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PART TWO
THE WORLD OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
6. THEBACKGROUND OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
interest in the social world of the New Testament, especially in Germany, O.
Cullman, for example, already pointed out as early as 1925 the need for a "special branch of sociology" for biblical studies.374 In concrete terms, however, Cullman's call went unheeded for the better part of a quarter of a century until R.W. Smith took the first steps with the publication in 1956 of his seminal work The Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions. Since then, there has been a marked increase
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in the number of scholars who have, from varying perspectives, developed social- scientific and social description methodological approaches that have greatly enhanced our ability to bridge the "social distance" between ourselves and the world reflected in the ancient writings, especially the worlds of both the Old Testament and the New.
The phenomenal rise in the popularity of the social-scientific approaches as well as of social description among scholars goes beyond mere dissatisfaction with the predominant historical-critical method. It is the result, rather, of an acknowledgment that the biblical texts reflect the faith of simple men and women in their everyday milieu. As G. Theissen has correctly noted, "The situation, the Sitz im Leben, from which the Bible springs is the life of the people". There is a need for us to understand that life if the biblical texts are to fully come alive in the hands of modern readers. There is a need, as it were, to read the bible from below. Social history has proved to be indispensable to exegesis, for in order to understand the message of the scriptures it is necessary to
pay more attention than has become customary to the ordinary pattern of life in the immediate environment within which the Christian movement was born. It will not do to describe that environment in terms of vague generalities...[T]o the limit that the sources and our abilities permit, we must try to discern the texture of life in particular times and particular places.377
373 D.G. Horrell has summarized well the emergence and development of the "social questions"
relating to the New Testament, beginning with Hermann Gunkel's development of form criticism which attempted to relate the text to its Sitz im Leben. See D.G. Horrell (ed.), Social-Scientific Approaches, 4-19, especially pages 4-6. See also G. Theissen's description of the checkered history of social-scientific biblical criticism in The Social Reality and the Early Christians, 3-21.
374 Cited from P.F. Esler, "The Socio-Redaction Criticism of Luke-Acts", in D.G. Horrell (ed.), Social- Scientific Approaches, , 128.
375 See D.G. Horrell (ed.), Social Scientific Approaches, 7-26, for a listing.
376 G. Theissen, Social Reality and the Early Christians, 4.
377 W.A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians, 2.
The recent surge in what Cullmann termed a "special branch of sociology for biblical studies" is perhaps also an indictment of the neglect of the sociological point of view due to an overemphasis on the literary-historical and theological perspective.
Obviously it is not meant by this statement that theological perspectives are a priori inappropriate to the study of early Christianity. It is however advisable to take seriously the cautionary approach of J.G. Gager when he asserts that
the inadequacy of theological paradigms is [...] that they have been directly responsible for the neglect of sociological and anthropological points of view.378
Most, if not all critical approaches to scripture in fact presuppose this principle without always explicitly enunciating it in as many words. When, for example, Hermann Gunkel developed the method of form criticism, he aimed at recovering the earliest forms of textual traditions by relating their use to their particular setting in life, or their use in particular cultural and social settings.
This is not, however, to say that there were areas in which the social sciences and social description did not decisively part ways with other approaches to biblical criticism. For example, the reader-response criticism which seeks in its methodology to determine meaning directly from the text itself without reference to the social context worked from a principle diametrically opposed to the one at the heart of the social-scientific method. B. Malina has noted that
the effort [by the school of the reader-response criticism] to read the Bible as literature, for its aesthetic majesty and universal ideas, involves an attempt at decontextualization since any aesthetic-literary, ahistorical framework is decontextualized. Much of the reader-response approach to literature is equally decontextualized, totally dismissing the social dimensions of author, original audience and the text in question.379
In brief, then, the greatest contribution of social description and the social sciences to biblical exegesis has been the recognition that the authentic meaning and terms of
J.G. Gager, Kingdom and Community, 3. See also R.A. Atkins, who says: "The traditional focus on ideas and theological constructs in biblical research leaves out the motivating role that sustaining and changing multiple social hierarchies have on defining ideology", Egalitarian Community, 31.
379 B. Malina, "Reading Theory Perspective: Reading Luke-Acts", in J.H. Neyrey (ed.), The Social World of Luke-Acts, 21. The social-scientific method, according to Malina, is all about "contextualized literacy".
reference of the biblical (and indeed any) text are to be found embedded in the crucible of culture, time, and space. Contact with these formative and decisive influences helps the reader to add human faces to the bare text. Social description is thus helpful for interpreting meaning communicated through texts within a social context, as long as it is kept in mind that interpreting a text is not the same as interpreting culture.
