JOHN CHRIST 27 - Jesus was a Wicked Priest and John the Baptist was the True Christ

The traditional Christian view of John the Baptist is straightforward enough. It is agreed that his baptism of Jesus marked the start of the latter’s ministry—in fact, two of the canonical Gospels begin with John preaching by the River Jordan. The image that the writers conjure up of John is that of a fiery, ascetic evangelist who emerged from a hermit-like existence in the desert to call the people of Israel to repent of their evil ways and be baptized. From the very beginning, there is something so uncompromising and cold about John that he makes the modern reader uncomfortable; indeed, there isnothing in the Gospels to justify the extreme veneration shown him by generations of heretics—

certainly not that shown him by men of such supreme intellect as Leonardo da Vinci. The Gospel accounts, in fact, reveal little about the Baptist. They tell us that the baptism he performed was an outward sign of repentance, and that a great many answered his call and were ritually immersed in the Jordan—including Jesus. According to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the Baptist proclaimed that he was only the forerunner of the prophesied Messiah, and that he recognized Jesus to be this figure. Having fulfilled his role, he fades almost entirely from the picture, although there are implications that he continued to baptize for a while. Luke’s Gospel makes Jesus and John cousins, and, interwoven with the account of the former’s conception and birth, gives a description of those of John—which parallel Jesus', but are markedly less miraculous. John’s parents, the priest Zacharias and Elisabeth, are childless and advanced in years, yet are informed by the angel Gabriel that they have been chosen to bear a son, and shortly afterwards the post-menopausal Elisabeth conceives. It is to Elisabeth that Mary goes when she finds herself pregnant with Jesus. Elisabeth is six months pregnant at the time, and at Mary’s presence her unborn child ‘leaped in her womb’; thus she knows that the latter’s child is to be the Messiah. Elisabeth praises Mary, which inspires her to proclaim the ‘song’ that is now known as theMagnificat²⁸

We read in the Gospels how, shortly after he baptized Jesus, John was arrested on the orders of Herod Antipas and imprisoned. The reason given is that John had openly condemned Herod’s recent marriage to Herodias, the former wife of his half-brother Philip—a marriage that, since she had divorced Philip first, was against Jewish law. After an unspecified period in prison, John was executed. In the familiar story, Herodias' daughter by her earlier marriage, Salome, dances for her stepfather at his birthday feast, and he is so delighted that he promises her whatever she desires, up to ‘half his kingdom’. On Herodias' prompting, she asks for the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

Unable to go back on his word, Herod reluctantly agrees—having come to admire the

27 Picknett, Lynn + Prince, Clive – The Templar Revelation. Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ. Ch. 14 28 Luke 1:46-55.

Baptist—and has John beheaded. His disciples are permitted to take the body away for burial, although whether this includes the head is unclear.²⁹

The story has everything—a tyrannical king, a wicked stepmother, a nubile dancing girl and the horrific death of a famous holy man—and has therefore provided fertile material for generations of artists, poets, musicians and playwrights. It seems to have an eternal fascination, which is perhaps curious for an episode that consists of just a few verses in the Gospels. Two adaptations in particular scandalized audiences at the beginning of the twentieth century: Richard Strauss' operaSalome portrayed a promiscuous girl trying to seduce John in prison and, when spurned, demanding his head as revenge, then kissing its lifeless lips triumphantly afterwards. Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name had only one performance due to the horror roused by its pre-publicity, which centred mostly on the fact that he himself played the title role. However, Aubrey Beardsley’s famous poster for the play remains a graphic depiction of Wilde’s interpretation of the biblical story, and once again, centres on Salome’s supposed necrophiliac lust. This heady cocktail of imagined eroticism has little connection with the bald account in the New Testament, whose sole purpose appears to be to establish in no uncertain terms that John was Jesus' forerunner and spiritual inferior—and also to fulfil the prophesied role of the reincarnated Elias, who would precede the advent of the Messiah. However, there is another easily accessible source of information about John: Josephus'Antiquities of the Jews . Unlike his alleged reference to Jesus, the authenticity of this is not disputed because it fits naturally into the narrative and is an impersonal account that does not eulogize John, and also differs from the Gospel accounts in significant ways.³⁰

