The Mysteries of John the Baptist

by Tobias Churton

  The Essenes, for example, had their own differences with the Temple system. According to Josephus’s account in his Antiquities of the Jews (book 18, chapter 1), Essenes would not make sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem, even though they still sent produce dedicated to God there. They had, according to Josephus, “more pure lustrations of their own.” Philo insists the Essenes would not sacrifice living animals. As a result, the Essenes were apparently excluded from the common court of the Temple, whether by choice or prejudice against them, Josephus does not make clear. He nonetheless points out that the Essenes were “better than other men” in their course of life. Righteousness, they believed, was its own reward.

  Essenes did give to those outside their number who were in need, and even took in unwanted children, while being themselves, in the main, unmarried. There is no reference to them calling the whole nation to repentance however, and Josephus has them for the most part occupied with husbandry and their own rituals and business.

  Josephus had himself been trained by a holy ascetic, one Banus, when a youth. Would it be surprising if John likewise had received early training among such persons? His specific “calling” came to him, after all, in his thirties, according to Luke’s dating. Josephus does not say that John was an Essene. It is possible that since John had serious trouble with the authorities, Josephus did not wish to “rub it in.” In his account of the interrogation of Essenes by the Romans during the revolt, they never broke nor cursed their torturers. As he admired the Essenes so much, Josephus may have been unwilling to give any grounds for thinking they could be “rabble-rousers.”

  If John was, or had been, among their number, Josephus’s account may give us an idea of his real dress. The Essenes wore white clothes, bound with a girdle at the waist, and a white veil. They believed in the immortality of the soul. The soul’s “enticement” into the body constituted the soul’s imprisonment; death was a release, a consummation devoutly to be wished: a point made strongly in Charlton Heston’s portrayal of John in the film The Greatest Story Ever Told, based on Fulton Oursler’s bestseller of 1949. The film script has Heston replying to Herod Antipas’s threat of execution: “You’ll be freeing me!”—clearly inspired by Josephus’s account to which the sensational discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls had doubtless alerted the scriptwriters.

  Essenes eschewed fornication. According to Josephus, they partook largely of silent suppers—no one spoke over anyone else—with bread and equal measure of meat, in private rooms, served by persons engaged for the purpose. This sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

  They dispense their anger after a just manner, and restrain their passion. They are eminent for fidelity, and are the ministers of peace; whatsoever they say also is firmer than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury for they say that he who cannot be believed without [swearing by] God is already condemned. They also take great pains in studying the writings of the ancients, and choose out of them what is most for the advantage of their soul and body; and they inquire after such roots and medicinal stones as may cure their distempers.

  There are also those among them who undertake to foretell things to come by reading the holy books, and using several sorts of purifications, and being perpetually conversant in the discourses of the prophets; and it is but seldom that they miss in their predictions.

  Josephus elsewhere illustrates this with the aforementioned account of the Essene called Simon who served at the court of Herod the Great. Simon predicted that Herod’s successor would reign in Judea for ten years, which was the case. So, clearly, there were Essenes who did not spend all their time with their brethren. We should also note that Josephus, to a degree, plays down the legalistic side of his subjects. Nevertheless, Essenes were particularly strict about the Sabbath and about ritual washing. If juniors touched senior members, they had to wash. People who broke the rules were kicked out with no support. Josephus says that members so ejected kept to what they had been told. Rejects had been known to try to live on grass or had starved to death in misery. Josephus then says that such former members were taken back in, just before they expired. The consequences were considered ample recompense for sin, and they could begin again. One might think of the famous story of the rich young man who came to Jesus, impressed. When Jesus asks if he would sell all he had to follow him, the man made his excuses and left. He might have expected similar treatment from Essenes who held all things in common, as Acts records also of the post-Pentecost assembly of Jesus’s followers in Jerusalem during the late 30s.

  Frankly, it is astonishing that Christian scripture forebears to mention the Essenes. This would not be so startling if, in some way, the church had emerged out of some kinship or association with the Essenes, a name, by the way, whose derivation is unknown.

  With nothing to say of the Essenes’ eschatology, or ideas about the end of the world, Josephus’s accounts seem clear that they were not, apparently, obsessed with waiting for a messiah to redeem Israel. Josephus does say, however, that they held books of “angels.” The one significant book of the period to feature lists of angels was the remarkable Book of Enoch. The Book of Enoch does look to a final judgment, though it is less a judgment on humankind than on the wicked “Watchers” or rebellious angels who, in primordial times, had insinuated themselves into the bodies of humanity out of ancient lust for the daughters of men. This was an esoteric interpretation of the account of the “Nephilim” in Genesis 6:1–4. Esoteric tradition suggested that the fallen angels had become guardian angels of the Gentile nations. Before the Gentiles could be saved, the fallen angels—their national guardians, or “types”—would have to be judged. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 180 CE) believed this justified Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. If the fallen angel doctrine was a favored doctrine of the Essenes, Josephus either knows not of it, or does not wish his readers to know of it. He wants his readers to think of the Essenes as exemplary men of philosophy and virtue, and this undoubtedly colors his presentation.

