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Who Lies Sleeping?

John the Baptist 4

The Death of John the Baptist
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Abstract

Essenes believed that all Israel should be given the chance to join the perfect of Israel in the last days. The Rule of the Congregation speaks of “the many of Israel in the last days when they shall join the community”. John the Baptist and Jesus were therefore offering all Jews the chance to repent and rejoin the chosen of God, those who would be saved in the coming holocaust. So, publicans and soldiers came to John asking him what they should do to be saved. The answer was the same for all Jews—sincerely repent and receive baptism. The Essene High Priest, who called the annual festival of the renewal of the covenant, rather than the Master, seems to have been their titular head. If, after the baptism of Jesus as Nasi, John the Baptist became the High Priest, it would explain why he was able to question Jesus’s progress in Matthew.

The Death of John the Baptist

Salome with the head of John the Baptist. Andrea Solario (c 1470-1520 AD). Is this the true origin of the legend of the Holy Grail?

Having said that John was dead, Mark decides to explain how it happened. The story about Herodias, Herod’s wife plotting to have the Baptist killed contrary to Herod’s wishes has characteristically Essene features. The scrolls show that the Essenes disagreed with the lax marital practices of the Herodians. Antipas had married his half-brother Philip’s divorced wife, Herodias, who was their niece and already had four children. Philip was not the tetrarch of Iturea who married Herodias’s daughter, Salome, but a brother who lived in Rome as a private citizen. Marrying a sister-in-law was illegal according to Leviticus 18:16 unless the woman had had no children when it was obliged (Dt 25:5). However John would also have objected to Herod marrying his niece. Jewish law allowed this but not the Essenes.

The story is romanticized here using scriptural precedents. There are echoes of Jezebel from 1 Kings and the fairy-tale formula of Esther 5:3 is used by Herod in verse 23. Incidentally, this latter tends to show this passage is not genuine Nazarene tradition because it seems the Essenes did not regard Esther as being canonical, no copies being found in their library, though possibly the copies they had have all decayed. The fairy-tale elements are added as a distraction from the truth that, far from respecting him as a saint, Herod feared John as a rebel. After all, John the Baptist had apparently done nothing worse than baptize a few multitudes in the Jordan river. Why should that worry a potentate like Herod Antipas to the extent of having him beheaded? Of course it could not but the Baptist was a dangerous barjona recruiting people to join the army of God, just like Jesus. Josephus is more honest in Antiquities of the Jews (18:5:2):

John, that was called the Baptist… was a good man, and commanded the Jews to practise virtue, both as righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism. For the washing would be acceptable to him if they made use of it not for the remission of some sins but for the purification of the body, supposing still that the soul had been thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now when others came to crowd about him, for they were greatly pleased at hearing his words, Herod who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready to do any thing he should advise), thought it best, by poutting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it should be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Machaerus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death. Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God’s displeasure against him.

So, John is “a disturber of the people, who seemed ready to do anything he should advise”. Mark cannot allow this to be known and so the original Essene complaint against the Herodians was expanded to cover up the truth.

The reason why the story appears at all is to mark the death of John the Baptist and the succession of Jesus. In Matthew 14:13, the connection is explicit. The aim was to show to followers of the Baptist that they should have transferred their allegiance to Jesus on his death. Hitherto Jesus had been the crown prince but now he had become the mebaqqer of the Nazarenes. But all of Mark 6:14 to 6:29 interrupts the dispatching of the disciples on their mission and their return, serving only as a literary device to signify the passage of time. Indeed, it could have been omitted and no one would have noticed, except that the disciples would have seemed to have returned immediately. The passage is a Christian elaboration, for Jesus became the leader in practice when John was captured not when John was murdered—though he was not the titular leader. The gospels succeed in suggesting the passage of time between John’s capture and death, and Matthew gives just the right flavour when John sends a message from prison to Jesus in verses 11:2-3. Almost half way through the gospel, John the Baptist is still alive in jail, and able to get messages to the outside! Only half way through Matthew in 14:2 are we told indirectly that John is dead. Gospel truth is a powerful concept and because the gospels tell us that John died first we all believe it even though Josephus contradicts it. Jesus must have died first.

