The Mysteries of John the Baptist

by Tobias Churton

  The theological John bypasses such concerns completely.

  Indeed, the theological John muddies the issues even more. For if we consider “theological John” as a later Christian reflection on “historical John,” we may be inclined to read John’s jibe about God being able to make inheritors of the Abrahamic promise at will—even, as he declares, out of common stones—less as a taunt to the pride of Judeans or Herodians, and more as a future-seeing encouragement to Gentile Christians. If God wills it, Gentiles can become, as from the olive stone, a new tree, a holy plantation of the covenanted faithful. Gentiles need not be disturbed by any Jewish taunt that being uncircumcised, they have no right to the promises of Abraham and the prophets on account of the Gentile Church’s rejecting, at Paul’s instruction, adherence to the Torah or Jewish Law as the means to righteousness.

  When brought into the Christian theological perspective, John’s attack on the rulers of his time may be interpreted, then, not only as a condemnation of those who reject Jesus as Messiah, but as a prophecy of the Gentiles receiving the first fruits of God’s salvation. It should be remarked that this interpretation may not have been in the mind of the writer of Matthew. Matthew’s original audience was probably Jewish-Christian and respected the Law, but Matthew soon circulated throughout the Gentile Church. Among Gentiles, it was doubtless interpreted to support the widespread Pauline anticircumcision position in Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, North Africa, and beyond, even unto today.

  In short, the Gospels fail to give us the signifying political context in which the events they describe take place. Fail, however, is arguably the wrong word, since there is no sign that conveying political realities was ever an intention of the gospel writers in the first place. The Gospels do not share the priorities of the historian—and vice versa. While such a riposte may be employed to defend the Gospels from the charge of fabrication, whether of events or words, it is not altogether certain that the Gospels’ lack of conventional historical meat is altogether innocent, as we shall see. It is also doubtful whether the gospel writers—and certainly their readers and hearers—understood the nature of the political situation in Palestine during the period of John the Baptist’s life anyway. A cataclysm of incalculable proportions had occurred between the time of those events and the sixty-year period in which, in the main, the canonical Gospels came into circulation (70–130 CE).

  So where can we find the “historical John?”

  JOSEPHUS

  If we had asked the Umayyad Caliph al-Walid I (668–715 CE) where we could find the historical John, he would doubtless have pointed us in the direction of his city, Damascus, having informed us with some pride that the head of Yahya (as John is known to Arabs) had lately been rescued from the earth where destruction of the prophet’s former resting place had consigned it. It was now placed in a Damascene pillar whose capital was carved into the form of a basket of palm leaves. That head was the most significant part of the historical John, and thanks to the veneration in which Yahya was, and is, held in the Qur’an, pious Muslims preserved it. The grave of Yahya Nabi (prophet) may be seen today in a shrine constructed in the Ummayad mosque in Damascus. John’s head, however, is reported to have suffered removal to Aleppo’s Citadel in the eleventh century. It was subsequently secreted in the congregational mosque’s pulpit, whence blessings accrued to the faithful, to preserve it from Mongol hordes. Not so, according to the guardians of Amiens Cathedral, in France. They claim their head to be the true one, as do other places that claim the Baptist’s head with all the fervor, if not the intent, of Salome.

  What we want is a fairly objective account of John the Baptist, written by someone who was not prejudiced either for or against John, an account preferably written by a contemporary. Such a document, I am afraid, cannot be supplied. The only near-contemporary historian who refers to John in the context of Jewish history’s relation to the real world was born about a year after John’s death. Still, that is pretty close, if we are not expecting an eyewitness report. Flavius Josephus (37–100 CE) wrote of John in his monumental collection of books called Antiquities of the Jews. The context for Josephus’s reference to John is his account of the political calamities that befell Herod the Great’s son Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea (4 BCE–39 CE). Josephus’s interest is Herod Antipas, not John.

  Josephus’s value as an historian must be weighed principally according to whether he was prejudiced for, or against, the Baptist. Discerning any bias in this regard is not easy, for Josephus does not always betray his favorites, though he makes his antipathies clear enough, in the main. Josephus wrote very well about politics because he was a politically minded person, though he sought the truth as a matter of record. Josephus, it is important to recognize, was a Jewish historian who left his country to live in the imperial Roman household in Rome, devoting his time to trying to make Romans understand Jews and to make them see and respect what he considered the best of what Jewish history and traditions had to offer. A Jewish zealot, that is to say a person prepared to kill Roman soldiers and be killed in defense of his patriotic and religious ideals, would have regarded Josephus, for all his patriotic history writing, as a quisling. Let us take a first draught from what Josephus has to say about John:

  Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s [that is, Herod Antipas’s] army came from God, 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, both as to righteousness toward 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 of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now when [many] others came in crowds about him, for they were very greatly moved [or pleased] by hearing his words, Herod, 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 any thing he should advise), 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 was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death. Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God’s displeasure to him. (Antiquities, Book 18, ch. 5:2; Whiston’s translation)

  The first great revolt of Jews against the Romans began in 66 CE at Caesarea, thirty years after the events described in the quotation above. Josephus took part in the revolt. He was a commander of the Galilean defense against the Roman X (tenth) Legion. But Josephus (the Roman form of “Yusef ” or Joseph) soon concluded that neither his own nor his country’s best interests were served by protracting the struggle. After escaping ignominiously from a collective suicide pact, Josephus surrendered himself to the Roman General Vespasian, whom he extravagantly declared to be the man prophecy announced as the great ruler who would come out of the East, that is, an imperial savior. Vespasian, founder of the Flavian dynasty from which “Flavius” Josephus took his new name, was made emperor in 69 CE. Josephus backed a winner.

  This all makes Josephus’s own position in relation to the figure of the John that we think we know somewhat ambiguous. We can, I think, be sure that neither John the Baptist nor any other Jew back in the 30s would ever have come to the conclusion that “the Christ” (Greek translation of the “messiah” or “anointed one”) was going to be a Roman general. However, Josephus’s profound suspicion of messianic Judaism and its fatal web of enthusiastic zealots were shared in the 30s by the ruling priestly party of Sadducees and their patrons, the Herodians.

  One thing we can probably say about John the Baptist with some assurance is that he was in favor of some kind of messi
anic solution to Jewish problems both religious and political, and one thing we can definitely say about Josephus is that the historian regarded the downfall of his country at the hands of the Romans as the sorry achievement of misguided Jews he calls “bandits,” who believed themselves to be the messiah’s advance guard. Josephus could see where violent extremism led and, in the end, was proved right.

  We have then a slight problem. While Josephus’s treatment of John recognizes that John was a thorn in the side of Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee, Josephus says nothing of what the Gospels give us to suppose was John’s fiery enthusiasm for a messianic solution—though not necessarily of the zealot, military kind. Now Josephus was never slow in accusing individuals of his country of intemperate fanaticism. He was convinced, and wished to convince the Romans, that his country’s woes, and those of the Romans with respect to them, were the result of a sect of revolutionary danger-men who brought ruin to the greater good of the Jewish people, whatever religious motives might be claimed in such men’s defense. Josephus knew the difference between a “wrecker” and a moderate, and he wanted his Gentile readers to know this too. John the Baptist is described by Josephus in terms that would make a centurion relax his sword grip.

  And yet, according to Josephus, something about John’s following upset Galilee’s old ruler, Herod Antipas, described by Josephus, as if by way of partial explanation, as a man of a “suspicious temper.” The implication is that the suspicions might have been unfounded, but this is not stated definitively. We may suppose perhaps that Josephus simply did not know enough about John’s large following to come to any conclusion that he could make sense of, either for himself or his readers.

  Or maybe he knew only too well.

  So, while all of this raises innumerable problems for understanding and interpreting any truth about what Josephus has to say about John, we can at least answer in the negative the question, Was Josephus prejudiced against John? As to whether Josephus favored John, we are not on such firm ground. Unless Josephus, for reasons either of his own or of his patrons the Flavian dynasty, was trying to rewrite history, we can only say that Josephus recognized John as a zaddik, that is, a righteous man. This must mean, given all else that Josephus has to say about his people and their beliefs, that he respected John. He tells us that “the Jews” believed God was displeased at the activities of Herod Antipas with regard to his executing a righteous man, but the historian does not commit himself. This may simply have been political horse sense.

  The war to which Josephus’s passage refers was fought between Herod Antipas and King Aretas of Nabataea. The war was launched with the explicit backing of the Emperor Tiberius. Tiberius demanded Herod return from the war with nothing less than Aretas’s head. Aretas had been a longtime and very expensive annoyance to Roman interests in the region south and east of Sinai.

  Josephus would have been on shaky ground with his Roman readers if he had explicitly backed the idea that a war whose loss was detrimental to the Roman interest had foundered as a result of the Jewish God’s favor for a Judean baptist. Josephus’s solution to this little dilemma was very smart, I think. He implied in his account that Herod’s war with Aretas might have succeeded but for Herod’s persecution of John. Since Herod Antipas was deprived of his position by Roman authority and exiled to Gaul in 39 CE, Josephus was risking nothing by suggesting that Herod Antipas was not always the wisest of rulers, or that he did not always fully discharge his duties to his ultimate political master. We may then conclude that Josephus, as far as the account as we have it goes, could find nothing against John. Josephus then is neither particularly pro nor particularly anti. In our terms, Josephus must appear fairly objective where John is concerned.

  Having established a reasonable basis for thinking Josephus’s account is a fair lozenge of history as far as it goes, what do we learn from it about John?

