Episode 57: Gospel of Mark 3–Elijah the Forerunner

What do the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, and Josephus all have to say about John the Baptist? Was he really a Baptist? (That was a joke)

We’re going to dig into Isaiah, Malachi, and Exodus in order to explore the very unique calling of the older cousin of Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth, as well as his position as a priest.

We’re also going to tackle another manufactured controversy–this time about whether or not John was really eating bee honey or date honey. 

I didn’t have as much time as normal to try and go through this. My dear friend David is being prepped for unexpected bypass surgery so I am a bit busy today <3

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Mark #3  1:2-8: The Forerunner

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

² As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
    who will prepare your way,
³ the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”

⁴ John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵ And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶ Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷ And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. ⁸ I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

So today, for our second lesson in the Gospel of Mark, we’re going to talk about John the Baptist as the forerunner of God and in order to do that, we have to talk about Isaiah 40. Hold on to your hats because Mark is just jam-packed with references to Isaiah and to the Greater Exodus which happened at the Cross when not just one nation was freed from slavery, but men from all nations were freed from the enslavement to sin and death, and the scourge of idolatry. Over the course of my series on Isaiah and the Messiah, we talked over and over again about the first Great Exodus out of Egypt, the mini-Exodus of a remnant out of Babylon (mini- because most Jews remained in Babylon), and a promised Greater Exodus out from the Pharaoh of sin and death that would be for all nations. Mark and the other Synoptics, but especially Mark, write their Gospel accounts from the vantage point of that Greater Exodus occurring at the Cross. Last week we talked about some modern reinterpretations where some people foresee paths opening up and everyone making their way across the oceans to Jerusalem, and I brought up some of the problems with this doctrine being too exclusivist to fit God’s pattern of deliverance.

I can’t stress enough the importance of understanding all of Isaiah 40-55 in context because when the Gospel writers penned their accounts, they based their understanding of what they had experienced, in great part, on what they saw there in Isaiah, and how Isaiah had explained what they would personally live out.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com.

I am using the ESV this week, the English Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.

So where did Mark get his take on John the Baptist? Well, according to Rikki E Watts and actually a lot of other scholars, in his masterpiece Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark, he makes it out to be an amalgam of three separate verses –Isaiah 40:3, Malachi 3:1 and Exodus 23:20.

Is 40:3 ³ A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

Mal 3:1 “Behold, I am sending My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. Suddenly He will come to His Temple—the Lord whom you seek—and the Messenger of the covenant—the One whom you desire— behold, He is coming,” says Adonai-Tzva’ot.” (TLV)

Ex 23:20 ²⁰ “Behold, I am sending an angel before you, to guard you on the way and to bring you into the place that I have prepared.” (TLV)

Now, you might protest—“You can’t just mash verses together!” But honestly, it was a very common thing to do—very acceptable in the ancient world.  And goodness, just read the Talmud and Midrashic literature. Honestly, nothing could be more Jewish, and, of course, Yeshua/Jesus was a Jew and so were every single one of His disciples and His family and pretty much everyone He knew and all of His followers for like about the first ten years after His resurrection. It’s all about talking the local lingo in the way that locals talk it. It doesn’t matter that it offends our current literary sensibilities. They came before us—we don’t get to change the rules and then hold them accountable to our standards—it would be silly!

It is important to note that the mashup doesn’t violate the meaning or spirit of any of the individual verses in context. Let’s look at Mark 1:2-8 verse by verse really quick here:

² As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way,

“Prepare your way”—right off the bat here, that is straight-up Exodus language because there has been an announcement of going somewhere—that’s what “your way” means. You are heading from one place to another and your way must be prepared. This person, who has not yet been named, is called “my messenger,” with the possessive pronoun “my” referring to God, of course.  But we also have this bit addressed to someone else, to the person whom the messenger is preparing the way for. The messenger is going “before your face” malak l’pane in Hebrew and that is odd language to us in this day and age—just remember that for now. Going forward:

³ the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”

Let’s review Is 40:3 in a bit more context:

40 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

³ A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

“Comfort, comfort” that is the commanded message to God’s people. War is over. Iniquity, which remember is avon—intentional sin but not willful rebellious sin—is finally being forgiven. If you recall from the series, in Isaiah 43:25 and again in 48:11 (Parts five and twelve), God tells them that He is forgiving His people and delivering them not because they are repentant, trusting, or worthy—just the opposite—but for His own sake. For His glory, for His honor, for the sake of having a witness in the earth. Verse four talks about the removal of obstacles from the path of God—but one might rightly ask—why does God, the generic word Elohim here and not Yahweh, need a highway and why does He need it to be free of obstacles? Because that’s what this language meant—about the lifting up or valleys and mountains and hills being leveled and the rough made smooth—it is poetic language for the removal of all obstacles. Remember that Isaiah 40-55 is oracular poetry, and so full of beautiful metaphors and similes. We shouldn’t be looking for an actual change of landscape here because that would strip it of its beauty—this is just talking about the way being prepared so that Elohim will be able to deliver the message of comfort—that an end to exile is coming. Wait, exile? Didn’t exile end when Cyrus sent the exiles home in 536 BCE??? Not according to Nehemiah, almost one hundred years later. In his prayer recorded in Nehemiah 9:34-37, he makes this sad statement:

Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. ³⁵ Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. ³⁶ Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. ³⁷ And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress.