Josephus records John’s preaching and baptizing, and the fact that his popularity and influence over the masses alarmed Herod Antipas, who had John arrested and executed in a ‘pre-emptive strike’. Josephus gives no details of his imprisonment or the circumstances or manner of his execution, and makes no mention whatsoever of the alleged criticism of Herod’s marriage. He highlights John’s enormous popular support, and adds that, not long after his execution, Herod suffered a serious defeat in battle—

which the people took as a sign of retribution for his crime against the Baptist. What can we conclude about John from the Gospel accounts and Josephus? To begin with, the story of his baptism of Jesus must be authentic, for its inclusion argues that it was too well-known to leave out altogether—we have noted earlier the tendency of the Gospel writers otherwise to marginalize John wherever possible. John was active in Peraea, east of the Jordan, a territory under Herod Antipas' rule along with Galilee. Matthew’s description is contradictory³¹ ; the Gospel of John is more specific and names two small towns where

29 The story of John the Baptist’s execution is told in Matthew 14:3-12 and Mark 6:17-29. Luke tells only of his arrest, and John omits any mention of his fate.

30 The only alteration that may have been made is the addition of the epithet ‘the Baptist’, as it is debatable whether Josephus would have been familiar with the term.

31 Matthew’s account (3:1-12) places John in Judaea, but on the eastern shore of the Jordan, which was actually

John baptized: ‘Bethany across the Jordan’ (1:28)—a village near the main trade route—

and Aenon in the north of the Jordan Valley (3:23). The two places are a fair distance apart, so John appears to have travelled extensively during his mission. The impression of hermit-like asceticism fostered by the English translations of the Gospels may, in fact, be a misconception. The original Greekeremos , given as either ‘desert’ or ‘wilderness’, can mean any place of solitude. The same word, significantly, is used of the place in which Jesus feeds the five thousand³² . Carl Kraeling, in his study of John, which is considered the standard academic text, also argues that the diet of ‘locusts and honey’

that John is said to have favoured does not argue an especially ascetic lifestyle.³³ It is also likely that John’s mission was not confined solely to Jews. In Josephus' account, although he initially has him exhorting ‘the Jews’ to piety and a life of virtue, he adds that ‘others gathered together [i.e. around him] (for they were also excited to the utmost by listening to his teachings)’³⁴ . Some scholars think that these ‘others’ can only be non-Jews, and according to the British biblical scholar Robert L. Webb: „…there is nothing in the content to suggest that they could not have been Gentiles. The location of John’s ministry suggests that he could have contact with Gentiles who travelled the trade routes coming from the East, as well as the Gentiles living in the region of the Trans-Jordan“³⁵.

Another misconception is that of John’s age, which is usually taken to be roughly the same as Jesus'. However, the implication of all four Gospels is that John had been preaching for several years before he baptized Jesus and that he was, perhaps by a large margin, the elder of the two³⁶ . (The story of John’s birth in Luke’s Gospel is, as we shall see, highly contrived and unlikely to bear much resemblance to the facts.) Like Jesus', John’s message was an implicit attack on the Jerusalem Temple cult—not simply on the possible corruption of its officials, but on all it stood for. His call to baptism may have angered the Temple authorities, not merely because he claimed it was spiritually superior to their rites, but also because his wasfree . Then there are the anomalies in the descriptions of his death, especially when compared with Josephus' account. The respective motives ascribed to Herod—fear of John’s political influence (Josephus), and anger at his criticism of the ruler’s marriage (the Gospels)—are not mutually exclusive.

Herod Antipas' marital arrangements did, in fact, have political implications, but not because of whom he had married. The problem lay with whom he haddivorced in order to do so. His first wife was a princess of the Arabian kingdom of Nabataea, and the perceived insult to this royal family had precipitated a war between the two kingdoms.

Nabataea actually bordered on Herod Antipas' territory of Peraea, where John was preaching. Therefore John’s denunciation of the marriage effectively put him on the side of the enemy king, Aretas, with the implicit threat that, if the populace were to agree

in Peraea (the Jordan being the border).

32 Kraeling, John the Baptist , p7.

33 Ibid., pp10-11

34 Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, quoted in Robert L. Webb,John the Baptizer and Prophet, p32.

35 Robert L. Webb, p36.

36 Schonfield, The Passover Plot , p72.

with him, they might end up supporting Aretas against Antipas.³⁷

Perhaps this seems academic, but it is puzzling that the Gospels should ‘soften’ Herod’s real motive for having John killed. If we recognize that they are essentially works of propaganda, and that when they obscure some event they do so deliberately, the alternative raises questions about why, in this instance, the Gospel writers should bother.

It is understandable that the Gospel writers would have wanted to censor any suggestion that John had a huge popular following—it fits their general policy towards him—but if they were going to fabricate anything, one might have expected them to concoct a story that supported Jesus in some way. For example, they might have had John arrested for proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah. The Gospel accounts also make a mistake. They say that John criticized Herod Antipas on the grounds that the latter had married his half-brother Philip’s ex-wife. But although the circumstances of the marriage are historically accurate, the half-brother in question was actually another Herod, not Philip. It was this Herod who was Salome’s father.³⁸ Despite the fact that John—like the Magdalene—has been deliberately marginalized by the Gospel writers, one can still find hints about his influence on contemporaries of Jesus. In one episode, the implication of which appears not to have impinged on most Christians, Jesus' disciples say to him: ‘Lord, teach us to pray, the same as John taught his disciples.’³⁹ This request can actually be understood in two ways: as ‘teach us prayers as John taught his disciples’ or ‘teach us thesame prayers as John taught…’ We then read that Jesus taught them what has become known as the Lord’s Prayer (‘Our Father, which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name…’). As long ago as the nineteenth century the great Egyptologist Sir E.A. Wallis Budge⁴⁰ noted the origins of the opening of the ‘Lord’s Prayer’: an ancient Egyptian prayer to Osiris-Amon begins

‘Amon, Amon who art in heaven…’ Clearly this predated both John and Jesus by centuries, and the ‘Lord’ who is invoked in the prayer is neither Yahweh nor his alleged son, Jesus. So in any case, the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ was not composed by Jesus. John is most widely considered to have been overcome by awe at the very sight of Jesus before he baptized him. We are left with the impression that his whole mission, perhaps his entire life, was geared to that one event. In fact, however, there are clear indications that John and Jesus, although closely associated at the beginning of the latter’s career, werebitter rivals . This has not escaped many of today’s most respected biblical commentators. As Geza Vermes writes: „The aim of the Gospel writers was, no doubt, to give an impression of friendship and mutual esteem, but their attempts smack of superficiality and close scrutiny of the admittedly fragmentary evidence suggests that, at least on the level of their respective disciples, sentiments of rivalry were not absent.“^{4 1}

Vermes also describes Matthew and Luke’s insistence on Jesus' precedence over John as

‘laboured’. Indeed, to objective readers, there is something deeply suspicious about

37 Kraeling, p87.

38 Ibid.

39 Luke 11:1

40 Wallis-Budge - Egyptian Magic , p116.

41 Vermes, Geza - Jesus the Jew, p31

John’s repeated, and rather sickening, emphasis on the superiority of ‘one that cometh after’. Here we have a John the Baptist who is actuallygrovelling before Jesus. However, as Hugh Schonfield says: We are made aware from Christian sources that there was a considerable Jewish sect in rivalry with the followers of Jesus, who held that John the Baptist was the true Messiah…⁴² Schonfield also notes the ‘bitter rivalry’ between their respective followers, but adds that, because the influence of John on Jesus was too well-known: ‘They could not therefore disparage the Baptist, and had to contrive instead to emphasize his secondary place.’⁴³ (Without an understanding of this rivalry neither John’s nor Jesus' true roles can be fully grasped.

