45. Appearance and Design of the Baptist-His Personal Relations With Jesus. (Chapter 1. Relations Between Jesus and John The Baptist.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

JOHN, a Nazirite, according to our authorities (Matt. iii. 4. ix. 14. xi. 18. Luke i. 15), and in the opinion of several theologians, an Essene, is said by Luke (iii. 2.) to have been summoned to his public work by the word of God which came to him in the wilderness. Not possessing the Baptist's own declaration, we cannot accept as complete the dilemma stated by Paulus, when he says, that we know not whether John himself interpreted some external or internal fact as a divine call, or whether he received a summons from another individual; and we must add as a third possibility, that his followers sought to dignify the vocation of their Teacher by an expression which recalls to mind the ancient Prophets.

While from the account of Luke it appears that the divine call came to John in the wilderness, but that for the purpose of teaching and baptizing he resorted to the country about Jordan, (ver. 3.); Matthew (iii. ff.) makes the wilderness of Judea the scene of his labours, as if the Jordan in which he baptized flowed through that wilderness. It is true that, according to Josephus, the Jordan before emptying itself into the Dead Sea traverses a great wilderness, but this was not the wilderness of Judea, which lay further south.Hence it has been supposed that Matthew, misled by his application of the prophecy, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, (fwnh boountoj e)n th e)remw ) to John, who issued from the wilderness of Judea, placed there his labours as a preacher of repentance and a baptizer, although their true scene was the blooming valley of the Jordan. In the course of Luke's narrative, however, this evangelist ceases to intimate that John forsook the wilderness after receiving his call, for on the occasion of John's message to Jesus, he makes the latter ask, "Whom did you go out into the wilderness to see?" (vii. 24.). Now as the valley of the Jordan in the vicinity of the Dead Sea was in fact a barren plain, the narrow margin of the river excepted, no greater mistake may belong to Matthew than that of specifying the wilderness as the e)rhmoj thj Ioudaiaj and even that may be explained away by the supposition, either that John, as he alternately preached and baptized, passed from the wilderness of Judea to the borders of the Jordan, or that the waste tract through which that river flowed, being a continuation of the wilderness of Judea, retained the same name.

The baptism of John could scarcely have been derived from the baptism of proselytes, for this rite was unquestionably posterior to the rise of Christianity. It was more analogous to the religious lustrations in practice amongst the Jews, especially the Essenes, and was apparently founded chiefly on certain expressions used by several of the prophets in a figurative sense, but afterwards understood literally. According to these expressions, God requires from the people of Israel, as a condition of their restoration to his favour, a washing and purification from their iniquity, and he promises that he will himself cleanse them with water (Isa. i. 16. Ez. xxxvi. 25. comp. Jer. ii. 22). Add to this the Jewish notion that the Messiah would not appear with his kingdom until the Israelites repented, and we have the combination necessary for the belief that an ablution, symbolical of conversion and forgiveness of sins, must precede the advent of the Messiah.

Our accounts are not unanimous as to the signification of John's baptism. They all, it is true, agree in stating repentance, metanoia , to be one of its essential requirements; for even what Josephus says of the Baptist, that he admonished the Jews, practising virtue, just towards each other, and devout towards God, to come to his baptism, has the same sense under a Greek form. Mark and Luke, however, while designating the baptism of John baptismoj metanoiaj (i. 4. in 3). Matthew has not the same addition; but he, with Mark, describes the baptized as "confessing their sins" (iii. 6.) Josephus, on the other hand, appears in direct contradiction to them, when he gives it as the opinion of the Baptist, that baptism is pleasing to God, not when we ask pardon for some transgressions, but when we purify the body, after having first purified the mind by righteousness. We might here be led to the supposition that the words for the remission of sins, as in Acts ii. 38. and other passages, was commonly used in relation ^{P.217} to Christian baptism, and was thence transferred unhistorically to that of John; but as in the passages quoted from Ezekiel the washing typified not only reformation but forgiveness, the probabilities are in favour of the Gospel statement. Moreover, it is possible to reconcile Josephus and the Evangelists, by understanding the words of the former to mean that the baptism of John was intended to effect a purification, not from particular or merely Levitical transgressions, but of the entire man, not immediately and mysteriously through the agency of water, but by means of the moral acts of reformation.

The several accounts concerning John are further at variance, as to the relation in which they place his baptism to the kingdom of heaven, basileia twn ou)ranwn. According to Matthew, the concise purport of the appeal with which he accompanied his baptism was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," (iii. 2.); according to Luke, the Baptist in the first instance mentions only repentance and remission of sins, but no kingdom of heaven; and it is the conjecture of the people, that he might be the Messiah, by which he is first led to direct them to one who was coming after him (iii. 15 ff.). In Josephus, there is no trace of a relation between the ministry of John and the Messianic idea. Yet. we must not therefore conclude that the Baptist himself recognized no such relation, and that its only source was the Christian legend. For the baptism of John, waiving the opinion that it was derived from the baptism of proselytes, is not quite explicable without a reference to the above-mentioned expiatory lustrations of the people lustrations which were to usher in the times of the Messiah; moreover, the appearance of Jesus is made more comprehensible by the supposition, that John had introduced the idea of the proximity of the Messiah's kingdom. That Josephus should keep back the Messianic aspect of the fact, is in accordance with his general practice, which is explained by the position of his people with respect to the Romans. Besides, in the expression, to assemble for baptism, in his mention of popular assemblages, and in the fear of Antipas lest John should excite a revolt, there lies an intimation of precisely such a religious and political movement as the hope of the Messiah was calculated to produce. That the Baptist should so distinctly foretell the immediate appearance of the Messiah's kingdom must create surprise, and (Luke's reference to a divine call and revelation being held unsatisfactory) might lead to the supposition that the Christian narrator, believing that the true Messiah was actually manifested in the person of Jesus, the contemporary of John, gave to the language of the latter a definiteness which did not belong to it originally; and while the Baptist merely said, consonantly with the Jewish notion already mentioned: "Repent, that the kingdom of heaven may come," a later edition of bis words gave ^{P.218} gar (for) instead of i(na (that). But such a supposition is needless.

In those times of commotion, John might easily believe that he discerned signs, which certified to him the proximity of the Messiah's kingdom; the exact degree of its proximity he left undecided.

According to the Evangelists, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, ( basileia tou qeou,) was associated by John with a Messianic individual to whom he ascribed, in distinction from his own baptism with water, a baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire,(Matt. iii. 11. parall.), the outpouring of the Holy Spirit being regarded as a leading feature of the Messianic times (Joel ii. 28; Acts ii.16ff.) of this personage he further predicted, in imagery akin to that used by the prophets on the same subject, that he would winnow the people as wheat (Mal. iii. 2, 3. Zech. xiii. 9.). The Synoptic Gospels state the case as if John expressly understood this Messianic individual to be Jesus of Nazareth. According to Luke, indeed, the mothers of these two men were cousins, and aware of the destination of their sons.

The Baptist while yet unborn acknowledged the divinity of Jesus, and all the circumstances imply that both were early acquainted with their relative position, predetermined by a heavenly communication. Matthew, it is true, says nothing of such a family connection between John and Jesus; but when the latter presents himself for baptism, he puts into the mouth of John words which seem to presuppose an earlier acquaintance. His expression of astonishment that Jesus should come to him for baptism, when he had need to be baptized of Jesus, could only arise from a previous knowledge or instantaneous revelation of his character. of the latter there is no intimation; for the first visible sign of the Messiahship of Jesus did not occur till afterwards. While in the first and third Gospels (in the second, the facts are so epitomized that the writers view on the subject is not evident), John and Jesus seem to have been no strangers to each other prior to the baptism; in the fourth, the Baptist pointedly asserts that he knew not Jesus before the heavenly appearance, which, according to the Synoptic Gospels, was coincident with his baptism (i. 31, 33.). Simply considered, this looks like a contradiction. By Luke, the previous acquaintance of the two is stated objectively, as an external matter of fact; by Matthew, it is betrayed in the involuntary confession of the astonished Baptist; in the fourth Gospel, on the contrary, their previous unacquaintedness is attested subjectively, by his premeditated assertion. It was not, therefore, a very farfetched idea of the Wolfenb ttel fragmentist, to put down the contradiction to the account of John and Jesus, and to presume that they had in fact long known and consulted each other, but that in public (in order better to play into one another's hands) they demeaned themselves as if they had hitherto been mutual strangers, and each delivered an unbiassed testimony to the other's excellence.

^{P.219} That such premeditated dissimulation might not be imputed to John, and indirectly to Jesus, it has been sought to disprove the existence of the contradiction in question exegetically. What John learned from the heavenly sign was the Messiahship of Jesus; to this therefore, and not to his person, refer the words, "I knew him not." But it may be questioned whether such an acquaintance as John must have had with Jesus, presupposing the narrative of Matthew and Luke, was separable from a knowledge of his Messiahship. The connection and intercourse of the two families, as described by Luke, would render it impossible for John not to be early informed how solemnly Jesus had been announced as the Messiah, before and at his birth: he could not therefore say at a later period that, prior to the sign from heaven, he had not known, but only that he had not believed, the story of former wonders, one of which relates to himself. It being thus unavoidable to acknowledge that by the above declaration in the fourth Gospel, the Baptist is excluded, not only from a knowledge of the Messiahship of Jesus,. but also from a personal acquaintance with him; it has been attempted to reconcile the first chapter of Luke with this ignorance, by appealing to the distance of residence between the two families, as a preventive to the continuance of their intercourse. But if the journey from Nazareth to the hill country of Judea was not too formidable for the betrothed Mary, how could it be so for the two sons when ripening to maturity? What culpable indifference is hereby supposed in both families to the heavenly communications they had received! indeed, what could be the object of those communications, if they had no influence on the early life and intercourse of the two sons?

Let it be granted that the fourth gospel excludes an acquaintance with the Messiahship only of Jesus, and that the third presupposes an acquaintance with his person only, on the part of John; still the contradiction is not removed. For in Matthew, John, when required to baptize Jesus, addresses him as if he knew him, not generally and personally alone, but specially, in his character of Messiah. It is true that the words: I have need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me? (iii. 14.) have been interpreted, in the true spirit of harmonizing, as referring to the general superior excellence of Jesus, and not to his Messiahship. But the right to undertake the baptism which was to prepare the way for the Messiah's king- ^{P.220} dom, was not to be obtained by moral superiority in general, but was conferred by a special call, such as John himself had received, and such as could belong only to a prophet, or to the Messiah and his Forerunner (John i.19ff.) If then John attributed to Jesus authority to baptize, he must have regarded him not merely as an excellent man, but as indubitably a prophet, indeed, since he held him worthy to baptize himself, as his own superior; that is, since John conceived himself to be the Messiah's Forerunner, no other than the Messiah himself. Add to this, that Matthew had just cited a discourse of the Baptist, in which he ascribes to the coming Messiah a baptism more powerful than his own; how then can we understand his subsequent language towards Jesus otherwise than thus: "of what use is my water baptism to you, O Messiah? Far more do I need your baptism of the Spirit !"

The contradiction cannot be cleared away; we must therefore, if we would not lay the burden of intentional deception on the agents, let the narrators bear the blame; and there will be the less hindrance to our doing so, the more obvious it is how one or both of them might be led into an erroneous statement. There is in the present case no obstacle to the reconciliation of Matthew with the fourth evangelist, further than the words by which the Baptist seeks to deter Jesus from receiving baptism; words which, if uttered before the occurrence of any thing supernatural, presuppose a knowledge of Jesus in his character of Messiah. Now the Gospel of the Hebrews, according to Epiphanius, places the entreaty of John that Jesus would baptize him, as a sequel to the sign from heaven; and this account has been recently regarded as the original one, abridged by the writer of our first Gospel, who, for the sake of effect, made the refusal and confession of the Baptist coincident with the first approach of Jesus. But that we have not in the Gospel of the Hebrews the original form of the narrative, is sufficiently proved by its very tedious repetition of the heavenly voice and the diffuse style of the whole. It is rather a very traditional record, and the insertion of John's refusal after the sign and voice from heaven, was not made with the view of avoiding a contradiction of the fourth Gospel, which cannot be supposed to have been recognized in the circle of the Ebionite Christians, but from the very motive erroneously attributed to Matthew in his alleged transposition, namely, to give greater effect to the scene. A simple refusal on the part of the ^{P.221} Baptist appeared too weak; he must at, least fall at the feet of Jesus; and a more suitable occasion could not be given than that of the sign from heaven, which accordingly must be placed beforehand.

This Hebrew Gospel, therefore, will not help us to understand how Matthew was led into contradiction with John; still less will it avail for the explanation of Luke's narrative.

All is naturally explained by the consideration, that the important relation between John and Jesus must have been regarded as existing at all times, by reason of that ascription of pre-existence to the essential which is a characteristic of the popular mind. Just as the soul, when considered as an essence, is conceived more or less clearly as pre-existent; so in the popular mind, every relation pregnant with consequences is endowed with pre-existence. Hence the Baptist, who eventually held so significant a relation to Jesus, must have known him from the first, as is indistinctly intimated by Matthew, and more minutely detailed by Luke; according to whom, their mothers knew each other, and the sons themselves were brought together while yet unborn. All this is wanting in the fourth Gospel, the writer of which attributes an opposite assertion to John, simply because in his mind an opposite interest preponderated; for the less Jesus was known to John by whom he was afterwards so extolled, the more weight was thrown on the miraculous scene which arrested the regards of the Baptist-the more clearly was his whole position with respect to Jesus demonstrated to be the effect, not of the natural order of events, but of the immediate agency of God.