# The New International Encyclopædia/John the Baptist

Edition of 1905. See also John the Baptist on Wikipedia; and the disclaimer.
​JOHN the Baptist. The forerunner of Jesus Christ. The sources on which we depend for our knowledge of the man and his work are: (1) The sections of the Gospels especially devoted to a description of him and his ministry. Of these the accounts in the Synoptic Gospels relate chiefly to his career up to the baptism of Jesus, while the account of the fourth Gospel is concerned mainly with John’s relation to Jesus after the baptism of the latter. (2) The incidental notices of the Baptist in the Gospels, either by the Evangelists themselves or in their reports of Jesus’ words. (3) The account of Josephus (Ant., xviii. 5, 2). From these various sources we learn that John the Baptist was born about six months before Jesus, in a town in the hill country of Judea. The name of the town is not given. The parents were of priestly stock, and full of anxious thought and earnest expectation concerning the future of Israel. To this only child, born in their old age and looked upon as a gift of Jehovah, they gave the name John ​(Hebrew Johanan, ‘Jehovah is gracious’). Naturally he was well instructed in the religious literature of Israel. To what exent, if at all, he was initiated into the priestly life we are not told. It is noteworthy that the messengers sent to him by the Jerusalem authorities were certain priests and Levites, as though these were best fitted to examine him (John i. 19). The greater part of his early manhood was spent in retirement, in the quiet of the wilderness. But at last, as in the case of the prophets of old, the ‘Word of the Lord’ (Luke iii. 2) came to him, and he issued from his retirement with a message such as Israel had not heard for centuries. (For the date, see New Testament Chronology.) The scene of his first public appearance was in the Lower Jordan Valley, and the wild slopes of Northeastern Judea (Matt. iii. 1; Mark i. 4; Luke iii. 3). Here, clad in homely garb, eating the simplest diet, he began his public ministry, crying, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord” (Mark i. 2). Hearers soon began to throng about him, the whole country was agitated, and even from Galilee the crowds gathered to hear the great preacher.
The message of the preacher was not a honeyed one. Like the prophets of old, his summons was “Repent!” Righteousness was the one thing needful. For it was a time of crisis. The axe was already laid to the tree; the chaff of the threshing-floor was about to be burned. ‘The Day of Jehovah’ foretold by the prophets was at hand (Matt. iii. 2, 7, 10; Mark i. 4; Luke iii. 3, 7–9). Nothing but a thorough repentance, a new moral condition, could save Israel from doom. What made this message so startling was its stern application to Israel, the chosen people. The Messianic age was not painted in glowing colors as a glorious triumph of Israel over her enemies. No false trust in the boasted descent from Abraham was permitted to blind the eyes or dull the conscience. The Messianic age was to be ushered in by judgment—a judgment that was to sift Israel herself first of all. Only a new, purified, righteous Israel could hope to meet and greet that age with confidence. This coming dispensation held a large place in John’s thought. To the many inquiries as to who he claimed to be, his reply was: “I am only the herald, only the voice that prepares the way; the greater one is to follow; one for whom I am unworthy even to do a slave’s service” (Matt. iii. 11, 12; Mark i. 7; Luke iii. 15–18). And it was doubtless with reference to this impending age that John instituted the rite of baptism, which is not inaptly termed a baptism of repentance to the remission of sins. The symbol was somewhat common in Jewish circles. Ceremonial lustrations with water were frequently practiced. But John’s baptism was no ordinary lustration. The requisite to receiving it was a confession of sin, and the baptized one arose from the water as a member of the new Israel, repentant, hoping for forgiveness, and thus ready to meet the Messianic age, which to such would be an age of blessing, not of judgment.
The multitudes that came to hear the Baptist were of two opinions. Some refused to admit the reality of his mission, and would have nothing to do with his baptism. Of such a mind were the higher classes. The humbler classes, on the other hand, welcomed him as a true prophet; and many of them, even those most despised and sinful, took his message to heart and were baptized (Luke vii. 29, 30, 33; Matt. xxi. 31, 32). For months, possibly a year, John continued this work, not always in the same place, but never far from the Jordan. He organized a body of disciples, and prescribed for them certain regulations touching prayer and fasting (Matt. xi. sqq.; Luke viii. 18 sqq., xi. 1; v. 33; Mark ii. 18 sqq., vi. 29). In the course of his ministry—under what circumstances it is not stated—he rebuked Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, for his adulterous marriage with Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. For this Herod, under the pretext that John’s large following made him a menace to the public welfare, imprisoned him. During his captivity his disciples had free access to him, and even Herod delighted to hear his teachings. Finally, at the definite request of Herodias, he was beheaded at the castle of Machærus (Mark vi. 17–29; Matt. xiv. 3–12; Luke ii. 19, 20; cf. the account of Josephus). It seems likely that John’s disciples continued their organization for some years at least. Twenty or more years later Christians were found even in Asia Minor who had been baptized according to John’s institution, not in the more specifically Christian way (Acts xviii. 25; xix. 3, 4). In other words, they had been baptized simply in reference to repentance from sin, but not with the emphasis on the Messianic era as already ushered in and partly realized in the Messianic work of Jesus (cf. Acts i. 5; xi. 16).
As to the relation of John to Jesus, it is not likely that there was any intimate acquaintance between them before their public work began (John i. 31), though their mothers were related (Luke i. 36). But the report of the great excitement in the Lower Jordan Valley reached Nazareth, and in due time among those presenting themselves for baptism was Jesus of Nazareth. The work of John had summoned Him to His life work. The Baptist discerned that there stood before him no ordinary person, and he was unwilling to baptize the candidate; but yielded at Jesus’ reasoning that “so it is becoming to us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. iii. 14, 15). Possibly only to John and Jesus was the baptism of Jesus with the Spirit visible (Mark i. 10, 11; Matt. iii. 16, 17; Luke iii. 21, 22; cf. John i. 32–34). Though thus ushered into His public ministry by John, Jesus seems to have had little converse with him subsequently (yet cf. John iii. 26). Nevertheless, Jesus ever recognized the greatness of John’s work and character. In his opinion John was no ‘reed shaken with the wind,’ but a prophet, the last in the great succession. He was the greatest of mortals (Matt. xi. 7–15; Luke vii. 24–28; xvi. 16). He came in the ‘way of righteousness’ (Matt. xxi. 32), and the result of his work was that many were seeking to enter the kingdom of heaven as by force (Matt. xi. 32). His witness was a witness to the truth, for he was a ‘burning and shining light’ (John v. 33–35). More than all this, he was the one definitely predicted in Mal. iii. 1 as the Elias who was to come (Mark ix. 13; Matt. xvii. 12). These statements show conclusively that Jesus recognized in John His forerunner, whose duty it was to prepare for His greater ministry. Such preparation was accomplished in two ways. On the one hand the general awakening of the moral sense of Israel by the Baptist’s preaching ​made Jesus’ profounder and higher message more readily and easily apprehended. On the other hand, the definite designation of Jesus as the Messiah—the Lamb who takes away the world’s sin—to a few choice spirits among his followers led these to Jesus as the first and truest of His disciples (John i. 29 sqq.). Notwithstanding Jesus’ testimony to John’s greatness and recognition of him as His forerunner, He taught that John’s conception of His mission was not altogether adequate. The ‘least in the kingdom’—i.e. the humblest one of those who entered the kingdom along the lines of Jesus’ message of the Heavenly Father and His love—was on a higher plane than John the Baptist (Matt. xi. 11; Luke vii. 28). John’s prophetic gift and calling did not make him infallible. His view of the Messianic age saw it mainly as one of judgment, sifting, and punishment. Jesus, with just as great an insistence on righteousness, proclaimed it in a gospel of glad tidings as an epoch of release from bondage, an era of comfort to the weary, a welcome to the Father’s house. To John the judgment was in the foreground, to Jesus it was still in the distant future. John did not advance beyond the old doctrine; Jesus fulfilled this and opened a new era (Matt. ix. 11–17; Mark ii. 21, 22). Jesus trusted the spiritual discernment of John to discover these truths when He sent back his messengers with His reply to their master in prison (Matt. xi. 1–6; Luke xi. 18–23). John baptized with water to repentance, but Jesus’ work led to the baptism with the Spirit (Acts i. 5; xi. 16). Consult the various lives of Christ, and Köhler, Johannes der Täufer (Halle, 1884); Reynolds, John the Baptist (London, 1888).