You DON'T KNOW John the Baptist | Professor Joel Marcus

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Find out about the real historical John the Baptist with Professor Emeritus Joel Marcus. Joel Marcus taught New Testament with an emphasis on the Gospels and the context of early Christianity within Judaism. His publications include two monographs on Mark, a two-volume commentary on the same Gospel in the Anchor Bible series, and a monograph on John the Baptist. He has worked on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in the first three Christian centuries.

Publications:

The Mystery of the Kingdom of God. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 90, 1986.

The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis in the Gospel of Mark. (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992).

Jesus and the Holocaust: Reflections on Suffering and Hope. (Doubleday, 1997).

"Mark. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary." (Anchor Bible 27; New York: Doubleday; vol. 1: 2000; vol. 2: 2009).

John the Baptist in History and Theology. The Personalities of the New Testament (University of South Carolina Press, 2018).

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[FictionMission]

I used to think early Jesus movement was trying to lure John the Baptist followers into the Jesus movement. Now I prefer to think (the future) Jesus movement was simply a continuation of John’s community after his death. The opening scene of GMk shows God shining favor upon John’s people by entering the physical realm via the body of Christ.

[elchasai]

Nasaraean Essenes and the Mandaeans should be taken seriously

[Darisiabgal]

This comment is not against the guest but more a critique against some of the comments.

In near eastern religion there are elements of self-critique. The reality of the religion is that the priesthood was the higher authority before the dynastic period. This is why sargon both promoted Inanna and promoted his daughter to priestess of Inanna and sent her to the sacred temple at Eridu for training.
Prior to the dynastic period lugal, big man, were appointed at large and the lugal needed to be recertified annually in the rather salacious kingship ceremony. As part of that ceremony the king gets a slap across the face.
At the end of the Bronze age just about every city-"state" had lost its authority and all were trying to recapitulate authority. This is when anointment emerges. Its basically a ceremony where a petty king tries to get other local kings to send priestess to his anointment ceremony.
My point is this, without a strong centralized dynastic leader kingship is tenuous and tge priest have more power. If the priest deem the king to be impious they could undermine his power and another king can be selected at the end of sime cycle. This is already part of the system. We can thing of the sage-priests as being a council of elders.
This issue that Elijah is taken up, we should see this as a metaphor for the eternal nature of the sages in near-eastern literature, that if kings were impious that sages will reappear. It is well known that kings that engage in battle will often by lost, cyrus the great and alexander are examples.
This issue is different from John the Baptist, he is not a sage within the system of priests. Lets look at what happens between 164 and 125 BCE. The Jerusalem cult which had little authority outside of Jerusalem expands its authority through a set of priest kings and forcibly converts people in the Jordan river region to their version of Judaism. This caused a multiway schism in the priest hood in which those representing the power elite are basically Jerusalem Jews who families are functionaries in the temple, the pharisees who represent the fair interpretation of the law, and the essenes who reject the authority of the temple. The last two of these groups follow a mystical interpretation, emphasized in the mystical/prophetic text of Daniel, that a messianic figure will return. We now kniw this text is a forgery.
None the less the two minority messianic beliefs were representative of a broad spectrum of moments in the period, some of whom thought the messiah was coming because they believed some aspect of Jewish governence (Herods) or spiritual/ritual life (Saduccees) were corrupt and should be replaced.
We have to be careful not to read to much into a single persons belief or interpretation thereof. This is particularly true of persperspectives from the gospels, and so lets point those out.

Mark - Final chapter, The women run away and say nothing. Mark knows this statement is not true, he simply is trying to say the jerusalem organization had no authority (like paul did) from the risen Jesus. Who was mark talking about, the pillars of Jerusalem, between 62-70 scattered to the four winds.

