Ep 61: Christmaker! With James McGrath

00:00It's in the gospel. He must increase while I must decrease. He kind of passes the baton.

00:06Yeah. And that's made so explicit in the gospel of John that scholars, historically

00:11skeptical scholars are like, yeah. Right. How convenient.

00:18Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan. And I'm Dan Beecher. And you are listening to the

00:26Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the

00:31Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things,

00:37Dan?

00:38Man, I'm ready to go. This is, I'm excited because we've got a guest today and I think

00:46some minds are going to get blue. We're going to blow some minds. Yeah. So and not in the

00:52arrested development sense, right? But in something, hopefully a little more productive,

00:57a little more constructive. Our guest today's longtime friend of mine, James F. McGrath.

01:03Welcome to the show James. Thanks so much. So good to be here on D and D D over D. That's

01:09right. And James is a professor of New Testament at Butler University in lovely Indiana. I

01:16don't know that I've ever what city in Indiana is Indianapolis. It is in Indianapolis. Okay,

01:22right there in India. It's like itself. All right. Well, James, I want you to know that

01:28I was talking to Dan about you. And at one point, he said of, he said a sentence that

01:35I heard as he's a butler. And I was like, he, he's got a sight. You've got a side job

01:42as a button. No, no, no. Okay. Fine. He's at Butler. I get it. All right. Yeah. Well,

01:47when I was when I was on sabbatical, working on the book that we're going to be talking

01:51about today, you know, I was in, I was in the UK for part of it. And you know, they hadn't

01:54heard of Butler University. And I was thinking they were going to think, you know, Butler

01:57training school or something. I like it. I like it. It's good to have a career you can

02:03fall back on. There you go. The Indianapolis school of butlery or butlerage or whatever

02:09is called. And when I was, I hung out with you for a day in Oxford last October at lovely

02:16modeling college overlooking to some degree, the garden there, which I was actually I was

02:24there back in October with my family. We decided to go hit up the the garden since I had such

02:29a lovely time last time. So thank you for introducing that to me.

02:35Oh, you know, thanks for stopping by and hanging out. It was, you know, it's always fun. But

02:40yeah, this was, I basically took a year and did very little else other than think about

02:45John the Baptist, write down the results of that. So I think that's a great intro into

02:51what we are going to be talking about. The title of your book, which I think is a great

02:56title is Christ maker, which is fantastic. And what we're talking, we're talking about

03:03John the Baptist, who I thought I might know something about. But it turns out I knew almost

03:11nothing. I mean, and you mentioned this sort of in the intro to the book, you talk about

03:16how when people people just sort of assumed that they know what, you know, if they've

03:22read the New Testament, they kind of, they feel like they got a sense of John the Baptist,

03:27you know, if you go to galleries around the world, you see paintings of a guy with crazy

03:34hair and some sort of caveman loin cloth made out of camel. And that's, and then you let

03:43any, you know, we got a guy wet. And that's kind of what you know about John the Baptist.

03:50And I was surprised to learn that there is a lot more that we that that to know about

03:58this figure. And I'm so I'm excited to get into it with you. And maybe we should start

04:05with just who was this guy? Like, wait, I we know that he was the same time frame as

04:14Jesus. But but he was he wasn't just he wasn't a disciple of Jesus. It was kind of the other

04:21way around.

04:22Yeah. And that's one of those things that oftentimes is the first it's like, wait, Jesus

04:27was someone else's disciple? No, can't be. And a lot of people, you know, respond, you

04:34know, quite forcefully in a negative way to that idea even being floated. But on the one

04:41hand, we have, you know, Jesus being baptized by John, which seems to indicate at the very

04:46least indicates Jesus acceptance of John, his teaching, his movement, right, in some

04:51way, shape or form, Jesus also, I mean, he praises John away. He doesn't praise anyone

04:57else. He connects his own authority and activity with John in a way that, you know, John keeps

05:02coming up. It's like, you know, John, the son of man, there's, you know, you want to

05:06know by what authority I do these things, but let me ask you one question. John's baptism.

05:10And so it's, he constantly is linking himself with John. And so there's so much there that

05:16suddenly we're like, Oh, that's why he was doing it. He was just a site and he was part

05:19of his movement. He was possibly casting himself as his successor or maybe even more than that.

05:26And through a lot of this book, one of the ways that you're kind of extracting a lot

05:29more data out of the New Testament than many people might assume at first glance is available

05:35is that you're, you're trying to put together explanations for why we're seeing the stories

05:41being told the way that we are seeing them being told. And one interesting thing about

05:46Jesus's baptism is it seems to present this as some kind of chance encounter, like in

05:52the in mark and in the other presentations apart from the nativity story that has Jesus

05:59and John linked from before birth, Jesus just walking around and just like, Hey, you're doing

06:06this, right? Let's let's go ahead and get this taken care of. What reason do you suppose the

06:14New Testament authors had for kind of sloughing off getting rid of some of this background and

06:22telling the story in the sparse way that they tell the story? Yeah, that's a great question.

06:27I think some of it is just the way ancient people tell stories, right? Unless they are doing a big

06:32epic, you know, poetic telling of something, we're going to lots of detail. And then even then,

06:37there's there's a lot of repetition, but you're still, you know, as a modern person, I feel it's

06:41still sparse on some of the details and description. But it seems to have been common knowledge in

06:48these circles that the start of the good news, the start of the story is with John. I mean,

06:56time and again, that's, you know, what we get, right, Mark goes there, you know, as the beginning

07:01of the good news is John. In the Gospel of John, John's the first human being to appear even before

07:08Jesus, right? If we've got the timing of, you know, where they're appearing on the scene in that

07:12prologue, right? And then in Acts, when it talks about, you know, the beginning of all of this,

07:19right? I mean, Luke had started with, I'm going to tell you the story about all these important

07:21things that happened and then starts with John's parents. But then in Acts, you have, you know,

07:26we're going to pick somebody to replace Judas. And so we'll go back to the very beginning,

07:30and that's not Jesus, it's John. And so I think everybody simply knew this to some extent. And so

07:37there's there's definitely some effort to emphasize Jesus' relative importance to John.

07:44Jesus kind of made that hard for the movement as it was developing, right? You couldn't shift

07:48focus away from John entirely because Jesus spoke so highly of John.

07:52I think some of John's followers may have found it easier to reject Jesus than vice versa.

07:59Yeah, interesting. Yeah, because it seems like

08:02there was a there was a big John movement before Jesus even came into the picture.

08:11Can you talk a little bit about what that might have been, what it probably looked like?

08:15Yeah, and I think some of some of how we deduce that is, you know, putting together what we know

08:22about your ancient movements in general, what we know about the Jesus movement upon which John

08:27was actually a major influence and connect those things with the things we're explicitly told.

08:32And so one, I think, mistaken notion that people have is that, you know, John,

08:39the world, there's something like a hermit, right, living out in the middle of nowhere.

08:42And I mean, even if that had been the case, given how many people apparently went to hear

08:46him wherever he was, he must have had apostles, right? He must have had people that he could send

08:51out, right? Wasn't like, you know, if you're doing some cool stuff in the wilderness of YouTube,

08:57but you know, you're worried that nobody's going, you know, nobody's going to just find you there,

09:00right, with all this, you know, barren landscape that's surrounding you. And so, you know, you got

09:05to get into, you know, you got to send apostles out, you got to get something on TikTok to, you know,

09:09where people really are, whatever it is that gets people to come. And so, we don't know for sure

09:15whether John, you know, how much John actually went into, let's say, cities and towns and talk

09:20there. But at the very least, he had either he had, you know, I mean, you'd either have to say,

09:25I mean, the only option for a historian is to say that he sent people out to invite people, right?

09:29Otherwise, you'd have to have, you know, angelic messengers or booming voices from the sky or

09:33something. And so, even in that, right, it's possible that before Jesus, you know, joined the

09:41movement, you know, John was, or had people that went out and, and proclaimed his message and

09:45invited people to, to hear it and things of that sort. No, it seems like, I mean, you talk a little

09:55bit in the book about the fact that John didn't invent religiously dunking people in water.

10:04But he, he may have invented this concept of baptism. Talk about what baptism is and why it's

10:10associated with John and, and that sort of thing. Yeah. So baptism is something that's so familiar

10:17to Christians, I think that it's like, I don't think I ever, before I started working on this

10:22book project, ever stopped to ask. So how on earth does somebody ever come up with the idea for this?

10:26Yeah. You're gonna dunk people in water, and that's going to be forgiveness. And you look at what

10:32Christian baptism is supposed to symbolize, right, dying and rising with. Well, that's, that's so

10:37you're united with, you know, it's not, it's not an obvious symbolism, right? Like that's been added

10:45on as an additional layer. And we get the sense from our sources that, you know, Christian baptism

10:51is sort of taking John's baptism and giving it a new spin and saying, you know, if you, if you want

10:57to connect with the Holy Spirit, you really need this, right? But in the process, we hear about

11:02people who were baptized only with John's baptism, right? And the fact that this had spread and

11:08spread quite widely before anything that is starting to become Christianity appears on the scene.

11:14And so John becomes nicknamed as, you know, nicknamed the Baptist, and that could mean, you

11:21know, or the dipper, the dunker, the immerse, or whatever we might want to call him. And

11:26that can be one of two things. Either you have a group like the Baptist, right? We have that today.

11:31And so if you have somebody who is a part of that group and hang out among Catholics and might call

11:36him John the Baptist or something like that, right? The other is that he is this person who really

11:43was the innovator, right? And the spearhead and the driving force of this new movement. And I'm

11:48inclined to think that the latter makes better sense the evidence because we get not just John

11:52the Baptist and reference to, you know, daily baptizers and the Baptist movement and things

11:57like that, but also reference to John's baptism, right? And so it seems to be this thing that

12:02there are people are aware that he's doing something different. And he's doing this in an arrow when,

12:09you know, on the one hand, immersing in water is a familiar practice, right? More so than perhaps

12:15ever before. But for that very reason, I think not just, not only does that tell us that John

12:21must have been doing something different, right? And something that stood out in this context,

12:24enough for him to get the nickname, but also that it can have been the very sort of scaled down

12:30immersion that you'd get in, let's say some certain, you know, like Protestant evangelical

12:36churches where it's like, you know, you don't, you know, you might get asked a question and then,

12:40you know, you get out of the water and it's over and, you know, get the potluck or whatever else is

12:44next, depending on which tradition it's in the context of. There must have been, you know,

12:50some ritual, right? There must have been formulaic phrases. There must have been things that would

12:53persuade people that this is something meaningful and help them to have some sort of experience

12:59in the context of this, this ritual. Right. Now, when I've been asked about baptism in the past,

13:06what I think the conventional wisdom, at least as I have perceived it and what I've shared with

13:11groups in, you know, when we're in Israel and Palestine and we come across a mikvah, the idea

13:18as far as I had always understood it was that this was just kind of an incremental elaboration on

13:24a mikvah, the kind of thing you found at Qumran among the people who were responsible for transcribing

13:30the Dead Sea Scrolls. But in the book, you talk about this as something that's a pretty radical

13:36departure from the mikvah. Can you talk a little bit about the purposes of the mikvah and the

13:41relationship to what John seems to be doing with the baptism? Yeah. So a mikvah, you know, an immersion

13:48pool, you know, purification, you know, bath. However, one wants to put it for people who may

13:54not be familiar with them. I'll encourage them to Google it, right? M-I-K-V-H, you know, get you

13:59to some pictures and you can see one if you've never, because a picture is sometimes worth a thousand

14:03words. But the Jewish law and even more so for some of the, you know, some of the particular

14:11groups that put a particular emphasis on purity, maintaining ritual purity, right, which is not the

14:18same thing as hygiene or cleanliness. Being pure in a ritual sense meant cleansing oneself of contact

14:28with or avoiding contact with things that were felt to be incompatible with sacred space, right?

14:33So particularly the temple and entrance into the temple. And some sought to integrate that more

14:38apparently to daily life. But at the very least, for those going into the temple, there were requirements,

14:44right? If you had had contact with a corpse, right? If somebody had given birth, they could not go

14:48into the temple for a certain amount of time. And I like that example, particularly because it helps

14:55people understand that you're impure, richly impure and can't go into the sacred space after

15:00giving birth, but giving birth is a blessing, right? It's not that you did something wrong, right?

15:04So, impurity and sin are sometimes, you know, one is used as a symbol of the other, but they're not

15:09the same thing. That's interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. Yeah. And so, a mikvah was used

15:16because in this time period, people had taken the references to washing, right, wash themselves,

15:22and taken it as full immersion, right? And it's not something that's explicit in most

15:27texts that you must immerse, but that became the way of doing things. And anyone who enjoys a,

15:33you know, a nice bath, you know, in hot weather will appreciate that this probably was, you could

15:38see why this would catch on. But for, you know, we're not told that John or Jesus or anyone else

15:46connected with his movement immersed in a mikvah or immersion pool to practice baptism, right? It

15:53seems to consistently be in rivers and sources of flowing water, which in Aramaic was living water.

15:59And so, it seems as though John may have chosen other venues, as it were, right, other modalities

16:06of immersion, both because it gave a different experience, but also it symbolically and even

16:11visually, you know, locationally distinguished what he was doing from what others were doing.

16:16So, what was he doing? Well, like, you sort of mentioned that Christianity has glommed onto this

16:25as a way of, I mean, you mentioned sin forgiveness or wiping a way of sin.

16:34Is that a John innovation or where did that come from?

16:39Yeah, so there are some great texts that might inspire one to do something like this,

16:46or at the very least one could latch on to and say, look, this justifies it, right?

16:50Doing that with biblical texts is not a new practice, right? I'm sure I know you address it

16:55quite often with some of the things that people do with texts, some of which are like, but it was

17:00interesting. One of our fellow bloggers just blogged about Isaiah chapter one today and I was like,

17:08yeah, good, good, draw attention to that text before my book comes out because that seems like

17:12one of those places where you could get away with your sacrifices, right? You know, the noise of

17:17your worship and all this stuff is displeasing to me, practice justice and then wash yourselves

17:23clean, you know, and make you clean. Yeah, and so somebody who, you know, I think that you need

17:29somebody who's primed to look for an alternative to the sacrificial system and I think I've deduced

17:38some things about why John might fit that kind of fit that description. But if you're if you're

17:42willing to go into that, I wanted to talk about this a little bit. From Luke, we get a little bit

17:47about John's family and John's birth. And you talk a little bit about how there seems to be based on

17:55what John gets from his father and what John gets from his mother attention in his the path that

18:02he has laid before him for his life, which has a lot to do with this idea of where we're not a part of

18:09the temple superstructure and everything that that goes on there, which might be responsible for for

18:16John's kind of use of alternative means of seeking forgiveness for sins. Can you talk a little bit

18:22about what you see as that tension that that John is born into? Yeah, absolutely. And I was hoping

18:29that would come up, not least because there's this time lag between this general audience biography,

18:35which I think is well informed academically, but is written hopefully excessively for, you know,

18:40anyone to read it. But then there's going to be a, in October, a big, thick academic monograph that's

18:46going to dig into some of the details that scholars care about. And because there's that lag, I'm very

18:51curious what a fellow academic will make of some of my deductive reasoning and inferences and things.

18:57I was more detailed argument. Yeah, briefly, I was going to say I was reading part of this and I was

19:02like, there seem to be some methodological assumptions going on here. But it wasn't until later that I saw

19:09that you were going to include your defense of those assumptions in the bigger book. So I look

19:15forward to that bigger book. But I'm sorry, I interrupted. No, no, it's I've given people

19:20academics just enough to say, what, what is he doing? Yeah, but hopefully to make it interesting

19:26enough that they'll come back and circle around and read the the bigger book.

19:34The starting point for some of the deduction that I, you know, sort of the deductive process

19:39I went through and working on this book was realizing that not only do we not see John following in

19:46his father's footsteps and practicing as a priest, that wouldn't necessarily tell us a lot because

19:51priests didn't get to serve in the temple, all that regularly, you know, it was a bit hit or miss,

19:55you know, you're, you're, you're cold on duty, but then you're a lot, may or may not be chosen,

19:59things like that. So that didn't necessarily tell us much. But if he's proclaiming an alternative

20:06mode for obtaining forgiveness and connecting with God and doing these things, expressing one's

20:12repentance, then that's not just going into a different line of work than your father. That's

20:18setting up a competing business, basically. And one that undercuts the pricing strategy of your

20:25father's business, which, you know, because immersing in water takes, you know, your time and effort,

20:30but doesn't, doesn't cost you what sacrifice would cost you and travel to the temple.

20:35It's a low overhead gig. Yeah. And so my immediate reaction once I realized, oh, you know, whoa,

20:43this is, I was like, there's got to be a really interesting family backstory to this, right?

20:48And I wish I could, I wish I knew what it was. And do I speculate? No, I better not. It's gonna be too.

20:55But as I was pulling on all these threads and looking closely at some of the details about John,

20:59started paying attention to the fact that he's depicted as being a Nazarite, right? Someone who's

21:06committed as very few other people that we know of were to

21:14be bound by this vow, right? That's people often took for a short period of time,

21:19but to be bound by this vow for life, right? And so we have Samuel and Samson, right in the

21:24jurisdictions who are, yeah, they will never cut their hair and will never partake of

21:28wine or strong drink, great products, and are dedicated to God in this way.

21:34And we get allusion to that in Luke's infancy story and first reaction as a scholar working

21:43with historical critical methods is, yeah, but we can't, we can't base anything on that, can we?

21:48But of course, you know, even when you have these very symbolic, highly, you know,

21:54you know, fictionalized and scripturalized narratives that you get in infancy stories in ancient

22:02biography and other literature, you still have incorporated those things that people knew about

22:08the individual, right? Names of parents, for instance, can find their way in there and maybe, you know,

22:13you don't invent new names if you happen to know the names of somebody's parent, right? And so

22:18John would have been visible, he may not have looked as much like Hagrid as people tend to assume,

22:22but he would have, the hair might be about right, you know.

22:25Still very tall though, probably 7/8 feet tall.

22:28Well, I like to think so because, you know, he's earned my respect as a part of this thing and I

22:32tend to look up to people who have exceeded me in stature as a smaller individual.

22:39But he's depicted as being committed to this and then I came across the fact that

22:48priests are required to keep their hair tidy and trim, right? It's there in the scripture and

22:57the wording that's used in Hebrew is actually, it's basically the exact opposite of what

23:03is required of the Nazarite, right? So the Nazarite keeps their hair this way and the priest

23:08is prohibited from keeping their hair that way, right? And so suddenly you have this tension,

23:14right? John is the son of a priest, but you have this Nazarite vow and so that got me thinking that,

23:20you know, one possible explanation for this, I'm pretty, first of all, I'm pretty sure this

23:25never came up for anyone, right? How often do you have somebody who's a priest and then there's,

23:30you know, lifelong commitment to, you know, but you could very easily imagine, as people do today,

23:36John's mother, if she was, you know, had not managed to have a child reading these stories

23:42about the patriarchs and saying, "Yeah, God, if you'll do for me what you did for Hannah,

23:46then I'll do with my child what, you know, what Hannah did with her child."

23:54And very similar for Menoahk and his wife and judges 13, they are older and childless and then

24:00angel visits them and blesses them. Yeah. And so whether you want to, you know, say it was Elizabeth's

24:06sort of motivated action, you know, if people are inclined to work angels into the story as well,

24:13it can always, you know, do that. But there's no need sort of for a historian to do that.

24:18But if you have someone who is dedicated in this way, then they're going to find themselves torn

24:22between their father's vocation, right? And which is their own, not just heritage, but imperative,

24:30right? If you are the son of a priest, you become a priest. Well, it's an incredible privilege too.

24:36Yeah, yeah. And so, and presumably so is being an Azerite, right? Like Samuel or Samson, you know.

24:43No, but John would have found himself not just torn between mother and father, but I think

24:48it might have also led him to some insights about scripture because you have a commandment

24:53that seems perfectly straightforward on your father and mother. What do you do when father

24:57and mother are pulling you in different directions? And you might assume, okay, patriarchal context,

25:02we'll go with that, but it's not spelled out in that way. And you think in this time period that

25:08the Hasmonean Kingdom is getting a lot of flack, particularly as we get into the first century CE,

25:14and we see this at Qumran, we see this in places where the authority of the High Priesthood that is

25:22now being assigned by Rome is in doubt, it's being rejected. Do you think that plays a role,

25:30perhaps, in John's decision? Yes, and certainly, you know, John has, there's a long history of

25:36associating John with the Essenes. It goes back, it's interesting. You know, one of the things that

25:41I noticed working on the project is that it goes back before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls,

25:44you know, so... Yeah, the Essenes are mentioned by Josephus. Yeah, and so, and you know, there was

25:51enough hint of, you know, some some bathing and stuff that it was like, you know, people have

25:54been proposing that. And so I think that that primed some people to then, you know, make those

25:59connections. John, this is why you said it in the book. I was thinking of it when you introduced

26:04it. I was like giggling to myself about the video they show you at the visitor center at Qumran,

26:09where they're kind of hinting at, oh, that guy, John, who went off and did his own thing might have

26:16been a member of the Qumran community. Yeah, and so there were, you know, it was not just the Essenes

26:21that were critical of the temple and of the priesthood. And the Essenes, one thing that I

26:26think was different between John and the Essenes is that the Essenes, you were eager to get back

26:31there, right? They just needed the right priests to be in place doing things the right way. And,

26:38you know, it's it's terrible when, you know, you see something being managed a certain way and you

26:43know the best way for that to be done. And nobody will just take, you know, put you in charge of it,

26:47you know. But John seems to have had a different sort of angle and seems to have been offering

26:52something that bypassed the temple in a way that, you know, we don't get, you know, in the Dead Sea

26:57Scrolls. And so there's probably definitely was conversation possible. And to that extent, you know,

27:05John's alternative to temple sacrifice probably resonated with a wider cultural current.

27:14I think one of the things that I'm going to jump a little bit because one of the things that I

27:18found most that was a revelation for me. I'm not, look, I'm not a well studied person in this.

27:24So I was not aware, and I think a lot of our listeners might be shocked to learn that not only

27:31did John have his own sort of separate ministry or, or, you know, I don't know what to call it,

27:39but his own, his own followers and his own movement back in Jesus's time, they still exist.

27:47Like there's still, there are, there is, there is a religious movement that is,

27:53that still follows John the Baptist and does not follow Jesus.

27:59And I think you, James, you're one of very few scholars, I think, who specializes in the study

28:05of this group, which is also the only remaining Gnostic community that survives from antiquity.

28:12So a lot of people don't know much about the Mandians. Can you talk a little bit about that

28:17in their relationship to John the Baptist? Always happy to talk about the Mandians.

28:22If somebody, you know, were like traveling the world and going to the most remote places they

28:29could and happened across like a Gnostic group that were, you know, immersing in, you know,

28:34they're speaking or using for the scriptures a dialect of Aramaic and they mentioned all these

28:39biblical figures and they consider themselves followers of John, but don't like Jesus and

28:44think Jesus was a follower of John's who went off the rails. I mean, this would be making headlines,

28:48right? I mean, you think about, you know, the Nogomadi discoveries, right? And so it's just

28:53bizarre to me that the Mandians are not better known. And of course there was fascination with

28:59them. And I think the reason why we don't see the same level of familiarity today is precisely

29:05because they had their heyday a while back in terms of awareness in the English-speaking world

29:12to think of that in particular. And it was the translation of one of their, you know,

29:17I mean, their most sacred text into Latin that sort of sparked off the the esophical movement

29:23and some of the modern esotericism, which is fascinating. Well, yeah. So like at the end of

29:27the 19th century, somewhere around there, going back earlier than that, so it was 18th. I mean,

29:32I want to say 18th century, we have, is it Norberg's translation of the, what do you call it,

29:40Lieber Adami? I think it was the way he rightly gave it, you know, a book of Adam.

29:45And so, you know, the sort of 19th century the esophical movements, you know, were drawing on

29:50that and make reference to it. Okay. And so then you had early 20th century, the, you know, scholars

29:58like, you know, Richard writes, writes in Stein in Germany doing sort of the history of religion

30:03stuff and then Boltmann drawing on that and bring it into New Testament. But plugging things in,

30:08you know, very uncritically, you know, I'm going to have a more extensive treatment of this in the

30:13the big book coming in October. But you know, Boltmann, you know, would find like, you know,

30:17being looking at one verse and see, you know, two redactional hands, you know, at work, you know,

30:22and do this whole thing. And then would quote this passage from a Mandian text and plug it in his

30:27background. And first of all, the Mandian texts are later, right? And so they need to be used much

30:32more cautiously. But also, there's none of that close redactional analysis to say. So is all of

30:37this one piece or anything? And I'm not saying that it's, you know, he should, you know, I think he

30:42had an over sensitive redactional radar, you know, as it were. But, you know, seeing all this editorial

30:50work and things like that in these texts and then plugging in something else from later as

30:54background without asking the same kinds of questions is problematic. And so then there's this

30:58backlash against it and they've been ignored. And so, yeah, so let me, having said some of that

31:05stuff that, yeah, that's the stuff Dan will find interesting. Now the stuff Dan will find interesting.

31:10This is a group that is Gnostic, which means that they think that the creator God in Genesis

31:15is not a very nice entity, right? This is, you know, not the ultimate source of all things,

31:23you know, not even the ultimate source of all things good and evil. This is a lower

31:26entity that sort of takes this material world that comes about as a result of, you know,

31:32cosmic mishap, essentially, and rules over it and orders it in a way that, you know,

31:39is not great because it doesn't have that doesn't have great stuff to work with, right?

31:43We can we can based on a middle platonic notion that the spiritual is divine, whereas the fleshly,

31:50the corporeal is corrupt and wicked. And yeah, it certainly at least connects with that. And,

31:55you know, they're they found the Gnostics that were in sort of the Greek speaking world and in,

32:02you know, areas where you could interact with Greek philosophy, definitely were, you know,

32:07latching onto that and were making common cause and influencing, you know, as well as being influenced

32:11by that. But we also get it, you know, in Mesopotamia, right, and you get it, you know, interacting

32:17there, I think much more much less with Greek philosophy and much more Zoroastrianism. And so

32:21you do get some hints of of a sort of a they're being dark waters, right, as well as the waters

32:27of the light world. And you know, then you get the reflection going on and then it kind of gets

32:32corrupted in that way. And so the possibility that there's some sort of more permanent dualism

32:38of some sort, you know, is at least explored. And for anyone who's

32:42dived into the Gnostic texts that we've had, you know, published, you only in pagans, Gnostic

32:48Gospels or things like that, we'll know that they were not very concerned about consistency

32:53in their, you know, in their cosmology and things like that. So they explore ideas and it's fascinating.

32:59But yeah, so they they practice immersion in living water. They don't consider John their

33:04founder because like Gnostics did ancient and modern, they think that their religion goes back

33:10to Adam, you know, and you have light world beings from, you know, the very start of human

33:15humanized creation, coming and trying to reach us and share with us the good news that if you

33:20realize that there is a world beyond this material world, you can actually prepare to escape from it

33:28when you die and ascend beyond it to the place where the place where goodness sort of thrives at

33:35war, where everybody knows your name. Just out of out of curiosity, you mentioned that the Mandian

33:42texts are are later do we have a good idea of the time period is the second century? Are we into

33:47the third and fourth century? Yeah, so I don't think anything could safely be traced back before

33:53the third century. We do have, you know, one thing that has often caused some misunderstanding is that

34:00some of them at the very least have been interpolated and redacted in like the Islamic era and things

34:05like that. But what's interesting is that oftentimes we can see, you know, scholars, scholars like us

34:11will immediately recognize that where it's like talking about, you know, Judaism and the Torah and

34:15things like that, and I'll say, and the Arabs got circumcision from the and the veers off of this

34:19thing. And veers off onto a subject that is not a focus anywhere else in this text or things like

34:26that. Well, I can imagine without a gigantic institution and the pressures of such an institution,

34:32there's more liberty with the way these texts are transmitted. Yeah, so in a sense, the ritual

34:39is the canon, right? The ritual is the thing that they try to safeguard and, you know, it's like,

34:43it's inherent and it can't be changed. Okay, the texts, you know, we're not treated in the same way,

34:48except in as much as the texts helped pass along the prayers and elements of the ritual.

34:54What are some of the earliest manuscripts of Mandian texts?

34:58So I mean, some of our our complete manuscripts tend to be, you know, just a couple of hundred

35:05years old, you know, not old that old. There's a big collection in the Baldaine Library. That's

35:09why I was in Oxford, with me, so I'll be there. On the other hand, we have some of the same formulas

35:14and prayers and things incorporated into things like incantation bowls that are found in, you know,

35:20the Mandian's historic context in Mesopotamia, where, you know, same light world being, same kinds

35:27of formulas are being mentioned in there and, you know, like in the fourth or fifth century,

35:32we have, I want to say in the, I'm trying to remember what century Theodore Barcone is, but he

35:37met, he quotes from Mandian sources. And we have even things like, you know, mannequin sources that

35:43seem to be quoting from and drawing on Mandian sources. Some some very early ones. And so

35:50triangulating back and figuring out when this religion takes something like the form of which

35:55we now find it is is challenging. Yeah. Yeah. I certainly don't want to say, let's anyone get

36:01the wrong impression that John was a Gnostic. Right. Any more than I want to say that we have

36:06the Nagamadi texts. And so Jesus was a Gnostic in those later texts develop. But I think that

36:13John provides an important clue to the emergence of this thing that becomes a really powerful,

36:20worldwide religious trend and movement in its own right. Yeah. We know, consider Gnosticism,

36:28it's rebirth and modern esotericism, the fact that there are Christians around the world who,

36:33nonetheless, you know, really like the gospel of Thomas and the various other texts.

36:36Yeah. These are, this is a movement that's continuing to, to make an impact and not just

36:43on the Mandians who are a fairly small number. Yeah. Being Gnostic is kind of like being Antifa.

36:49Like you don't get a membership card. It's, it's a very kind of

36:53loose collection of, there's a large spectrum of a relationship to the ideologies of that.

37:03I think you're going to say it's just, you know, it's a label that's only put on you by the people

37:07who disagree with you. Right. And that's, and that's another way to think of it. But I just one more

37:12question before we get to Dan's question, I, it strikes me that you have in the Mandians the

37:20convergence of at least three different traditions. You have something to do with, with John the Baptist,

37:26you have something to do with Gnosticism and you have something to do with Zoroastrianism. And it

37:30sounds like they kind of took root in Mesopotamia. Is there, and again, a lot of this is speculative,

37:37we can't really unpack everything going back in time, but is there a sense for any kind of order

37:44that this happened? Or they're like, John the Baptist followers moved to Mesopotamia to escape

37:50from the, the Jesus movement and, and met up with Zoroastrians there? Or is it Gnostics who were

37:57like, nah, this Jesus gets a little weird, let's, let's pick up this John the Baptist guy. Is there

38:02a sense for that? Or is it just kind of, all these things are all a part of this tradition and,

38:08and, and it's fungible basically at this point? Yeah, it's, it's, it's challenging to answer those

38:14questions. But you know, you'll find, particularly among New Testament scholars who've never actually

38:18looked at these texts, there, there are some assumptions about answers to that, you know,

38:23you'll hear things like that, you know, they might have borrowed John in order to fly under the radar

38:28of Islamic authorities or something like that. And that doesn't fit at all, not least because,

38:32I mean, it's, they say fairly negative things about, you know, Islam and Muhammad and about

38:37Jesus, who's also a prophet in Islam. And so, you know, unless you want to say they did that,

38:41they did this clever thing to fly under the radar of Islamic authorities, but didn't realize that

38:46insulting other prophets would, you know, undermine the, the, botched it completely. So I, the, the

38:52Mandian text mentioned, you know, Jerusalem, more than, you know, I mean, they have this inordinate

38:57attention to Jerusalem and its, its surroundings, which, you know, even, I did a comparison, you know,

39:03sort of, you know, the, the Babylonian Talmud is much longer as a corpus than the Mandian text,

39:10but in terms of, you know, sort of like per page kind of, how often do we get references, you know,

39:15and this is a tradition that considered itself to be essentially an expatriate community, right,

39:21with its roots in, you know, in Judah and Judaism and Jerusalem. And it's more frequent, right,

39:29and they blame the destruction of Jerusalem on, you know, the persecution of, essentially,

39:36Mandians, right, you know, disciples. And so, I think that it's hard to account for that,

39:43if this is a group that comes about in Mesopotamia, right, I think that they need to have some sort of

39:47historic connection and then there needs to be some movement. And I think the best way to make

39:52sense of all the different pieces of, you know, and signs of influence is to suggest that this was

39:57a Jewish esoteric movement or an Israelite esoteric movement, because I think it had some broader

40:03traditions beyond what was defined as, or understood as Judaism in that time. And that, you know,

40:09makes its way to Mesopotamia and continues to exist within the framework of, you know, the local

40:16community as an esoteric, you know, secretive tradition that has its own views and beliefs and

40:23some mystical practices. And so we get some things that are at the very least dialogue, but might

40:29even be influence of some of these, you know, some of the Gnostic forms of mysticism on, you know,

40:35more mainstream Jewish mysticism, right. You look at some of the, even some of the diagramming of

40:40light world beings and the emanations and things, and it looks like the Sefirot, you know, from the,

40:46from, you know, Merkobah mysticism and Kabbalah. And so you get these intersections. And so I think

40:53they weren't esoteric tradition still within that context until at some point, you know, their,

41:00their beliefs come to light or somehow, you know, people become aware of them, some, someone with

41:06authority and the synagogue starts, you know, doesn't like what's going on, gets rid of it or

41:11something, and you get some sort of separation. And so that was one, one of the first things that I,

41:17you know, as a foray into this area was bringing my work on the gospel of John, where you have this

41:23sense that you have a community that has this, you know, sort of, it's been described as being

41:28rather anti-Jewish. And yet it's also Jewish, right? And so it's, and so that this process of being

41:36sort of driven out from a community that one was a part of might have played a similar role and

41:41maybe a similar dynamic in the case of the Mandians, probably within a Mesopotamian context. Although

41:47as with Christianity, not all necessarily in the same, in the same manner and in the same way

41:53everywhere in the world. Yeah.

41:59I was curious, you know, you mentioned the Mandian literature. And I'm curious how a skull,

42:08how sort of scholars, because it seems like that is that that's sort of probably

42:14that there's a lot of information there about John the Baptist. How much do you think you can

42:22trust that as being as being informative about this figure? And how much do you think it's just

42:28sort of legend that they've created about this man? Yeah. And there's, I think one could assume

42:37even before going into it, based on experience with other sacred texts and traditions, that

42:42there's going to be, there's going to be some legend. And there's also the possibility that

42:47there may be some useful historical information. And the question is, is there enough of the latter

42:51to justify having your attention if you're interested in historical stuff? But then how to get at it,

42:56right? And so, yeah, in the bigger book that's coming later, that's one of those methodological

43:01things that Dan, when he was reading, was probably wished, was already available. I discuss, you know,

43:07I think that the Mandian texts, you know, plugging them in as background uncritically, trusting them,

43:15or ignoring them are the two extremes, both of which are problematic, and that we should use them

43:21the way we use, you know, rabbinic tradition, if we're interested in the first century,

43:26later rabbinic sources, despite, you know, some of the scholarship of past centuries,

43:34is not the religion of Jesus' time, right, without, you know, but it's influenced by the

43:39religion of Jesus' time. And sometimes there are things embedded in there that help us to

43:42understand things that were going on in the first century, right, because they are outgrowths

43:47from that along a different avenue, right? In the same way, you know, we're spoiled if we work on

43:53historical Jesus, we've got these early sources, that's often not the case. If we didn't have the

43:59Gospels, and actually have this thought experiment in the bigger book, and all we had was the Nagamadi

44:04stuff, we'd actually be able to get back to, yeah, well, we might struggle to get back to,

44:11but we'd have maybe even more than we'd realize from the historical Jesus, right? Because there's

44:16this stuff in the, you know, the Gospel of Thomas, that because we have the synoptic Gospels, we know

44:21some of these are versions of sayings that probably were historical. And so one thing that hasn't

44:27been done yet, and I'm eager to see some other people work on this, besides me, and you know,

44:34a very, very small number of other people who have an interest in this, is, you know, there's

44:38teaching attributed to John in Mandine sources. We can't trust it that this is like a verbatim record,

44:45or even a close approximation, but there may be things embedded in it, right? Certainly some

44:50of the same ideas, you know, emphasis on social and economic justice and things like that come

44:54across. And so there's reason to at least ask the question, because we don't have great first

45:01century, you know, we don't have the equivalent of first century, multiple first century Gospels

45:05about John the Baptist. And so in that circumstance, I think we should take these things and,

45:11you know, critically weigh what they tell us. And as one of the one of the first people to be

45:19doing that, I'm sure I'm going to get a lot wrong. And I'm pretty sure I'm not done with John the

45:25Baptist. You know, I finished working on this and was like, you know, what do I do next? I'm like,

45:30yeah, I should just do more John the Baptist. But I need, you know, we need more eyes and ears,

45:36you know, paying attention to this and asking these questions and looking from a different angle.

