The Prophecy of John the Baptist PDF

## Chapter 2 ## The Prophecy of John the Baptist The four small books that we call the gospels are not biographies and were never intended to be. Their purpose was to show how Jesus could be relevant to people who lived outside Palestine a generation or two after Jesus' death. This first generation...

## Chapter 2 ## The Prophecy of John the Baptist The four small books that we call the gospels are not biographies and were never intended to be. Their purpose was to show how Jesus could be relevant to people who lived outside Palestine a generation or two after Jesus' death. This first generation of Christians obviously did not feel the need for an exact biography of Jesus' life. They wanted to know how Jesus might be relevant to them in their situation outside Palestine. We today are no more in need of a biography then that first generation or any other generation of Christians. Like them we need a book about Jesus that will show us what he might mean to us today in our situation. An exact chronicle of names, places and dates seldom allows an historical figure to come to life again for a later generation. However, we can enable Jesus to come to life again for us today only by going back behind the four gospels to discover for ourselves what Jesus had to offer to the people of Palestine in his time. We don't need a biography but we do need to know the historical truth about Jesus. If we read carefully between the lines of the four gospels and if we make full use of the information available about the contemporary situation, we shall be able to uncover a great deal of historical information about Jesus.1 This is possible because, although the gospels were written for a later generation, they make use of sources that go back to Jesus and his contemporaries. ## Catastrophe In many places it is even possible to capture the actual words used by Jesus and to retrace exactly what he did (his ipsissima vox et facta). But what is of far greater importance is to uncover Jesus' original intentions (his ipsissima intentio).2 If our purpose is to discover what Jesus was trying to achieve in his time, then it will sometimes be more valuable to know how his contemporaries lived and thought, and how they must have reacted to him, than to know exactly what words he used or what form his deeds took. Knowing these words and these deeds would be of value only in so far as they too might help us to uncover his original intentions. What was Jesus trying to do? What did he hope to achieve for the people amongst whom he worked in first-century Palestine? One of the best ways of uncovering Jesus' intentions would be to look for evidence of his decisions and choices. If we could find an historically certain incident in which Jesus made a choice: between two or more alternatives, we should have a very important clue to the direction of his thinking. This we have at the beginning of all the gospels: Jesus chose to be baptized by John. Whatever else Jesus' baptism might have meant, it implied a decision to align himself with John the Baptist rather than with any of the other voices or movements of the time. If we could understand how John the Baptist differed from his contemporaries, we should have our first clue to the direction of Jesus' thinking. We know enough about the history of the times to do this. The Romans colonized Palestine in 63 B.C.E. In accordance with their policy of appointing native rulers in their colonies, they eventually made Herod, the most powerful claimant, king of the Jews. Jesus was born during the reign of this Herod, known as Herod the Great. In 4 B.C.E. (by modern calculation) Herod died and his kingdom was divided up amongst his three sons. Herod Archelaus was given Judaea and Samaria, and Herod Antipas Galilee and Peraea, while Herod Philip received the most northerly regions. Archelaus, however, was unable to cope with the restless discontent of the people. The Romans became concerned. Eventually they deposed Archelaus and sent out a Roman procurator to govern Judaea and Samaria. Jesus was about 12 years old at the time. It was the beginning of direct Roman rule, the beginning of the last and most turbulent epoch in the history of the Jewish nation, the epoch that ended with the almost total destruction of the temple, the city and the nation in 70 C.E., and their final and complete destruction in 135 C.E., the epoch during which Jesus lived and died and during which the first communities of Christians had to find their feet. The epoch began with a rebellion. The issue was taxation. The Romans had begun to take a census of the population and to draw up an inventory of the resources of the country, for the purpose of taxation. The Jews objected on religious grounds and rose up in rebellion. The leader of this rebellion was a man named Judas the Galilean, who founded a religiously inspired movement of freedom fighters. The Romans soon checked this first uprising and then as a warning crucified no fewer than two thousand of the rebels. But the movement continued. The Jews called them Zealots; the Romans called them bandits. They were of course an underground movement, no doubt loosely organized, sometimes breaking up into factions and sometimes joining up with some newly formed group like the Sicarii, who specialized in assassinations. Perhaps some joined in because they liked to fight but others were in deadly religious earnest, with the constant threat of torture and crucifixion hanging over their heads. For sixty years they continued to harass the Roman army of occupation with sporadic uprisings and occasional