Chapter 138 of 404

CHAPTER 11 - John the Baptist

CHAPTER 11

John the Baptist

“. . . it may be that John the Baptist served [Jesus] not only as the reagent by which the elements of his distinctive Gospel were brought to precipitation but also as the inspiration for that line of thought that leads from the contemplation of his personal jeopardy toward the conception of his own place in God’s plan.”

CARL H. KRAELING¹

“It seems likely, then, that in continuing John’s message, Jesus also continued his immersion.”

JOAN E. TAYLOR²

“At the beginning of Jesus’ career, then, we find him accepting the mission of John the Baptist, who said that the climax of history was at hand. Within no more than a decade after Jesus’ execution, we have firm proof that his followers expected this dramatic event very soon. Jesus must fit this context.”

E. P. SANDERS³

Scholars today frequently depict John as Jesus’ “mentor,” or Jesus as John’s “disciple.” ⁴ Even if such explicit titles go beyond our extant evidence, Jesus certainly had some respectful relationship toward John. The Gospels, eager to exalt Jesus, would hardly have invented his submission to John’s baptism or portrayed Jesus’ ministry as chronologically following John’s (at least in the Synoptics) if John did not genuinely play an important role in Jesus’ ministry. Early sources compare Jesus with John (Mk 11:27-33; Q material in Matt 11:18-19//Lk 7:33-34), and some of John’s known emphases (like baptism, also attested in Josephus’ portrayal of John)⁵ show up in the early Jesus movement probably because Jesus approved of such emphases.

Thus what we know about John affects what we can surmise about Jesus, as scholars often observe. This observation challenges the suppositions of those who think of Jesus opposing an eschatological message (in contrast to the explicit gospel evidence to the contrary), when we know that both John and Jesus’ subsequent followers supported it.⁶ To posit such a view is simply to dismiss all the evidence for Jesus’ teaching and his context (in his own and John’s movements) that we have and to argue the contrary based on inferences from silence. While such inferences satisfy particular audiences today, such an approach ends up trying to explain away more evidence than it explains.

A much larger number of scholars accept John’s ministry as a positive context for that of Jesus.⁷ As Robert Webb concludes, “We may conclude at the historical level what the early Christians concluded at a theological level: John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus.”⁸ Since I do not wish to expend much space on material already treated more thoroughly by others, this chapter will be quite brief. It is nevertheless important to offer a context for Jesus’ mission as an end-time prophet as well as a sage.

↑ Back to top