45:41But I think there's much more there that will prove to be valuable for our understanding of

45:46Christian origins, for our understanding of John the Baptist, for understanding of

45:50ancient religion, that is really appreciated. I'd like for you to talk a little bit. You mentioned,

45:57you sort of mentioned in passing that the Mandians don't aren't fans of Jesus and sort of don't love

46:06where Jesus took John's teachings. I would love to talk a little bit about both their perspective

46:14and maybe just the perspective of if we could imagine a, you know, a follower of John,

46:19what Jesus might have looked like to them. Because I don't think that that's a perspective that

46:25anyone has really considered like scholars like you have considered it. Obviously,

46:33I had never thought about it. Obviously, like, when you when you're raised with a Christian tradition,

46:39of course, John would want Jesus would be excited for Jesus to become, you know, this Messiah figure.

46:46But that may not have been what John was after. That may not have been John's perspective

46:51and or the people that are following John. So I'd love to have you talk about that.

46:59Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So I knew it was going to be potentially focusing the attention in a

47:05particular way that might or might not be helpful and might or might not be appreciated in some

47:09circles, calling the book Christ maker. Yeah. I thought, but once I got that, I was like,

47:15okay, but it's a good title is good. And particularly, I'm hoping, you know,

47:20Mandians are going to actually read this and appreciate that I'm working their sources into

47:25this attempt to get at the historical John the Baptist. They're obviously going to find take as

47:30much exception to some of the things that I say is, you know, Christian scholars take to some

47:33of the things I say about, you know, historical Jesus are about John. But I think that historically

47:39speaking, you know, we have John depicted as talking about one who will come after him,

47:43you know, presumably meaning, you know, a disciple who will be stronger than him.

47:47Yet we also have people talking about the possibility that he's the Messiah.

47:54And Luke is pretty upfront about that. And so if he's clearly saying, no, not me,

47:59I'm not the Messiah, right, he's doing this Monty Python routine right back in the first century.

48:03And everybody's like, see, you know, or the or the Dune thing, right? Only the true Messiah

48:09would say he's not the Messiah. I think that actually John must have been speaking in a way that,

48:15first of all, speaking in a way that was a bit more elusive and less, less easily pinned down.

48:22I think his life was, you know, seems to have been cut short so that he didn't get a chance

48:27to say to everyone, okay, you know, so my time is coming to an end here. And so you should all

48:32follow Jesus, right? You know, he was, you know, we were closely together, you know, before I was

48:36imprisoned, and you know, he's he's the way I think the movement should go, right? And so clearly,

48:40Jesus followers believe that. And it's not necessarily historically implausible.

48:45It's in the gospel. He must increase while I must decrease. He kind of passes the baton.

48:51Yeah. And that's made, you know, so explicit in the gospel of John that scholars, you know,

48:56historically skeptical scholars are like, yeah, right. How convenient.

49:02It's like, he was not the light. He just gave witness bear war, poor witness to the light. It's

49:08like, okay, you seem to you seem to think is important. Who's who's saying the opposite, right?

49:13And you look around, it's like, oh, yeah, there's this wider movement. And I think that as time

49:19went on, right? Certainly once Jesus is executed. And you know, it's like, no, no, he'll be back.

49:24And he's going to do this. And still time is passing. I think other other figures emerge who say,

49:31yeah, no, it was it was not Jesus. And you know, maybe it will be me. And so we get this ongoing

49:37movement. And probably also get some who, you know, as also happens with Gnostic forms of Christianity,

49:43just say, you know, what's the spiritual message that matters? And you know, kind of the apocalyptic

49:48stuff can be phased out or toned down. Now, can you talk a little bit about you? One of the chapters

49:54is entitled The Last Days. You can you talk about the decline and fall of John the Baptist, how

50:01is the end of his life plays into basically how his tradition has been carried on?

50:08Yeah. So it's, it would be easy, you know, and I'm sure I at least initially, you know, went this

50:15route that, you know, thinking, well, at least we've got this vivid story of his execution, right?

50:20And so, you know, if we don't, there's a lot that we don't know, but you know, here's this nice big

50:25puzzle piece, you know, with several several interlocking bits that we can slot in. But often,

50:31when we have a particularly vivid story told in an ancient source, it'd be very easy to just

50:36assume that it's, you know, it's historical because it's early and it's vivid and it's got lots of

50:40detail. But in actual fact, Mark is our only source for that. You know, Matthew and Luke repeat,

50:47you know, some of what Mark says, but Mark is the source. Josephus indicates that Herod Antipas

50:54executed John, but doesn't give us, you know, there's no birth, no mention of her birthday party,

50:59not that there's any reason why John, you know, but why Josephus would have mentioned that.

51:03And so, eventually it struck me that, you know, in the story of, you know, the birthday and the

51:11dancing girl and Herodias and all this, that you get this attempt to shift the blame away from

51:16Herod Antipas, right, who's sort of the representative of secular authority and rules at Rome's behest.

51:23And so, and we get the same thing in the story of Jesus execution, where is this effort to divert

51:30the attention and say, well, no, I mean, the representative of secular authority didn't really

51:34want to kill him, but you know, the hands were tied. And so, that parallel between those two

51:41ways of dealing with the story of the execution of these key figures in this movement,

51:45that parallel had not struck me in quite the same way, right? And you do get it mentioned,

51:53but it's usually is, you know, Mark's telling of John's story prefigures the death of Jesus,

51:58or, you know, there's, you know, foreshadowing, there's, you know, intertextual echoing or whatever

52:04else, but not in terms of this effort to divert attention away. And so, I don't think anyone is

52:11likely to have known whether, you know, who if anyone danced at Herod's birthday party or anything

52:16like that, there's the tradition identifies the girl as Salome, but there's actually a significant

52:25problem having that be the person given when this is supposed to have happened and what we're told

52:30in Josephus about, you know, sort of Herod and Herodias and their family and things like that.

