Was Jesus a CopyCat? The Role of John the Baptist in the Ministry of Jesus.

Episode Outline:
0:00 Who was John the Baptist, and how much can historians actually know about him?
1:11 Bart and Megan on fiction reading, Nietzsche, and Iris Murdoch’s wonderfully chaotic housekeeping
4:16 Why John the Baptist matters so much for understanding Jesus historically
5:12 John’s movement: baptism for repentance in preparation for the coming judgment
6:44 Was baptism already a Jewish practice before John?
9:49 How John’s baptism differed from Jewish purification rituals like the mikvah
11:15 Conference promo: New Insights into the New Testament 2024 on Paul
21:08 Where John appears in the New Testament, and how each Gospel portrays him differently
23:00 Why Matthew and Luke soften the idea that Jesus was baptized by someone spiritually above him
25:31 What Josephus says about John the Baptist outside the New Testament
27:17 Why the Gospels include John: forerunner, fulfillment of scripture, and precursor to Jesus
29:30 Do we know anything about John’s birth and early life?
31:51 How historians sift miracle stories from likely historical facts about John
34:18 The historical core: Jesus was probably baptized by John
35:00 John’s apocalyptic preaching: the axe at the root of the tree and judgment is near
37:34 Weekly Update: Bart’s Europe cruise and his lecture series on “the high seas in the Bible”
41:18 Looking ahead to the Antarctica cruise and “to the ends of the earth” theme
42:42 Listener Q&A: Paul’s citizenship, Jesus and violent resistance, the torn temple curtain, shunning in 1 Corinthians, and why Paul mentioning James matters
52:14 Final summary: John the Baptist was a real apocalyptic preacher whose movement likely shaped the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry

Episode Description

Jesus is usually credited with starting the Christian movement, but were his ideas orignally his? It appears that John the Baptist preached a similar message and that Jesus was originally a follower of his. So who started Christianity? In this episode we consider what we can know about John, why he engaged in his ministry, and what influence he had on his follower Jesus. If John started the movement, why isn't there a religion in his name?

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Megan asks Bart:

- Why is this important?

- What was John the Baptist’s movement?

- Was baptism a new thing?

- Was John using baptism in a different way?

- What books of the NT mention him, and what do they say?

- Do we have any other sources for him, or does he just appear in the NT?

- What kinds of things does Josephus say about John the Baptist?

- What purpose did the gospel writers have for including John the Baptist, and did it differ from Josephus?

- How does our understanding of his role and purpose in the NT inform how we reconstruct the historical John the Baptist?

- Do we know anything about John’s early life, or does he pop onto the scene as a full-fledged adult?

- How do historians separate out accounts intended to show John as Jesus’ precursor from the historical man “john the baptist”?

- What can historians say about the historical figure, rather than the mythologized character?