guerilla warfare. They developed from a group of rebels into a revolutionary army. Then, in 66 C.E., about thirty years after Jesus' death, with mounting popular support, they overthrew the Romans and took over the government of the country. But four years later a very powerful army was sent out from Rome to destroy them. It was a merciless massacre. The last group held out against the Romans from their mountain fortress of Masada until 73 C.E., when nearly a thousand of them chose to commit suicide rather than submit to Rome. It must be emphasized that the Zealot movement was essentially religious in inspiration and purpose. At that time most of the Jews in Palestine believed that Israel was a theocracy, that God was King, their only Lord and Master and that their land and resources belonged to God alone. To have accepted the Romans as their masters would have been an act of unfaithfulness to God. To have paid taxes to Caesar would have been to give to Caesar what belonged to God. The Zealots were faithful Jews, zealous for the law and for the sovereignty and kingship of God. The Pharisees would have had no quarrel with the Zealots on this score. Six thousand Pharisees refused to sign the oath of allegiance to Caesar, and the Romans had to waive this requirement for their Jewish subjects. But most of the Pharisees did not feel impelled to take up arms against the Romans, presumably because the odds were so heavily loaded against them. Their principal concern was the reform of Israel itself. God had abandoned them to the Roman yoke because of Israel's unfaithfulness to the law and the traditions of the fathers. The Pharisees paid their taxes to Rome under protest but then separated themselves off from everyone who was not faithful to the law and the traditions, in order to form closed communities, the faithful remnant of Israel. Their name means "the separate ones," i.e., the holy ones, the true community of Israel. Their morality was legalistic and bourgeois, a matter of reward and punishment. God loved and rewarded those who kept the law and hated and punished those who did not. The Pharisees believed in an after-life, in the resurrection of the dead and in a future Messiah whom God would send to liberate them from the Romans. The Essenes went very much further than the Pharisees in their striving for perfection. Many of them separated themselves completely from society and went to live a celibate and ascetic life in camps in the desert. They were even more concerned than the Pharisees about ritual impurity and contamination by the wicked and unclean world. They observed daily and meticulously the rites of purification originally prescribed for priests who were about to offer sacrifice in the Temple. The Essenes rejected everyone who did not belong to their "sect". The priestly regime in the Temple was regarded as corrupt. All outsiders were to be hated as the "sons of darkness." Love and respect were reserved for the members of their group - the "sons of light." They alone were the faithful remnant of Israel. Their strict separation and rigorous discipline must be understood as their response to the belief that the end of the world was near. They were preparing for the coming of the Messiah (or perhaps two Messiahs) and for the great war in which they as the "sons of light" would destroy the "sons of darkness," the armies of Satan. The first of the "sons of darkness" to be destroyed would be the Romans. The Essenes were therefore just as warlike as the Zealots but for them the time was not yet ripe. They were waiting for the day of the Lord. Around 66 C.E., when the Zealots began to overpower the Romans, the Essenes seem to have joined in, only to be eventually destroyed together with the Zealots and others. In the midst of these outbursts of exceptional religious fervor, the Sadducees were the conservatives. They clung to the most ancient Hebrew traditions and rejected all novelties of belief and ritual. The after-life and the resurrection of the dead were regarded as novelties. Rewards and punishments were to be found in this life. The Sadducees were therefore expedient. They collaborated with the Romans and endeavored to maintain the status quo. The Sadducees were to a very large extent, though not exclusively, members of the wealthy aristocracy: the chief priests and elders. The chief priests were a special class of priests. They not only offered sacrifices like other priests, they were also responsible for the organization and administration of the Temple. The priesthood was of course hereditary. The elders were the lay nobility, the old aristocratic families who owned most of the land. The Sadducee party would also have included some scribes or rabbis although most of these were Pharisees. The scribes or rabbis were the men of learning. They were at the same time theologians, lawyers and teachers but they were not priests. Thus in the gospels the Sadducees are frequently referred to as "the chief priests, elders and scribes" or as "the leaders of the people." They were the ruling, upper class. Mention should also be made of a small group of anonymous writers who indulged in a type of literature which we today call apocalyptic. They were seers or visionaries who believed that the secrets of God's plan for history and especially for the end of the world had been indirectly revealed to them. As they saw it, God had predetermined all times and epochs, revealing secret plans to the men of ancient times like Enoch, Noah, Esdras, Abraham and Moses. The apocalyptic writers had now come to know these secrets and they were recording them on behalf of