we might plausibly assume that that Christianity that Islam is connected with does have a um a more authoritative role for John the Baptist than kind of in the Nicene Christianity that we have in the canonical gospels and so for that reason then John is a more important prophet in Islam than we might expect

(1:19:20) him to be the Dave Kravitz asks what is the relationship between John the Baptist to second temple ideas of Elijah for example Malachi 4 5-6 synoptics suggests he's an incarnation of Elijah and John's gospel has him flatly deny it yeah so um there is an idea like you say for Malachi the in the second temple that part of you know one of these signs of of the times is going to be that Elijah is going to return and Elijah is returned is to be a forerunner of uh the spirit of Elijah coming back is essentially a forerunner of the Messiah

(1:20:05) and that is like you say kind of suggested in the synoptics and then uh not to you know completely denied in the in the fourth gospel um and so what's the relationship to that so I think that they're the different um uh Christian thinkers are are looking at that prophecy and are trying to maybe say well maybe this is fulfilled through John um and Christians have been of different Minds about it ever since because um as you see that there's as you say there are contradictory um uh interpretations of that or understandings of that even within the

(1:20:43) um the four canonical Gospels miscellaneous religion writes uh why don't you think more liturgical songs make reference to John like they do other biblical characters like Moses or Daniel that's interesting yeah um what do you what oh yeah so okay so you don't mean in this case um you mean you mean modern hymns that we would have hymns and spirituals as opposed to ones that are incur included in the in the Bible yeah so um yeah so we just uh we just barely sang what in our congregation the beyond the walls choir recorded on Jordan's Banks the Baptists cry right uh the Baptist call

(1:21:29) but that's the only one you're saying right um I guess because maybe John is a complicated figure so you know we've had you know here this um uh the evangelists are are very nervous about um why does Jesus get need to be baptized by this guy we're baptizing people for uh the remission of sins and Jesus is sinless um and so I think that maybe part of it is that uh he's not in it because his his point in the story is is confusing to people so um Kagan says assuming that Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist why are the gospels uh so quiet about what Jesus did

(1:22:15) before his public Ministry wouldn't Jesus have talked about his life before his public Ministry um no not necessarily but Jesus might have talked about that but it doesn't mean that it would be um that would be remembered uh really we don't have um we really have almost nothing about uh Jesus's background and you wouldn't you wouldn't wouldn't really expect to have very much um because we because like I said we don't have very much he's a person from a um a very low social class background we very rarely have

(1:22:49) um biographical details of almost any ancient figure so most of those have to be invented even for Kings when when um biographers Greek and Hellenistic biographies are trying to make the biography of of a Ptolemy or king or something like that they'll they'll have to invent um stories like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and so on in order to in order to tell the stories of the guy's character so we wouldn't be I don't think that there's a um I don't think that we would be very likely to have those kind of details generally what's preserved is the actual Ministry

(1:23:27) and the actual teachings and then the rest has to be um uh later writers who want to make points about pre-figuring it have to supply or create those details Sean Matheson says was baptism practice in the Jewish religion in Old Testament times and at the time of Jesus so um not as a initiation ritual of in other words becoming um you know like becoming Jewish or something like that um uh I don't think you know so I know that now Mikvah bathing is part of the initiation ritual now that I'm thinking about it but I don't think that

(1:24:12) um it's certainly not practiced the way John the Baptist is practicing it he is repurposing um ritual bathing Mikvah bathing which is done for um ritual Purity and he's doing that by making it kind of a one-time spiritual practice that is not about becoming ritually unclean which is not about Sin it is about coming into contact with things and making yourself ritually pure in order to offer sacrifices or to do certain kinds of activities he's changing that in spiritual holy spiritualizing it making it be about sin or separation from God and instead trying to have a rebirth

(1:24:54) into a new relationship with God and so it is based it's like in that sense the Passover and so the Passover is something that is practiced in second temple Judaism it becomes a common and popular practice in the maccabean the hasmonian era um and so that's practiced but then the Last Supper which is at taking place at a Passover repurposes this annual ritual that exists in second temple Judaism as a more frequent Sacrament in Christianity communion right so it's like taking things that are existing in the context and and giving them new

(1:25:36) purpose and meaning atheist apostate says Matthew and Luke may be reliant on Josephus but wasn't marked earlier than that um yeah I don't know that I was maybe that they were relying I think that Josephus here yeah Mark is an earlier uh writing they have to look exactly when Josephus wrote the uh his part on the John the Baptist there in that he was writing multiple texts over the course of a while but I think that it's an independent witness so they're not dependent on Josephus and I don't think that Matthew and Luke are also

(1:26:14) even dependent on Josephus they're going to be dependent on Mark not on Josephus uh Mikey says do you think uh Jesus claimed Jesus's claims of being a messiah or convincing because of his relation to John John possibly being an earlier Messiah if you assume they were related so I don't think that the historical Jesus is related to the historical John I also not sure that the historical Jesus did claim to be a messiah so Jesus in scripture claims very much to be the Messiah but this are texts that are written by Christians

(1:26:54) many decades later who already testify and already believe Jesus is the Messiah and their point of writing these is to to share that testimony and to convince others of that claim so um so that may not be something that even that might not be something that goes back to the historical Jesus um you have to delete some of these slander after Mikey okay so atheist apostate rights could it be that information on John is limited because Christians deliberately tried to lessen his importance yes I think that that is the case it could be so um he

