THERE could be no beginning of the work of the Messiah until the coming of the Prophet Elijah. That he would return before the Day of the Lord had been declared by the last of the prophets of old. The expectation became linked with the hope of a Priestly Messiah, so that Elijah began to be thought of as a priest. He would reveal and anoint the Messiah of Israel, the Son of David. The Scribes allowed their fancy to play around the prophecy of Elijah's advent, associating with it all kinds of quaint notions. No one knew how he would appear, and make himself known. He might arrive on the clouds of heaven, or suddenly be present and announce himself. Some, holding the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, supposed that the soul of Elijah would enter the body of a boy who should be born at the predestined time. Others considered that the spirit of Elijah would come upon someone as anciently it had done on his disciple Elisha. But we get the impression that many took the promise of Elijah's return only half seriously, as they did the coming of Doomsday and of the Messiah himself. It was a long time since there had been a prophet in Israel, and it seemed only remotely probable that another would arise. The common people clung to the belief, however, and so did the pious and earnest men who pored over the prophecies and sought to read the Signs of the Times.
Jesus, for one, was in no doubt at all. He had absolute faith in the fulfilment of the prophecies, and was as sure about the coming of Elijah as he was that he was destined to be the Messiah. We are compelled by the evidence at our command, which we have already presented and built upon in the previous chapters, to think of him as a man with very definite spiritual convictions who treated the Bible as the incontrovertible Word of God and interpreted it in the oracular manner of the fringe sects of pietistic Judaism.
It chimed therefore with the expectations of Jesus when news reached him in Galilee that a strange antique figure had suddenly emerged from the Wilderness of Judea and was now standing on the banks of the Jordan, preaching to the people and dipping them in the river. This wild man, as report had it, wore the hair garment characteristic of the ancient prophets, bound with a leather girdle like the Prophet Elijah.1 The name he bore was Johanan (John) son of Zechariah. He was of priestly stock, as it was currently said Elijah had been. It was from the banks of Jordan that Elijah had been taken up to heaven,2 and now in the guise of John, as it could be thought, he had come back as foretold.
We cannot know, of course, how Jesus reacted to the news about John, but we can guess at his excitement. A sense of enormous relief would be mingled with feelings of deep solemnity. At long last, as it seemed, there was amazing external confirmation that what he believed about himself was true. He had not been wrong: his inner vision had not lied, and he had been guided aright in all that he had seen and worked out of his messianic vocation. He must go to the Jordan to John, listen and judge for himself. But already in his heart any lingering traces of doubt were dispersing like mists before the sun. The trying years of waiting were over.
There is considerable mystery about John. Little is known of his antecedents except that he was the son of a priest called Zechariah of the priestly course of Abijah, and that his mother's name was Elisheba (Elizabeth). The late Christian story, told only by Luke, has it that John's mother was a kinswoman of Mary the mother of Jesus, and that John was only six months older than Jesus. Luke's account of John's nativity probably depends in large part on material produced by Baptist sectaries, which has been adapted and enlisted to support the superiority of Jesus without detracting from the prophetic significance of John.3 The blood relationship between them is therefore unlikely, and other indications are that John was very much older than Jesus. Matthew is vague about when the Baptist's ministry began, but he may be understood to date it in the reign of Archelaus, successor to Herod the Great,4 in which it is also placed by the Slavonic version of Josephus' Jewish War.5 It is entirely possible that John had made a brief public appearance at that time, which being so long ago Jesus may not have heard about it. In any case the dramatic quality of John's present activities and the impression they created was not affected.
Jesus was by no means alone in supposing that John was Elijah returned. Others wondered if he could be the Messiah or the Prophet like Moses. In the Gospels the prophecy of the Messenger is applied to him, linked with that of the voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’6 John's concern, we are told, was with the urgent call to repentance he had been mandated by God to deliver in these Last Days, and he may well have believed himself to be the forerunner of the Messiah. A hermit-like denizen of the waste lands, a long-haired Nazirite, he was a weird embodiment of the apocalyptic sensationalism of his time, delivering his exhortations with all the fire and assurance of the old prophets of Israel. He declared that the Kingdom of God was at hand, and urged the people to save themselves from the Wrath to Come. At his hands they were dipped in the sacred river to cleanse them from their defilement, as Elisha, the follower of Elijah, had instructed the leprosy-stricken Naaman the Syrian.7 To be Children of Abraham, John proclaimed, offered no guarantee of salvation. The people must amend their ways, and wash away their sins, as did the Gentile in abandoning idolatry and seeking admission into the community of Israel. Then only would they be worthy to share in the great Deliverance.