Matthew - Again Matthew is from the very outset trying to point ot that herods priest are dullards and dont see the signs of the new king. Matthew wants to paint Jesus as Christ and he wants to blame the priests for not seeing this and he is also blaming the jews for following these priests. Here is the problem, at best only 5% of jews woukd follow any given priesthood, and matthew knows this. Chapters 1 and 2 in Matthew are simply "made up shit".
Matthew portrays Jesus as a loyal servent of god, pious to the law in every way, but we know that this is a bit of a pretense. Yeshu_ bar Josep of Nazara can be seen as an occult mystic who is not following any of the three major sects in his teachings. Hes certainly not to the extreme of occult behavior as Paul, but he says things against the scribes, the high priests, the essenes, and the pharisees. Yeshu is anti-authoritarian and believes the scribes have been adding to the text, but we dont know with any certainty what he thinks was added.
Again the 'seek, find, marvel, empower, and rest' trope is one of the 4 to 6 most attested things jesus said but its mystical and it is of greco-anatolian origin.

Luke - I am going to take luke at his words that he is trying to organize many sources. But who ever the author is, by the second century is working with so many corrupted sources he apparently thing his narrative makes the sources work together, he's not to keen on minizing the contradictions since he duplicates contradictory material. By the time we get to the end of Acts pretty much the author luke is trying to reconstruct a fairy tale.

John - As origenes points out John is not to keen on factual accounts.

Conclusions: The relationship of king and priest is dynamic in neareastern societies since the dawn of human history. Priesthoods want kings to exhibit pious behavior as to show the authority of the priesthood and kings want all their subjects to be loyal. Whereas in 170 BC a small priesthood tried to rapidly expand their priesthood, and instead of creating loyalty they created a confused plurality of belief, many who were following the mysticism of a forged text. In 30 CE there was a sense that the messianic prophesies would be fulfilled and by 70 CE those who believed this needed to put the fallen temple in that context. This was a cognative dissonance and is evident in the dishonesty of the gospel literature.

[showyourvidz]

How do the Mandians of Iraq connect to John the Baptist?

[yishislassieswaiting]

Excellent primary sources for further scholarship - which it seems you could use - Ken Johnson Bible Facts translation team, publishing.& teaching online of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other contemporaneous writings of apostles & their personal disciples, John's Essene community included.

[hermanhale]

The perfect head of John the Baptist on the plate would be played by...Jacob Berman!

[iwilldi]

John was always a good camel. He acted as a paralytic to whom Jesus could say: Son your sins are forgiven, now take your crap and go home.
John would fit through the hole of the roof as through the eye of the needle.
If you remove the head, then you get Jesus, and if your remove the rest, you have nobody in the tomb.
And at the eucharist the rest of the body is spread. Call it messianic fertilizer.

But the interesting part is, that Mark implicates Jesus (together with 4 accomplished fishers of men) in the arrest of John and later in the beheading.
Very unsurprsing you find a hairy Mary (Herodias who sponsored 300 denari for Jesus head) at the burial. Its seems those iscariots never run out of jobs.

[willempasterkamp]

Nero J.C. son of Germanicus , ydk but never will tell us ; lool

[lessanderfer]

I'm confused, John the Baptist WAS Elijah...Matthew 17:11) Jesus answered and said to them, “Indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things. 12) But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished. Likewise the Son of Man is also about to suffer at their hands.” 13) Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist."

[yishislassieswaiting]

I wish you the JOY!!! - Which comes via knowing YeHoVaH thru His Word, His only begotten Son and the ministry of His Spirit into your hearts and minds. .

[yishislassieswaiting]

Balderdash! I can't respect your "scholarship" until you quote the Bible and the Essene writings & other contemporary writings from the Dead Sea. John was the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Z being the Aaronic high priest the year Yeshua was conceived, and Elizabeth being Mary's cousin. John & Yeshua were cousins. John was not sure of Yeshua's messiahship until he saw a dove descend upon him. He fully supported Yeshua as Messiah after that, but unfortunately, was soon imprisoned in a prison on a mountain east of the Dead Sea (you can explore that dramatically interesting place today). Soon ater that he was beheaded.