(1:27:35) definitely gets in there as we see as the gospels get later and later and later they try to minimize uh what they're saying about him and certainly even take out the baptism of Jesus part of it if they can and it may well be um that they are also limiting the number of teachings and other sayings that are that are happening um if we had if it were to turn out that the mandaeans really do Trace their way all the way back and if there's a full study of all their writings and we actually find texts that go back which I think is unlikely um it would be very interesting to find

(1:28:12) that but I think it's more likely to be the case as with the Samaritans who are ancient people who are descendants from the northern we're going to talk about this next week with the last 10 tribes they are descended from those 10 tribes but it does look like their Torah although it's different from or has different variations from the Judean tour of the Jewish Torah that it's it's not an independent witness it's one that they are writing in you know they've written in response to the fact that the their opponents have one of these and they have their own now and so I think that that's going to also have been

(1:28:54) proved to be the case with the mandaeans so unfortunately we don't have um any more outside of what the Christians well outside of what your enemies are saying not your enemies but anyway your rivals in terms of authority your sort of enemies in terms of an independent John movement um you don't we don't have it's just like what we have when we don't have the uh actual ebionite text you just have the uh the texts of the people who don't agree with the evianites right so miscellaneous religion says uh

(1:29:23) when the New Testament says locusts do they mean insects or do they mean some plant so so I haven't read I haven't read any um like detailed discussion of that or notes of that I'm presuming when it says Locus it means insects we saw uh we saw in the uh the Jewish gospels just last week that that is changed in in some of the gospels of the Hebrews where because the EB night sect or one of the sects anyway were vegetarians um they they had John eating like essentially a mana-like cake instead of made from a plant instead of eating animals but I think in the canonical

(1:30:08) gospels it's Locus and I think it means insects uh nadav Kravitz says if Jesus Will baptize with fire does not not mean uh that the idea represents a fairly high christology of Jesus as the coming judge um so not necessarily um Jesus Will baptize with fire um is I think generally interpreted as meaning uh essentially the confirmation of the Holy Spirit the spirit is being equated here with fire and so you know we have the the two or twin sacramental rituals of Christianity you have the the baptism of water which is being born

(1:30:52) again to New Life in Christendom which is baptism that kind of baptism immersion baptism that John is doing and then you have the baptism with fire which is to say the confirmation of of the Holy Spirit the fire fiery Spirit kind of appears on Pentecost and so on and then you're speaking with um with Revelation and so forth so I don't think that um I don't think the baptism with fire reference you can interpret it that way as uh you know the world is going to get destroyed by fire or something like that

(1:31:22) um there is other there are other Jesus sayings you know I I you know I don't come you know the famous one that that gets quoted for Matthew I don't come to bring peace but with a sword and I I wish the world were already lit on fire you know you know I come to bring fire and I wish it were already a flame is the is the related saying and Thomas kind of thing so in that sense it could be it could be related to that and you could make that argument um jlm310 writes was there a difference between new religious leaders and political revolutionaries in Judea what

(1:31:59) would be the Roman orientation to leaders like John and how might that have constrained his message um I think I think the Romans especially considering John is is running around in the perea just to say the middle of nowhere where the Romans don't really care the Romans I think don't particularly care about messages like that and and given the fact that he's running around within um a client Kingdom you know so an area that is ruled by Herod Antipas the tetrarch I think the Romans largely would have taken essentially no notice to John when stories about

(1:32:45) um these sort of uh contrary or uh Innovative independent religious figures come up in Josephus the people that are more concerned with them tend to be the local Jewish political and religious leaders and so we have it's not the Romans that want to kill John the Baptist it's it's Herod Antipas who was worried about somebody who has more popularity with the Jewish people that he's ruling over and the same thing happens with James the brother of Jesus so when the Roman Administration is temporarily in advance the the high priest takes the opportunity to just go ahead and kill

(1:33:25) James the brother of Jesus according to Josephus as a as a person who is a thorn in his side as opposed to anything that the Romans care about the Romans care if you actually do have a a revolution um like for example the Jews do you know when you have the first great Jewish Revolt when that is happening when uh when Mark is writing his text and the Romans ultimately send all their Legions or a third of their Legions or whatever and destroy everything um that's what they care about and they do the same thing with the later on the

(1:33:58) second Jewish revolta Park so um claims of bar hokba is not the the thing the Romans are especially caring about it's the fact that he um overthrows Roman Authority he starts minting coins in his own name he takes control of of the territory and raises armies and fights against Legions that's what they care about um Edgard Edgardo says was baptism in those moments what was baptism in those moments of John the Baptist is there any reps reference to baptism in ancient Jewish Traditions so I've answered that

(1:34:33) a few times so I've just talked about again how there is an earlier ritual Mikvah bathing in in Jewish tradition and that John may have had a bunch of connections to that if he for example does have these connections with the Jewish sect of the essenes that was based nearby where we think John was so at that qumran community and that involves ritual purification so you have come into contact with something that makes you ritually unclean you you have to wash in a ritual way it doesn't necessarily make you clean in a physical

(1:35:09) sense but it makes you clean ritually according to the law so