In other words, the text comes alive and takes upon itself a distinct form and character when read from the background of the world within and about which it speaks. The social-scientific approach involves a movement from the abstraction and disembodiment of the de-contextualized or de-historicized text to concrete personal
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involvement, whether that involvement be that of the author, or the original audience, or the present day reader. Or, in the words of Gager: "once we begin to pay serious attention to the social constituency of [early Christianity], the customary overemphasis on theological matters seems quite out of place."381
But is this - or should this - necessarily be the case? Are theological and historical loyalties always in conflict, or is there neutral ground over which they not only meet but also cross-pollinate? We share the more nuanced approach with R. Ulin in his assertion that
Both the textual scholar and the anthropologist are confronted with the difficult task of appropriating that which is alien or not one's own...the process that characterizes the comprehension of human actions and cultural products is not essentially different from the interpretation of a text as a life expression382
or, in the thought of Ernst Kasemann: the primary force for the development of the early church was the cross between theology and experienced
380 See R.A. Horsley, "Popular Messianic Movements Around the Time of Jesus", CBQ 46 (1984), 472-473.
1 J.G. Gager, Kingdom and Community, 5.
1 R. Ulin, Understanding Culture: Perspectives in Anthropology and Social Theory, 92. See also R.A. Atkins, Egalitarian Community, 39-40.
3 See "Paul and Early Catholicism" in E. Kasemann, New Testament Questions of Today, 236-251.
6.2 The Context of John the Baptist
The "Fertile Crescent" is undoubtedly the single most studied area of the world.
What it lacks in geographical size it makes up for in scientific and scholarly attention and research. Long (though not altogether accurately) acclaimed as "the cradle of civilization", what the historians call the "Ancient Near East", or what we now commonly call the Middle East, has for centuries fascinated the anthropologist, archaeologist, historian, biblicist, philologist, politician, social-scientist, and many other specialists from diverse fields of learning. Many eminent and scholarly works that have greatly enhanced our knowledge of this small part of the world have been written in our own times. However, for the purposes of our study we are offering a very limited and narrowly focused look at Palestine in the brief but eventful times of John the Baptist.
Most recent studies in the area have been concerned to show how widespread and influential the apocalyptic, messianic and liberation movements in Palestine were during the First Century C.E.384 Many movements emerged within Judaism that to a greater or lesser extent left their mark on the society and culture of their day. John the Baptist and his movement flourished during this highly charged period in Palestinian history.
If we accept in general terms Luke's narrative technique - according to which he seeks to establish historical parallels and synchronisms between the events about
A sampling of the works dealing with the subject of apocalypticism, messianism, revolutionary and other movements includes, among others, W. Beuken, S. Freyne, A. Weiler (eds.), Messianism Through History; G. Boccaccini, Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought 300 B.C.D. to 200 C.E., Minneapolis, Fortres Press, 1991, see especially Part I; D. Cohn-Sherbok, The Jewish Messiah, London, T&T Clark, 1997, see especially chapters 1-3, 10; W. Fairweather, The Background of the Gospels: Judaism in the Period Between the Old and New Testaments, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1920;
L.H. Feldman & M. Reinhold (eds.), Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1996, see especially sections 8-10; L.L. Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian, London, SCM Press Ltd., 1992; L.L. Grabbe, An Introduction to First Century Judaism:
Jewish Religion and History in the Second Temple Period, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1996; M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, London, SCM Press Ltd., 1974; W. Horbury, Jewish Messianism and the Cult of Christ, London, T&T Clark, 1998; W. Horbury, Messianism Among Jews and Christians, London, T&T Clark, 2003; R.A. Horsley, "Popular Messianic Movements Around the Time of Jesus", CBQ 46 (1984), 471-495; R.A. Horsley, "Like One of the Prophets of Old: Two Types of Popular Prophets at the Time of Jesus", CBQ 47 (1985), 435-463; R.A. Horsley & J.S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs; S. Jones & S. Pearce (eds.), Jewish Local Patriotism and Self-Identification in the Graeco- Roman Period, Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press; E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE-66 CE, London, SCM Press Ltd., 1992.
which he writes and objective data from Roman history, - it is possible to situate John the Baptist with a high degree of certainty in the first half of the First Century C.E.
6.2.1 Turmoil and Revolt
Palestine was at this time a part of the Roman Empire, and if we follow Flavius Josephus' analysis of the period, Palestine was a particularly trouble-prone part of the empire, if not in fact the most volatile little corner of the Roman Empire. R.A Horsley has neatly summarized the "salient characteristics of this period [in Palestine as] turmoil and revolt".387
While the Jews, on the socio-political and cultural level, had been largely assimilated into the Greco-Roman environment of which they were unavoidably a part, they could be quite uncompromising on matters that touched upon their religion, for this was what set them apart and gave them a distinct national identity in the cultural melting pot that was the Roman Empire. Relations with Gentiles were accepted as necessary and unavoidable in day-to-day economic, civic, and even political matters, but only to a certain degree. The Book of Jubilees gives an example of the stipulated boundaries of social intercourse between Jews and Gentiles:
Separate yourself from the Gentiles, and do not eat with them, and do not perform deeds like theirs. And do not become associates of theirs. Because their deeds are defiled, and all of their ways are contaminated, and despicable, and abominable... And for all of those who worship idols and for the hated ones, there is no hope in the land of the living; because they will go down into sheol. And in the place of judgment they will walk, and they will have no memory upon the earth". (Jubilees 22:16,22)
The teaching against Jew-Gentile marriages was even harsher:
If there be any man in Israel who wishes to give his daughter or his sister to any man who is from the seed of the gentiles, let him surely die, and let him be stoned because he has caused shame in Israel. And also the woman will be burned with fire because she has defiled the name of her father's house and so she will be uprooted from Israel...And there is no limit of days for this law. And there is no remission or forgiveness..." {Jubilees 30:7-17)
385 See, for example, the references to "Herod, king of Judea" (Luke 1:5; 3:18-20; 23:6-15; cf. Acts 12:1-13:1); Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1); "when Quirinius was governor of Syria" (Luke 2:2); Tiberius (Luke 3:1-3); Pilate (Luke 23:1-25); "Felix the governor" (Acts 23:24-26; "when two years had elapsed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus" (Acts 24:27)
386 War 11.4.
387 R.A. Horsley & J.S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs, xxxiii.
Purity thus served to underline Judaism's separation from the rest of the world, and to establish a particular and distinct identity for the Jewish people.
Similar attitudes on the political level spawned a number of revolutionary movements
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in Palestine, such as the Sicarii and the Zealots - though R.A. Horsley has shot down the idea that there ever was a movement by this name "prior to the second year of the great Jewish-Revolt of 66-70". According to Horsley, therefore, the group of people called 'the Zealots' are "a modern scholarly construct". Various revolutionary and popular prophetic and messianic pretenders also attracted to themselves large numbers of people who thought that they might in some way (sometimes understood in terms of some form of military action) rid themselves of foreign domination and thereby bring about a reconstitution of Jewish nationhood under the rule of Yahweh through a messianic figure appointed by him. Josephus, in one of his sweeping generalizations describes the leaders of these movements as
impostors and deceivers who called upon the mob to follow them into the desert; for they said that they would show them unmistakable marvels and signs that would be wrought in harmony with God's design.390
Nor were these movements only politically motivated. A number were fuelled by experiences of being socially and/or economically deprived. These movements were, to use E.W. and W. Stegemann's phrase, "stratum-related" on account of the
"embedding of religion in socio-economic antagonisms".
The specific issue of Jewish national identity became the battle cry of some of these movements. The motivation was clear:
because of the virtually permanent foreign hegemony with its pagan or semipagan governing structures, the urgency of an identity-preserving delineation was not exactly small...it is not by accident that discussions about purity and food regulations in the New Testament and above all in the Mishnah have important significance; in many respects they are crucial for Pharisees and Essenes...they also shaped the daily
388 War ii.13.3. See also Ant. xx.8; War vii.8; E.W. Stegemann & W. Stegemann, The Jesus Movement, 138, 165-167.
389 R.A. Horsley, "Popular Messianic Movements Around the Time of Jesus", CBQ 46 (1984), 471- 472.
390 Ant. xx.8. See also War xi.13.
391 E.W. Stegemann & W. Stegemann, The Jesus Movement, 138. See also page 186.
life of most Judeans, as attested especially by Josephus (cf. Ap. 1.198, 205; but cf.
also Luke 2:22-23, 39),392
The period during which John the Baptist lived - one of the most heavily studied historical periods of Judaism393 - has been described as "one of the most violent epochs of Jewish history...a milieu ripe for revolution".394 Reasons for this volatile situation have been cited, among others, as "foreign military occupation, class conflicts, misconduct of Jewish and Roman officials, Hellenism, burdensome taxation". 395
The search for political and religio-cultural self-determination in the pluralistic and culturally diverse world of the Greco-Roman Empire was one of the key characteristics that defined Jewish identity, more so in Palestine than in the Diaspora.
