Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.
If this is your first visit, you can check out the introductory installment here. It will help orient you to our purpose.
As a general reminder to everyone, our purpose is to pull back a dark and heavy veil that has, since the time of Christ himself, obscured his true and humble visage from the vast majority of his followers. This writing is explicitly not for profit, and this work is to be considered "open source."
This writing is for the open-hearted. This writing is for the revolutionary-minded.
This writing is for the open-hearted. This writing is for the revolutionary-minded.
Last time, we met John the Baptist. I might have mentioned that The Baptist is probably my second favorite Gospel character. Today, we're going to talk a little bit more about that character. On that account, we'll start today with our reading.
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Matthew 3:4 through Matthew 3:6
4 John wore clothing made of camel’s hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.
5 At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him
6 and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.
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Now let us turn our attention from John's asceticism to his baptism.
When one approaches the study of John the Baptist, one will do well to focus on a couple of specific "-isms": asceticism and baptism. (It dawns on me that the average modern American reader might not know what this word "asceticism" means.* For the uninitiated, asceticism is defined as "severe self-discipline and avoidance of all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons.")
Last time, we mentioned a possible connection between The Essenes, whom we learned about a few weeks ago here, and John the Baptist. As we discovered, some see a link between the frequent ritual bathing of first-century Essenic communities and the baptism that John offered in the Jordan. We also mentioned that John lived ascetically, much as The Essenes did.
Verse 4 today highlights some specifics about John the Baptist's asceticism. We find John wearing an uncomfortable hair garment, rather than a soft fabric manufactured from wool, which would have been widely available in the area at the time. His leather belt is mentioned specifically as well. We will keep an eye out, but it would appear that the description of John's clothing is the most specific mention of one's attire we find in the entirety of The Gospels. Scholars see this as evidence that what John was wearing must have been notably different from the contemporary standard. His manner of dress sets him apart from the community he came up in.
Regarding John's clothing, notation in The New American Bible points us to 2 Kings 1:8, where we see the prophet Elijah described thus:
"He wore a hairy garment with a leather belt around his waist."
We will discuss the prophet Elijah soon enough, as no picture of John the Baptist is complete without an understanding of this Old Testament personality. We mention this here merely to highlight the fact that the text is being used yet again in a vain attempt to neatly place Jesus within the ancient Jewish tradition.
Just as we find John dressed in an unorthodox way, we find him eating an unorthodox diet. The author of Matthew shows John eating "locusts and wild honey." Again, the specificity of the passage leads us to an understanding that his diet was atypical and probably undesirable.
We can assume by the information in verse 4 that John has basically "dropped out" of society, and does not engage in the contemporary version of the rat-race. The description reminds one of the modern street-philosopher, who chooses poverty and homelessness over what he sees as "wage-slavery," or perhaps of Diogenes, the early Greek Cynic philosopher, who deliberately denied property and lived on the streets among dogs. John the Baptist is certainly a unique character, in the context of The Gospel.
We can assume by the information in verse 4 that John has basically "dropped out" of society, and does not engage in the contemporary version of the rat-race. The description reminds one of the modern street-philosopher, who chooses poverty and homelessness over what he sees as "wage-slavery," or perhaps of Diogenes, the early Greek Cynic philosopher, who deliberately denied property and lived on the streets among dogs. John the Baptist is certainly a unique character, in the context of The Gospel.
Now let us turn our attention from John's asceticism to his baptism.
John is introduced to us in the wilderness, out by the Jordan river. According to Matthew, everyone in the region was travelling to see John and to be baptized by him. Perhaps the most compelling fact to understand here is that baptism, in the context of Judaism, barely exists at all. Ancient mainstream Jews had some prescribed "ritual bathing" in their tradition, but that ritual bathing was far different from what we think of now as "baptism," and happened far less frequently than the ritual bathing done by The Essenes.
Differences between Jewish ritualistic bathing and John the Baptist's baptism are myriad. "Baptism" is understood by Christians generally as a "one time" event. In contrast, the "ritual bathing" of ancient Judaism was something that could happen repeatedly, depending upon need. Today, Christians generally see baptism as the regeneration or spiritual cleansing of a person as they enter the Church of Christ, and many understand baptism specifically as having the capacity to wash away sin. Ancient Jews used ritual bathing to eliminate temporary "impurities," such as the impurity of having touched a corpse. Many modern Christians see baptism as a prerequisite for "salvation," while ancient Jews had no such thoughts about their ritual bathing practices.
That said, whatever John was doing out by the Jordan, we can see it as innovative and outlier. The people that followed him out to the desert did so seeking novelty, not tradition.
To understand why "the whole region around the Jordan [was] going out to him," perhaps it is best to pan out a little, here, and understand that the time of John the Baptist was a time of crisis for Judaism, and for Palestine in general. Tensions were extremely high in the region, as Rome struggled to maintain control of a population who were prone to revolt and who refused to worship the Roman pantheon of Gods. The rise of eschatological thinking during that period is well documented, and corresponds with the steady ratcheting-up of the imperial threat, which would have appeared existential to anyone who was paying attention at the turn of the millennium. All of this speaks to John's beckoning in Matthew 3:2: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
In those days, the political and religious tensions would have been high enough that preaching a near-to-come revelation or an end-of-days would have appealed to both pessimists and optimists alike. One can imagine the average faithful Jew in Jerusalem at the time lamenting that "something has to change" in the face of increasing external meddling with the most sacred Temple matters. It is easy to imagine John attracting the disaffected and marginalized of these people with his message of an impending change.
From what Matthew has given us thus far, John is what we can consider some kind of revolutionary leader. We can say with certainty that this was the kind of person who "marched to the beat of his own drum."
As we've mentioned before, John the Baptist is perhaps the only character in The Gospel that Jesus is ever deferential toward. Some scholars believe that Christ may have received his cosmology through the teaching of the ascetic. It cannot be stressed enough how important this figure is in shaping our understanding of the true moral vision of Jesus Christ.
We have only a couple more installments of our study ahead of us before we finally first see the grown-up Jesus on the scene. Next time, we will stay with John the Baptist as he confronts The Sadducees and The Pharisees, who will go out to see what all the hubbub is about. The next several verses are particularly dense, and we may find cause to slow our narrative down some to make sure that we capture all the relevant data. Soon enough, though, we will be reading in red-letter and really getting to know Joshua of Nazareth.
Please join us next time to continue to be a part of what will shortly become a real-world revolution in the style of Christ, and please share this writing.
Love
We have only a couple more installments of our study ahead of us before we finally first see the grown-up Jesus on the scene. Next time, we will stay with John the Baptist as he confronts The Sadducees and The Pharisees, who will go out to see what all the hubbub is about. The next several verses are particularly dense, and we may find cause to slow our narrative down some to make sure that we capture all the relevant data. Soon enough, though, we will be reading in red-letter and really getting to know Joshua of Nazareth.
Please join us next time to continue to be a part of what will shortly become a real-world revolution in the style of Christ, and please share this writing.
Love
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* I mean... they wouldn't, right?
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To read what came prior to this, click here.