Antipas’s previous wife was the daughter of Aretas (Harith) IV, the Arabian king of Nabataea, who Josephus tells us began a war with Herod when he divorced his daughter. Herod rapidly lost a large army against the Arabs and according to rumour the Jews believed it was his punishment for murdering the Baptist. That the rumour should have been important enough for Josephus to record shows that John left a deep impression in Palestine at that time. The war did not begin until 36 AD whereas on gospel dating Jesus died not later than 33 AD and possibly a decade earlier.

Now Antipas married Herodias about the time that Tiberius succeeded Augustus to the Imperial Throne in 14 AD. If John really complained about Herod’s marital affairs then he must have complained immediately and Herod must have had to put up with John’s criticism. John must have been an important person in Judaea when Tiberius came to the throne. John the Baptist’s long career has been compressed in the gospels to make it seem insignificant compared with Jesus’s. In fact John started long before Jesus and was not murdered until some time after Jesus was. The early church had to counter the impression that John was the more important person, so they compressed his life, made him acknowledge Jesus as the messiah, gave him the role of compere and made him die first so that Jesus became the message—not John as many thought at the time—not the messenger.

Why then did it take Harith so long to avenge his daughter? The reason probably was that Harith was scared of the consequences—scared of Rome—because Antipas was well considered by the imperial court. He had to bide his time. Tiberius began as a vigorous Emperor, a good administrator, an active soldier supporting effective military campaigns and a successful statesman annexing Commagene and Cappadocia. Harith thought it too risky to take on a Roman favourite. Later Tiberius became morose and reclusive, eventually retiring to Capri where he ruled by diktat. From 32 AD until his death in 37 AD he did not budge from his island home. Plainly the lack of vigour of the Emperor, combined with Harith’s awareness that time was no longer on his side, for he too was an old man, and a border dispute with Antipas, impelled him to strike. Thus it was that it took him twenty years to avenge his daughter’s dishonour. In fact his judgement was pretty shrewd, because Tiberius was enraged by the attack on Antipas and ordered Vitellius, legate of Syria, to march with a large army to punish him, but Tiberius died before the command could be carried through.

John was active in the south by the Jordan and Josephus tells us that he was put to death in the fortress of Machaerus to the east of the Dead Sea, a place that can be seen across the lake from Qumran. If there were any truth in the gospel story it all occurred at Machaerus, where Herod had his southern palace, but his capital was at Tiberias where it seems more likely that he would celebrate a birthday. John must have been murdered during the hostilities—which would have been in the south where Nabataea and Peraea adjoined—because Herod feared the Nazarenes as potential fifth columnists. That explains why Josephus associates John’s death and Herod’s defeat which must have followed soon afterwards.

Comment

From Brad

Very informative information on John the Baptist on this page. I find it very interesting that John the Baptist, who apparently was standing in for a preoccupied Elijah, was supposed to have been trying to reconcile families as stipulated in Malachi 4:5-6. Yet, there is not one reference to John the Baptist ever attempting to perform that required function.

According to the gospel of John, John the Baptist denied being Elijah so the whole concocted effort of some of the New Testament writers to retrofit John the Baptist into the role of Elijah falls apart. To make matters worse, Jesus claimed in Luke 12:49-53 that his mission was to divide families.

So we have John the Baptist portrayed as Elijah by the New Testament writers who is supposed to have a mission to reconcile families and Jesus having a mission to divide them. A more absurd set of mission parameters for two men living at the same time, allegedly directed by the same God, I can’t imagine.

This is the type of nonsense that occurs when writers attempt to concoct and retrofit an agenda or storyline into an existing prophecy as the New Testament authors did. God said he would send Elijah himself and not some facsimile who wouldn’t even admit he was the genuine article.

Amazingly, this blatant example of theological self contradiction is almost completely ignored. If ever there was evidence as to how concocted some of the New Testament storyline is, this issue is it.

