John the Baptist

From the wilderness of ancient Judea to the pages of the New Testament, John the Baptist is one of the most compelling and mysterious figures in biblical history. But who really was he? What was his message? And why did he choose to live in isolation, wearing camel hair and eating wild locusts and honey? In this special episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes takes you to Bethany – the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism and the heart of John the Baptist’s ministry to uncover the life and legacy of this fiery preacher. Joining Tristan are two expert guests – Professors Joan Taylor and Helen Bond – to explore the archaeological and historical evidence surrounding John the Baptist. Together, they delve into his radical message, his clash with Herod Antipas, and his role in the broader world of Roman-occupied Judea. What emerges is a portrait of a man who defied authority, inspired movements, and helped shape one of the most influential stories in human history. For more from Helen and Joan on The Ancients: Jesus of Nazareth - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6qFWoLLNQFgL0FmBhUoKe2 Mary Magdalene - https://open.spotify.com/episode/43gF3oTWEwz0pi3PLRmtGc Pontius Pilate - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6vZxK1dFIwspOoBOkpVLmA Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 1:35Tristan Hughes?

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• 2:57Tristan Hughes?

  So I'm currently standing on top of Little Hillock at Bethany beyond the Jordan, where the phrase 'chariots of fire' originates from. This is part of what we call the baptism site, the place where it is believed that Jesus of Nazareth was baptised and John the Baptist did his preaching, did his ministry. This was the place of his ministry. Looking around this area of the world, first off, there's no other tourists here, so it's very special access we've got. It is a very barren, quite arid landscape. This is the wilderness, and that corroborates with the literature, with the biblical sources, which mentions how John the Baptist, he was preaching by the river Jordan in the wilderness.

• 3:39Tristan Hughes?

  And he lived, well, not in the loveliest of accommodations, he lived in a cave and he ate a diet of wild honey and locusts, and also wore camel skin, or camel hair, I believe that's in the Gospel of Mark. This is an extraordinary sight. I can see the remains of a few buildings, the foundations, stone foundation layers, and many of them are believed to have been churches. There's even a reconstructed arch, symbolising the opening of one particular monastery. But there were also pools, there were also sources of water, and we also know that there was a complex water system underneath, highlighting how water was so critical for Those groups of early Christians who came and congregated over here in the centuries

• 4:23Tristan Hughes?

  following the time of John the Baptist and Jesus. This became an incredibly important area on the route of pilgrimage for people who, for instance, were going from Mount Nebo further to the east, the place where Moses looked and saw the promised land, to further west, across the Jordan, to places such as Jerusalem. Going back quickly to what I mentioned about the origins of that phrase, chariots of fire. Well, this hillock is sometimes known as the hill of Elijah, Elijah's hill. Elijah was one of the prophets of the Old Testament, and at the end of his life, the story goes that he crossed the Jordan, he ascended a hill, and then he ascended up to heaven in a chariot of fire.

• 5:06Tristan Hughes?

  And some believe, in the Christian faith, that it was this hillock from where Elijah ascended to heaven from. We're not really going to be focusing on Elijah today. I have come here to learn more about John the Baptist and what he was doing right here. It's The Enchantress on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. There was a short on-location introduction from Bethany beyond the Jordan, in present day Jordan, that I visited last year. It's a site associated with the famous biblical prophets Elijah and John the Baptist, both of which will feature in today's episode. But of the two, well, the clue's in the title, it's John the Baptist's story that will

• 5:50Tristan Hughes?

  take the limelight. Who was John the Baptist? What is his role in the Bible? What message was he preaching alongside his baptisms? And why did he decide to live in a cave, wearing a camel hair garment, and eating a diet of wild locusts and honey? Well, joining me for this episode exploring the life of John the Baptist, we have not one but two interviewees, both of whom are friends of the ancients. First off, Dr Joan Taylor from King's College London, and Professor Helen Bond from the University of Edinburgh. Now, both Helen and Joan are experts in the story of ancient Judea, modern day Israel and Palestine, at the time of Jesus of Nazareth, and the key figures that feature in his story,

• 6:34Tristan Hughes?

  including, of course, John the Baptist. Let's get into it.

• 6:42Tristan Hughes?

  Helen, Joan, it is fantastic to have you both back on the podcast and at the same time, welcome to you both.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Thank you, thank you, lovely to be here.

• 6:51Tristan Hughes?

  We've had you both on the podcast several times before when you've just been the only interviewee, but we've also had it once before where we've had you both on at the same time to talk about Mary Magdalene. John the Baptist is slightly different, but I guess similar at the same time, isn't he? He's around that same time in the biblical story. And is it fair to say that he's often seen as a forerunner to Jesus in the Christian tradition?

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Yes, he is the forerunner in terms of the Christian tradition. After him comes Jesus. Jesus comes to him at the Jordan River and gets baptised by him. He sees this incredible thing, this visionary thing of the heavens opening and the Holy Spirit coming down upon him like a dove at the Jordan River. And so Jesus and John the Baptist are welded together because Jesus has this incredible experience. And at that point, he goes off and does his own missionary thing. He starts his, his own teaching and John the Baptist is kind of left behind as we follow Jesus.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  But because Jesus starts off with John at the Jordan River, John is something to be reckoned with in terms of Christian thought.

• 8:03Tristan Hughes?

  Can we say for certain that, like Pontius Pilate, we've done in the past, and Jesus of Nazareth, that it's very likely John the Baptist was a real figure?

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, I think so. I think there's no doubt. I mean, there's no actual inscriptions or anything like that, anything tangible, but he's mentioned not only in the Christian Gospels, but also in the works of the Jewish historian Josephus. So he has a really nice paragraph about him. So I think there's no doubt that actually he was not only a real figure, but, but actually quite a big deal in his day, possibly more of a big deal than Jesus was.

• 8:40Tristan Hughes?

  You're nodding there profusely, Joan. Seems like you agree to that.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  I agree to that. And Christians wouldn't have made him up. He's a problem in some ways for the church, because you can see in in our text that whenever he appears, they have to try and apologise, you know, sort of say, well, you know, I must decrease and he must increase in the Gospel of John. John the Baptist is someone who does himself down in terms of how the Gospel of John presents him. In the Gospel of Matthew, it has to be explained why Jesus goes to John, and why would Jesus, who is supposed to be Son of God, go and get baptised by John in the Jordan River when his baptism

• 9:28Speaker 03

  is for the remission of sins? You know, this is a an issue for for the Christians. So they had to explain why Jesus went to John at the Jordan, and in the Gospel of Matthew it was, John actually protests when Jesus comes to him at the at the Jordan and says, I should be baptised by you. And Jesus says, let it be so for now. You know, it is important to fulfil all righteousness. It somehow has to be explained. And you can see this awkwardness go through in in quite a number of Christian texts, that if only John the Baptist wasn't part of the Christian story, but he has to be because Jesus has gone to to John. So that makes him historically credible.

• 10:13Tristan Hughes?

  Does it also feel, because I remember when chatting with you both in the past, I mean, there's the mention of the the so-called apocryphal gospels and those other ones that don't make it into the final four. Do we think that there was more information about John, let's say from the first century, from when he's alive, that has been lost since, and that we only have a little bit, only a little snapshot of actually all the information that was recorded about this figure near the time that he was alive?

• 10:42Speaker 04

  Oh, undoubtedly. I mean, you know, if if we didn't have the Gospels and we just had the Letters of Paul, we wouldn't actually know very much about the historical Jesus either. I mean, Jesus was really lucky that people started writing biographies about him. If they'd written biographies about John, we'd have had a lot more information. Probably, actually, some of the some of the things that John said have sort of somehow migrated over to Jesus, because when we do have some information about John's actual message, particularly in Luke, it sounds suspiciously like the kind of thing that Jesus says later. So so there probably has been a bit of sharing here. But we also know that followers of of John carried on for a long time. We meet one of them in the book of Acts called Apollos,

• 11:27Speaker 04

  and he only knows about John the Baptist, so he has to have a bit of extra teaching. So clearly, you know, this these traditions and stories about John are are moving about. People are talking about him, but but yet the precise teaching of the first century man nowadays is is pretty scanty.

• 11:44Tristan Hughes?

  And so with John's life, if we don't have, I'm guessing, biographies wise, you don't get it from birth and his extended family, where he grew up and all of that. I mean, how much of John's life do we actually hear about from the surviving sources? And when in his life do we start hearing about this person called John the Baptist?

• 12:02Speaker 03

  Well, there is a nativity account of John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke.

• 12:07Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  And it is a real question about whether or not that comes first. And then Luke weaves in a nativity account of Jesus as a kind of way of trumping John the Baptist, because everything about Jesus' nativity in the Gospel of Luke is more fantastic than the nativity of John the Baptist. But it's quite a detailed nativity of John, and that is trying to present him as the Elijah figure, the Elijah figure who is supposed to come ahead of the day of the Lord, as predicted by the prophet Malachi.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  And so there is a situating of John the Baptist and this great plan, the divine plan for humanity. And it's it's quite a personal story. It's a curious one. We hear of of John the Baptist's parents, Zecharias and Elizabeth, and Zecharias meets the angel Gabriel in the in the temple and and John has this miraculous birth in that they are an old couple, an older couple. Barren. Past childbirth age. And yes, so they they have this miraculous conception really of John in their old age. And he is born to Elizabeth when she thought she couldn't have any children.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  So then Mary comes along and wow, it's even more amazing what happens to Mary. So this shows this interaction between the Jesus tradition and the John tradition, as Helen says, there's probably quite a bit of sharing, actually, in terms of the tradition. If something looked good in terms of what John the Baptist said, it might very well have migrated to be recorded on the lips of Jesus.

• 13:55Tristan Hughes?

  Helen, I remember when we did a chat about Jesus and Nazareth.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 13:59Tristan Hughes?

  Where you were explaining how when you explore the context of the time, Judea, what is today Israel and Palestine, the lives of people who would have been living by the Sea of Galilee, fishermen, carpenters, and getting a sense of how they lived, the clothes they wore, whether they had lice, wasn't that another thing we were talking about?

• 14:17Speaker 03

  I love that.

• 14:19Tristan Hughes?

  But like.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:20Tristan Hughes?

  Could we imagine something similar with John the Baptist? Are we able to kind of build up an idea of the world that he grew up in from the surviving archaeological information?

• 14:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, our knowledge of first century Galilee is getting better and better all the time. And archaeologists nowadays are doing a lot of work on on villages in particular, you know, for a long time it was it was the big monuments and and cities people were interested in. But now there's been a lot of work on villages and village culture. I mean, again, if Luke is right and John comes from a priestly family, then that brings its own sort of ethos. His father would have gone down to the Jerusalem temple. Every so often to do his duty there. So, I mean, he would have been brought up in the home in the synagogue with a strong sense of the Jewish scriptures, of his heritage,

• 15:09Speaker 04

  the story of Israel. And I think that's quite important because when he does suddenly appear in the wilderness by the river Jordan, these are all sort of ideas that are so important in terms of the story of Israel. You know, the river Jordan is the place that they had to pass through to get to the promised land. And the wilderness is sort of full of sort of ideas about the Israelites in the wilderness. And he's very much kind of tapping into these stories.

• 15:38Tristan Hughes?

  Is there any assumptions about whether he belonged to a particular sect, particular Jewish sect maybe at all? I know, Joan, we've done the Dead Sea Scrolls, chat about that in the past, haven't we? And there's always that name of the Essenes. Can that link into John the Baptist's story at all and his background?

• 15:53Speaker 03

  Some people think that John was an Essene, and some scholars have written about that quite recently, actually, and thought he might have had some connection with this particular group. It's a tricky one for me because I often think scholars have the wrong idea about who the Essenes were. And that there's been this tradition of seeing them as quite a mystical, otherworldly sect, completely out of step with all others within Judaism at the time, and somehow precursors to Christians and being this different group. But I simply don't see that evidenced in any of our literature about the Essenes. And it comes from a particular

• 16:38Speaker 03

  19th century idea about the possible precursors to Christianity and Judaism and wanting to configure the Essenes as being Very different from the Pharisees who were in the eyes of the scholars of the nineteenth century, very law-bound, whereas the Ascens were kind of much more free and community-driven and radical and so on. And that idea is still knocking around. In fact, quite recently, I was looking at the Wikipedia article on the Ascens and it's described as a mystic sect or mystic group or something. No, they weren't. And so the Ascens, in a nutshell,

• 17:21Speaker 03

  were one of three groups in Second Temple Judaism described by Josephus. The other two, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, are clearly part of public life and very involved in temple administration and the law courts. And I think the Ascens were two, and Josephus describes them as being called by certain rulers of Judea. At certain times, they played parts of predicting things that are going to happen because they have particular expertise and prediction. But they're respected. Josephus says all the time how incredibly respected

• 18:02Speaker 03

  they are and how much they're esteemed. And so does Philel of Alexandria when he describes the Ascens. So they're not out of step with anything. They're incredibly central and part of public life. So the question then is, how close was John the Baptist to any of those groups, really? Sadducees, Pharisees, or Ascens? Can we see something in his teaching that would align with anything we know of any of these three parties, we might call them parties, of public life? And it's really hard to say, because what he says really is so based on reading Isaiah, or, you know, reading the prophets. And people can have

• 18:47Speaker 03

  quite individual inspiration without them being allied with any particular group.

• 18:55Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, with John's background and this kind of, you know, this priestly background, so evidently, I'm guessing he must have been educated or to an extent. Should we imagine that he spoke Greek? Did he speak more than one language? Have we got any insight into that?

• 19:09Speaker 04

  It's very hard to know any of that. I mean, it depends a lot on where exactly he grew up, and we don't know that. I mean, assuming it's a village, it's probably very unlikely that he spoke Greek. We do know that Hellenistic culture, Greek language, had penetrated Galilee actually to a considerable extent by this time, but it was largely in the cities, places like Cephalus and Tiberias on the lake of Galilee. So it was these sort of bigger settlements. I suppose a priest who was going down to the temple in Jerusalem, his father would have known a reasonable amount of Greek because Greek was spoken

• 19:49Speaker 04

  quite readily in Jerusalem. But I think it's unlikely that he had a great facility in Greek. He might have known a bit, but I think probably, like everybody else in these sort of rural settlements, he would have been speaking Aramaic.

• 20:02Tristan Hughes?

  It's Aramaic, is it? Okay, yeah, that's the dominant one.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  That's the language of the whole of the Eastern Roman Empire at this point, actually. It's only really the educated and traders and I guess the people who might have spoken French in sort of medieval times and now speaking Greek. Everybody else in the Eastern Empire are speaking, yeah, Aramaic.

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• 23:09Tristan Hughes?

  The key part of his story is him going to the River Jordan and the wilderness and of course would ultimately get to the baptism of Jesus. But I must ask, was there at that time, was there a precedent for individuals, maybe you had a priestly background or something similar to that, of venturing on their own to the River Jordan or this wilderness area around that? Was there a precedent for John the Baptist deciding to do that?

• 23:36Speaker 03

  I don't think so. Again, the Essenes are located by the Dead Sea in the wilderness of Judea, broadly speaking, that region. If you buy into the idea that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Essenes, or some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Essenes, they're located at the site called Qumran by the Dead Sea. And the Roman historian Pliny also talks about the Essenes as located there. But that's not the Jordan River. Sometimes it's used as an example of, you know, or John the Baptist was in the wilderness, the Essenes were in the wilderness by the Dead Sea, John the Baptist wasn't a scene, you know, that's not the equation, because the wilderness is quite a large area.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  That area going eastwards from Jerusalem, dropping down to the Dead Sea.

• 24:25Tristan Hughes?

  Wow, yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  But the Jordan River is actually eastwards of Jericho, north of the Dead Sea. It's quite far from Qumran. So it wasn't sort of a place that people regularly went to. There were roads and fords over the Jordan River, because people would go from Jericho to Philadelphia and the cities on the eastern side of the river.

• 24:52Tristan Hughes?

  That's present day Oman, isn't it?

• 24:54Speaker 03

  Present day Oman and Jordan. So that was actually part of Judea at the time. The Judeans had conquered it in the century before. So that was absorbed into wider Judea in the same way that Galilee was absorbed into wider Judea. So as Helen says, it was a place of incredible memory in terms of things that happened by the Jordan. Joshua's armies crossing over miraculously, or Jordan parting them and them crossing over the river. And likewise Elijah parting the river Jordan, crossing over to the other side, going up to the heavens in a chariot of fire.

• 25:35Speaker 06

  Ah, yes.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  His mantle falling on Alicia, Alicia parting the Jordan river going back, you know, it was this magical, amazing place. So it had huge resonance, but it wasn't the sort of place that people went to regularly.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  I think it's worth pointing out too, though, that that John seems to sort of start something, you know, after him, there's a whole series of prophetic figures. And they nearly always start off in the wilderness. Therefore, in the wilderness, they gather people. And then there's, there's a guy called Thudus in the forties. And he similarly goes to the river Jordan and, and he seems to be saying it's going to part until the Roman governor comes and, and kills them all. He gets beheaded, poor guy. So you never know what's going to happen. And another guy in the fifties called the Egyptian, takes a group of followers from the wilderness again. And he goes to the Mount of Olives and there he says, the, the walls of Jerusalem are going to fall at my signal.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  Again, we don't get a chance to find out if it's actually going to happen or not, because the governor sends in the troops. And the Egyptian escapes actually, but everybody else gets killed. So this idea of kind of starting off in the wilderness and a, a sort of prophetic figure in the wilderness is actually a common one later on. And I think for all of these, this ideas about, you know, that the memories that it provokes.

• 26:59Tristan Hughes?

  Being in the wilderness, is it a bit safer for him? But I guess when the stories of his spread, actually, it's just as easy to fetch him out there than it would be in a city ultimately at the end of the day.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  You're right, because such a huge number of people went out to John in the wilderness by the Jordan River, according to the Gospel of Mark, all Jerusalem and all Judea went out to John. It's like overstatement, but that it just shows how many people he attracted by by doing what he was doing there. But I think that it's an interesting idea that you are safer out there. Certainly, people do flee to the wilderness, to caves in the wilderness, to get away from the Romans. And archaeology has brought to light a number of refugee caves in the Judean wilderness. And some are very sad in terms of what what they show. It shows that the Romans built their

• 27:52Speaker 03

  camps and and and starved the people to death in these caves, rather than let them flee. So the Romans would be methodical about tracking you down if they wanted to get rid of you.

• 28:04Tristan Hughes?

  Well, you mentioned caves right there, which leads me nicely onto the next question. How did John the Baptist live? What do we know about his lifestyle when he's living out by the river Jordan in the wilderness?

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Well, Mark's Gospel and Matthew and Luke, which are dependent on Mark, they all say that he's out there, he's in the wilderness, and he's eating locusts and wild honey, which sounds absolutely horrible. I mean, the thing with locusts and wild honey, I mean, it could possibly be some sort of sap as well, but it may also be honey as we know it. The thing about locusts and wild honey is that this is kosher food. And so if you're there in the wilderness, this is this is stuff that he could find himself, that he could eat and would also be kosher. So he's clearly very interested in purity aspects and and keeping kosher.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  Food requirements and, and you know, we'll get on to this in a bit when we talk about the baptism, but he's, he's clearly living off the land. And, and also Mark says that he's, he's dressed like a prophet of old. He's got this sort of camel hair garment on and he's got a leather belt around his waist. Presumably again, he's trying to say that he's, he looks like a prophet of old, but also very specifically, Mark wants to say that John the Baptist is Elijah, come back again. And this is precisely because of what Joan already mentioned, this prophecy in Malachi that Elijah will come back and restore all things before the great and glorious day of the Lord. So, so there's, there's

• 29:39Speaker 04

  this sort of apocalyptic excitement about John. John is here, he's appeared in the wilderness. He's saying, you know, God is going to come, things are going to happen. And, and certainly Mark wants to say, this is it. This was Elijah coming back. And so da, da, da, the next one is going to be Jesus. That's the way that Mark is linking these two men. As, as Joan already said, you know, there's that sort of slightly problematic angle about it. On one hand, John is massively famous. So it, it, it's good for the Christians to kind of link in to John. But on the other hand, you don't want Jesus to sort of look like he's just a follower of John.

• 30:19Tristan Hughes?

  He's another John, yes.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. You know, how does Jesus fit in? So you get this whole sort of story about John is Elijah and everything about Jesus is greater and John is pointing to Jesus here.

• 30:30Tristan Hughes?

  And in regards to that Elijah link, it's really interesting because you have in Jordan today, don't you have the baptism site and you have the archaeological site? And there's that cave which they say was, was John the Baptist cave or it was believed to be John the Baptist cave, was it Joan?

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Well, that actually comes rather from a later story where one of the monks of the Judean desert area was on a trip and camped out in a cave by the, the river Jordan and then got a vision of John the Baptist saying, you know, this is a very important cave. I used to live here. And so it's one of these holy sites that were developed in the Byzantine period as a result of a vision or dream from someone, which is a very common way in which holy places were established in the Byzantine period. So there was nothing before that in terms of Christian tradition that said John lived in this particular cave. It was all on the

• 31:27Speaker 03

  basis of this vision. But yes, that's on Elijah's Hill, uh, just

• 31:32Tristan Hughes?

  Yes.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  And at the bottom there.

• 31:33Tristan Hughes?

  Where else?

• 31:34Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah. So, uh, and you've been there Tristan, I believe.

• 31:39Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, no, that's exactly what I was going to say was because you have Elijah's Hill, don't you? And then you have the, all of those later, as you say, Byzantine, late Roman churches and Baptist pools around that area. So it becomes so important. And you have that cave, which is part of the, it becomes the apps of a church, I think, or something like that. It gets brought into it.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  Yes, they do. They build a church around it, which is common, again, in the Byzantine period. You absorb a cave into a church and then you go into the church and then you go down the steps into the cave and, and it was developed in, in that way. And part of a monastery, which again is another way of looking after particular holy places. You'd have a group of monks around. And that was really important tourism of the Byzantine period. Huge numbers of people came to the baptism site from the fourth century onwards. There's all these pilgrim accounts of people that, that came there. And they'd start off usually on the west bank, on the, the west bank of the, the Jordan River. And there was a monastery on that side and

• 32:39Speaker 03

  they'd go in to the river. And there was even a pole in the, in the river where they identified exactly where Jesus was baptized by John. And they'd go there for cures. They would hope to be purified by the water, but, but, but actually it would have a physical effect on people. People with skin diseases, all kinds of other diseases would hope to be cleansed and healed in the river Jordan. Actually go across the river and it was much wider river than it is now. And at some points, there was a rope strung across the river so they wouldn't get lost in the flow. Um, but they would go across, they would sometimes swim, uh, those that could swim, but otherwise they would just

• 33:23Speaker 03

  pull themselves across the river. And then they would be on the other side, the eastern side, and again, remember further things on the eastern side of the river. So the, these two sides of the river were both very important for centuries that people would go and remember John and Jesus there.

• 33:42Tristan Hughes?

  I remember also before going there, we went to Madaba, the church in Madaba and seen the Madaba mosaic, this extraordinary Byzantine map. And I think there's one part of that map, it does show the baptism site. So it just shows how, you know, centuries after John the Baptist is living, Jesus of Nazareth was living, that they believed they'd found the site where all of this was happening and where John was living and he was doing his ministry. That is still a fascinating part of the story when talking about the location and why he chooses there and the legacy of it.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  Yes, people did remember roughly where, where it was, but then it becomes very fixed in the, in the Byzantine period. And it was quite close to a ford, so quite close to a main road. So it was, you know, when we talk about John the Baptist being in the middle of nowhere, he wasn't. He was in a site of, of incredible significance in terms of memory. And he wasn't that far from a main road crossing the, the Jordan River. So people could get to him.

• 34:45Tristan Hughes?

  Helen, you mentioned the word apocalyptic when you were talking just about John's preaching and John's ministry, his teaching. Before we get to the word baptism, I mean, can you explain a bit more about this? His preaching and his idea, was it this very much, you say, God is coming, get ready, that kind of apocalyptic narrative, you better be ready for his arrival?

• 35:04Speaker 04

  That's exactly it. Yes, it's very much the end of the world is nigh. And he seems pretty uncompromising about it, at least as far as we know from the Gospels. Strangely, Josephus doesn't give any hint of this, but the Gospels are very much of the view that John's message is, you know, get yourself ready because one greater than me is coming. Now, whether originally he actually did think of Jesus or some kind of messianic figure, we don't know. I think more likely he was actually saying, God is gonna come. You know, the one greater than me is God. And John is getting everybody ready. He's saying, repent, you know, say sorry for your sins,

• 35:47Speaker 04

  accept baptism, because God is about to come. And actually, many aspects of this are really quite a scary message. I mean, he says, God is, or the coming one will come with his winnowing fork and he's gonna, you know, the fires are gonna come and you're going to be, the chaff is going to be extinguished in the fires. And it's all really quite gory stuff. So it's this sort of terrible vision of the end and you've really got to get yourself ready for it.

• 36:18Tristan Hughes?

  So how does baptism form into this? How does it become such a key part of his ministry? I mean, does John invent baptism? I mean, forgive my ignorance, but what's the story?

• 36:28Speaker 04

  It's really quite complicated because to understand John's baptism, I think you have to understand quite a bit about Second Temple Judaism, the Judaism of John and Jesus' time. And as Christianity has marched forth from Judaism, that world of understanding in terms of what purity means, what immersion means, has got lost. So it's been transformed in Christianity. And people know what Christian baptism is. So that's not John's baptism. It's not a sacrament. It is actually doing something in terms of the preparation for the coming figure. And the idea was, in Isaiah 35, there's this prediction of a highway will be in the wilderness

• 37:11Speaker 04

  and only the clean, only the pure will pass along this highway, looking forward to the day of the Lord, the change in terms of God's dealing with humanity.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  So actually being purified and ready for that change is part of John's message. You know, get ready now because something is going to completely shift. God is going to sweep away the the present world order. And which side are you on? Are you going to be clean or unclean? Or are you going to be ready or or not ready? And as Helen says, you know, really tough stuff. You know, already the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Any tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down. It's it's, you know, wake up now, it's gonna happen. And people were so clearly so fed up with the present world

• 38:06Speaker 03

  that they really wanted to hear this message that something was going to be radically changed. They wanted that and they were ready to go and and do whatever John wanted by the the Jordan River and and confess their sins, as as it said, and be immersed in in the river. What John said in terms of his particular immersion, even though immersions were happening in Second Temple Judaism all over the place, was you had to repent before it would actually work. So it wasn't okay to just go into a ritual immersion pool, a mikvah, or a sea

• 38:49Speaker 03

  or a river or a lake and immerse yourself and think, okay, I'm purified on my body. You know, this is all fine. I I can, I'm doing the right thing. What he looked at was the heart. He wanted people to to be doing the right thing. And so he has this moral teaching that goes to people. And in the Gospel of Luke, he he challenges people and tells them what to do, what soldiers should do, what what others should do in terms of sharing clothing, for example. It's a moral thing. And he asks them, don't rely on Abraham, that being the of the heritage of Abraham,

• 39:34Speaker 03

  the the children of Abraham, because God can raise up children of Abraham from these stones. He's looking at the, again, quite a symbolic thing in the Jordan River, certain stones.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  It's all down to you as an individual. You can't rely on your heritage to to expect to be okay when the transformation of the world happens at this day of the Lord. It's actually you individually that has to, you have to take responsibility for your actions and your cleanness as you approach that day.

• 40:10Tristan Hughes?

  Is it a very bad state of the world? Well, you mentioned it is there. So this is after big bad King Herod's, but before Pontius Pilate or maybe around that same time, isn't it? So you've got Roman military figures, you've got a Roman presence. So given that you've mentioned how Josephus highlights, so a non biblical source highlights how popular John the Baptist teachings were, and you say we know what John the Baptist teachings were from the Gospels. So you kind of put it together. Like, do we know the catalyst for why the world was so bad at that time? The historical reasons why all these people are being driven there? Is it because of Rome? Or is it just because of other things? Do we know much about that?

• 40:48Speaker 04

  Probably a mixture of different things. I mean, it is very different to Jesus in terms of Jesus is healing people and working miracles. So, you know, you can understand why people go out to be healed and there's these amazing things happening. In the case of John, it really is that it's all about the message. These are difficult times. There's a big debate amongst scholars as to how difficult first century Galilee was. And some people paint a very bleak picture that the the cities are sort of extorting money from everybody. People in the villages are sort of being driven into banditry. I don't think it was that bad, but of course, you know, life is always tough in the ancient world.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  Rome is making inroads all the time. People are wondering what's next. Only a hundred years earlier, they had Jewish self-rule. And now look at them, you know, they've got Herodian kings, they've got Rome knocking at the door. So I think there's always a lot of things to be upset about. And, and, and here is just this radical message that, you know, things that have been prophesied, promises from the Hebrew scriptures are about to be fulfilled. And this was obviously something that people really felt they wanted to get behind.

• 42:03Tristan Hughes?

  And a message that spreads far and wide, I guess, as well, because that introduces another key figure in our story before we get to Jesus, which is we'll come back to him as well, no doubt at the end, but who is this? Herodian king, not big bad King Herod that we've done in the past Helen, but Herod Antipas, he's another big figure in John the Baptist story and I guess would have been seeing how popular he was at the time.

• 42:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's a son of Herod the First or Herod the Great. When Herod died, his, his kingdom was actually divided among three of his sons. So Herod Antipas is not king, but he's called a, a tetrac. And, and he, he rules over Galilee and Peria. I mean, he seems to have been reasonably okay as a ruler. He tried to be a bit like his dad. He sort of founded cities and, and, and he likes to be a, a player on the world stage. But he's, he's a much sort of lesser character than, than his father was. I mean, the real problem with Antipas is that, like every ruler of his day, he doesn't like

• 43:07Speaker 04

  to have people who are attracting crowds anywhere in his kingdom. And according to Josephus, at any rate, this is what does for John, that the fact that he's attracting all of these people, the whole of, of Judea is going out to him. Herod takes fright at this. He thinks, you know, what's going on here? And he decides that it's better to sort of nip this, this in the bud and get rid of him quickly.

• 43:32Tristan Hughes?

  No spoilers, no spoilers. We're going to get to that in a bit, but it's almost kind of the epitome of, of his popularity. You've got Herod Antipas in the background, but of course you then get Jesus of Nazareth's arrival on the stage. So Joan, I mean, take it away. What is the story of John the Baptist and Jesus's baptism in the, in the Gospels?

• 43:51Speaker 03

  John the Baptist baptizes Jesus in the Gospels when Jesus comes from Nazareth and Galilee with all of Jerusalem and Judea. He is clearly attracted by the message calling for people to have a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He goes, all of the package of John in terms of calling for repentance ahead of the day of the Lord, all of the fiery things that John says is clearly something that Jesus responds to. He is with this huge crowd of other people. He goes to the Jordan. There's no indication in the Gospel of Mark that John knew Jesus beforehand.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  It's there in the Gospel of Matthew. It's implied because of the nativity in the Gospel of Luke. It's just this thing that happens at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, that everything begins with John baptizing Jesus in the Jordan. Jesus is baptized, he goes down into the water. And it's said that as he comes up out of the water, he sees the heavens open. And the Holy Spirit descends upon him like a dove. And it goes into him in the Gospel of Mark. It goes into him. And he hears a voice saying, "You are my beloved son, and whom I am well pleased."

• 45:17Speaker 03

  And that accounting of him as son of God is clearly a profound experience. And actually, the only way anyone would have known about this, if we just go from the Gospel of Mark's telling, is that Jesus would have then told this story to his disciples. And that would then be very influential on them in terms of how they see Jesus and John.

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• 47:03Tristan Hughes?

  In chats we've had in the past, something that I'd never really realised was how with the Gospels, they have almost differing opinions about certain figures and their roles. Is John the Baptist similar? So if Mark's the earliest of the Gospels, but do the later ones decide to try and portray him slightly differently? Can you almost see an evolution of John the Baptist, his character, what he's meant to represent, even from the four canonical Gospels?