52:34But I think that we can actually connect John and, sorry, John's death as depicted in Josephus

52:42and in the Gospels and find that they do actually dovetail in some interesting things that probably

52:48do point us to some useful historical information. So in the Gospels, John's main criticism of Herod

52:56Antipas is his divorce of his first wife and his marriage to Herodias, who had been his brother's

53:04wife, and the details, you know, this is sort of things that kings and tetrarchs and would people

53:10wish they were kings did in the ancient world. And so, but, you know, there seems to have been some

53:15illegality, at least with regard to the timing and other things. But Josephus says that when

53:21Herod Antipas was defeated by Herodis that some blamed this, you know, basically said that, you know,

53:29he's getting his comeuppance for what he did to John. And that's often viewed, you know, some

53:34have said that, you know, Josephus must be getting the dating, you know, or must be telling us that

53:38John lived much longer than Jesus did because he tells his story about the sort of the end of the

53:43conflict. And it's like 37 ish. And so, you know, Herod, John must have died then, but it would have

53:48been natural to connect these two, right, to the death of John, John, the execution of John several

53:54years earlier, and this event, when we consider that Herod Antipas's first wife was the daughter

54:01of Eretus. Okay. And so she flees back home and that, you know, his, you know, Herod Antipas's terrible

54:08treatment of the daughter really sours the relationship. And that's what leads them into war. And I think

54:12that John the Baptist was calling out Herod Antipas, not just, you know, oh, you know, you divorced and

54:18married for convenience, but you're dragging your people into a war. That's foolish. And that's

54:23bound to be disastrous. And in the process of his being defeated by Eretus, Herod Antipas's

54:33stronghold at Macarris is one of the places that Eretus sort of conquers. And that's where

54:41John the Baptist, according to Josephus had been executed. And so we put, you know, sort of all

54:46these things together. And I think we do get a sense that these things are, are complementary

54:50sources of information about this and not things that are actually intentioned with one another.

54:55That's interesting. That's so John the Baptist is not just, he's out there preaching forgiveness

55:03of sins and is socially concerned, but also to some degree, geopolitically concerned. Or is,

55:08or is this mainly about the, the well-being, the homeostasis of, of the Jewish people at the time

55:15that he's thinking, Hey, you're, you're putting us in a vulnerable position by, by ticking off

55:19the wrong person's daughter. Yeah, I don't think we necessarily have to choose between those,

55:24you know, fair enough. More than one thing wrong with what

55:28do it. But yeah, I think it's very interesting. You know, one of the things that led me to really

55:35revisit some of the, and try to challenge some of the stereotypes is that, you know,

55:40I mean, John is something of a, you know, a judgment and, you know, fire in brimstone,

55:44he kind of preacher, but it's all aimed at, you know, the aristocracy, the religious leaders.

55:49But we're also told that he, you know, he was listened to and, you know, his message was appealing

55:56to tax collectors and prostitutes. And your standard fundamentalist preacher

56:03doesn't resonate with that only. Your water gave fundamentalist preacher.

56:07The tax collectors and prostitutes are not going to be lining up to say, Hey, this guy's speaking

56:11our language. Right. And so I think that we have to get that rather like Jesus, right? There's

56:18harsh words and harsh criticism and sarcasm and, you know, condemnation towards those in power.

56:24And there's, there's compassion, right, for ordinary people. And this concern with,

56:31with social and economic justice, I think connects with that, because on the one hand, you have,

56:35you know, ordinary people who would have struggled to, to travel into a foreign sacrifice and do

56:40these things. But then also even the tax collectors and the prostitutes who are complicit in some

56:46ways with the, you know, the things that are going on in that time, or victims, you know,

56:51victims who may further victimize, right, by, you know, the way they then, you know, bring others

56:55into the, this whole system that is to the advantage of very few, but not any of those people that,

57:02you know, we're currently talking about. And so John's teaching to them seems to have been,

57:08you know, do what, you know, do what's within your power, right? You know, God, you know,

57:13eventually sort out, you know, the, the dawn of the kingdom of God and the, the, the whole messed

57:19up system will be dealt with in some way, shape or form. You don't need to take responsibility.

57:24The fact that you can't change the whole system doesn't mean that you just then join in with it.

57:30You as a soldier, you as a tax collector, just take what you're doing, right? Don't take more than

57:36that. Everyone is, you know, living on the edge of starvation, you could potentially elevate

57:41yourself and your family out of that by, you know, taking a bit more. And that's what everybody's

57:45doing. And everybody's trying to, yeah, as far as it depends on you, do this, you know, do what's

57:50right. And that, I think resonated, right? Because I think he understood, you know, I wonder if

57:55John's time in the wilderness, right, was not, you know, a time which he was thinking about these

58:01things and realizing, you know, on the one hand, you know, if he eats just what is sort of provided

58:06naturally, whether it's be honey or date, honey, and whether he actually dipped the locus in the

58:12hungry or, you know, separately, whether it was dessert or the other, you know, we don't need to

58:16worry about that. But I think he probably, you know, it would have dawned on him that you could

58:22actually disentangle yourself from injustice. But you're also not making things better and you're

58:27not making a difference and you're not doing anything that addresses what's wrong with the

58:32society. And that being active and going back, you know, maybe involves getting your hands dirty.

58:40And so you have to, you know, you have to have both a passion for justice and a means of forgiveness.

58:46Yeah. And I think if he's influenced by texts like Isaiah one, you have one of the strongest

58:53iterations of the prophetic critique within Isaiah one. And so if there is a

58:59kind of a distancing from the institutions of the temple, I can see how the prophetic critique,

59:09the concern for social justice, as well as the concern for critiquing the systems that are

59:14facilitating all of this injustice could be part and parcel to to his message. So yeah,

59:21that's a that's a great message to to end the life of John the Baptist on. So not that he was a

59:29socialist, but at the very least was very concerned for systems of power and for ensuring that the

59:37people who are on the, the business end of them are not, are not just afterthoughts are not just

59:43grist for the mill. Anything else to add, Dan? I think that there is more to talk about. And

59:52it's such a fascinating figure that I'm we're going to grab you, James McGrath, we're going to keep

60:00you with us for our patrons only section segments so that people can can hear a little bit more about

60:06this because it is super interesting. But for those of you who aren't patrons, thank you so much

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60:50James McGrath, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate having you on the show.

60:56Oh, thanks so much. I just thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. I have as well and we will

61:01see those of you who join us in the afterparty in just a moment and for everyone else. Bye, everybody.