From Vincent Cook

I read with great interest your explanation of how Pilate’s rule of Judea may have extended as far back as 18 AD, and that the crucifixion dates to 21 AD. In doing some further research on this subject, I came across some interesting numismatic evidence that is consistent with this theory.

I would call your attention to:
Pilate Coins and Coin Varieties
for a detailed look at Pilate’s Judean coinage. In keeping with the standard chronology, coins from years 16, 17, and 18 of Tiberius’s reign are commonly recognized as Pilate types, and are shown on the first page.

The second page shows variants of these coins, supposedly caused by incompetent diesmiths who did a poor job copying the letters that represent the dates, etc. These are easily identified by the fact that the letter combinations are not consistent with the dating system used on Hellenistic coins. However, one variant stands out as corresponding to a real date, namely year 8 of Tiberius’s reign—21 AD!

Now, it is possible that this coin really was produced in year 18, and that an incompetent diesmith failed to copy the letter representing ten years (engraving “LH” instead of “LIH” on the die). But what if this coin is exactly what it appears to be—a coin produced in year 8 that matches the design of coins produced in years 17 and 18?

To analyze this possibility, it’s also necessary to compare them to the coinages commonly recognized as Gratus types
http://ancient-coin-forum.com/Biblical/Valerius_Gratus.html
Coins from years 2, 3, 4, 5, and 11 of Tiberius’s reign fall into this category. There is also a Gratus-type coin that might date to year 14, but the letter combination for 14 hard to distinguish from the combination for 11. Gratus-type designs use traditional agricultural imagery, some of which can be found also on pre-Roman Herodian coinages and on coins issued during the later Jewish uprisings.

The year 16 Pilate-type coin is also rather traditional in design, but Pilate-type coins from the years 17 and 18, and the year 8 variant, have an unusual image on the obverse—they show a “lituus”, a kind of crook that symbolizes the Augurs, a Roman priesthood.

Whether this “lituus” design was first introduced in year 8 or year 17 of Tiberius’s reign, it must have caused an uproar among the Jews, notwithstanding the irony that the Christians later appropriated the religious symbolism of the crook for themselves. Imagine how they would react to an idolatrous image on Judean coins being used in their temple!

Maybe there is more to all those references about the evils of money and of the temple’s moneychangers in the Christian scriptures than meets the eye—maybe the coin design itself helped provoke an uprising, reviving the idols-in-the-temple problem that plagued Pilate from the beginning of his praetorship. 21 AD and 30 AD would be the two most likely dates for such an event, with 21 AD being the crucial date if you assume that the year 8 dating is not a diesmith’s error and that the Christians tampered with the dates in Josephus.

The 21 AD theory would require that one account for Pilate’s use of older coin designs, especially the Gratus-type issued in 24 AD, but it is not hard imagining a temporary reversion to an older coin design in the wake of a revolt sparked by a new coin design. The real question then is why Pilate would then tempt fate and reissue the controversial new coin design in 30 AD and again in 31 AD.

At any rate, the numismatic evidence is intriguing; I thought you might appreciate it.

Comment from Dave M

Can you tell me your source for the information that the Essenes called themselves “banaim”? Is there some historical reference for this?

Although I say somewhere on the website that I do not provide detailed references because I am not writing works of scholarship for scholars, but simply reportage for the general reader, I get enquiries like yours that force me to try to find the source of something I might have written long ago. So it was with your question on the source of the description “banaim” applied to the Essenes. Whereas I might feel entitled to make my own suggestions as to the whys of history, the facts of it are not mine to change, so, when I have written something like this, I know, and I trust my readers will know, there was a source. It gets harder too because I have to rid myself of surplus books, so some of them that I might have used as a source I no longer have. Then some sources are on the internet such as the various articles in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Any way, I took me some time to track this one down to J B Lightfoot who himself cites someone called Frankel. My guess is that I got to this from following up something in Peake’s Commentary.

Now, I suspect your question is really meant as a rebuke because you already know the source, and Lightfoot thought Frankel’s deduction was speculative, and that might indeed be right, but on the page it is cited simply because it does fit in with the Essene interest in punning on words , and here they pun on stones, sons, builders, teaching and so on. And I suspect that they were initially friendly with Herod because he used them in building his temple as they were priests. Anyway, I’ll take your question as a rebuke and will look at some way of being more tentative in using the reference.