• 47:30Speaker 04

  Yes, you can. Mark is very similar to Matthew and Luke because they are using Mark as a source. And in all of those ones, the stress is on John as the forerunner, the Elijah figure. But you get a completely different picture in John's Gospel. And in this Gospel, in fact, you have people coming to John the Baptist and they say to him, are you the Christ? And there's no. And they say, are you Elijah? And he says, no, I'm not. So clearly, you know, a very different picture. And what John is doing, it gets a bit complicated, what John's Gospel is doing with John the Baptist is for him, John the Baptist is a witness to Jesus.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  And so whereas the other Gospels have John the Baptist being arrested and sort of off the scene before Jesus starts his own ministry, in John's Gospel, it's important that the two of them are actually active at the same time. So Jesus is a disciple of John the Baptist and... John the Baptist has his own disciples and when he sees Jesus, he says, behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. And he says that twice. And so the whole point of John the Baptist in John's Gospel is to be a witness to Jesus, to say, you know, I know who this man is. This is the one who's coming after me. This is the mightier one.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  And so there's no sense that he's Elijah. He's just the witness to who Jesus is.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  And he must decrease. Jesus must increase and he must decrease. He knows that he's going to be eclipsed by Jesus and he's perfectly okay with it.

• 49:09Tristan Hughes?

  And I've also got to ask quickly before we go on to what happens afterwards. The Old Testament, you know, with prophets and Moses and Elijah, those names we've already mentioned. And then of course you get the New Testament and Jesus. Is there a view that John the Baptist is almost linking the old with the new? Is this kind of prophet or the last prophet before Jesus idea? So it's kind of that link between the Old Testament and the new?

• 49:31Speaker 03

  There is this statement by Jesus, recorded in Matthew and Luke, where the law and the prophets were until John. Since then, the good news has been preached and da, da, da, da, da. A number of the statements that Jesus makes about John in our tradition are very elusive statements. They're very difficult to understand. But because of that idea about John, because of that statement, people assume that he's sort of the last of the Old Testament prophets. And then there's the new dispensation, the New Testament of Jesus' proclamation. But because the John the Baptist tradition was so shaped very early on in Christian tradition,

• 50:16Speaker 03

  you can see that these statements about John by Jesus have also been tinkered with and they're not quite the same in Matthew and Luke. And unlike when we've got Mark, and you can see when Matthew and Luke are using Mark and changing Mark as they rewrite Mark.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  We don't have their source material. We can only guess at their source material. That source material is usually called Q. And it's this this text that would have had quite a lot about John the Baptist. Studies of Q have shown how much there is about John the Baptist in the source text, but it's been lost. We only have the Matthew and Luke versions in which there's tinkering.

• 50:59Tristan Hughes?

  The elusive Q that I know, it it seems so important, so yet so frustrating that it's disappeared. But I guess from the information that you do have available, is it following Jesus's baptism? Is it following that that you don't really hear anything more about him until his execution? I mean, do we know what happens afterwards?

• 51:19Speaker 03

  There's a point where, again, Matthew and Luke have the story of John the Baptist disciples going to Jesus and saying, are you, John wants to know, are you the coming one or are we to expect another? Which again, indicates that John didn't know Jesus before. He sent this question via his disciples. And Jesus replies, well, look at all of the healing I've been doing. Look, you know, the lame are walking and the blind are receiving their sight. And and the the good news is preached to the poor. And he's conflating a passage in Isaiah and a psalm to indicate that he is predicted this coming figure.

• 52:00Speaker 03

  But he's also indicating that he's doing what John proclaimed the coming figure would do, which is to cleanse in the Holy Spirit in in some way. So his work is aligning what he interprets John to mean. Whether John actually meant that is another question. You know, as as Helen says, he might have meant much more, the coming of of God in a completely transformative way, in this final eschatological change in terms of the world. But Jesus is interpreting, at least as we have that that saying, himself to indicate he is the fulfillment, he is the coming figure.

• 52:45Speaker 04

  And the disciples of Jesus and early Christians would definitely say that, that this is exactly what John the Baptist is predicting. He's predicting Jesus.

• 52:55Tristan Hughes?

  And is the idea that they go away, Jesus's ministry begins there and then, is that the idea? And John the Baptist, he continues doing what he's doing until we hear the unfortunate fate that happens to him, Helen?

• 53:09Speaker 04

  It depends where you're reading. I mean, because he's been arrested in the synoptic gospels, he's been arrested before Jesus's ministry.

• 53:19Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, he's been arrested. Oh, okay.

• 53:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, so this message that Joan mentioned, this is coming from prison.

• 53:24Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  He's obviously having visitors in prison and people are, I mean, that's part of the thing in the synoptics, that he can't see Jesus himself. He's already sort of curtailed, but he's sending his people to go and look and he's wondering about this figure that he's hearing about.

• 53:41Tristan Hughes?

  Ultimately, John the Baptist is arrested, as you say. Does Josephus come in handy here for what ultimately happens to John the Baptist with Herod Antipas?

• 53:50Speaker 04

  Yes. In fact, the whole story that Josephus gives us is in the context of defeat, a military defeat of Herod Antipas. And Josephus says, well, everybody thought that he got defeated as divine judgment because he killed John the Baptist. And then he kind of has a flashback and telling you how he kills John the Baptist. And Josephus says, you know, he was a good man, loads of people followed him. He talks about baptism. And then he says that he was attracting so many crowds that Herod Antipas started to get worried. He thought there could be some kind of insurrection. And he decided it was better to nip things in the bud quickly rather than wait for it to get out of hand and then have to intervene.

• 54:35Speaker 04

  So that's a little bit different to the much more famous story that we had, the very sort of glamorous exotic story that we have in Matthew and Mark. In those stories, of course, John is in prison and Herod actually likes John. He likes to hear him. He doesn't really want to do anything about him. But Herod's wife Herodias has a grudge against John the Baptist. And the reason is that John has been criticizing her marriage to Herod Antipas. And you just need a little bit of the background here because Herodias used to be married to Herod's half-brother, who's either called Herod or Philip, depending on the source.

• 55:18Tristan Hughes?

  They're like the same names, don't they?

• 55:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're all called Herod. I mean, Herod is sort of a family name anyway. So Herod Antipas meets this woman, Herodias, who's married at the time to his half-brother. And they fall in love and they decide they're going to get married. Now, the problem is that their marriage is against the Jewish law because it was illegal to marry your brother's wife if your brother is still living. If your brother's dead, then actually you're supposed to marry his wife and bring up children. But but they decide they're going to get married. They both get divorced and they get married. And it seems from Matthew and Mark that John has been criticizing this. Now, Josephus says nothing at all about John criticizing the marriage.

• 56:02Speaker 04

  But it does seem to me that that the two things actually fit in quite well. I mean, if if John is all about living a moral life, be righteous, repent of your your your crimes, your sins, then I think it's quite likely that that he criticized Herod Antipas. This is very high profile, you know, this is the ruler and he's probably going to have criticized him. That may not be, you know, the whole story about the the dancing girl. And then Herod says to her, oh, you know, he's he's completely kind of swept away this ridiculous middle-aged man. And he says, you know, you can have whatever you like, half of my kingdom. And the girl goes, I mean, she's a little girl. She's not the sort of the dancing girl we sometimes imagine.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  But this little girl goes to her mum and says, what shall I ask for? And she says, the head of John the Baptist. And the little girl adds the detail, on a platter. And so that's what happens. And poor old Herod has to kill John the Baptist. He can't go back on his promise. And then the disciples of John come and take the body away. All pretty grim.

• 57:08Speaker 03

  Very grim.

• 57:09Tristan Hughes?

  A popular topic for Renaissance artists and so on, I can guess.

• 57:13Speaker 04

  Very much so.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  And as Helen says, a little girl, Karasion, but in terms of popular imagination, of course, she's become this sexy vixen, you know, this.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  The dance of the seven veils and Oscar Wilde and all of that stuff, the Salome play, yes.

• 57:31Speaker 03

  It's a great chance for movie makers to have erotic dance in a biblical story.

• 57:37Tristan Hughes?

  That brings into the last thing, which is obviously the legacy of John the Baptist. We've touched already on how with even the gospel writers, you start seeing the kind of change, the evolution of John's role in the tradition. Does that amplify as the centuries go on? I mean, does John the Baptist's legacy, are there big spikes in its evolutionary trail almost as time goes on?

• 58:02Speaker 03

  There are in that he becomes almost the patron saint of Christian monasticism. So there's John in the wilderness, being someone who seems to have rejected everything in terms of worldly life. He's not even wearing human made clothing. He's wearing camel hair with a skin tie around his waist and this wild food. So that idea of leaving the city, leaving urban life, leaving normal life and going out to the wilderness and living on next to nothing or whatever is provided by the wilderness. I think John quite lived quite well in the wilderness, locusts and honey.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  And, and actually the vegetation around the Jordan River is, is reasonably lush for a little strip around the Jordan River. But Christian monastics from the fifth, sixth, seventh century really look to John as their prototype of going out and, and living in the wilderness. So he, he does become very important and he's portrayed as rather a wild man as well. This natural wild man, which appealed to the, the Christian ascetics who, who went off and lived this very deprived life, but very spiritually rich life out in the wilderness.

• 59:26Tristan Hughes?

  Joan, Helen, this has been such a fantastic chat. Last but certainly not least, you both have got stuff in the works, either relating to John the Baptist or this area of ancient history?

• 59:36Speaker 03

  Yes, we're both writing for a book on the reception of John the Baptist, which is coming out with TNT Clark next year.

• 59:44Tristan Hughes?

  And also Helen, we should mention your podcast as well, Biblical Time Machine.

• 59:48Speaker 04

  Yes, thank you very much. Yes, Biblical Time Machine, weekly podcast with me and journalists and the great journalist, the wonderful Dave Rouse, and all things biblical, social history to do with Bible times. We love it all. And we've had Joan on there a few times too, so she's a friend of the podcast.

• 1:00:07Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. And you're both very much friends of the Ancients Podcast and it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on today.

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:00:18Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Doctors Joan Taylor and Helen Bond talking through the story of John the Baptist. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Now Joan has been on the podcast several times before. She's talked about Bethlehem, but also the copper scroll, this unique, very different scroll made completely out of copper, discovered amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. Helen has also been on several times. She's talked about Pontius Pilate, Jesus of Nazareth, and Joan and Helen have both also been on before at the same time, talking through the story of Mary Magdalene. So we have a number of episodes featuring Joan, featuring Helen, and one featuring both alongside this one in the Ancients Archive. So do check those out if you want more. Thank you for listening

• 1:01:03Tristan Hughes?

  to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe. Lastly, if you want more ancient history videos and clips, then be sure to follow me on Instagram at @AncientsTristan. That's enough from me, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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