Going back to times well before the Maccabean revolt - about which see the rather full description in 1 and 2 Maccabees - the stage was already set for one of history's longest struggles for national independence and cultural self-determination. The attempts at forceful Hellenization of the Jews by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (1 Maccabees 1-6; 2 Maccabees 4-10) became both a catalyst and a point of departure for one of the most sustained if futile attempts at rebellion by what was in essence one of the smallest regions of the Roman Empire pitting itself against the awesome military might of Rome.
392 E.W. Stegemann & W. Stegemann, The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1999,143.
393 See, among many other studies of the period, E. Schiirer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ; M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism; L.L. Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian;
L.L. Grabbe, An Introduction to First Century Judaism; L.H. Feldman & M. Reinhold (eds.), Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans; E.P. Sanders, Judaism; B.J. Malina, The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels, London, Routledge, 1996; S. Jones & S. Pearce, Jewish Local Patriotism and Self-Identification in the Graeco-Roman Period; R.A. Horsley & J.S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs.
394 W.J. Heard & C.A. Evans, "Jewish Revolutionary Movements" in C.A. Evans & S.E. Porter (eds.), Dictionary of New Testament Background, Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 2000, 936.
395 W.J. Heard & C.A. Evans, "Jewish Revolutionary Movements", 936.
396 E.W. Stegemann and W. Stegemann trace Jewish difficulties in adjusting to the pluralism of the Greco-Roman world to, among other factors, the reason that "Judaism in the period of the second temple was always shaped by a number of fixed characteristics and institutions, whose roots reached far back into the preexilic period and its traditions". See The Jesus Movement, 137, also 142). The Stegemanns speak later on of the "urgency of an identity-preserving delineation" by which the Jewish people could draw "boundaries between [the] outside and [the] inside" (: 142). By these and other means the Jews were able to preserve themselves as a religious and cultural entity in a world that they perceived as hostile to them.
Down through the centuries the legacy of foreign occupation and especially the imposition of Roman rule as well as of local leaders397 generated a widespread spirit of resistance among the Palestinian Jews. Roman response to movements perceived as insurrectionist was sometimes quite harsh and repressive. Great numbers of leaders and followers of these movements were either slaughtered or crucified by the troops of procurators such as Pilate, Fadus, and Felix. In spite of this various charismatic movements with political as well as religious agendas for the liberation of the nation from external rule sprang up throughout Palestine. Social-revolutionary resistance and rebellious movements as well as what E.W. and W. Stegemann call
"charismatic-ascetic messianic-prophetic groups" were common phenomena in the world of John the Baptist.400 Indeed, John the Baptist and his followers are to be counted among the movements of the time. As noted by E.W. and W. Stegemann
these movements...represent in each case a specific and original answer to the crisis of Jewish society...there are religious reactions to the destruction of Jewish society through the coercions of pagan and semipagan structures of sovereignty, reactions that were only of a more or less indirect or prepolitical kind.401
A great section of these movements eschewed strong messianic and apocalyptic- eschatological ideas - though Horsley notes that
there is very little evidence [as usually suggested by secondary literature] for any Jewish expectation for an eschatological prophet prior to the early Christian communities' interpretation of Jesus (and John the Baptist) and the emergence of rabbinic Judaism following the crisis created by the Roman devastation of Jewish Palestine in A.D. 70.403
Biblical and other literature of the time reflects an intense belief in a decisive action of God for the liberation of his people. This was understood not only to involve
397 The period of the rule of Herod the Great, though glorious by Hellenistic-Roman standards (extensive building projects, lavish donations to imperial figures and Hellenistic cities), has been noted to be one of the most oppressive for the average Jewish people - economically and politically. See further R.A. Horsley, "Popular Messianic Movements Around the Time of Jesus", 480. See also Horsley's assessment (in "Ancient Jewish Banditry") of the internal, intra-Jewish hostilities that made the situation in Palestine ripe for revolt, "even without the factor of foreign rule." (:416-417).
398 Ant. xviii.4; xx.5; xx.8; War ii.13.
399 E.W. Stegemann & W. Stegemann, The Jesus Movement, 138.
400 See also R.A. Horsley, "Like One of the Prophets of Old", 461-463.
401 E.W. Stegemann & W. Stegemann, The Jesus Movement, 138-139.
402 Messianic movements in Israel are traced by R.A. Horsley as far back as the time of Saul and David. These movements continued to use especially the latter as their battle cry or point of ideological reference. See Horsley's argument in "Popular Messianic Movements", 474-478.
403 R.A. Horsley, "Like One of the Prophets of Old", 437.