JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HIS JEWISH BACKGROUND

You have already been presented with the information we

possess concerning John. As you have seen, our knowledge
mainly derives from the four Gospels describing the association
of the Baptist with Jesus and from the Prologue of the Fourth
Gospel twice naming John as the historical link with the
incarnation of the divine Logos (Jn 1:6, 15) . There are further
mentions of Johns baptism of in the Acts of the Apostles ( Acts
1:5, 22; 10:37; 11:16; 13:24-5; 18:25; 19:3) and we have the
famous snippet from Josephuss Jewish Antiquities 18. 117-9,
outlining the career of the Baptist. The Dead Sea Scrolls, as I
will show, contain no further direct reference. Nothing much
can be added to the data already on the table except some
background material collected from the Old Testament and from
post-Biblical Jewish literature including Qumran.
1. John as a prophet
John is portrayed as a prophet in the New Testament and
obliquely in Josephus where John is identified as a good man
who exhorted the Jews to practice justice, a programme
regularly ascribed to prophets in the Bible.
But what kind of a prophet was he? Like his Old Testament
predecessors, he was a critic of the moral conduct of his Jewish
contemporaries, including the tetrarch of Galilee, Herod
Antipas, and exhorted them to make a return to God, an all-

inclusive repentance on account of the proximity of the

Kingdom of heaven. Those who were moved by his words were
instructed to undergo a ritual of purification and renewal,
baptism.
John is furthermore described as an ascetic prophet, a
hermit living in the desert, who reminds one of the famous
charismatic man of God of the Old Testament, Elijah. The idea
of the returning or resurrected Elijah associated with John
appears four times in the Gospels. In the Fourth Gospel John is
asked whether he was Elijah, but he denied it. By contrast, in the
Synoptics, Jesus himself subscribed to the returning Elijah
concept and stated that Elijah had already come without people
realizing it, thus pointing to John. Herod Antipas, the murderer
of John, imagined that in Jesus the Baptist had risen from the
dead. Finally there is the famous question put by Jesus to his
apostles, Who do men say that I am?, to which the popular
answer was: John the Baptist/Elijah. So the Elijah saga which
was deeply implanted in Jewish religious consciousness appears
to be an essential element for the proper understanding of the
figure of the Baptist in the New Testament.
2. Cessation of prophecy?
Before continuing the analysis of the prophetic
background of John, a major preliminary question needs to be
settled: Did Jews in the age of Jesus believe that they were
living in the era of the prophets? I am hinting here at a well-

known early rabbinic saying, which asserts that with the death
of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, the last three Old Testament
prophets, prophecy came to a halt and from then on divine
communications were transmitted by a heavenly voice, called
bat qol or the daughter of a voice. But if the cessation of
prophecy goes back to the sixth/fifth century BC, was the
prophetic status of John and of Jesus, the great prophet from
Nazareth in Galilee, a Christian invention completely
meaningless for Jews? Not so. If hope in prophets was given up
in some Jewish circle, it definitely remained alive in others.
Between the second century BC and first century AD prophets
were still expected: a prophet was to decide what to do with the
remains of the altar destroyed during the Hellenistic crisis, 1
Mac 4:46, and another was expected to determine whether the
high priestly dynasty of Simon Maccabaeus should persist for
ever, 1 Mac 14:41. The Qumran Community Rule also looks
forward to the coming of a prophet and the two Messiahs of
Aaron and Israel (1QS 9:10). It is also significant that Josephus
mentions three Essene prophets by name, Judas, Menahem and
Simon, between the end of the second century BC and the
beginning of the first century AD.
3. The heavenly voice
Instead of the rabbinic alternatives, either prophet or
heavenly voice, the evangelists opted for both. The three
Synoptic Gospels assert that a bat qol was heard at the moment

of Jesus baptism by John, as well as at the Transfiguration, but

the wording differs. In Mark and Luke the voice from heaven
declares: You are my beloved Son, with you I am well
pleased. Matthew, in turn, speaks in the third person: This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. In the first case
the message is addressed to Jesus without implying that anyone
else heard it, whereas in the second the voice is directed to John
and possibly to all the other bystanders.
It may be interesting to recall in passing a second century
AD sarcastic version of the baptism of Jesus with dove and
heavenly proclamation. It comes from the Jewish informant of
the Greek philosopher Celsus, and has been preserved in
Against Celsus, Origens rebuttal of the book entitled, The true
religion, which Celsus wrote c. AD 180. According to Celsuss
Jew, Jesus deduced his divine pedigree from the fact that when
he was bathing with John, he saw a bird flying towards him and
heard a voice calling him Son of God. However, this event had
no corroboration, the Jewish critic remarked, as there were no
independent witnesses (Celsus 1. 41).
4. John the hermit-prophet
John was the voice crying in the wilderness. He dwelt away
from human habitations and his dress and his diet recalled the
rough Elijah, the wearer of a furry garment and a leather girdle
or loincloth. John, too, was clothed in camels hear and carried a
skin girdle around his waist. His wardrobe is paralleled in rustic

simplicity by another desert sage, a man whom Josephus

selected for a while as his master. This Bannus, like John, dwelt
in the wilderness and covered himself with leaves and barks,
such things as the trees provided. His food is not specified. All
we are told is that he survived on the natural produce of the
desert.
As for Johns diet, I do not wish to trespass on Sebastian
Brocks preserves, let alone to compete with his culinary
expertise. So I will not comment on locusts or grasshoppers and
especially not on wild honey. I am sure Sebastian will explain
with his customary learning that the wild honey, the meli
agrion, was not necessarily produced by bees, but could also be
the sweet juice of plants and pods, such as the carob or St Johns
bread. The Baptists tough dietary regime he was not eating
and drinking according to the Gospels (Mt 11; 18; Lk 7:33)
was anticipated once more by Elijah who, whilst hiding in
Transjordan, lived on food brought to him by ravens and is said
to have ran forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb without
taking any food or drink.
5. John the Baptist and Qumran
In the Gospels John is especially linked to Isaiah 40:3, which
associates him also with the Qumran Community Rule. It runs
as follows:
A voice crying/ in the wilderness/ prepare the way of the Lord.
Make straight in the desert a pathway for our God.

The first line indicates that the preaching of John in the desert
fulfilled the prophecy of the Second Isaiah. Isaiah 40 foresees
the coming of God through the desert bringing his liberated
people from the Babylonian captivity towards the Land of Israel
with a view to inaugurating his reign. Hence the single sentence
programme of John, and of Jesus after him, runs: Repent, for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Mt 3:2; 4:17).
Isaiah 40:3 also plays a momentous role in the religious
thought of the members of the Qumran or Essene community. In
fact, it appears to be the foundation text of the sect.
And when these become members of the Community in
Israelthey shall separate from the habitation of unjust men
and shall go to the wilderness to prepare the way of Him; as it is
written, Prepare in the wilderness the way of ****, make
straight in the desert a path for our God. This path is the study
of the law, which he commanded by the hand of Moses (1QS
8:12-15).
This text would imply that the establishment of the
Qumran Community in the Judaean desert was motivated by the
fulfilment interpretation of the same Old Testament prophecy
that inspired both John and Jesus in their call for repentance
with a view to the imminent arrival of Gods Kingdom.
The baptism of repentance, the once and for all
purification advocated by John and Jesus, was also paralleled at
Qumran by the yearly initiation ritual of new members. The
ceremony performed on the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost
entailed an immersion into the purifying and sanctifying water

which, together with a humble submission to all the precepts of

God would cleanse the soul of the new initiate (1QS 3:8-9).
To conclude, my answer to the often asked question, Was
John the Baptist an Essene? remains firmly negative. If he had
been, he would not have been allowed to preach to all and
sundry, as Essene doctrine was reserved for a carefully chosen
and trained elite. Nevertheless I am convinced that the Scrolls
are highly useful for shedding extra light on John and for this
reason I hope that the ideas placed before you will have helped
to perfect the image of the Baptist whose personality and ideas
must have yielded an important influence on the early stages of
the ministry of Jesus.