Helen Bond
Appearances
The Ancients
John the Baptist
It's very hard to know any of that. I mean, it depends a lot on where exactly he grew up and we don't know that. I mean, assuming it's a village, it's probably very unlikely that he spoke Greek. We do know that Hellenistic culture, Greek language, had penetrated Galilee actually to a considerable extent by this time.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
But it was largely in the cities, places like Sepphoris and Tiberias on the Lake of Galilee. So it was these sort of bigger settlements. I suppose a priest who was going down to the temple in Jerusalem, his father would have known a reasonable amount of Greek because Greek was spoken quite readily in Jerusalem. But I think it's unlikely that he had a great facility in Greek.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
He might have known a bit, but I think probably like everybody else in these sort of rural settlements, he would have been speaking Aramaic.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Das ist die Sprache des gesamten oberen Romen-Empires an diesem Punkt. Es sind nur die Bildenden und Träger. Ich glaube, die Leute, die früher französisch gesprochen hätten und jetzt griechisch sprechen, alle anderen im oberen Empire sprechen Aramaikisch.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
I think it's worth pointing out too, though, that John seems to sort of start something, you know, after him there's a whole series of prophetic figures and they nearly always start off in the wilderness. They're first of all in the wilderness, they gather people and then there's a guy called Theudas in the 40s and he similarly goes to the River Jordan and he seems to be
The Ancients
John the Baptist
saying it's going to part until the Roman governor comes and kills them all. He gets beheaded, poor guy, so you never know what's going to happen. And another guy in the 50s called the Egyptian takes a group of followers from the wilderness again and he goes to the Mount of Olives and there he says, the walls of Jerusalem are going to fall at my signal.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Again, we don't get a chance to find out if it's actually going to happen or not because the governor sends in Und der Ägypten fliegt tatsächlich, aber jeder andere wird getötet. Also diese Idee, in der Wildnis zu beginnen und ein prophetischer Figur in der Wildnis, ist eigentlich eine gemeinsame später. Und ich denke, für all diese Ideen, dass die Erinnerungen, die es provoziert.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Marks Gospels und Matthäus und Luke, die auf Mark abhängig sind, sagen alle, dass er da draußen ist, in der Wildnis, und er isst Locusts und Wildschweine, was absolut schrecklich klingt. Ich meine, das Ding mit Locusts und Wildschweinen, es könnte auch ein Art Saft sein, aber es kann auch Fleisch sein, wie wir es kennen. Das Ding mit Locusts und Wildschweinen ist, dass das koschere Essen ist.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
And so if you're there in the wilderness, this is stuff that he could find himself, that he could eat and would also be kosher. So he's clearly very interested in purity aspects and keeping kosher food requirements. And we'll get onto this in a bit when we talk about the baptism. But he's clearly living off the land. And also Marx says that he's dressed like a prophet of old.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
He's got this sort of camel hair costume. Garment on and he's got a leather belt around his waist. Presumably, again, he's trying to say that he looks like a prophet of old, but also very specifically, Mark wants to say that John the Baptist is Elijah, come back again.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
And this is precisely because of what Joan already mentioned, this prophecy in Malachi, that Elijah will come back and restore all things before the great and glorious day of the Lord. So there's this sort of Apocalyptic excitement about John. John is here. He's appeared in the wilderness. He's saying, you know, God is going to come. Things are going to happen.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
And certainly Mark wants to say, this is it. This was Elijah coming back. And so the next one is going to be Jesus. That's the way that Mark is linking these two men. As Joan already said, you know, there's that sort of slightly problematic angle about it. On one hand, John is massively famous. So it's good for the Christians to kind of link in to John.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
But on the other hand, you don't want Jesus to sort of look like he's just a follower of John.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Yeah, exactly. You know, how does Jesus fit in? So you get this whole sort of story about John is Elijah and everything about Jesus is greater. And John is pointing to Jesus here.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Das ist genau es. Ja, es ist sehr viel so, dass das Ende der Welt nahe ist. Und er scheint ziemlich unkompromissiv darüber zu sein, zumindest so weit, wie wir es von den Gospeln wissen. Stranglich, gibt Josephus keine Hinweise darauf, aber die Gospels sind sehr viel von der Sicht, dass Johns Botschaft ist, dass man sich bereit macht, weil ein Größerer als ich kommt.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Now, whether originally he actually did think of Jesus or some kind of messianic figure, we don't know. I think more likely he was actually saying, God is going to come. You know, the one greater than me is God. And John is getting everybody ready. He's saying, repent, you know, say sorry for your sins. Accept baptism because God is about to come.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