It was hardly a rebuke. Far from it. I am currently doing research for a book I am considering about how and why Jesus faked his death on the cross in order to “resurrect”. My question about “banaim” relates specifically to Jesus as an Essene. The Greek “tekton” referring to both Joseph and Jesus has been consistently translated as “carpenter”, but since it could also mean several other trades I believe that it refers to them properly as “builders”. Thus, the gospels in fact tell us that they were Essenes; the Greek “builders” actually refers to Essene "banaim". That is why a reference for this comment would be helpful.

Your website is awesome, though it has thrown some of my theories out of wack. I have learned a great deal. Thanks! Right now, I am trying to resolve your idea that Jesus died BEFORE John and what that does to my overall theory. Hope you don’t mind if I bother you from time to time with more questions. If so, don’t hesitate to let me know. Thanks for responding, I’d almost given up hope of hearing from you. Take care and thanks again.

OK, no rebuke, though a rebuke was in order, perhaps. Anyway, your point about “tekton” reminded me of a place on my website where this is mentioned and in the context you speak of. It is in:

http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/0330Healing.php#The%20Withered%20Hand

Under the sub-heading “Withered Hand”, you will find:

Jerome gives an additional detail about this incident. He quotes from the gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use. The man with the withered hand pleaded:
“I was a mason seeking a livelihood with my hands. I pray thee, Jesu, to restore mine health that I may not beg meanly for my food.”

The mason is Israel which had lost the power of its right hand and was reduced to begging from the foreigner. If the people repented, God would restore their power through the poor and they would be able to build a new house for the Lord. One of the Talmudic names used for the Essenes was the “banaim”, a word derived from the Hebrew for stones (abanim) and which means “masons”. “Banim” means “sons” or “children”—both coming from a word meaning “to build”. So “banim” was a pun on “banaim” and explains the gospel use of the word “children” to mean “the saved”—the “banaim” seek to save the “banim”. In Mark 6:3, Jesus is described as a carpenter and, in Matthew 13:55, his father is so described. S Campbell gives an interesting gloss on the Greek word used in these passages and usually rendered “a carpenter”. The word is “tekton” and is found nowhere else in the New Testament. Yet in modern Greek “tekton” means a “mason”!

In case you do not have the book by Steuart Campbell, this is what he wrote (scanned verbatim, The Rise and Fall of Jesus, Steuart Campbell, Explicit Books, Edinburgh, 1996, pp 57-58):

Jesus' trade

According to English versions of the Gospels (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3)
both Jesus and his father Joseph were carpenters (and a similar term
appears in other modern language editions). Klausner (1925) accepted
this as a fact and Guignebert (1935) claimed that' everyone today
knows that Joseph was a carpenter...'. More cautious was Goguel
(1933), who suggested that there is no evidence that Jesus followed
the trade of his father and that he was known as the' son of the
carpenter'. Conversely Murry considered that the report that Jesus'
father was a carpenter may be deduced from the fact (sic) that Jesus
had been one.
 Some have challenged the traditional belief. For example Mackinnon
called Jesus 'a builder accustomed to handling heavy material', and
Stauffer wrote that Joseph was in the building trade and a
carpenter.
 Case suggested that Jesus worked in the building trade.
 In the Greek text, the word translated as 'carpenter' is tekton.
These are the only two occurrences of this Greek word in the whole
New Testament. However it does occur several times in the Septuagint
(II Kings 12:11, 22:6; II Chr. 34:11; Zech. 1:20), where it is
associated with the building trade. The word appears to be related
to the noun techne (art, craft) and the derived noun technites
(craftsman, builder). The exact meaning of tekton seems to be
'artificer', but we should take note of the meaning of archi-tekton
(I Cor. 3:10), which means 'master-builder'.
 Daniel-Rops claimed that tekton means 'both carpenter and joiner
and in a general sense the builder of houses', while Craveri noted
that tekton means 'builder of houses', i.e. a worker in both wood
and stone. We must therefore take the meaning of tekton to be 'a
builder', in the general sense. Indeed, in modern Greek, a tekton is
a mason, and an altogether different word is used for a carpenter.
 Wilson made the mistake of believing that tekton attempts to render
the Aramaic naggar, which he claimed means either a craftsman or a
scholar (in fact it means' carpenter'). Consequently he believed
that Jesus was a scholar (1992:83). In fact, in the Septuagint,
tekton translates the Hebrew charash (craftsman). Salibi considered
the possibility that 'Carpenter' was Jesus' surname, i.e. 'Ben
Nagara', and therefore that he was not actually a carpenter
(1988:39).
 In Palestine in the time of Jesus, ordinary dwellings were
constructed of sun-dried bricks of mud or clay on a stone
foundation. Rough timbers may have been built into the walls to
prevent warping during the drying out of the building after
construction. Roofs were constructed of timber beams covered with
lathing and plaster, usually flat. The foundation consisted of very
rough stones, except for the foundation corner-stone, which was hewn
square. In important public buildings, the whole corner of a wall
would be built of stone and only temples and palaces were
constructed entirely of stone. Thus a Palestinian builder was a
craftsman who handled various materials: stone, bricks, timber and
plaster, and he needed to be both a mason and a carpenter. There was
no division of trades as in the modern Western construction
industry.

