A Shift in Time by Lena Einhorn

Author:Lena Einhorn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHRONOLOGICAL ENIGMA TEN: JOHN THE BAPTIST

LET US NOW TURN TO THE OTHER MAJOR MESSIANIC LEADER PRESENTED in the Gospels, the person described as Jesus’s teacher and forerunner: John the Baptist, the man who baptizes Jesus by the Jordan River. How does he fit into the emerging picture?

The prominence of John the Baptist is so great in the New Testament that all the Gospels except Matthew start with a description not of Jesus, but of John. And also in Matthew, an account of the missionary activity of John the Baptist fills up most of chapter three. At the same time, however, John seems to be a complication to the Gospel authors; he must be deferred to, and at the same time he must be diminished. Thus, in introducing John, the Synoptic Gospels quote Isaiah: “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”1 And in the Gospel of John it says: “He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”2 The man at the top of the Gospel narratives is simply a messenger of someone greater than himself: Jesus. To make this even clearer, all four Gospels have John the Baptist proclaim his own lesser importance than the man from Nazareth, who comes to the river Jordan to be baptized by him: “I am not,” says John, “worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.”3

Who, then, was this forerunner, whose place in history was so impossible to ignore?

The one Gospel which gives a description of John’s origins is Luke. According to this account, John’s mother Elizabeth was a relative of Mary, the mother of Jesus. And the mothers appear to be pregnant simultaneously (Mary is told she will give birth to a son conceived with the Holy Spirit, upon which she travels to see Elizabeth, who is then six months pregnant with John. Mary herself seems to be already pregnant at this point, since Elizabeth, when she meets her, exclaims: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb”4).

All the other Gospels introduce John the Baptist when he begins his mission. He appears “in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”5 And “the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”6

John the Baptist is thus described as a man of the desert, of the wilderness. He wore “clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.”7 He lived simply, and he preached simplicity and compassion: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”8 Nevertheless, his message to those who came down to him by the river Jordan

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