John comes FROM Acts...

[rgprice]

So, you may know that my theory is that actually a version of Acts, what I would call Acts of the Apostle, was written BEFORE any Gospel was written. This story was a companion piece to the Pauline letters and was only about Paul, beginning with his persecutions and his conversion. And the "Gospel of Mark" was written as an introduction to this Acts of the Apostle.

So where did Mark get John from? Why does Mark open with John "the Baptist"? The writer of the Gospel got his John character from Acts of the Apostle.

The difficulty here is that the canonical Acts of the Apostles has greatly modified the original context so much of this is confusing because some of the content in Acts was produced AFTER the Gospels, but some of if comes from BEFORE the Gospels.

In Acts 18 we read:

24 Now there came to Ephesus a Jew named Apollos from Alexandria. He was an eloquent man, well-versed in the scriptures. 25 He had been instructed in the Way of the Lord, and he spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.

Here is what I think happened. This passage has been re-worked by the canonical editor, but in the original story of Acts of the Apostle, there was something about a baptism by "John". But who was this John? This John was actually the John of Peter, James and John:

Galatians 2: On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the gentiles and they to the circumcised.

But, when the writer of the Gospel wrote his story, he got this mixed up and created two people from one. He created a John who was a baptizer and also John the disciple. But according to Paul, these were both actually the same person. But it got even further confused because the writer of Mark created the characters James and John Zebedee, who were supposed to represent the James and John from Galatians. However, later readers thought these were different people.

So what we really had was one John, who was a companion of Peter and James. Paul talked about this person. Paul talked about how other apostles also baptized people. But Paul had a strained relationship with these figures.

1 Cor 1:12 What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” 13 Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God[d] that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16 I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel—and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

Something related to these baptisms was in the original Acts.

Acts 19:While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples. 2 He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They replied, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 Then he said, “Into what, then, were you baptized?” They answered, “Into John’s baptism.” 4 Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied, 7 altogether there were about twelve of them.

In the original Acts, this was a story about Paul re-baptizing someone who had been baptized by the apostle John, of whom he was a rival. But this got turned into something entirely different in the Gospel stories.

So I think this is how it got started, and then the whole business about Herod and John the Baptist is all a bunch of later nonsense.

[rgprice]

But here is the kicker, I think what we have here is temporal dislocation. Maybe impossible to prove, but I suspect that in Act of the Apostle, it did say, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.”

But this was talking about John the pillar, a contemporary of Paul's. So in the original story, which was prior to any Gospel, John the pillar was using a baptism that talked about the future coming of Jesus. From the perspective of John the pillar, Jesus had not come yet.

The writer of the first Gospel, however, took this John figure and made a new John figure who came before Paul and to whom Jesus came. And not only that he divided this real historical John into two fictitious Johns, John "the Baptist" and John "Zebedee", neither of which existed.

The real John, John the pillar, who was a contemporary of Paul's, preached that Jesus was "yet to come". But what the writer of the Gospel did was he took the story of Pau's ministry and prefigured it all with the story of Jesus, so that basically the things that happened during Paul's time he presented as having happened just prior to Paul. So whereas in reality people in the second half of first century were preaching that Jesus was "yet to come" and were baptizing people with the expectation of the coming of Christ, the writer of the Gospel cast those actives into the first half of the first century. But in reality, people in the second half of the first century had n concept of a Jesus who had come, only a Jesus who would come. It was not until the Gospel stories that people thought he had already come a "first time". Thus what was originally thought to be the "first coming" of Christ was re-imagined as a "second coming" of Christ.