John the Baptist Rewrite Essay

Abstract John the Baptist practiced preaching and baptizing Jews in the river Jordan. He was the one who recognized Jesus as the messiah and baptized him. This baptism was the beginning of Jesus’ life as a teacher. But it is his death that is almost always how John the Baptist is remembered and studied. His teaching is the basis of Baptist today. His life is told in only the Gospels and not much is really known about the man who came before Jesus to preach the word of God and of Jesus’ coming. INTRODUCTION: John the Baptist practiced preaching and baptizing Jews in the river Jordan. He was the one who recognized Jesus as the messiah and baptized him. This baptism was the beginning of Jesus’ life as a teacher. But it is his death that is almost always how John the Baptist is remembered and studied. His teaching is the basis of Baptist today. The New Testament does not supply precise information about the dates of John’s or Jesus’ birth. Usually John the Baptist is associated with the Advent season. His Birth is celebrated on June 24th. In the third or fourth century the birthday of Jesus was assigned to Dec. 25th, around the time of the winter solstice, after what we call the shortest day of the year, when the time of daylight begins to increase. In John’s Gospel there is a saying from John the Baptist, referring to Jesus, that â€Å"he must increase; I must decrease† (3:30). And so the birth of John was assigned to June 24th, after the summer solstice, when the daylight begins to decrease, following the longest day of the year. The Scripture readings for the nativity of St. John the Baptist reflect the dynamics of Decrease and increase between John and Jesus. Today’s Old Testament reading is one of the servant songs from Second Isaiah. It was chosen for its reference to the servant having been named from his mother’s womb (Luke 1:60). But the passage also expresses important aspects of John’s career as a prophet to God’s people and a light to the nations. At the same time his status as servant makes him subordinate to Jesus. The selection from Paul’s speech in Acts 13 reminds us that John played a pivotal role in Salvation history and so won a place in the early Christian proclamation. Importance is given to John’s own recognition of his subordinate status with respect to Jesus, â€Å"I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet†. HIS HISTORY: John the Baptist was described as a man that walked among the Jews in animal’s hair that was not covered by his own skin and he was a savage. He came with a message that â€Å"God hath sent me to show you the way of the law, by which ye shall be freed from many tyrants. And no mortal shall rule over you, but only the highest who hath sent me. † He dipped them into the stream of the Jordan and let them go warning them that they should renounce evil deeds (Harrington, 2005, p. 25). In Luke’s early narrative there are many parallels and comparisons between John and Jesus, both in the announcements of their births and in the accounts of them. While John is great, Jesus is greater is the message given. The idea is not to critic John but rather to highlight Jesus’ greatness. The birth of John is presented by Luke as the fulfillment of God’s promises not only to his elderly parents but also to God’s people as a whole, Elizabeth and Zechariah, John’s parents, insists that the child be named John , a name whose Hebrew form, Yohana, celebrates God’s mercy and favor to his people . If there is any connections between Jesus ant the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is through John, who was â€Å"in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel† The child John grew up to become a herald of God’s coming kingdom, the messiah and the mentor of Jesus. The Gospel of Luke provides some of the chronological history of John the Baptist. According to Luke, John began to preach his baptism of repentance in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. Jesus was born sometime before the death of Herod the Great. This puts him at about thirty when he began to preach and died during the reign of Pontius Pilate, whose term was terminated shortly before the death of Tiberius in 37 c. e. Since in all three gospels Jesus’ ministry appears to last no more than about a year, the gospel of Luke places the death of Jesus between 25 C. E. and 29 C. E. with the latter being a range that would fit with Luke’s claim that John began preaching around 28 C. E. (Kraemer, 2006, p. 334). There is a period of John the Baptist life that is blank and because the gospels are the only mentioning of the man, speculation has given a possibility of where he was. They believed that John the Baptist was a recluse who spent a great amount of time with a group of people named the Essenes. These people lived in the desert awaiting the imminent arrival of the Messiah (Miller & Scelfo, 2007). The Essenes had turned its back on the Herodian temples and its worship to withdrawal to the Judean desert. Their communities were created using monastic style communities, but also to instill a religious life for families. These religious instructions included a literary center and used exclusive rituals such as baptism and prayer. This is probably where the basis of John’s beliefs was founded. In an article in Newsweek it discusses how close John the