 It appears therefore that Jesus was not a carpenter in the modern
sense, certainly not a joiner or a carver or wooden objects. He was
a builder. This trade is revealed in his sayings and parables. 'For
which of you', he asks, 'wishing to build a tower does not first sit
down and count the cost, to see whether he has enough money for
completion? In case, when he has laid the foundation he is not able
to finish and onlookers mock him.' (Luke 14:28-29). He also told
parables about a tower built in a vineyard (Matt. 21:33) and about
two houses, one built upon sand and one built on rock (Matt. 7:24-
26). Jesus declared that he would build his assembly upon a rock
(Matt. 16:18) and that 'the stone which the builders rejected became
the chief corner-stone' (Matt. 21:42).
 Jesus' injunction about motes and beams (Matt. 7:3-5) derives from
the building trade. Builders often carried large beams through the
streets on their shoulders. Those passers-by who did not keep a
careful watch, perhaps because they were blinded by a speck of dust
(mote), might receive the end of a beam in their eye. Powell thought
the metaphor 'physically impractical' and that the 'beam' and
'splinter' (sic) were used hyperbolically dealing with Jewish/
Gentile relations. Kersten & Gruber (1995:128) assumed that the
aphorism is derived from a Buddhist text which urges recognition of
one's own faults, rather than those of others (but in which there is
no mention of motes, splinters, beams or eyes).
 Ferguson claimed that metaphors and similes from carpentry' came
readily' to Jesus, but there is no evidence for this. Jesus' sayings
betray no knowledge of carpentry; they do betray a knowledge of the
building trade. Wilson believed that, because Jesus could speak of a
beam 'sticking out' of the eye (this is not true), he had no
practical knowledge of what it was like to work in a carpenter's
shop and that he was not a practical man. This is a fundamental
misunderstanding.
 How is it then that the AV describes Joseph and Jesus as
carpenters?
 The explanation lies in the nature of domestic construction methods
in seventeenth century England (where the translation was made). At
that time in that country, nearly all houses were framed in timber
and were constructed by carpenters. Since the timber frame was so
fundamental, and since so little of a house was undertaken by other
trades (separate trades did exist in seventeenth century England),
the carpenter was the de facto builder. Almost certainly, the
seventeenth century translators of the Bible knew that tekton meant
a builder. Therefore they translated it into their own equivalent,
'a carpenter' ('one who builds houses'). Unfortunately this word
misleads modern readers who do not appreciate the socio-economic
milieu which prevailed at the time the 'translation was made and/ or
do not understand the original meaning of tekton. Modem translations
which derive from the A V (instead of from the Greek text) may also
carry this error.

This might be of more use to you than my previous reply.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.