19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”
21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”
24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
6 comments:
I'm currently only through Numbers in the Old Testament and Luke in the New Testament...I'm not sure if I've missed something, or if I'm just not there yet - who is Elijah? Is he a prophet? And for that matter are they therefore asking him the same question twice?
Why is "I baptize with water" an acceptable retort to their question about why he felt qualified to baptize - was this a new method of baptism created by John, and therefore his right to practice alone? What was baptism before John?
Hi Kelsey -- you haven't gotten to Elijah yet. Yes, he was one of the many Old Testament prophets, and many Jews believed that Elijah would return to earth before the Messiah came. (And in fact, John does fulfill the Old Testament prophecies about the one who would prepare the way for Jesus. So in a symbolic sense, you could say he was Elijah, but not literally.)
Next they ask about "the Prophet." This is someone Moses predicted -- another prophet who would be like Moses. In many ways, this is fulfilled by Jesus, because both he and Moses introduced entirely new covenants, or ways of relating with God. But again, John is not that person, so he says no.
"I baptize with water" is a puzzling response in isolation. Fortunately, this is one of those passages that has parallels in the other three gospels. In all three of them, John says something like, "I baptize with water, but one is coming who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." In John, for whatever reason, that latter part isn't included.
Baptism began as part of Jewish law. If someone did something that made them ritually unclean, such as have contact with a corpse, washing with water made them ceremonially clean so that they could enter the temple and offer sacrifices. Later on in Jewish history, when Gentiles wanted to convert to Judaism, the Jewish priests would circumcise and baptize them as a sign of them taking on the covenant of Abraham.
The thing that was new about John's baptism was not the water, but the fact that he preached a baptism of repentance. This was part of his ministry to prepare people for Christ. Anyone listening to John who felt a consciousness of sin, and wanted to show repentance for it (to repent means to turn away from), they could be baptized as an outward sign of that.
So basically, John is trying to tell them that he is baptizing people to prepare them for Jesus, who will baptize those who believe in him with the Holy Spirit (after his resurrection).
It's kind of funny because last night as I was reading before bed, I got to the point in Luke where he describes John and includes the second part of John's response - and I was like, "Man, that makes a lot more sense now." Strange that John doesn't include it.
Yeah, there are all sorts of textual issues like that, especially looking across the four gospels. Whoever wrote John either didn't have access to the other gospels, or that part of it got left out over the centuries as people were copying the manuscript.
Wait...I thought John wrote John?...
Tradition says that he did, but it's also possible that someone close to him wrote it. The authorship of most of the bible is difficult to be really certain about, for obvious reasons.
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