Baptist, Jesus and possibly his family were to the Essenes community. The actual ritual of Baptism, that was the Essenes belief, symbolizes â€Å"the leaving behind the sinful life one has led until now and to start out on the path to a new, changed life (Ratzinger, 2007). A Professor of religious studies wrote a book in 20006 that gave a little different look at the historical life of John the Baptist. According to this author, James Tolson, Jesus with his cousin John were in partnership and saw themselves as the founders not of a new religion but of a worldly royal dynasty that would be fulfilling ancient prophecies. The dynasty had come down from King David and was to restore Israel and guide it through an apocalyptic upheaval that was growing in the Kingdom of God on Earth. All of this was supposed to happen not in the distant or metaphoric future but then and now. True their message was one of a peaceful change, but Jesus knew he had aroused suspensions of Herodian rulers of Palestine as well as the Romans. So, according to Tolson, Jesus had to establish a provisional government with 12 tribal officials and named his brother James, not Paul as his successor. Later James became the leader of the early Christian movement (Tolson, 2006). HIS DEATH: History remembers Archelaus’s brother, Herod Antipas, because of his interactions with the prophet John the Baptist. John would loudly condemn Antipas immoral behavior of having stolen his brother’s wife, who was also his niece. Antipas arrested and kept John in chains, unable to kill him yet unable to put him out of his mind. According to the Book of Mark, â€Å"When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him† (Mark 6:20). Through a trick thought up by his wife and her daughter Salome, Antipas ended up executing John. Reports then filtered in of another prophet, and Antipas, perhaps plagued by remorse tried to see Jesus who avoided him, because of what he had done to his cousin. In both Mark and Mathew, the death of John the Baptizer is told in flashbacks. Jesus’ activities have attracted attention, and there have been speculation as to his identity, with some proposing that Jesus could be John the Baptist. Ross S. Kraemer of Brown University wrote an essay dealing with this subject. He also wrote that, â€Å"Herod Antipas too having heard the word of the prophet after John’s beheading, believes that Jesus is indeed John. Herodias, Herod’s wife, was the one who resents John and wishes to kill him but she was still prevented by Antipa’s fear of John’s righteousness and holiness. In Mark’s account at Antipas’s birthday meal was when an opportunity presented itself to Herodias. Antipas became entranced by his wife’s daughter dancing and offered this daughter anything she wished, even half of his kingdom. The daughter then goes and asks her mother what to request and her mother replies that she wants her to ask for the head of John the Baptizer on a platter. Antipas complies only in order to keep his oath and preserve his honor before his guests. In Matthew’s account there are some differences but still significant differences. Both agree that it is Antipas who orders John’s execution, but in Mark it is only because of Herodias that he does so, because Antipas has no desire to kill John. In Matthew Antipas himself desires to be rid of John, but has reservations because he fears the people who see John as a prophet. In Matthew’s account Antipas thought well of John and found his speeches pleasing. In Matthew, Herodias does not appear as a player until the end where like in Mark; Herodias capitalizes on Antipas’s offer. In Mark, Antipas has been totally manipulated by Herodias and her daughter, but in Matthew, he has merely been enabled to do what he had wished all along but was too weak to do. One more account from the book of Josephus tells that Herodias and her daughter played no role whatsoever. Josephus and Matthew actually concur in seeing Herod as always desiring John’s death, but with different motivations being that John was critical of Herodias for the way of flouting Jewish tradition by marrying Antipas and this was the motive for Herods ordering the beheading. But Josephus does cite that Antipa’s was fearful of John’s popularity and that could have started and uprising. HIS PROPHECIES: John the Baptizer was a prophet that preached with not so much words but with life. The words of the prophet ring true only because they carry with them the sweat, tears and blood of the prophet. According to Abraham Joshua Heschel, prophets are preachers whose lives are under siege, â€Å"The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of living a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words†. (Dube, 2002, p. 42). The ministry of John the Baptizer was to challenge, provoke and call towards holiness. Because prophets are on the cutting edge of the call for repentance, their call is to shatter the comfort zones of sin and complacency. The conditions that call fourth prophets are conditions of idolatry, moral decadence and weak spirituality. This is why strict conditions are set up for any prophet who prophesies peace. The message of the prophet is one that calls for repentance, one that threatens us with its incarnated holiness, rages at us with God’s words as with John the Baptizers words of, â€Å"Repent, God’s rule is around the corner! † John’s