Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [148]
Then silence. The next eighteen years or so in Jesus’ life are undocumented in the New Testament. Did he follow in Joseph’s footsteps and become a carpenter? Did he marry, as was expected of most young Jewish men of the day? Was he a witness to an anti-Roman uprising at that time in nearby Gamala? The Romans razed his neighboring town and crucified the Jewish rebels along the road. There is no record, only speculation.
When next seen, Jesus comes to his relative John, who has become a “baptizer.” Descended from a priestly family, John was one of a growing number of Jewish preachers who practiced immersion baptism in the Jordan River. Baptism as a form of ritual purification was not widely practiced among Jews at that time, but the idea of washing off sins with water goes back to Hebrew scriptures. John the Baptist called for repentance and cleansing from sin, symbolized by baptism. While some historians have attempted to fit John into the traditions of the Essenes, the monastic sect who lived at Qumran and apparently made ritual bathing part of their daily life, John seems more to have been a loner, a bit of a wild man who wore clothes made from camel skin and lived on “locusts and honey,” preaching the need for repentance and the confession of sins.
John’s miraculous birth was foretold by Gabriel in Luke, and he was cast as Jesus’ advance man, also in fulfillment of several Hebrew prophecies. The synoptic versions of Jesus’ baptism contain slight differences but all three basically agree that at the moment of the baptism the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, descended on Jesus’ head and a voice from heaven declared, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
BIBLICAL VOICES
But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company, and she pleased Herod so much that he promised on oath to grant her whatever she might ask. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.” (Matt. 14:6-8)
Why did a young girl want John the Baptist’s head on a platter?
Sometime after Jesus was baptized, John was arrested on the orders of Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. The Gospels depict John preaching the coming of the Messiah. The Jewish historian Josephus adds to the Gospel record of John the Baptist but his account presents John as a sort of wandering teacher. When John publicly denounced the marriage of Herod Antipas to Herodias, who was his niece and was married to Herod’s brother, the angry queen demanded John’s arrest. Herod was fascinated by John, but when the daughter of Herodias danced at his birthday party, Herod was swept off his feet and promised the girl as anything. The Bible does not identify this young girl as Salomé, although Josephus does. There is also no biblical mention of the famous “Seven Veils” that Salomé sheds as she dances for her stepfather, which figure prominently in Richard Strauss’s 1905 opera Salomé (adapted from an Oscar Wilde play). Egged on by her mother, the girl asks for, and receives, John’s head on a platter. (The operatic Salomé is put to death by her stepfather, but the historical figure actually married Herod’s son Philip).
John’s severed head raises some more problems of chronology. Traditionally, Jesus was said to have begun his ministry around the time of John’s death. But history intrudes once more if the Jewish historian Josephus is to be believed. According to Josephus, John was arrested in 33 or 34. By that time, Jesus was supposedly already dead.
BIBLICAL VOICES
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned