The Mysteries of John the Baptist

by Tobias Churton

  The Community Rule states (1QS III, 6–9):

  For it is through the spirit of true counsel concerning the ways of man that all his sins shall be expiated. . . . He shall be cleansed from all his sins by the spirit of holiness . . . and his iniquity shall be expiated by the spirit of uprightness and humility. And when his flesh is sprinkled with purifying water and sanctified by cleansing water, it shall be made clean by the humble submission of his soul to all the precepts of God.

  If I had indicated that this had been written by a “father of the church,” few would find cause to object. The point to be appreciated here is that there is no reason to think that John’s baptism was not integral to a turning again of the heart to God’s Law. The Law was holy and adherence to it brought purification, which purification opened the inner being to the “spirit of holiness” or the holy spirit. As Genesis states of God’s creation, “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2).

  Paul’s hostility to this established Zadokite doctrine was that he had experience wherein Gentiles who did not follow every detail of the Law were nonetheless, after his baptism, exhibiting signs of holy spirit. The Zadokite response was that no one who disobeyed the Law could be considered holy. Paul countered that even while a Jew might be properly bound to the Law, this did not apply to converts after Jesus. Jesus’s sacrifice had generated a new covenant. That had been God’s long-term intention: the very mystery hidden in the prophecies from the beginnings of time. Besides, Paul argued, no one could be holy by the Law; Man’s inherited share in the “sin of Adam” prevented it. The Law put men in condemnation; it did not free them. A new age had come. When it came to the final judgment, only faith in a spiritual communion with Jesus would serve as defense and ground for acquittal. Salvation was an act of grace; it could not be earned by adhering to the rules. Even Jesus, goaded Paul, since he was hanged on a “tree,” which the Law declared a curse, was condemned by it. God accepted faith in Jesus’s sacrifice as sufficient defense from damnation in the last judgment, as God had accepted Abraham’s faith before Moses brought the Law.

  The two sides were irreconcilable.

  Theologians and rabbis may still discuss the merits or otherwise of the opposing cases, but what is important to this investigation is to recognize that Paul’s sundering of God’s holy spirit from John’s baptism, when that baptism is seen in its broader historical context, appears nothing less than a caricature of it—much in keeping with Paul’s and much of the canonical gospels’ extreme attack on the Torah as the instrument of salvation—a few passages in the Gospels about not a jot or tittle being taken from the Law being stand-out exceptions to the rule.

  It is also important to recognize that long before Mark wrote his Gospel applying Isaiah 40:3 to John the Baptist, the New Covenanters had already taken Isaiah 40:3’s “call” to go into the wilderness and make a path straight for the Lord, as their special guide and inspiration. That was why they established camps in the wilderness:

  And when these become members of the Community in Israel according to all these rules, they shall separate from the habitation of unjust men and shall go into the wilderness to prepare there the way of Him; as it is written, Prepare in the wilderness the way of . . . make straight in the desert a path for our God [Isaiah 40:3]. This path is the study of the Law, which He commanded by the hand of Moses, that they may do according to all that has been revealed from age to age, and as the Prophets have revealed by His Holy Spirit. (The “Community Rule,” 1QS VIII, 10–15; Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, p. 109)

  Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise (The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, Penguin, 1993) have examined the fragmentary evidence surrounding the Rule and other key works of the New Covenanters’ literary and liturgical material and have drawn attention to remarkable parallels of language between the Scrolls and the New Testament. One fragment of text from the Rule (4Q 286–287, Manuscript B, Fragment 3 [13]) bears the intriguing words, “The Holy Spirit [sett]led upon His Messiah”—which, if nothing else, shows that the idea of the Holy Spirit descending at John’s baptism of Jesus has some authentic extra-testamental messianic background to it.

  What Eisenman calls a “Baptismal Hymn” and what Vermes refers to less suggestively as “a purificatory ritual and prayers” show that a possible model for John “the Baptist’s” activities can be found among the New Covenanters. Were the stakes not so high, most historians would, I think, on the strength of the evidence, be inclined to suspect that if John was not himself of the camp of the New Covenant, then he had, or had had, something to do with the New Covenanter tradition, and was therefore highly unlikely to have echoed the Pauline critique of his baptismal activities, as Mark has him do.

  The call to repentance must have meant a call to honor the Law in spirit and in conduct. Otherwise, there would have been no concrete thing to turn again to, since God’s will was approached through the observance of the Law in faith of him who had long saved his People, when they returned to him.

  John the Baptist himself would not have taken his cue from Paul. Mark undoubtedly did, believing Paul to be an instrument in the Lord’s salvation. The following quotation from Dead Sea Scrolls fragments may give us an idea of the words that the historical John might have uttered over the penitent receiving baptism at his hand:

  . . . and thou shalt purify us according [to] Thy precepts of holiness for the first, the third and the seventh . . . by the truth of Thy covenant . . . to be purified from the impurity of . . . And then he shall enter the water. . . . Answering, he [presumably the penitent] shall say, “Blessed a[rt Thou, God of Israel] for from the utterance of Thy mouth is declared the purity of all: to be separated from all the guilty men of uncleanness who cannot be purified by the purifying water . . .” (4Q414, Fragment 2 ii 3–4, Vermes, Scrolls, p. 398)

  The water of purification is holy water. In fact, Mark’s Gospel contains a no-less-potent endorsement of the heavenly character of John’s baptism. Indeed, it is so strongly linked to Jesus’s own logia that the saying occurs also in Matthew and even Luke, despite the inference that, read carefully, Jesus’s challenge to the chief priests, elders, and scribes absolutely flattens Pauline objections to John’s baptism:

  And they [Jesus and his disciples] come again to Jerusalem: and as he [Jesus] was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? Answer me. And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? But if we shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed. And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things. (Mark 11:27–33; Luke 20:1–8)

  Jesus and John receive authority from the same source; who dare question it?

  MATTHEW’S GOSPEL

  Matthew’s Gospel is usually dated ca. 80–100 CE. Scholarship generally concludes that its primary audience was Syrian-Jewish Christian and that it may have been composed in Edessa. It is believed that Matthew probably had either a copy of Mark to work with or a source common to both.

  Where the Baptist is concerned, Matthew deviates from Mark straightaway.

  After the baptism, Mark has Jesus going straight into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan and to live among the wild beasts while being cared for by “angels.” We then hear that John has been put in prison, whereupon Jesus enters Galilee, saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Matthew 3:2 makes this latter conviction the opening salvo of John the Baptist, not Jesus, who, preaching in the Judean wilderness, says, “Repen
t ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias [Isaiah], saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Matthew has John personally identify himself with the voice in the wilderness. Mark had the quote, then the appearance of John. The reader was supposed to link them together. Matthew seals the identification.

  Matthew makes it clear that the “Repent” message of Jesus is identical to that of John, who utters it first. Matthew’s John is closer to Jesus than Mark’s. For example, when Jesus, after the Temptation in the wilderness, goes into Galilee, it is because he has heard of what happened to John: “Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee” (Matthew 4:12)—and it is from that time that he began to preach the same message as John (Matthew 4:17). John’s arrest is causative of Jesus starting to preach. Mark 1:14 associates the two events, but only chronologically. These may seem fine points but they are suggestive. Jesus moves with reference to John: the operation is a concerted operation. This closeness is manifested again in Matthew’s interesting conversation between John and Jesus, which takes place after John’s aforementioned speech, aimed at Pharisees and Sadducees, about God being able to make children of Abraham from the stones, and that even those with deep roots would be torn up and burnt if they failed to bring “fruits of repentance” at the coming apocalyptic harvest, or, more prosaically, imminent Feast of Weeks.

  Matthew has Jesus coming all the way from Galilee to be baptized by John. His arrival occurs just after John declares that “he that cometh after me is mightier than I.” We then get the comment about John’s unworthiness to “bear” his shoes (slightly less forceful than Mark’s reference to undoing the coming-one’s shoe “latchet”) and the proclamation that the one who is coming will “baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (3:11). Mark, note, does not have the telling “fire” reference.

  This fire might be a reference to the Pentecost story of the Holy Spirit appearing like flames on the apostles’ heads, or it could refer to the judgment of the previous verse (3:10) when the bad tree is “cast into the fire.” The latter seems most appropriate, given the context. Elijah was known for calling down fire from heaven on God’s enemies. Thus Matthew’s “baptism of the Holy Ghost” that is greater than John’s of water may not have that intimate, philanthropic flavor of Mark: quite the opposite. The Holy Baptism of fire would truly sort out the wheat from the chaff! In other words, the baptism of the Holy Ghost looks more in Matthew like a metaphor, not for “Paul’s baptism” but for the coming judgment itself, the rain of fire and the waters of destruction, from which the sole protection would be, presumably, the redeemed character of the baptized penitent.

  Nevertheless, while the source detail suggests that it is God’s judgment that is coming, the arrival of Jesus from Galilee appears to be the intended fulfillment of John’s prophecy concerning “he that cometh after me.” This does seem a little forced on the material. John prophesies, then, hey presto! Jesus appears.

  The problem lies in that phrase about the one who is coming after “me.” As we have seen, the original prophecies refer to God, the Lord. However, Jesus can only “come after” John with some forced narrative; that is, John makes the speech, then, afterward, Jesus comes from Galilee. Furthermore, the reader or hearer probably knows that John the Baptist died, and afterward, Jesus’s church began. Jesus appears to “come after.” And Matthew’s Gospel seems to want you to get that message because Matthew tells us later that John was cast into prison and “from that time Jesus began to preach” (4:17). This all chimes in neatly with the idea—or propaganda—of John as herald of Jesus.

  However, apart from the fact that Jesus and John were probably contemporaries, and one did not “come after” the other, it would seem from the nature of their dialogue in Matthew 3:14–15 that the two may have known one another. John may have been surprised to learn his days on Earth were numbered, as indeed were Jesus’s: maybe only a year between them, as we shall see.

  Jesus comes to be baptized, but John forbids it, saying, apparently in the sense of the water/Holy Ghost duality that “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” There is no hint that John has suddenly recognized the Messiah, which, one would think, would be a pretty astonishing thing to happen to him. Jesus says, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.” Having heard this curious statement, John duly “suffered him” and did the business (3:15). According to Jesus’s statement about righteousness (zedek), Jesus wants to stand within the rules prescribed for the righteous. There was, please note, no prophecy that “the messenger” should baptize the Messiah. But there does appear to have been an expectation among New Covenanters that the Holy Spirit would descend on the Messiah. And this is what happens next in Matthew’s account. According to this line, Jesus identifies himself with the whole righteous community as a prelude to his being anointed by the Holy Spirit.

  There was no prophecy of the messenger baptizing the Messiah, no, but there was certainly a prophecy applied to the Messiah that the spirit of the Lord would “rest upon him.” We have seen this very prophecy in the New Covenant baptism hymn being slightly reworded to apply to “His Messiah.” The prophecy is Isaiah 11:1–2:

  And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

  And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.

  If there is any historical actuality in Matthew’s account, it would appear that John and Jesus were, if only for a time, working together, perhaps consciously, to enact the prophecies. The descent of the Holy Spirit, its “resting” on the promised leader, has little to do with the Pauline “baptism of the Holy Ghost.” Were it otherwise, every baptized Christian would be a messiah, but it does have much to do with the one who must accomplish the work of the Lord, which work is clear from the picture in the verses of Isaiah preceding those quoted above. These verses seem to have directly informed the content and flavor of the speech given to John the Baptist concerning the apocalyptic harvest:

  Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, shall lop the bough with terror: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled. And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one. (Isaiah 10:33–34)

  A mighty one would come. But who would it be?

  LUKE

  Luke’s Gospel is in no doubt. The mighty one is Jesus, Lord and Savior. “Luke” or Luke’s writer was a 100-percent “Paul man.” His Gospel bears all the signs of a Pauline education in Jewish history. Whether the author received his instruction from Paul himself is uncertain. The famous “we” passages in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles (such as 16:11) suggest he may have traveled with Paul for a time (ca. 58 CE). In that case the general dating spectrum for his Gospel of 80–130 CE seems a trifle late at the top end. However, the Gospel may have been linked to a Luke who knew Paul, whence the first-person plural material derived. The complete work may have been composed by someone else.

  Luke is usually dated after Matthew for he appears to use Matthew’s Gospel where it suits his purposes. Luke offers lots more information about John the Baptist than Matthew does. He may have got this inside information from Paul. Paul was well informed about affairs in and around the Temple, in which world, we assume, John was brought up. We receive a fascinating account of John’s birth and his family. We learn that John was related to Jesus and that their mothers were friends. We shall explore this startling aspect of Luke’s John in chapter 6.

  Luke gives us some straight history too. He tells us that it was in the fifteenth year of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (29 CE) that John, the only son of priest Zacharias, received the “word of God,” being in the wilderness at the time; in Jerusalem, Luke tells us,
Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. Was John steering clear of high priestly pollution? Luke gives us the now-standard quotation from Isaiah 40:3 about the voice in the wilderness. He takes Matthew’s speech about the messianic harvest and the stones of Abraham. He aims it, however, not at Pharisees and Sadducees, as Matthew does (Sadducees were hard to come by after the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE), but rather at the “multitude” who have come to John for baptism. This seems a bit rich; John has, after all, called the people to repent. Furthermore, and for no apparent reason, John calls the undifferentiated multitude a “generation of vipers.” Who, he asks, has warned them to flee the wrath to come? Who indeed? So, having come, they should bring forth “fruits worthy of repentance” and humble themselves utterly.