The commanding uncompromising voice of John struck terror into the hearts of multitudes who heard it. Everywhere there was talk of this extraordinary portent, which not a few were ready to interpret as signifying that the Romans would soon be driven out of Palestine and their Jewish minions in high places would meet their just doom. From all parts the crowds flocked to John to be baptised. The scenes on the banks of the Jordan were fantastic.
What did Jesus think would happen when he went to the Jordan? Did he anticipate that John would recognise and identify him as the Messiah? It would be natural for him to expect some experience which would certify to him that his call had come, that he was anointed for his office. The prophecies required that when that time arrived he would undergo a profound change: he would be invested with powers which would qualify him for the exacting part he would have to play. It was written: ‘And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord. . . .’8
The Gospels clearly regard the baptism of Jesus as the effective beginning of his ministry, the moment of his designation as king of Israel, when God made acknowledgement of him as his messianic son and representative. What underlies their testimony is the original Jewish-Christian doctrine which has been termed Adoptionist, because in keeping with the Scriptures9 it held that Jesus on that occasion had been received into sonship of God. This teaching became overlaid in Gentile-Christianity by the concept of the Incarnation, which asserted in pagan fashion that Jesus had been born Son of God by a spiritual act of fatherhood on God's part which fertilised the womb of the Virgin Mary, and then went on to claim by an elaboration and partial misunderstanding of Pauline theology that the Son of God had eternally pre-existed and was manifested on earth in Jesus, who thus from birth was God dwelling in a human body by a hypostatic union of the two natures. The Gospels, the later ones especially, naturally bring the pristine faith of the followers of Jesus into line with the prevailing ideas. They are also inevitably concerned to combat the view that Jesus in being baptised by John was admitting himself to be a sinner and the inferior of the Baptist. So in Matthew's Gospel John is made to say that it is he who should be baptised by Jesus, and Jesus explains why he submits. The Fourth Gospel also stresses the inferiority of John and offers his reiterated witness to this effect. The early Christians had to meet a strong challenge from the sect which adhered to John as the Messiah. The literature preserved by the Mandaeans of the Lower Euphrates, which honours John to this day, excuses him for having baptised in Jesus a false Messiah.10 Luke, as we have seen, emphasises the superiority of Jesus in the nativity stories. In the more primitive Markan tradition of the Baptism John does not recognise Jesus, and the psychic experience Jesus has as he comes up out of the water is confined to himself.
The conclusion to which we are led is that Jesus did have an experience. He was confident that he would have it, and that the Spirit of God would be poured upon him. Everything was there, as we can gather from the Gospel descriptions of the crowds which flocked excitedly to the Jordan to hear John and be baptised, to intensify the emotions of Jesus. When he saw John there was no doubt in his mind that Elijah had indeed come.
Never had Jesus witnessed such a scene or listened to such words. Truly here was a prophet who spoke with the voice of God, spoke in language that united with all he had thought and believed! He stepped into the chill stream, and the hairy hand of John was upon him, sending him down, down into the depths. Jesus prayed. Slowly he rose up out of the water; and then he had the experience. Tradition says that he heard a Voice from heaven, and that the Spirit of God descended upon him like a dove, or in the likeness of a dove, and entered into him, thus signifying that he was the Messiah. Whatever the actual experience of Jesus was, the tradition certainly conveys appositely and graphically what it meant to him.
There are conflicting accounts of what followed the baptism. The synoptic Gospels say that the Spirit of God drove Jesus into the wilderness to undergo a critical test. For forty days, a symbolic period, he was alone with his thoughts, wrestling with a satanic temptation to misuse his new powers and seek a short cut to the Throne which would eliminate any necessity for his suffering. These urges he triumphantly conquered. He would adhere firmly to the path God had marked out for him in the prophecies. Only after an interval did he return to Galilee.
The Gospel of John has no reference to the Temptation in the Wilderness. Instead, it makes Jesus linger by the Jordan, where John in the presence of two of his disciples points him out as the Lamb of God. Those disciples follow Jesus, and they spend a night with him. One of them is Andrew, brother of Simon afterwards called Peter. They are convinced that he is the Messiah, and the outcome is that Jesus gains his first followers, Andrew, Simon, Philip and Nathanael, and the unnamed disciple whose memories are reflected in this Gospel. All but he are Galileans, and they set out immediately for Galilee.