And actually, many aspects of this are really quite a scary message. I mean, he says, God is, or the coming one will come with his winnowing fork and he's gonna, you know, the fires are gonna come and you're going to be Der Schaff wird in den Feuer gestürzt und es ist alles wirklich ziemlich furchtbar.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Es ist also diese Art von schrecklicher Vision des Endes und du musst dich wirklich bereit machen, dafür zu sein.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Probably a mixture of different things. I mean, it's very different to Jesus in terms of Jesus is healing people and working miracles. So, you know, you can understand why people go out to be healed and there's these amazing things happening. In the case of John, it really is that it's all about the message. These are difficult times.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
There's a big debate amongst scholars as to how difficult first century Galilee was. Some people paint a very bleak picture that the Die Städte verkaufen Geld von allen. Die Leute in den Wäldern werden in Banditur gedrückt. Ich glaube nicht, dass es so schlecht war. Aber natürlich ist das Leben in der ältesten Welt immer schwierig. Rom macht immer Anrufe.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Die Leute fragen sich, was als nächstes passiert. Nur 100 Jahre zuvor hatte es die jüdische Selbstregelung. Und jetzt, schau dir das an, sie haben Herodischen Könige, sie haben Rom an die Tür geschlagen. So I think there's always a lot of things to be upset about.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
And here is just this radical message that, you know, things that have been prophesied, promises from the Hebrew Scriptures are about to be fulfilled. And this was obviously something that people really felt they wanted to get behind.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Yeah, he's a son of Herod I, or Herod the Great. When Herod died, his kingdom was actually divided among three of his sons. So Herod Antipas is not king, but he's called a Tetrarch. And he rules over Galilee and Perea. I mean, he seems to have been reasonably okay as a ruler. He tried to be a bit like his dad. He sort of founded cities and... Und er mag es, auf der Weltstange zu spielen.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Aber er ist ein viel wenigerer Charakter als sein Vater. Ich meine, das echte Problem mit Antipass ist, dass er, wie jeder Regierer seiner Zeit, nicht mag, dass Leute, die Kräfte attraktivieren, Anywhere in his kingdom. And according to Josephus, at any rate, this is what does for John, that the fact that he's attracting all of these people, the whole of Judea is going out to him.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Herod takes fright at this. He thinks, you know, what's going on here? And he decides that it's better to sort of nip this in the bud and get rid of him quickly.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Yes, you can. Mark is very similar to Matthew and Luke because they are using Mark as a source. And in all of those ones, the stress is on John as the forerunner, the Elijah figure. But you get a completely different picture in John's Gospel. And in this Gospel, in fact, you have people coming to John the Baptist and they say to him, are you the Christ? Yes. Und sie sagen, bist du Elijah?
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Und er sagt, nein, ich bin es nicht. Also klar, eine sehr andere Bildung. Und was John macht, das wird ein bisschen kompliziert, was Johns Gospels mit John the Baptist macht, ist für ihn, John the Baptist ist ein Beobachter zu Jesus. Und so, wobei die anderen Gospels John the Baptist verabschiedet und auf der Szene sind, bevor Jesus seinen eigenen Geist startet,
The Ancients
John the Baptist
In Johns Gospels ist es wichtig, dass die beiden eigentlich gleichzeitig aktiv sind. Jesus ist ein Disziplin von John the Baptist und John the Baptist hat seine eigenen Disziplinen. Und wenn er Jesus sieht, sagt er, Behold, der Gnade Gottes, der die Sünden der Welt wegnimmt. Und er sagt das zweimal.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Und der ganze Punkt von John the Baptist in Johns Gospels ist, ein Beobachter zu Jesus zu sein, zu sagen, ich weiß, wer dieser Mann ist. This is the one who's coming after me. This is the mightier one. And so there's no sense that he's Elijah. He's just the witness to who Jesus is.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Es hängt davon ab, wo du lesen willst. I mean, because he's been arrested in the Synoptic Gospels. He's been arrested before Jesus' ministry. Oh, he's been arrested. Yeah, so this message that Joan mentioned, this is coming from prison. He's obviously having visitors in prison. I mean, that's part of the thing in the Synoptics, that he can't see Jesus himself.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
He's already sort of curtailed, but he's sending his people to go and look and he's wondering about this figure that he's hearing about.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Ja, in Wahrheit ist die ganze Geschichte, die Josephus uns gibt, im Kontext eines Krieges, eines militärischen Krieges, von Herod Antipas. Und Josephus sagt, dass alle dachten, dass er als göttliches Verurteilung getötet wurde, weil er John the Baptist getötet hat. And then he kind of has a flashback and telling you how he killed John the Baptist. And Josephus says, you know, he was a good man.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Loads of people followed him. He talks about baptism. And then he says that he was attracting so many crowds that Herod Antipas started to get worried. He thought there could be some kind of insurrection. And he decided that it was better to nip things in the bud quickly rather than wait for it to get out of hand and then have to intervene.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
So, that's a little bit different to the much more famous story that we had, the very sort of glamorous, exotic story that we have in Matthew and Mark. In those stories, of course, John is in prison and Herod actually likes John. He likes to hear him. He doesn't really want to do anything about him. But Herod's wife, Herodias, has a grudge against John the Baptist.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
