John the Baptist as the anti-Paul?

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Giuseppe
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John the Baptist as the anti-Paul?

Post by Giuseppe »

This passage of Luke reveals that that the basic requisite of the name John for the man who had to play the role of Elijiah redivivus was a name came suddenly ex nihilo, without apparent connection with the past.
On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, 60 but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”
61 They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.”
62 Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. 63 He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” 64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God

(Luke 1:59-64)
This surprising break with the tradition (in assigning the name) is rather strange, given the established fact that the role of John the Baptist in the Gospels is precisely to guarantee the continuity between the OT prophets and the Christ.

So note the coincidence:
1) John is a name popped out of nowhere, without no connection with the tradition, per Luke 1:59-64
2) John means "grace of god".

In all the NT we have only another example of a man who satisfies both the two requisites:


1) a man who popped out of nowhere
2) his name refers to the divine grace


Moreover, that the name Paul could already be conceived in a figurative sense by the writer of the Pauline letters can be clearly seen in 1 Cor 15:9, where “Paul” speaks of himself as the last and the smallest, like a “miscarriage” as it were. B. Bauer correctly commented about this: “He is the last, the unexpected, the conclusion, the dear nestling. Even his Latin name, Paul, expresses smallness, which stands in contrast to the majesty to which he is elevated by grace in the preceding passages of the letter.”

(H. Detering, The Falsified Paul, p. 145, my bold)

So John the Baptist could be invented or introduced (by the Judaizers) as the anti-Paul in the role of who will secure the grace of God.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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