Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §11.2
nizable identity long after his death (cf. Acts 19.1-7). This thesis is probably confirmed
by the clear polemical note in the Fourth Gospel against overestimating
John's significance, 57 and is certainly strengthened by the testimony of the
pseudo-Clementines. 58
Would that we could shed more light on these scattered hints. At any rate, the
fact that Jesus bulks so large in Christian retrospection should not be allowed to obscure
the historical fact that for many in first-century Judaism John bulked larger.
b. Jesus, Disciple of John?
Still more to the point, it is highly probable that Jesus himself first emerged from
the circle round John. Indeed, it is quite possible that Jesus began, properly
speaking, as a disciple of John. 59
The key fact here is that Jesus was baptized by John (Mark 1.9 pars). This
is one of the most securely grounded facts in all the history of Jesus. 60 It is not
something which his followers were likely to have made up; there was nothing
about the impact made by Jesus which pushed them to attribute it to the influence
of John on Jesus as Jesus' mentor. On the contrary, the fact of Jesus having been
baptized by John seems to have been something of an embarrassment to them.
For John's baptism is clearly signalled in the Synoptics as a 'baptism of repentance'
(Mark 1.4 pars.), an emphasis which again accords with the report of
Baptist and His Relationship to Jesus', in B. Chilton and C. A. Evans, eds., Studying the Historical
Jesus [Leiden: Brill, 1994] 179-229 [here 194-96, 205-206]) ignores the stronger indications
that it was provisional and transitional in preparation for the more important baptism to
come (see below §11.3c).
57. John 1.6-9, 19-23, 30-34; 3.28-30. The argument that the Fourth Evangelist was directed
polemically against disciples of the Baptist has been taken seriously since it was first developed
by W. Baldensperger, Der Prolog des vierten Evangeliums, sein polemischapologetischer
Zweck (Tübingen: Mohr, 1898); see, e.g., R. Schnackenburg, The Gospel according
to St John, vol. 1 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968) 167-69.
58. Ps.-Clem., Recog. 1.54: 'Some even of the disciples of John, who seemed to be great
men, have separated themselves from the people, and proclaimed their own master as the
Christ' (also 1.60). The old suggestion that parts of Luke 1 were derived from a Baptist group
(e.g., Bultmann, History 294-95) is too speculative to build on. More plausible is the suggestion
of W. Wink, John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition (SNTSMS 7; Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 1968) 59-82, that 'the church possessed these traditions from the very beginning by
virtue of the fact that it was itself an outgrowth of the Baptist movement' (71).
59. The point is widely recognized; see, e.g., Sanders, Jesus and Judaism 91; Webb,
'John the Baptist' 218-23, 226-29; Becker, Jesus of Nazareth 52.
60. For the historicity of Jesus' baptism by John see Meier, Marginal Jew 2.100-105;
Webb, 'John the Baptist' 214-18. The Jesus Seminar confidently voted the event red, that is,
genuine (Funk, Acts of Jesus 27-28, 54).
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