JOHN THE BAPTIST
JOHN THE BAPTIST
865
personal audiences he granted him (Mk 6°"), and by the fact that he allowed him to have intercourse with his disciples (Mt 11-, Lk 7'^' '"), and through them to exchange messages with Jesus (Mt 11-", Lk 71'-==).
The message which John sent to Jesus has often been regaided as exceedingly strange on the part of one who had previously borne so signal a witness that Jesus was the Christ, and it has even been suggested that he sent his messengers not because there was any wavering of his own faith, but for the sake of his disciples, to whom he wished some confirmation of the Messiahship of Jesus to be given (see Bebb in Hastings' DB li. 680). But the more simple explanation is also the one which is truer to human nature. The depression wrought by imprisonment on one accustomed to the freedom of the wilderness, together with his disaj)pointment at the seeming delay of Jesus to assert His power and authority as the Christ of Israel, had resulted in an hour of the power of darkness in the soul of the great prophet, when he began to wonder whether after all he had not made a great mistake. That in spite of his doubts he had not lost his faith in Jesus is shown by the very fact that it was to Jesus Himself that he applied to have these doubts removed, as well as by that message of encour- agement and ' strong consolation ' which the Bridegroom sent back to His sorely tried friend : ' Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me'(Mtll«, Lk7=^).
From Josephus we learn that the Castle of Machserus (wh. see) was the scene of the Baptist's imprisonment (Ant. XVIII. v. 1, 2). Machserus was a powerful stronghold, at once a fortress and a palace (BJ VII. vi. 1-3 ; cf. Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. xvi. 72), situated on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea (G. A. Smith, HGHL p. 569 f.). Within these gloomy walls, then, the death of John took place, one of 'those awful tragedies for which nature has provided here so sympathetic a theatre ' (op. cit. in loc). Of this tragedy St. Mark has furnished us with the fullest account (6-'"™) in a narrative which is not more thrilling in its dramatic vividness than it is instinct with the elements of what might almost be described as self -evidencing moral and historical truth.
vi. John and his Disciples. — Besides the crowds that came to him to be baptized, John appears to have drawn around him a circle of closer followers, who are referred to in all the Gospels as his 'disciples' (Mt O'-" [|[ Mk 2'8, Lk 5^3] ll'^ [if Lk 7'«-n Mk6=9, Lk 11', Jn \^-" 3« 4>; cf. Ac 18== 19'"''). It appears that, unlike Jesus, he enjoined regular fasts upon his disciples (Mt 9" ||), and that he also gave them forms of prayer (Lk 11') which they were in the habit of employing frequently (Lk 5^^). Possibly he utilized them as assistants in the work of baptizing, for which he could hardly have sufficed personally when his movement was at its height.
It was from the circle of these disciples of the Baptist that the disciples of Jesus were immediately drawn (Jn 1^'°'), and that not only with John s full consent, but through his own express witness both in public (Jn 1'*^- '^^■) and in private (v.^^f.) to the superior worth of Jesus and to his own function as the mere herald and forerunner of the latter. And yet he did not, as we might liave expected, decline, after Clirist's baptism, to stand any longer to others in the relation of a master to his disciples. Perfectly loyal as he was to Him whom he recog- nized as the Messiah, he evidently felt, as Jesus also did previous to Jolin's imprisonment (Jn 3-*^- ^ 4'-), that there was still need for a work of pre- paration, and room therefore for a discipleship to the Forerunner. But wlien his disciples grew jealous of the rapidly growing popularity of Jesus, vol.. 1.-55
and came to him with their complaint, lie pro- claimed to them once more the true relation between that Other and himself, — ' He must in- crease, but I must decrease,' — and reminded them how he had said from the first that lie was not the Christ, but was sent before Him (Jn 3=» ; cf. Mt 3"l). ,
The fidelity of John's disciples to their master is shown by tlieir holding together and continuing to observe Ids prescriptions after he was east into prison (cf. Mt 4'- i| with 9'^ ||), by their attendance upon him during his captivity (Mt IP"'-, Lk 7'*- ""''•), and by their loving and reverent treatment of his corpse (Mk 6^). The vital impression he made upon them, and the self-propagating power of the baptism of repentance in the absence of a liigher teaching, is proved by the fact that more than 20 years afterwards, and in the f ar-ofl' city of Ephesus, St. Paul found certain disciples, including no less a personage than Apollos, the Alexandrian Jew, who knew no other baptism than that of John (Ac 19'"';, cf. 182'"f'). Before the growing light of Christianity John's baptism as a baptism of pre- paration for the Messiah soon vanished away, but the traces of his memory and influence are found lingering long afterwards in the name, doctrines, and practices of tlie Hemerobaptists, who claimed John as one of themselves (Clem. Horn. ii. 23; cf. Hegesippus in Euseb. HE iv. 22 ; Justin Martyr, Dial. c. Tryph. On the relation of the Hemero- baptists to John, see Lightfoot, Colossians, p. 402 ff.).