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1. KNOWING ONLY THE BAPTISM OF JOHN

The first important Jewish dissident to follow Judas of Gamala, the alleged author of the mysterious fourth philosophy, was John the Baptist. During his life, John does not appear to have troubled Pontius Pilate; he was a problem for Herod Antipas, whom the Romans had assigned as their vassal ruler of Galilee as well as Perea, the desert region just to east of Judea, where John did his preaching. In the pages of Flavius Josephus' histories, John makes his only appearance in Antiquities 18.116-119, in the context of Herod Antipas' border conflict with his former father-in-law, the Nabatean king Aretas. Herod Antipas had gravely offended Aretas by agreeing to divorce the latter's daughter, in order to marry his half-brother's Herod's wife Herodias (given the profusion of Herodian namesakes, the error we find in Mark 6.17, where we are told that Herodias was the wife of another Herodian scion named Philip, is understandable). After the annihilation of Herod Antipas' army several years later, many Jews attributed the catastrophe to "divine vengeance" for the execution of "John called the Baptist."

Josephus then gives a brief but telling account of John's activities: He was a "good man" who called on the Jews to exercise justice to one another and piety toward God; those who did so should come and receive baptism, not to pardon their sins, but as a consecration of the body signaling that the soul had already been cleansed of sin. Clearly John had a popular message: "Now when others came in crowds around him, for they were greatly aroused by his words, Herod became alarmed, fearing that this eloquence which had such a great effect on men might lead to sedition, for the people were guided by him in everything." Deciding that it was better to strike first than wait for a potential rebellion, Herod Antipas had John "brought in chains" to the fortress at Machaerus, where he was executed.

Jesus was almost without question one of those baptized by John. The author of Mark begins his gospel (Mk 1.2-13) with an account of this event; Jesus joined a great crowd of country people and Jerusalemites who went to John in the wilderness, to be baptized in the Jordan river. Mark paints a plausible portrait of John as a charismatic ascetic -- he wears a camel-hair tunic (the cheapest material available) and eats locusts and wild honey. As soon as Jesus came out of the water, the Spirit (pneuma) descended upon him like a dove, "saying, You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him."

As we will see later, this account may be based on the ritual passage of a spirit from John the Baptist to Jesus, the overtly magical elements edited out to avoid casting Jesus as just another magician. Whether or not that is so, by any interpretation the ritual was reputed to have provoked an immediate and prolonged spiritual crisis, during which Jesus communicated with demonic and angelic spirits. And it is certainly the event from which Jesus' followers believed that his spiritual authority and mission proceeded.

Later, Mark also gives us the classic account of John's demise (Mk 16.17-30), attributing it to John's opposition to Herod Antipas' marriage to his half-brother's wife. Herodias demanded that John be imprisoned, then prompted her unnamed daughter (the name Salome is obtained from Josephus, but Josephus' Salome, born shortly before Herodias' divorce, can only have been a child) to ask for his head on a plate as a reward for her dancing. (The Herod-Herodias dynamic is likely correct. Josephus recounts how Herodias bullied the hapless Herod into supplicating Gaius Caligula in Rome, an ill-considered venture that resulted in Herod's banishment, on charges of sedition, to Gaul. And John's opposition to Herod's remarriage was sound criticism of a foreign-policy blunder, given the subsequent trouble with Aretas.)

According to Mark 6.33-34, the news of John's death provoked Jesus to retire into the desert, where John's followers flocked to him. "And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things." At the end of day, seeing that the crowd also needed to be fed, Jesus transformed five loaves and two fishes into supper for five thousand (Mk 6.37-44). Again, the story may have large elements of fiction, but it also seems to echo an historical memory of the migration of John's followers after his death.

It would have been logical for John's followers to turn to Jesus, given that they might expect to hear much the same message. Like Jesus, John was said to be strongly egalitarian, as in the statement reputed to him in Luke 3.11: "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise." Like Jesus, John ministered to outcasts. "For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not;" Jesus is said to complain to the priests, "but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him" (Mt 21.32). John's basic warning, "Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mt 3.2), is the same Jesus instructs his disciples to announce in the towns and villages they visit (Mt 10.7, Lk 10.9).

