FINDINGS VI By Harry T. Cook
     
 

Advent III-B: December 14, 2014

John 1: 6-8, 19-28 

 

  

Harry T. Cook
By Harry T. Cook
12/8/14

 

Evidently John the Baptist, both living and dead, was one with whom Jesus Judaism had to deal as things evolved. Exegetes have long pointed out that John 1: 6-8 and 19-34 can and maybe did at one time stand alone as parts of a tradition separate from the verses that surround them. The evangelist John seems to have gone out of his way both to acknowledge the Baptist's importance and to put him in his place as he depicts him saying such self-effacing words as are found, for example, in 1:30, 3:28, and 3:30. And after being the subject of brief, sometimes off-handed allusions, viz. 4:1, 5:34, 36 and 10:40-41, the Baptist slips from the Johannine narrative.

 

One can read the record and reasonably conclude that the Baptist had been as great or even greater figure on the early first century Palestinian scene than Jesus of Nazareth. The Baptist certainly seemed to have had a following in life and in death, just as Jesus obviously had and has his own. To what degree the two followings were in competition can only be inferred, and not very clearly at that. Since the winners write history, absent some sensational archaeological find, we will never know.

 

One thing is certain: those who broke away from the synagogues in the second third of the first century ended up embracing Jesus as the figurehead rather than the Baptist. That would explain the generally dismissive tone of many of the gospel texts concerning the latter. But that the Baptist was included at all in documents whose clear purpose was to promote the person and prominence of Jesus and the strength of his following is a point not to miss. Why the cult of the Jesus figure survived is a mystery. In any event, it was he for whom the resurrection myth was woven. A more reasoned understanding of that history would be to say that, for whatever set of reasons, the message of Jesus, which seemed largely to be one of pragmatic ethical wisdom, won the day against the Baptist's essentially apocalyptic, world-renouncing program.

 

"There was a man sent from God whose name was John." There you have the opening sentence of what would at first appear to be a great saga of the man named. As has been observed, it is entirely possible that 1: 6-8 did at one stage exist as the introduction to a major document rather than as a parenthesis in another. "He came to witness to the light, so that all might come to belief through the light." That was away of putting a different slant on what had been the Baptist's muscular message of repentance. It was, the evangelist or his editors imply by their parenthesis, a means of attracting attention to the real thing, i.e. ίναμαρτυρήσηοήπερίτοϋφωτός - to bear witness to the light, Φως is a major motif in the Fourth Gospel, meaning more than a mere ray of illumination, rather the major reason anyone can see. In Homeric Greek a related term denotes "means of victory." Not to forget also is that light was the first creature spoken into being by the elohim in Genesis 1:3.

 

Φως is the agent of άλήθεια or the manifested essence of a matter. Then it would be called άληθής, the unconcealed or manifest. No longer did σκοτία obscure that essence now that the light (θως) had got the best of it.

 

Go to 1:19ff., and if you weren't aware of what had intervened, you'd think you were continuing the story of a man sent from God whose name was John. The Temple authorities wanted to know who or really what John was. He seemed anxious to say that he was not the "anointed one" and certainly not Elijah redivius, nor yet one of the soap-box orators of that time. The evangelist put words of Isaiah on John's lips: "I am the voice in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of Yahweh.'" Of course, fatally, John came to Herod's attention through truth-telling, so John paid the price by having his head separated from his body. But no story was told of its being reattached or of his resuscitation.

 

If the exchange between the Baptist and the Temple deputation in any way represents what may actually have taken place, the Baptist's denial of being anyone of importance, save an echo of an ancient prophet's image of a herald, may have been a survival tactic. Echoes here of Mark 8:30 and 9:9. The Baptist's demurrer at this place rather contravenes what John 1:6-8 has just said of him being the witness to the light. Or perhaps the denial was meant to stand for a complete break with the past. "Messiah," "Elijah" and "that prophet" are part of an order that was passing away in significance. The one who "comes after" John is something else again.

 

* * * * *

 

More than once a summer storm took out electrical power to our home, forcing us to grope in the dark to do things that we ordinarily do without thinking about it. We had to feel our way through even the most familiar of territories, taking care not to run into an object that had stood where it had been already for years. In so doing, we were experiencing the unmanifested essence that John says light reveals.

 

We realized that we ourselves are a witness to the light. By the way we conduct our lives, i.e. oblivious of the blessing of light when we have it and sorely tried when we do not, we bear witness to its fundamental importance. The light from the fixture banishes the darkness and enables us to live and move and have our being long after the sun has gone down. Ordinarily the darkness does not overcome us until we turn off the bedside lamp and whisper our "good nights."

 

The light from that or any lamp is stolen, as it were, from the sun itself, its energy. We bear witness to both the daylight and the nightlights by living purposeful lives. If in John Evangelist's scheme of thing, Jesus Christ was the light, we might say that it was the ethical wisdom attributed to Jesus that was the light. It reveals how we are able to negotiate life on this planet more or less successfully. By declining to hit back and turning the unsmitten cheek, we reduce by half the number of cheeks that are smitten. The smiting of cheeks is part of the darkness that, if we allow it, will comprehend and defeat us. We see that baleful truth in war and global conflict. As Sir Edward Grey, a British statesman, said so presciently on the eve of World War I, "the war to end all wars," The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time.

Copyright 2014 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

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