the ancients for the sake of the learned men of their own time. These writers were possibly scribes and they may have belonged to the Pharisee or Essene parties but we cannot be sure of that. They were anonymous and remain anonymous to this day. In the midst of all these religio-political movements and speculations there was one man who stood out as a sign of contradiction. John the Baptist was different precisely because he was a prophet, and indeed, like so many of his predecessors of old, a prophet of doom and destruction. Superficial similarities with the Essenes or the apocalyptic writers or anyone else should never blind us to the fact that John was as different from his contemporaries as any prophet ever was. While others looked forward to the "age to come" when the faithful of Israel would triumph over their enemies, John prophesied doom and destruction for Israel. There had been no prophet in Israel for a very long time. Everyone was painfully aware of this, as all the literature of the period attests. The spirit of prophecy had been quenched. God was silent. All one could hear was "the echo of his voice." It was even felt that certain decisions would have to be postponed "until a trustworthy prophet should arise" (1 Mc 14:41; see also 4:45-46). This silence was broken by the voice of John the Baptist in the wilderness. His style of life, his way of speaking and his message were a conscious revival of the tradition of the prophets. The evidence we have about him, both within the New Testament and outside of it, is unanimous on this point. John's prophetic message was a simple one. God was angry with the people and planned to punish them. God was about to intervene in history to condemn and destroy Israel. John pictured this destruction as a great forest fire before which the vipers flee (Mt 3:8 par), in which trees and chaff are burnt (Mt 3:10, 12 par), and in which people will be engulfed as in a baptism of fire (Mt 3:11 par). He also made use of the metaphors of the axe and the winnowing-fan. These are the metaphors of the prophets. They have nothing in common with the wild images of the apocalyptic writers. There is no reason to believe that John was referring to hell in the after-life or to a cosmic upheaval. The forest fire is an image of hell on earth. God's fiery judgment upon Israel would be executed, according to John, by a human being. John spoke of him as "the one who is to come" (Mt 3:11 parr; Mt 11:3 par). He is even now standing ready with his axe or his winnowing-fan. "He will baptize you with... fire" (Mt 3:11 par). A prophecy is not a prediction, it is a warning or a promise. The prophet warns Israel about God's judgment and promises God's salvation. Both the warning and the promise are conditional. They depend upon the free response of the people of Israel. If Israel does not change, the consequences will be disastrous. If Israel does change, there will be an abundance of blessings. The practical purpose of a prophecy is to persuade the-people to change or repent. Every prophet appealed for a conversion. Unlike his contemporaries who were not prophets, John addresses his warning and his appeal to all Israel. They must not imagine that it is the Gentiles who are heading for destruction and that the children of Abraham will be spared because of their ancestry and race. "Do not presume to tell yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father,' because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones" (Mt 3:9). God can destroy Israel and create a new people (children of Abraham) if Israel does not repent. John appealed to sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors and soldiers as well as scribes and Pharisees (Lk 3:12, 14; Mt 21:32). He even challenged the Jewish king or tetrarch, Herod Antipas (Mk 6:18 par; Lk 3:19). There is no question here of gathering together a remnant or founding a "sect". Everyone must change. The earlier prophets had expected Israel to change as a whole in the person of its king or leading men. John, like the later prophets, expected each individual in Israel to repent and experience a personal change of heart. This is surely the fundamental meaning of John's practice of baptism. It does not matter what precedents there might be for the rite itself. What matters is the use that John made of it. John's baptism was a sign of individual and personal repentance. "They confessed their sins" and were then baptized (Mk 1:5 par). This baptism is said to have been for or toward (eis) the forgiveness of sins (Mk 1:4 parr). In the context, the forgiveness of sins would mean being spared from the future punishment. If the whole of Israel or perhaps the majority of the children of Abraham were to repent, God would cease to be angry and relent, so that the catastrophe would not take place at all. It is not clear whether, if the catastrophe did take place, those who had been baptized would be spared as individuals or not. Everything depends upon what kind of catastrophe John had in mind. Was it a war? More often than not the disaster which the prophets had in mind was a war in which Israel was defeated. The innocent are seldom spared in a war. But there is not enough evidence for us to decide what John had in mind or whether he had thought about it at all. It is also significant that the kind of change for which John appealed had nothing to do with ritual purity or petty details of sabbath observance; nor had it anything to do with not paying taxes to Gentiles. John appealed for what we would call social morality. If anyone has two tunics he must share with the man who has none, and the