Not long after this the Baptist was arrested by order of Herod Antipas and incarcerated in the fortress of Machaerus in Perea east of the Dead Sea. He had been at liberty just long enough for Jesus to see him and be baptised by him. Already things were beginning to happen as ordained.
At this time Herod was threatened with war by the king of Arabia, whose daughter had been Herod's wife and whom he had discarded for Herodias, former wife of his brother Philip. John had denounced the marriage as illegal, but over and above he was in our parlance a security risk. With the people, many of them subjects of Herod, ready to take any action the Baptist might command, or even take their cue from his condemnation of Herod, there was grave danger of a revolt in Galilee which would force the tetrarch to fight on two fronts. This could be the end of his government and might cost him his life. In any case the Emperor Tiberius would be angered, and might order the Roman legate of Syria to send forces and depose him. He could count on no sympathy from Pontius Pilate, the present governor of Judea, who already had his difficulties because of his high-handed flouting of Jewish religious sentiment.
From now on Jesus was called upon to make good the work of the Messiah. As a result of the spiritual ‘anointing’ he expected to be different; and he was different. The prophecies had said that the Messiah would receive from God wisdom and insight, the power to heal and to subjugate evil. The faith of Jesus was so strong that he did not question that these capacities had now been conferred upon him. He believed it implicitly, and proceeded to act accordingly. He spoke positively and with the authority of his position: ‘I say unto you.’ He moved on his appointed way with assurance and masterly skill. The sense of his dynamic power awed his humble followers. He dealt with human disorders as entitled to dominate and control them, and evoked a responsive faith in a multitude of sufferers. His own townsfolk were astounded at the tremendous change in him. This was not the retiring and rather inconspicuous Jesus with whom they had been acquainted, who did not talk very much and seemed moody and often remote. This was another man, outspoken and decisive.
Rapidly his fame spread far and wide, and his name became a legend overnight. Nothing was too impossible to be credited to him. There were those, on the other hand, who were scandalised by his teaching and behaviour, particularly members of the Pharisee fraternity who considered themselves to be the custodians of the nation's morals and spiritual instruction. The more straitlaced of them winced at some of the things he said and were offended by the freedom of his conduct. His autocratic attitude roused them to fury. Since initially he made no declaration of his identity, they were not to know that he spoke as the Messiah when he told a man his sins were forgiven. For them he was a religious upstart and demagogue. They did not deny that he wrought cures, as did many of the Essenes and the Pharisees themselves. But in his case they spitefully attributed his successes to possession by the prince of the demons. Jesus retorted that such an accusation was blasphemy of the Spirit of God which was in him, an unforgivable sin now and hereafter.
The alteration in Jesus was real enough. His absolute conviction that he had been owned by God as the Messiah had brought out and intensified certain of his natural qualities. Like a man who has experienced what is called conversion he felt in himself that he was a new being, and this feeling would have been stimulated by his sudden emancipation from the tension engendered by the long years of waiting, by the knowledge that he had liberty to speak and act now instead of having everything pent up inside him. He had not to quest around for what to do, how to begin. He did not fumble or hesitate. The course to be pursued was already mapped out in its essentials. He had only to take the right decisions and make the right arrangements to reach the positions which were progressively indicated. He had the agility of mind and the strength of purpose to attain these objectives.
1. Zech. xiii. 4; II. Ki. i. 8.
2. II. Ki. ii. 8.
3. See Schonfield, The Lost Book of the Nativity of John.
4. Mt. ii. 23, iii. 1.
5. The text is given in the Appendix to The Jewish War in Thackeray's translation of Josephus (Loeb Classical Library). In the Slavonic version the Baptist is brought before Archelaus and the doctors of the Law, threatened with punishment and released.
6. Mal. iii. 1; Isa. xl. iii.
7. II. Ki. v. 10.
8. Isa. xi. 2–4.
9. II. Sam. vii. 14; Ps. ii. 7.
10. In the Mandaean records Jesus seeks to be baptised by John and is at first refused as a deceiver. John finally gives way because of a message he receives. The passage is in the Sidra d'Yahya (Book of John), section 30. A translation is given by G. R. S. Mead, The Gnostic Baptizer, pp. 48–51.