whole life was directed towards one goal, one direction, to give witness to the transcendent reality of God, which now made near, our eyes can see it and our hands can handle it. In John’s own words, â€Å"I did not know Him, but that He should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water† (Dube, 2002, p.43). What this means is that, ultimately, every prophet has to let go. John the Baptizer has to let that which he has given witness to take its own shape and form. Letting go seems easy, a holy thing to do, but in its aftermath it is a very hazardous moment for the prophet. What is hazardous for the prophet is thinking about what has really taken place. The result is that this final movement of the prophetic life is bound by some kind of crisis such as doubt or a trouble in the mind. The prophet discovers that he or she is not the sound from the trumpet but just a reed. This realization requires a re-centering. In John’s case, the crisis is his doubts about the Messiah. But after John sends two of his disciples to ask Jesus a question if he was the one or whether they should look for another his fears were relinquished (Yancey, 2007, p. 72). In Christian faith they believe that John the Baptist was ordained by God to preach and reveal the Messiah, they believe this to be Jesus. Prophecies that were foretold by John are in Luke 1:17, â€Å"And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways. † and also Luke 1:75. In the Book of Malachi John the Baptist is referred to as a prophet who is to prepare the way of the Lord, â€Å"Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in, behold, he shall come, saith the Lord. † (3:1). PROOF OF EXISTENCE: In recent times a cave was discovered not far from the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist, Ein Kerem, just west of Jerusalem on a Kibbutz. Where John the Baptist was born and also where churches and monasteries are built to commemorate his birth. The cave is of considerable size with genuinely puzzling feature such as a large amount of broken patter, some dating to the period when John was active, a pool used perhaps for ritual immersion, a stone with the imprint of a foot, apparently used for foot-anointing and pictures on the walls that could relate to John the Baptist that depicts an upraised arm with three crosses. But much speculation as to whether this is a representation of John or not is still up in the air (Scham, 2004). Caves have long been associated with John. In the bible, his mother, Elizabeth, flees with him to a cave to escape Herod’s massacre of male infants, and as an adult he frequently lives in caves, giving some weight to the cave findings mentioned earlier. After John’s beheadings cults formed around his memory and often held religious rituals in caves. The site was excavated by Shimon Gibson an Israeli archaeologist in 1999 and 2000. Around the perimeter he discovered the remains of walls with large dress stones which usually is a sign of an important place in the Near East. Although Gibson isn’t clear on their age, he still uses this to uphold his find. Another artifact is a unique water channeling system suggesting the presence of a reservoir from its earliest occupation, probably between 800 and 500 B. C. This, Gibson proposes, was used for baptism rituals. Along with these relics are thousands of pieces of pottery, dating from Hellenistic times. CONCLUSION: John the Baptist was a prophet of the coming of Jesus and as elusive in history as was Jesus. Not much information can be obtained about much of his life except for what is mentioned in the Gospel. The finding of the cave and if it is indeed where John the Baptist did work his miracles would be the first evidence to his existence. In all the information I found most focused on his death and the meaning of his sermons towards the end of his life. If the evidence at the excavations do prove to the existence of John than evidence on Jesus’ life will follow. I was most interested in the essay by Ross S. Kraemer that mentioned a possibility that John and Jesus could be the same. Whatever is true, it is easy to say that John the Baptist was a man that through his sermons changed the world and created a faith. Bibliography Bugge, J. (2006, April). Virginity and prophecy in the old English Daniel. English Studies. 87(2), 127-147. Dube, C. (2002). From ecstasy to ecstasies: A reflection on prophetic and Pentecostal ecstasy in the light of John the Baptizer. Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 11. 1 41-52 Gibson, S. (2004). The cave of john the Baptist. New York: Doubleday Harrington, D. (2007, June 18). Decrease and increase. America, 196(21), 38-39. Kraemer, R. S. (2006). Implicating herodias and her daughter in the death of john the Baptizer: A christian theological strategy? Journal of Biblical Literature, 125(2), 321-349. Miller, L. & Scelfo, J. (2007, May 21). A portrait of faith. Newsweek, 14(21), n. p. Ratzinger, J. (2007, May 21). The meaning of baptism. Newsweek, 149(21), n. p. Scham, S. (2004, November). St. john’s cave. Archaeology, 57(6), 52. Tolson, J. (2006, March 17). The kingdom of Christ. News & World Report, 140(14), n. p. Warrington, K. (2006, April). Acts and the healing narratives: Why? Journal of Pentecostal Theology. 14(2), 189-217. Yancey, P. (2007, January). A tale of five herods. Christianity Today, 72.