  We learn that John was a good man, meaning a zaddik or righteous man, someone separated from birth for God’s service, a keeper of the Law, a holy man. He preached to his people. When Josephus says John called on his hearers to “exercise virtue” we should recall he was writing to people of Roman- or Greek-speaking background. The word virtue translated back into its Jewish setting could cover a large range of teaching and spiritual instruction, from apocalyptic warnings to ethical social-justice injunctions in the spirit of the prophets Amos and Hosea. Virtue, to a Roman, meant inner strength and vital or virile force, the healthy root of an integrity that could be reflected in the virtuous Roman’s social relations and public standing. Virtue also involved the protection of one’s family and family name, the courage to face the facts of life, a readiness to die if necessary, to be philosophical, to be impartial in justice, to honor and serve Rome and its ruler, to obey the law, to refrain from avarice or overindulgence in bodily comfort, to live reasonably sparely, and, importantly, to honor the word given. Josephus identifies John for his readers as an upright, honorable man, a patrician, even though he did things that might appear strange, at first sight, to Roman citizens.

  What would Josephus have meant by the “piety toward God” that John’s hearers must demonstrate? The temptation is to go to the Gospels for elucidation, but if we do, we should bear in mind that we enter thereby a theological minefield. We may fairly say, but only in general, that John demanded that his people honor the spirit and the letter of the Law, as the prophets continually recommended, refusing to hold any idol of alien god in reverence, but to love God, obey his commandments, and seek the will of God in all things. Jews should commit themselves to the claims of zedek, righteousness toward one’s fellows, and hesed, pious devotion to God. All of those things, of course, had strong implications as to how to regard the oppressive Roman occupation of Judea.

  That Herod “slew him [John], who was a good man” can only really mean that, as an historian, Josephus wants posterity to know that John did not personally deserve the punishment; it was meted out for no wrongdoing on his part. While John was not a criminal, it may have been politically necessary for Herod to have John executed, though a question of honor might hang over such an act.

  Josephus’s treatment of John’s baptism is interesting. The Gospels connect John’s baptizing with the general idea that it was “unto repentance.” This probably means that his baptism was the definitive act of repentance, after which, backsliding would involve a sin inviting judgment. There is certainly no conception of baptism representing being “born again” or anything like it. Josephus wants it to be known that John’s baptism was not any form of mystery-initiation, something with which some of his readers would have been familiar. Of course, if Josephus had come by some of his information on John from Pauline Christian sources, it would have been made clear to him anyway that John’s baptism was “only of water.” If such was the source of his information on John’s baptism, it is interesting to see what he makes of the idea.

  Josephus emphasizes that John’s baptism was for washing of the body. He does not mean that it was simply a bath to keep clean. The Romans knew all about baths, of course, though Josephus might well have wished to evoke that familiar concept of civilized bathing to allay any suspicion about John’s being a “baptist.” What, a Roman would have asked, is a “baptist” anyway? Josephus knows a lot more about it, judging from his own autobiographical account of his youthful enthusiasm for asceticism under his “guru,” one Banus (who bathed religiously), but he is determined not to distract his readers with complexities, subtleties, and ambiguities. As far as Josephus understands John’s activities, the idea is implied, I think, that as the soul had already been cleansed by a change of heart and conduct, the body also required some kind of symbolic, or frankly, actual, cleansing: a fresh start to a new day, both actually and symbolically, a manifest sign. Repentance “washes” accreted spiritual pollution away; washing symbolizes that. Clean, one can face judgment with confidence. Josephus does not go into the symbolism. However, since Josephus shows elsewhere in his books a fami
liarity with the Platonist and Pythagorean idea that the physical body is a kind of “tomb of the soul,” and also knows of an extensive party of Jews who shared this belief (the Essenes), there may be more to the idea of a baptism “for the purification of the body” than simply a sign of a moral determination to keep the body free from pollutions, such as fornication, gluttony, drunkenness, and touching things Jews traditionally held to be unclean, such as pigs, the dead, lepers, menstruating women, food that had been offered to idols, foreign gods, bloody meat, and so on.

  The idea of mortification may have been involved in John’s baptism—and in Josephus’s thinking about it—since cold water stills the passions (of most people) and braces the person into alertness. If the Gospels reflect historical fact, then alertness, endurance, and patient watching were signal duties of the baptized penitent. Cold water, we know from later accounts of cultic bathers during the next three centuries, was frequently used to still the sexual urges of religious bathing sects whose activities may or may not have been derived from John’s activities, or those of his many followers.

  Josephus next makes it clear that John had oratorical skills. People liked listening to him; his voice made them curious. He was an attraction. Josephus would not want to say much more about this, lest his readers move naturally to the conclusion that John was a magician who by magic of voice seduced his followers, putting them under a spell, making them do things they would not otherwise do. Romans were wary of magicians; so was Josephus, who blamed “false prophets” and sorcerers for many of his country’s woes. Josephus would like his Roman readers rather to think of John in terms of an orator, a learned and responsible speaker. His words moved people, his presence authoritative. John could command great numbers, sufficient anyway to “put the wind up” the Tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas. This latter fact certainly begs many questions.