Most remarkably, when Jesus is asked in Luke 11.1, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples," he proceeds to rattle off the Lord's Prayer. The version given in Luke 11.2-5 is thought by scholars to be the original, short version of the prayer, and a look at it is gives an insight into issues that evidently concerned both Jesus and John: "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come." The next line does not appear in all ancient sources of Luke, but does appear in Matthew: "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into adversity, but deliver us from our hard labors." The last five words are also absent in some ancient sources.

For all its universality among modern Christians, this prayer is a highly specific compendium of intertestamental social concerns. It beseeches God to establish his kingdom on earth as it is presently established in heaven, the fulfillment of Jewish nationalism. The request for the daily bread is tantamount to "give us our welfare," as Jewish authorities were obligated to provide daily loaves for the poor; that the poor had to beseech God for their bread suggests another neglected social program. In Matthew's version of the prayer, the "sins" to be forgiven are legal debts (opheilema), which most scholars agree is more consistent with what follows with both versions, the forgiveness of "every one that is indebted to us." Generic sin isn't the issue here; this is about the periodic forgiveness of debt which had traditionally enabled many Jewish peasants to hold on to homes and farms they otherwise would have lost to their mortgage holders. This subsidy to small farmers was, by means of the prozbul (see The Fourth Philosophy), systematically eliminated in Jesus' day, swelling the ranks of the unemployed and semi-employed workers.

Certainly the messages of John and Jesus were sufficiently alike that the authors of the gospels regarded their confusion as plausible. When Herod Antipas hears of Jesus, Mark has him say (Mk 6.16), "It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead," a statement that may indeed reflect what many people were saying twenty-five years earlier. When Jesus asked his disciples, "Whom say the people that I am? They answering said, John the Baptist..." (Lk 9.18-19). The question could also be reversed: "All men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not" (Lk 3.15).

It is John himself, in the next verse (Lk 3.16), who is obliged to issue the definitive disclaimer, "I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I is coming, the fastener of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire..." This is not an isolated case of humility; throughout the gospels, the reduction of John is left to John himself. It is Jesus who should baptize John, John says; only at Jesus' insistence does he reverse the roles (Mt. 3.14). Jesus is the bridegroom; John is only the friend of the bridegroom (Jn 3.29). John is of the earth and must speak of earthly things; Jesus comes from Heaven and speaks the words of God (Jn 3.31-34).

John's the Baptist's scriptural self-abasement is so vehement and pervasive that it suggests the equally pervasive problem it was intended to remedy: Evidently a lot of people had considered Jesus a mere disciple of John the Baptist. In fact, if we are to accept the Q saying in Luke 16.16 as authentic, Jesus himself acknowledged John's primacy in preaching the good news of the coming end of time: "The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presses into it."

We also have evidence that John was still preceding Jesus at mid-century, at least in the Christian community at Ephesus in Asia Minor; Acts 18:24-25 offers a startling glimpse of John's following in what was then one of the four largest cities in the Roman empire. There the apostle Paul's companions Priscilla and Aquila encountered "a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, [and] mighty in the scriptures... This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spoke and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John." Shortly after that, Paul himself found twelve additional "believers" in Ephesus who had been baptized by John but who remained entirely unaware that John had allegedly instructed them to believe in Jesus (Acts 19.1-7). In these passages, the New Testament gives us an extraordinary picture of a body of believers who are almost entirely versed in "the way" of early Christianity -- except that they haven't heard of Jesus.

However difficult it may have been for the Jesus of history to emerge from the long shadow of John the Baptist, the very competition between the two movements suggests that Jesus' followers had compelling reasons to choose Jesus rather than John as their Messiah. But exactly how and how much Jesus differed from John is a highly contentious issue in contemporary biblical scholarship. And that debate takes us to the central issues of who Jesus was and what he believed.

Next: AND HE SENT THEM TO PREACH THE KINGDOM OF GOD

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