one with something to eat must do the same. To the tax collectors he said, "Exact no more than your rate!" To the soldiers he said, "No intimidation! No extortion! Be content with your pay!" (Lk 3:11-14). Herod he criticized for divorcing his wife to marry the wife of his half-brother (another Herod) and for all his other crimes (Lk 3:19). But Josephus, the contemporary Jewish historian, maintains that Herod arrested John for political reasons. He was afraid that John would turn the people against him. Herod could not afford to lose the support of his people especially in view of the political consequences of his re-marriage. In order to marry Herodias he had divorced the daughter of Aretas II, the ruler of the nearby kingdom of the Nabataeans. This would be viewed not only as a personal insult but also as a breach of a political alliance. The Nabataeans were therefore preparing for war. As far as Herod was concerned John was only making matters worse for him by criticizing his divorce and re-marriage and by prophesying divine retribution. Some years later the Nabataeans attacked and defeated Herod, who had to call in the Romans to rescue him and his kingdom. John was arrested and beheaded because he dared to speak out against Herod too. John the Baptist was the only person in that society who impressed Jesus. Here was the voice of God warning the People of an impending disaster and calling for a change of heart in each and every individual. Jesus believed this and joined in with those who were determined to do something about it. He was baptized by John. Jesus may not have agreed with John in every detail. Later, as we shall see, he certainly came to differ somewhat from John. But the very fact of his baptism by John is conclusive proof of his acceptance of John's basic prophecy: Israel is heading for an unprecedented catastrophe. And in choosing to believe this prophecy, Jesus immediately shows himself to be in basic disagreement with all those who reject John and his baptism: the Zealots, Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees, scribes and apocalyptic writers. None of these groups would have been willing to believe a prophet who, like the prophets of old, prophesied against all Israel. Jesus' point of departure, then, was the impending judgment of Israel, an unprecedented catastrophe. There is plenty of evidence to show that Jesus repeated this prophecy again and again throughout his life. In fact in several of the texts which have come down to us, Jesus is far more explicit than John about what the impending disaster would entail. We quote a few of them: A time is coming when your enemies will raise fortifications all around you, when they will encircle you and hem you in on every side; they will dash you and the children inside your walls to the ground; they will leave not one stone standing on another within you - and all because you did not recognize your opportunity when God offered it! (Lk 19:43-44). When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, you must realize that she will soon be laid desolate. Then those in Judaea must escape to the mountains, those inside the city must leave it... For this is the time of vengeance for those with child, or with babies at the breast, when those days come. For great misery will descend on the land and wrath on this people. (Lk 21:20-23). But Jesus said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep rather for yourselves and for your children." (Lk 23:28). People told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with that of their sacrifices. He said ". unless you repent you will all be destroyed as they were." (Lk 13:1, 3). There can be no doubt about what is being referred to here: the destruction of Jerusalem in a war with the Romans. In true prophetic style Jesus prophesies an unparalleled military defeat for Israel. The divine judgment would be a terrible massacre, and the executors of the judgment would be the Romans. Only those who have the sense to flee will be spared (Mk 13:14-20 parr). This is precisely what did happen in 70 C.E. Most scholars have not given much attention to these and similar texts (Mk 13:2; 23:37-39 Lk 13:34-35; Lk 11:49-51; 17:26-37). They are quite commonly dismissed as predictions inserted into the text after the event (vaticinia ex eventu). But recent scholarly research has shown quite conclusively that this is not so. It was C. H. Dodd23 who first showed that these passages could not have been written after the event because they are modelled on the scriptural references to the first fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. and they make no allusion to the distinctive features of the fall in 70 C.E. Lloyd Gaston comes to much the same conclusions. He spent ten years in research on this question and produced a voluminous scholarly work which is very convincing indeed, although little known and seldom read. There can be no doubt that Jesus did prophesy the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The early Christians may have touched up his words a little but even this must have been done before the events of 70 C.E. It was John the Baptist who first foresaw the disaster, although we do not know what exactly he envisaged. Jesus agreed with John and reading the signs of the times saw quite clearly that Israel was on a collision course with Rome. Both Jesus and John, like the prophets of the Old Testament, expressed this imminent disaster in terms of a divine judgment. The very thought of it made Jesus weep (Lk 19:41) as it had made the prophet Jeremiah weep centuries before. But what was he to do about it?