  I have to say that while evidence for a direct link between John and the Essenes is insufficient to deliver conviction, I find it difficult to think of John and not think of them.

  For all Luke’s extra information, his presentation of John is, when all is said and done, still only that of a secondary figure and typically colorless as to John’s personality. Luke’s concern is with Jesus as the Son of God; John played his part.

  Luke has the “people” ask themselves whether John was the Christ. Why they should do so is by no means clear; that they did so is significant. John had not done all that a messiah was expected to do. John did stand up for God’s Law against religious and political authority. He demonstrated exemplary personal righteousness and piety, but, unlike Elijah, he had not raised the dead, unless we take “raising of the dead” as a metaphor for inducing a spiritual awakening in those formerly dead to the word of God and the divine life. Nevertheless, the suspicion must lurk that people afterward did take John as a messiah, and Luke is preempting (or postempting) the issue. He lands the now familiar line about the distinction between water and Holy Spirit baptism right on the nail of this issue. According to the tradition dear to Luke, John cannot be the Christ because his baptism is not powerful enough. Luke adds Matthew’s “fire” to the Spirit baptism. The coming one will baptize with Holy Spirit and with fire. Nevertheless, Luke clearly understands the fire as referring primarily to the fire of the messianic harvest: “the chaff he will burn with the fire unquenchable” (3:17). Luke has his cake and eats it. He links the Holy Spirit baptism he knows about from Paul directly to the fire of judgment, as Paul himself did.

  In Luke’s account, Jesus’s part in his own baptism is confined to himself. There is no conversation with the Baptist: “Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended . . .” (3:21–22). It may be the case that Luke wants to be sure that none confuse the water and spirit
baptisms. That is, John’s agency in the baptism, which brings the Holy Spirit on Jesus, is muted. The opening of the heavens seems to have as much to do with Jesus “praying” as with the now almost incidental fact that he was being baptized by John “when all the people were baptized.” The reason people did not get the Holy Spirit was because John was not given the gift —as, Luke believed, Paul was. And yet, the uncomfortable tradition existed that John baptized, and Jesus received the Holy Spirit. Another fairly obvious point coming out of this distinction is that there is no account of Jesus baptizing with water and the Holy Spirit (or fire) anyhow. When Jesus baptizes in John’s Gospel (3:22–24), the idea that Jesus was himself baptizing people is actually denied in the chapter following (John 4:1–3)!

  Chapter Five

  JOHN AND JOHN

  BUT FOR THE LONG TRADITION that John’s Gospel was named, rather confusingly, after the “beloved disciple,” who “wrote these things” (21:24), and who was then, tautologically, identified as “John,” disciple of Jesus, from the Gospel’s existing title—and supposed to be John the “apostle,” or “evangelist”—one might conclude that the Gospel was originally named after John the Baptist. Yes, John the Baptist. That is not to say that the Baptist actually wrote it, of course, but that its contents are bound up with the figure and alleged testimony of John in a powerful, determinative, mysterious way.

  If this sounds a trifle eccentric at first hearing, take a look at the following remarkable feat of verbal acrobatics from chapter 1, verses 29–34:

  The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, ‘After me cometh a man, who is preferred before me: for he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.’” And John bare record, saying, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.”

  The whole story is presented as coming from the Baptist who “saw” and “bore record,” that is, who testified in his own words, what happened at the baptism: “And I saw . . .” In complete contradiction to the synoptic Gospels, John says it was he who saw the Spirit descending: “And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending like a dove, and it abode upon him” (v. 32). This alone would seem to me to explain how this maverick Gospel, beloved of mystics, a veritable “halfway house to Gnosticism,” as Rudolf Bultmann’s study of John called it, came to acquire the title of the Gospel of John. It is there, staring you in the face if you care to see it.

  John is doing the testifying. John is “bearing the record”—at least to start with.

  Common sense suggests that someone read that direct testimony from John in the first chapter and titled the work “The Gospel according to John,” unless it was so titled from its beginning. John is announcing the good news: this is the “herald’s” role: the kērux of the divine ceremony.

  On this reckoning, John the Baptist is John the Evangelist! And who is John testifying to? It seems to me that “John” is addressing an elect body in an eternal setting. The text is then delivered, as it were, to the seekers below: us.

  The Gospel is the truth in which we are called to “dip”: the mixing bowl in which we may be spiritually baptized. A Neoplatonist philosopher would undoubtedly recognize John’s role here as one incarnating the divine Hermes, the psychopomp leading the soul upward through the waters to a higher life, or, if the Neoplatonist were Hebraic in outlook, across the waters to the Other Side and on toward the Promised Land: a new Moses, preparing the way for the new Joshua-Jesus.

