Killing Him Just Made Him Stronger
On the Speculation That Jesus Was John the Baptist Resurrected
(avg. read time: 18–35 mins.)
This is one of my more experimental long-form posts; it is an example of what I call a “proof of concept” post. Unlike various rough drafts I have posted of articles I have submitted for publication, “proof of concept” posts are not yet ready for submission. They represent my attempts at pursuing ideas concerning texts prior to any extensive engagement with scholarship. At this stage, I am more interested in if there is a workable idea for an article here than in seeing what other scholars have had to say about it thus far. Of course, based on what I have read, there is not a great deal of extensive writing on my text or the subjects I address in it. With all that said, let’s get into it.
Jesus posed a question to his disciples that has resonated throughout the ages: “Who do people say that I am?” While the Synoptic Gospels all feature this pericope because of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah, which is then juxtaposed with Jesus’s prediction of his death and resurrection, they also mention other ideas from Jesus’s own time of who Jesus was. Interestingly, all of the Synoptics feature as the first in the series of answers that some thought Jesus was John the Baptist/Baptizer (Matt 16:14 // Mark 8:28 // Luke 9:19). Each of the authors has also set up that this was an opinion in a previous pericope in Matt 14:1–2 // Mark 6:14–16 // Luke 9:7–9. Particularly, it was something thought about Jesus associated with Herod Antipas when he heard about him sometime after ordering John’s execution. That is, there was speculation that Jesus was John risen from the dead.
Why did this speculation arise? After all, unlike Jesus, there is no record of John’s disciples going around proclaiming that he had risen from the dead. Matthew 14:12 and Mark 6:29 tell us of his burial, but there are no follow-up claims of an empty tomb. Nor are there any noted claims of appearances. John’s movement continued on after his death, as Paul encounters people in Ephesus in the 50s CE who had received the baptism of John (Acts 19:3–4), and Apollos had previously received John’s baptism (Acts 18:25). But the message was not that John himself was still alive. As each of the Synoptics indicate in distinct ways, this belief was likely inspired by at least some people only becoming aware of Jesus after John’s arrest, especially if there was speculation about John’s death prior to his execution. Between Herod’s apparently troubled mind and the distinct possibility that he did not know where John’s tomb was, at least for a time (as John’s disciples would be unlikely to be forthcoming about such a matter to Herod), Herod had significant fuel for such speculation.
But why do the Gospel authors record this speculation when they could have made more straightforward references to the fact that Herod had John killed and left it at that? While the speculation serves as an introduction to stating that John has been executed, it is clearly more than is necessary for that function. For all the differences in the accounts and their contexts, which I will explore in due course, I argue that the speculation appears in all Synoptic Gospels for two reasons: 1) the resurrection speculation presents perhaps the most dramatic—even if misinformed—statement of Jesus’s continuity with John as well as his superiority; 2) the resurrection speculation provides an ironic foreshadowing of the link between Jesus’s identity and his fate, a link that fits with each author’s themes of resurrection. To demonstrate my argument, I perform a comparative analysis of this pericope in Matthew, Mark, and Luke in two steps. First, I perform a comparative analysis of the texts themselves to show the similarities and differences between the accounts. Second, I then examine how each pericope fits in the larger context of what each Gospel author writes about John the Baptist on the one hand, and about Jesus and resurrection on the other hand.