Apart from the far-reaching implications for Christian theology itself, the failure to recognize the Jesus/John hostility makes most radical new theories ultimately unsatisfactory. For example, as we have seen, Ahmed Osman actually argues that Jesus was invented by John the Baptist’s followers in order to fulfill his prophecy about one who was to come. Similarly Knight and Lomas'The Hiram Key⁴⁴ goes so far as to maintain that Jesus and John were co-Messiahs working in partnership, a theory that demands that the two preachers were close colleagues; but nothing could be further from the truth.) The most logical conclusion is that Jesus began as one of John’s disciples, and broke away later to form his own group. (It is very likely that hehad been baptized by John, but as an acolyte, not as the Son of God!) Certainly, the Gospels record that Jesus recruited his first disciples from among the hordes of John’s disciples. In fact, the great English biblical scholar C.H. Dodds translates the phrase from John’s Gospel, ‘He that cometh after me’ (ho opiso mou erchomenos), as ‘he that followsme’. This could, for the ambiguity is the same as in English, mean ‘disciple’. Indeed, Dodds himself thought that this was the case.⁴⁵

The most recent Bible criticism points to the notion that John never made his famous proclamation about the superiority of Jesus, or even hinted that the latter was the Messiah. This is supported by several facts. The Gospels (rather ingenuously) record that John, when in prison, questioned the authenticity of Jesus' Messiahship. The implication is that he doubted whether he had been right in his original endorsement of Jesus, but this could equally be another example of the Gospel writers having had to adapt a real episode for their own purposes. Could it be that John had unequivocallydenied Jesus' Messiahship-maybe even denouncing him? From the point of view of the Christian message the implications of the whole episode are—or should be—deeply disturbing.

For on the one hand Christians accept that John had been divinely inspired to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, but John’s question from prison reveals, at the very least, that he had doubts. Clearly his incarceration had given him time to think, or perhaps divine inspiration had deserted him. As we shall see, later followers of John, who were

42 Schonfield, The Essene Odyssey , p40.

43 Ibid., p58.

44 Knight and Lomas, The Hiram Key, chapter 11.

45 A.N. Wilson, Jesus, p112.

encountered by Paul during his missionary work at Ephesus and Corinth, knew nothing of John’s alleged proclamation of a greater figure who was to come after him. The single most compelling piece of evidence that the Baptist never proclaimed Jesus as the coming Messiah is that Jesus'own disciples did not acknowledge him as such , at least at the beginning of his ministry. He was their leader and their teacher, but there is never any suggestion that they originally followed him because they believed he was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. Jesus' identity as the Messiah seems to have gradually dawned on the disciples as his ministry progressed. Yet Jesus began his mission after his baptism by John:so why, if John had really announced Jesus' Messiahship, did no-one else know of it at the time? (And the Gospels themselves make it clear that the people followed him not because he was the Messiah, but for some other reason.) Then there is another, very thought-provoking, consideration. When Jesus' movement first began to make an impact, Herod Antipas became afraid and appeared to think that Jesus was John resurrected or reincarnated (Mark 6:14): „And King Herod heard of him (for his name had spread abroad) and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do shew themselves in him.“

These words have always been a source of puzzlement. What did Herod mean by them

—that Jesus was in some way John reincarnated? But this can hardly have been the case, for both John and Jesus had been alive at the same time. Before examining this story further, let us note some important implications of Herod’s words. The first is that clearly he does not know that John had foretold that ‘one greater than he’ was to follow him, otherwise he would have drawn the obvious conclusion that Jesus was this person. If the coming of the Messiah had been a conspicuous part of John’s teaching—as the Gospels claim—then Herod would have known about it. The second is that Herod says that

‘John…was risen…and therefore mighty words do shew themselves in him [Jesus]…’ This implies that John had enjoyed a reputation on his own behalf for miracle-working. This, however, is flatly denied in the Gospels—in fact, in the Gospel of John (10:41) it is so emphatic as to

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