  The Gospel of John’s treatment of the baptism story is extraordinarily peculiar. Yes, we see some of the familiar lines about John’s unworthiness to undo the shoe latchet of one coming after him, but the whole essence is different; it is deep. There is bizarre wordplay; the real message is for those who can see behind the apparent sense. Let’s just take the verses above.

  “This is he of whom I said, “After me cometh a man, which is preferred before me: for he was before me.” Note the play on “after me cometh,” followed by “for he was before me.” This seems a flat contradiction, but it is a gnostic riddle: how can he who comes after be he was before? The answer is in verse 26:

  I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not.

  There is one who stands. This almost suggests a giant. This being stands when all else falls. This being has always stood. You did not see him. This being is the one “whom ye know not.” Verse 31 then informs us that John also, he knew him not: “And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.”

  John’s job is to make the one whom we, and he, knew not, manifest to Israel. And he does this by baptizing with water. Without John, the being is not made manifest. Without John, we cannot know.

  John knows.

  In verse 33, John repeats that line for emphasis; it is crucial: “And I knew him not [he does now!]: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he who baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God” (John 1:33-34).

  John has received a message from “he who sent me” (ho pempsas me). This Greek phrase is used with great emphasis by Jesus later on in the Gospel: “he who sent me.” “He who sent me” is “the Father.”

  The Father sent John.

  John saw, and “bare record.”

  What did John see?

  John saw the “Logos.” The “Logos” is translated as the “Word” (John 1:1) but English does not do the Greek justice. The Logos was understood by Greek philosophy as the intelligence, the Mind, by whose order the universe was created. That is why “he” was before John. “He” had always existed. For anyone saying, “John came first; Jesus copied him,” John’s Gospel says “No!” John himself testifies that he did not really know the one who was before him, who yet came “after.” This figure is a cosmic, eternal principle, ever-present but unseen; now manifesting in flesh.

  Those seeking understanding of the universe need to find the Logos inherent in the creation-design, just as a Taoist seeks the Tao, or as an ancient Egyptian sought Ma’at: goddess of justice and balance. The Hindu equivalent of the Greek word logos is the Sanskrit vāk, or divine sound: the manifestation of the soundless. When the primal conditions emerged in the ultimate soundless God for the creation of the universe, a divine sound became manifest. Thus: “in the beginning was the Word.”

  In the deepest sense, the universe is sound, or vibration, and making union with that sound is the basis and goal of mantra yoga (where the Sanskrit man means “thought,” and tra, “liberation”); thus: the “truth will make you free.” The carnally inaudible (or unseen) vāk or logos may reveal the existence of the soundless, invisible source of creation. In pictorial terms, the primal God’s utterance contains the divine formative intelligence: the “word” is creative and in creation; the “word” was “with us from the beginning.”

  At the time John was baptizing, a Jewish philosopher living in Alexandria called Philo (ca. 20 BCE–50 CE) identified the Greek logos with the Hebrew Hokmah, or Divine Wisdom. The Divine Wisdom was philosophically identified as God’s cocreator or “Son” (not to be taken literally!), a part of himself, the means by which intelligibility was infused into primal chaos, and the means by which that intelligibility and meaning could be discerned by the “children of wisdom.” While the Logos could be seen as a manifestation of God’s profound nature, men, by and large, could not see it.

  The Word of God should not be, as it so often is, confused with the words of God or written scriptures
, however exalted or profound they may be. The Voice or presence of the Spirit—the divine breath itself—is far more important than letters and words. Far beyond mere words exists the divine vibration; that is what must be experienced and known for true spiritual liberation to take place. This spiritual tradition was almost entirely obliterated in the bibliolatry of the Western Reformation, which divorced the words from the Word and Music: the divine sound to which the carnal world is deaf—and blind.

  The hymn, which opens the Gospel of John, famously leaps to a tremendous affirmation:

  “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

  That is to say, the “divine word” became, temporarily, audible, “enfleshed” to those who had ears for it. This Logos is the one that the people among whom he was standing knew not. The Logos was there, but not manifest; the Logos went unseen. And the answer to this riddle becomes plainer still. The Logos was indeed, as John the Baptist declares, “before me.” The Gospel’s prologue makes it plain that the Logos was preexistent. It was both with God as being an aspect of God, and it “was God” since God is not divided but manifest according to the perceiver’s capacity. To make the situation plainer still, the hymn or prologue begins with a direct echo of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” John begins, “In the beginning was the Word . . .” There was no heaven and earth without the Word, the Logos. And the Logos appears as a Man!

  We need to look closely at the famous prologue to John’s Gospel, for John the Baptist is revealed in its words to be second only in significance to the Logos. John occupies a very important place in the divine scheme. It is extraordinary that this inference has so rarely been grasped. So full have commentators been with the idea that John was, according to “John,” secondary, they have been blinded to the import of what he was secondary to. If John’s Prologue is a hymn to the Logos, the Son of God, it is also a hymn to John: