John the Prophet
Luke 1:68-79
Once upon a time in the early 13th century, just right before the mongol invasion, a King decided to go to the Holy Land as crusader, leading an army to reconquer Jerusalem. The crusade was a complete fiasco and lasted for years, but at least the king got a nick name, Andrew of Jerusalem. However the king had been many times away from his kingdom even before the crusade or after.When the king was far, the queen ruled as a regent on behalf of his husband. The queen was a foreign origin from a foreign land, but having a great influence on his husband, she governed as she wished. She started to give land away to the foreigners, like one third of country very soon became a property of foreign landowners.
When she appointed her own but otherwise foreign brother as a governor general prince of the Eastern half of the country, that was the last drop into the cup filled with the grievances of the people. The traditional leading nobles held a secret meeting to plot to kill the queen and her foreign entourage. All agreed to charge the queen with high treason against the country, a crime punishable by death. In order to make their plot justified they asked the support of the Roman Catholic Archbishop. And they needed it in a written document to obtain some medieval legality for their action.The archbishop sent an ambiguous written note to them.
The note was of course in latin: “Reginam occidere bonum est timere nolite” . In English approximately sounds like this: To kill the queen is needed, not to fear is a must. The sentence had a double meaning because it lacked punctuation. To kill the queen is needed not, to fear is a must. (Yoda style)
The archbishop’s answer became Europewide famous and went viral. Although with the medieval speed of the contemporary social media, including rumor and gossip, fairy tale telling, bed time stories etc, it took two centuries of reaching England. The forerunner drama writer of William Shakespeare, called Christopher Marlowe used the famous ambiguous sentence in his king drama, titled Edward II.
It is less known that in the Christian Bible, it happens many time that when the New Testament writer quotes the Old Testament, occasionally the quote is handled in a big way, aka the quote is liberally adjusted to fit the new content. One of this adjusted quotes is regarding the path taken by John the Baptist, the prophet in the Judean desert.
In the Gospel of Luke, but actually in all the four Gospels we are presented the quote from the book of prophet Isaiah, like that "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” The quote is almost all right, however it is slightly different from the original one as you could read it in its original place in the book of prophet Isaiah chapter 40 verse 3 as it follows:
“A voice is calling, Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. ”
One may ask that what is the difference? The two statements are so close to each other, that they are almost the same. Almost. Nonetheless, it is not anyway, at least in the society of a vanity fair like today, whether a person is proved to be a monkey of the donkeys, or a donkey of the monkeys, as it sounds almost the same, but their meanings are different, at least a bit.
Thus the prophet of Isaiah is talking about a crying voice which calls others to prepare a smooth highway to God, in the desert. It means, go or live in the desert and over there prepare the way of the Lord. Luke, the gospel writing physician, fluent in Greek, is talking about the crying voice in
the desert which was supposed to belong to John the Baptist.
The voice of the prophet , who lives in the Judean desert, calls the people of Judea to prepare the way of the Lord. The difference is really small but it is also really meaningful.
They knew very well their Bible, including the text of the book of Isaiah, and we should strongly think that the slight difference between the original and the lately quoted version is deliberate and intended. It should mean also that it was well-intended. There should be also a logical question raised even from the floor of the posterity.
Why did the authors of the Gospels adjust the clear message of Isaiah? Why did they alter the theoretically unalterable Holy text? Because the crying voice in the desert, called John the Baptist was not alone. He did not appear out of the Blue, neither Jesus, his cousin, did it. They belonged to a group called the Nazarenes, which was the Northern, the Galilean wing of the so called Essenes, where the Southern wing was the famous Qumran.
The slogan quote aka go to desert was the chief motto of the Southern group in the Judean desert. They were the people of the Qumran who literally took on the words of the prophet Isaiah, and left the big cities and the small towns for the desert and separated themselves from the mighty and from the crowd. They were the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, who prepared the Way of the Lord in the desert. That is why the New Testament is able to state that the crying voice is not anymore just calling people to go to the desert, because the called group had moved to the desert centuries ago, and also the calling voice itself was in the desert.
There is also a slight shift in the New Testament quote regarding the voice.
In the Jewish tradition, the voice of God , (bat kol in Hebrew,) is a "heavenly or divine voice which proclaims God's will or judgment." It is literally a sound from Heaven. This voice differed essentially from the Prophets", though the prophets were delegates or mouthpieces of the Holy Spirit.
Thus when the Voice of God was heard from heaven, according to Isaiah, it meant that whosoever is able to receive the message, they shall go to the desert to build a pathway for the Lord OR when John the prophet told the people with a loud voice in the desert that they must repent and turn to God, because the advent of the Kingdom of God is near. Although the prophets announced judgments on behalf of God, their voice were merely a human voice.
However the Gospel is not completely libertarian with the quote, because the Voice of God aka the BAT KOL was being heard exactly when John baptized Jesus, declaring that “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Both messages Johns and Jesus' were very similar to each other like repent, turn to God because the Kingdom is near. No wonder they were close. John and Jesus were cousins, belonged to the same religious fraction called Nazarenes, and last but not least in a human sense Jesus was the disciple of John and later he became the successor of John, as the leader of the Nazarenes, and their throne claimant.
In this way it is not a coincidence that the first disciples of Jesus were originally disciples of John the Baptist, namely Peter and Andrew, John and James, fishermen by profession but otherwise belonging to the Nazorean sect in Galilee.
The ancient traditions said that when the Messiah comes, there will be not only one but two Messiah figures. One priestly figure and an other one a kingly Messiah. John the Baptist was the son of a priest, Zechariah, having ties to the Qumran, underlined even by the Gospel which reads:
and you, child, (JOHN) will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, WHERE ? The Gospel continues : The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel, TO DO WHAT? to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.
At that time Messiah meant a real king of Israel, and kingly Messiah like Jesus, a descendant of King David. Maybe the real duplication of the Messiah figure was not really intended, however the work of John and Jesus was intertwined. Without John there would not have been momentum for Jesus. Also in the ancient tradition a real king was not self appointed, but chosen by God, announced and anointed by a real Prophet. As Samuel the prophet anointed and announced David as king so Jesus was baptized and announced by John the Prophet saying: Behold the Lamb of God. And the voice of God was heard, this is my beloved Son, listen to Him!
It was the first Advent when the people were called by the voice from Heaven to go and prepare the way of the Lord, and the people were called by John to repent, amend your ways, turn to God, because the King is near.
We live in the second advent, we are waiting for the return of the King.
We can be very sure that the Kingdom, and the King is very near. One by one, community by community we are called to prepare the way of the Lord, in the second Advent when we are waiting for the returning Lord. It is an unspeakable event, when Heaven descends to the Earth. We are waiting, but we are not to sit idle, because we have to prepare the way of the Lord .Thus we have to repent and amend our ways, because the King is near. May his name be Blessed for Ever. AMEN.
