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What Was John The Baptist Up To?
By Administrator | December 8, 2007
by Rev. Scott Elliott
There are a number of stories of John’s baptisms in the New Testament (Matt 3:1-17; Mk 1:2-12; Lk 3:2-21; Jn 1:19-35), but, this week’s Lectionary reading is the one from Matthew which reads (NRSV):
John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” . . . [T]he people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. . . . [John said] “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire. I will baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful that I is coming after me . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ” (Matt 3: 1, 5-6, 10, 11).
In this selection from Matthew we get a glimpse of most of what John is believed to have been doing and preaching.1 We read that John was calling Jews to the desert wilderness to confess their sins and come into the river Jordan to be immersed by John as a baptism of repentance of sins and to be cleansed and initiated into the group bearing “good fruit” in anticipation of the Coming One who would bring about an apocalyptic eschaton.
The Jesus Seminar took an extensive look at all New Testament sources and extra canonical writings on John and after discussion and voting on the historicity of these records, summarized John’s:
baptism []as probably a form of a Jewish immersion rite and . . . probably performed in flowing water, such as the water of the Jordan River. No doubt John’s baptism was understood to be an expression of repentance by those who accepted it. His baptism was also probably understood to mediate God’s forgiveness, to purify from uncleanness, and to serve as an initiation into a sectarian movement. By implication, therefore, John’s baptism – in all likelihood– was understood to be a protest against the temple in Jerusalem, for his baptisms provided an alternative to functions of the temple. 2
John’s baptisms, like those in his Jewish heritage served to change the status of the unclean who came before him, by making them clean. The unclean who came before John included common folk 3 and among them were expendables and outcasts (like the many who came to and followed Jesus 4). To all these folks John was “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”(Mk 1:4).5
But John was doing more than proclaiming and baptizing for forgiveness of sins, he was serving as a mediator of that forgiveness.6
As such, John’s baptism is significantly parallel to atoning sacrifices of the temple cult which also mediated God’s forgiveness to the person offering the sacrifice, thus, John’s baptism provided an alternative to the temple sacrificial system as a means of forgiveness.7
The temple was an institution corrupted by Rome and the temple elite, including the priests, worked for and with Rome in oppressing the Jewish peasantry. 8 John’s offer and practice of forgiveness by baptism side-stepped the temple, its rites and its expensive temple fees.9 Consequently, “[a]s John grew in popularity, he would probably have been perceived as a real threat to those whose authority was grounded in the temple.”10 His movement would have been understood as a protest against the temple.11
And John was doing more than protesting the temple elite and providing a free temple-less ritual of forgiveness. It was not uncommon in the first century for Jews to go “back into their own ancient stories and thence ritually reenact those great inaugural acts of Exodus from bondage in Egypt and arrival in the Promised Land.”12 In fact, around the time of John the Baptist other prophets are known to have invited followers into the desert wilderness to cross the Jordan in hope of a divine ousting of Rome and a re-conquering of the Promised Land for Israel.13
John the Baptist appears to have been doing just that. His followers reenacted Joshua’s river crossing and conquest of the Promised Land in anticipation of the Coming One’s intercession, on behalf of Israel, i.e., “John’s message was an announcement of imminent apocalyptic intervention by God . . .”14 John was also beckoning the masses to reenact God’s deliverance of the Promise Land to the people of Israel. John’s movement itself was non-violent, but it was nonetheless a highly explosive challenge with “overtones, explicit or implicit, of political subversion.”15 In short, John’s message indicted the present system and called for the “Coming One” to overthrow those in power. 16 John’s movement threatened Herod’s rule and Rome’s Pax, and as a result John was imprisoned and executed by Herod.17
It is important to keep in mind that John the Baptist preceded Jesus, and that he was teaching not just repentance but resistence of Rome in hopes of an apocalyptic end to Rome’s rule of Palestine. John foresaw a Coming One who would wrest Israel from Rome and its temple goons with divine vengeance, and violence with chopping with ax and burning fire (Matt 3:10).
Jesus was a follower and probably a disciple of John. 18 But at some point Jesus parted company with John’s movement. Indeed, John’s execution itself “may have convinced Jesus of a different type of God– the non-violent God of a non-violent kingdom, a God of non-violent resistence to structural as well as individual evil.”19 In other words while Jesus started out as a follower of John the Baptist Jesus changed his view of John’s mission and message. John’s vision of awaiting the apocalyptic God, the Coming One, as a repentant sinner, which Jesus had accepted and even defended in the crisis of John’s death, was no longer deemed adequate. It was not enough to await a future kingdom; one must enter a present one here and now. By the time Jesus emerged from John’s shadow with his own vision and program, they were quite different from John’s, but it may well have been John’s own execution that led Jesus to understand a God who did not and would not operate through imminent apocalyptic restoration.”20.
END NOTES:
1. Tatum, Barnes, John The Baptist and Jesus: a Report of the Jesus Seminar, Sonoma: Polebridge Press, (1994), , 20.
2. Ibid
3. Webb, John, John the Baptizer and Prophet, Sheffield:JSOT Press, (1991), 377. 4. John Dominic Crossan and Stephen Patterson both note that Jesus’ ministry included healing outcasts by declaring them clean, that is giving them status in his community. Crossan, John,, Jesus a Revolutionary Biography, San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, (1989), 77-84; idem, The Birth of Christianity, San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, (1998), 293-304; Patterson, Stephen, The God of Jesus, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, (1998), 63. Perhaps as a follower of John Jesus borrowed from him the idea that someone outside the temple elite could mediate a process to change the unclean to clean and then expanded it from baptism to healing and meal sharing. Cf., Tatum, 164 (where a side box indicates that Paul Hollenbeck’s work suggests Jesus abandoned baptism for healing when he discovered he could do exorcisms).
5. Ibid., 172 (”we may conclude that the NT description of John’s baptism as ‘baptism of repentance of the forgiveness of sins’ probably reflects the significance of John’s baptism as John proclaimed it . . .”).
6. While baptisms were not unique in John’s day, preacher performed baptisms apparently were. It is believed that one of the distinctions of John’s movement is that he innovated the preacher performed immersion. Tatum, 120.
7. Ibid., 203.
7.8. Ibid., 203-205.
9. Crossan, The Historical Jesus, San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, (1992), 231. Crossan also notes that this end run around the temple was probably John’s unique invention.
10.Webb, 204.
11. Tatum, 124
12. Crossan, The Historical Jesus, 159.
13. Ibid., 162-165.
14. Ibid., 231, 235; Joshua 3.
15. Ibid., 231, 235.
16. Tatum. 160.
17. Ibid., 153.
18. Ibid., 151.
19. Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, 287.
20. Crossan, Jesus: a Revolutionary Biography, 48.
Copyright Scott Elliott © 2007
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