The Messiah’s forerunner (2)
by Mike Oettle
IT was the
second writer of Isaiah who wrote: “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: ‘Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God . . . and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.’ ”[1]
Judah was in exile at the time, and the “second Isaiah” – or Deutero-Isaiah, as he is known – no doubt imagined that these words God had given him referred to someone calling the people back to the land of Judah in his own time, or a generation or two later.
But it was to be seven centuries before the prophecy was fulfilled by Yochanan bar
Zechariah – or John the Baptist, as we know him better.
The
wilderness of Judæa[2] was where he took his stand. Matthew tells us how completely John adapted to the desert environment, wearing a garment of camel hair and a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey. (Yes, locusts, not locust beans – remember, these insects fell into the only class of kosher six-legged animal.)[3] The camel-hair garment was not merely appropriate to the desert: it was the traditional garb of the prophets. John was leaving no doubt as to his calling.
Crowds came to hear this man, using the words that God had given the second Isaiah: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” but he also told them: “Turn away from your sins and be baptised.”
It was unheard of in mainstream Judaism for sins to be symbolically “washed away” in this fashion, but there were others baptising at the time. Perhaps they recalled Naaman’s bath in the Jordan that had washed away his leprosy, and they came to hear him and be cleansed.
Non-Jews wanting to be admitted to the synagogue underwent ritual bathing, but there
appears to be no link between this practice and John’s. The community of Qumran,
who left us the Dead Sea scrolls, also underwent ritual baths, but they were regarded as lunatics by most Jews.
John was pretty outspoken when it came to the Pharisees, Sadducees and others who
regarded themselves as being favoured by God because they kept the law, and
despised “lesser” people whom they called sinners, because in some way or other
they did not observe every last detail of the law:
“You brood of vipers!” John said. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”[4]
The “holy” people must have been pretty miffed with a man who called them names like this – unlike their fellow hypocrites, who praised them for their observance.
John
attracted quite a following. We know the names of four of his disciples: Simon
(later Simon Peter) and his brother Andrew, Philip of Bethsaida,
and Nathanael.
And in Acts (19:1-7) we read that Paul encountered disciples of John at Ephesus who had not been aware that an even greater preacher had come from among those who
had undergone John’s baptism. Paul asked them: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit
when you believed?” Their reply was: “No, we had not even heard whether there
is a Holy Spirit.”
At the same time we know that John certainly did teach (though perhaps not all the time) about the Holy Spirit. He said of Jesus: “He who is coming after me is mighter than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” [5]
Probably the best-known passages about John are those that describe Jesus’ baptism, when the Lord insisted on being baptised even though He had no sins to wash away, and God confirmed His Son’s anointing by speaking from Heaven and sending the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. [6]
After that the Gospels’ focus shifts to Jesus’ ministry, and John appears in just one further short set of incidents.
John had the temerity to point out the sin of Herod Antipas, Tetrarch[7] of Galilee and Peræa and son of Herod the Great, who had married his niece Herodias, divorced wife of his half-brother Herod Philip. According to the law a man was permitted (even encouraged) to marry his brother’s widow, but was specifically forbidden marriage to the wife of a living brother.[8]
Mark tells us that Antipas liked listening to John. However he also feared that, with his marriage denounced by John, his Jewish subjects might rise in revolt alongside the trans-Jordanian Arabs of Peræa. At first he merely imprisoned the prophet – in part, fearing that execution might trigger such a revolt – and it was not until Herodias encouraged her (and Philip’s) daughter Salome to dance provocatively before Antipas on his birthday that the final act of the drama was played out.
Modern theatricals – and, more recently, Hollywood – have made much of Salome’s seductiveness, but it is the brutality of mother and daughter that stands out in their character, demanding John’s head on a platter. [9] Having made a promise before all his birthday guests that he would give what Salome asked, Antipas had the Baptist beheaded and the gory head brought into the palace.
John’s disciples fetched his body away and buried it. Tradition has it that the burial was at Sebaste (previously known as Samaria).
His feast days are 24 June (marking his birth) and 29 August (his beheading).
The name
Yochanan has, as I have remarked before, become one of the Christian world’s
most popular. To distinguish children named after the Baptist it has become
common, especially in Latin countries, to double the name, as in Jean-Baptiste
(French), Giovanni Baptista (Italian), or Juan Battista (Spanish).