And the reason is that John has been criticizing John her marriage to Herod Antipas. And you just need a little bit of the background here, because Herodias used to be married to Herods half-brother, who's either called Herod or Philip, depending on the source.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Yeah, they're all called Herod. I mean, Herod is sort of a family name anyway. So Herod Antipas meets this woman, Herodias, who's married at the time to his half-brother, and they fall in love and they decide they're going to get married. Now the problem is that dass ihre Verheiratung gegen die jüdischen Regeln ist, weil es illegal war, deine Brüderin zu verheiraten, wenn dein Bruder noch lebt.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Wenn dein Bruder tot ist, dann solltest du eigentlich seine Frau verheiraten und Kinder erbringen. Aber sie entscheiden, dass sie verheiratet werden. Sie werden beide verheiratet und verheiratet. Und es scheint von Matthew und Mark, dass John dies kritisiert hat.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Now, Josephus says nothing at all about John criticizing the marriage, but it does seem to me that the two things actually fit in quite well. I mean, if John is all about living a moral life, be righteous, repent of your crimes, your sins, then I think it's quite likely that he criticized Herod Antipas.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
This is very high profile, you know, this is the ruler and he's probably going to have criticized him. That may not be, you know, the whole story about the dancing girl and then Herod says to her, oh, you know, he's completely kind of This ridiculous middle-aged man. And he says, you know, you can have whatever you like, half of my kingdom. And the girl goes, I mean, she's a little girl.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
She's not the sort of the dancing girl we sometimes imagine. But this little girl goes to her mom and says, what shall I ask for? And she says, the head of John the Baptist. And the little girl adds the detail on a platter. And so that's what happens. And poor old Herod has to kill John the Baptist. He can't go back on his promise. And then the disciples of John come and take the body away.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Ja, vielen Dank. Ja, Biblische Zeitmaschine, ein täglicher Podcast mit mir und Journalisten, dem großen Journalisten, dem wunderschönen Dave Roos und allen Dingen biblischer Sozialgeschichte, die mit den Bibelzeiten zu tun haben. Wir lieben es alle. Und wir hatten auch Joan da ein paar Mal, also sie ist ein Freund des Podcasts.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Oh yes, I think so. I think there's no doubt. I mean, there's no actual inscriptions or anything like that, anything tangible. But he's mentioned not only in the Christian Gospels, but also in the works of the Jewish historian Josephus. So he has a really nice paragraph about him.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
So I think there's no doubt that actually he was not only a real figure, but actually quite a big deal in his day, possibly more of a big deal than Jesus was.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Oh, wahrscheinlich. Ich meine, wenn wir die Gospels nicht hatten und wir nur die Letters von Paul hatten, würden wir eigentlich nicht so viel über den historischen Jesus wissen. Ich meine, Jesus war wirklich glücklich, dass Leute Biografien über ihn geschrieben haben. Wenn sie Biografien über John geschrieben hätten, hätten wir viel mehr Informationen gehabt.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Wahrscheinlich haben einige der Dinge, die John gesagt hat, irgendwie zu Jesus geflogen, weil wenn wir etwas Informationen über Johns echte Botschaft haben, besonders in Luke, dann klingt es ausgesprochen wie das, was Jesus später gesagt hat. Also es hat wahrscheinlich ein bisschen von dem Teilen hier gewesen. But we also know that followers of John carried on for a long time.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
We meet one of them in the Book of Acts called Apollos, and he only knows about John the Baptist, so he has to have a bit of extra teaching. So clearly, you know, these traditions and stories about John are moving about, people are talking about him, but yet the precise teaching of the first century man nowadays is pretty scanty.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Können wir eine Idee von dem Welt, in dem er aufgewachsen ist, aus der überlebenden archäologischen Information bilden? Ja, unser Wissen über die 1. Jahrhundert-Egalität wird immer besser und besser. Und Archäologen machen heute sehr viel Arbeit auf Wälder, insbesondere für eine lange Zeit waren es die großen Monumenten und Städte, in die die Leute interessiert waren.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
Aber jetzt hat es viel Arbeit gemacht Villages and village culture. I mean, again, if Luke is right and John comes from a priestly family, then that brings its own sort of ethos. His father would have gone down to the Jerusalem temple every so often to sort of do his duty there.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
So, I mean, he would have been brought up in the home, in the synagogue with a strong sense of the Jewish scriptures, of his heritage, the story of Israel. And I think that's quite important because when he does suddenly appear in In the Wilderness by the River Jordan. These are all sort of ideas that are so important in terms of the story of Israel.
The Ancients
John the Baptist
You know, the River Jordan is the place that they had to pass through to get to the Promised Land and the Wilderness is sort of full of sort of ideas about the Israelites in the Wilderness and he's very much kind of tapping into these stories.