The mini-Exodus out of Babylon, because it was incomplete and not combined with repentance, was merely a change in location. And they were under new overlords, who themselves would fall to the Greeks in the 4^th century and then to the Romans in the first century BCE. And yet, throughout Isaiah 40-55 they are repeatedly promised a great deliverance—but what kind of deliverance? We’ll get back to that.

Our second mashup verse is from Malachi—a really hair-raising book if you’ve never read it. Postexilic prophet, writing about the horrible abuses in Israel after the return. Offenses against God, against wives, against one another—and on top of all of that, accusing God Himself of being as crooked as the day is long. And, in the midst of all this oppression is this bone-chilling warning:

Mal 3:1 “Behold, I am sending My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. Suddenly He will come to His Temple—the Lord whom you seek—and the Messenger of the covenant—the One whom you desire— behold, He is coming,” says Adonai-Tzva’ot.” (TLV)

This verse sounds awesome out of context, but in context, it comes down to this: “Just wait until your father gets home.” Yes, the returned exiles wanted a Messiah—so that they could be on top militarily again. They didn’t want a Messiah who was going to come on behalf of a wronged God, wronged wives, and wrongs committed against the vulnerable. Remember Isaiah 40-55 that God is very concerned about His witness, people’s perception of Him. He can’t save people who are disgusted with Him because of the behavior of His people. If they are not behaving like saviors themselves, doing acts of justice and righteousness but instead committing acts of oppression and treachery, who will believe their God is any different? So, yes, this is a warning. Remember, on one hand we have, from the surrounding context of Is 40:3, “Comfort, comfort” (as well as another promise in verse 11 that the Lord Yahweh will lead His flock like a shepherd with gentleness) but we also have this warning that not everyone (and especially the priests) will be happy about His coming.

And the third verse from Exodus—along with the verse after it for a bit more context:

²⁰ “Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. ²¹ Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.

This verse was spoken to Israel after the giving of the commandments, and right before the blood ratification of the Covenant and Moses going up onto Sinai to receive the instructions for the Tabernacle and the Priesthood—which of course, happened before the Golden Calf incident. But all that was future, these two verses are a promise that as they go forth into the Land of Canaan (and this is obviously before the ten spies fiasco) that they will have a “messenger” (malak—often over translated as angel when it might just be a messenger) who will go before them and guard them as they travel to the Promised Land. They are warned not to rebel against him, that they must obey him—he will not pardon pescha level sin (willful rebellious God-hating sin).

But I want to talk about this “angel” because the phrase is malak l’pane which is very well reflected in the English Standard Version. The Messenger of the face—meaning the Messenger of the Presence. That is very much royal/divine language—when a lesser is serving as messenger in preparation for the arrival of the greater and that is exactly what we have here. That right there is the biggest reason, in my opinion, why we see Exodus 23:20 included in the mashup.

So, the context of what is being said here about the messenger is broader than the mashup suggests, but that is why they did the mashups. Can you imagine how much vellum they would go through and how big those scrolls would be if they didn’t take shortcuts that would be understood by people who were familiar with the Torah and the Prophets already?

To sum up—a messenger will go before a greater figure. From the context of Exodus 23:20 and Isaiah 40:3 we know that this is referring to the comforting of the people of Israel through an Exodus that will end their estrangement from Yahweh.  From Malachi 3:1, we know that the messenger is going ahead of Yahweh Himself in some way—either personally or through His own agent.  What the verse, as written in Mark, says is that the Messenger (to be named as John in the next verse) is announcing repentance and forgiveness and the coming of Yahweh.

Let’s continue on with the text so I don’t have to jump ahead as much:

⁴ John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 

John, of course, as we know from the Gospel of Luke, is a priest as well as a cousin of Yeshua/Jesus through their mothers. John’s mother Elizabeth was of Aaronic birth, and so Mary’s mother was as well, whereas Mary, whose father was named Heli, was from the tribe of Judah but not through the Royal line. Priests had to marry women of priestly stock, but women from priestly families were not limited. If there were more priestly-stock women than men, it would not be odd for one to marry into another tribe.

So, John appeared and as a priest, he would have had immediate gravitas—people would listen because he was a priest. But added to that the miracle related to his birth, which was well known, and you have a dazzlingly compelling eschatological figure. Josephus wrote about him in his Antiquities. John was well-loved, followed, and respected by most everyone—except the Jerusalem leadership who refused to be baptized by him. He was so beloved that the downfall of Herod Antipas was believed, by the Jews, to be the result of his beheading of John the Baptist. Did you know that he never worked a miracle? He didn’t have to. He was born with some seriously legitimate street cred.

Here is what Josephus claimed about John in Antiquities 18.5.2 116-119

Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and was a very just punishment for what he did against John called the baptist [the dipper]. For Herod had him killed, although he was a good man and had urged the Jews to exert themselves to virtue, both as to justice toward one another and reverence towards God, and having done so join together in washing. For immersion in water, it was clear to him, could not be used for the forgiveness of sins, but as a sanctification of the body, and only if the soul was already thoroughly purified by right actions. And when others massed about him, for they were very greatly moved by his words, Herod, who feared that such strong influence over the people might carry to a revolt — for they seemed ready to do any thing he should advise — believed it much better to move now than later have it raise a rebellion and engage him in actions he would regret. And so John, out of Herod’s suspiciousness, was sent in chains to Machaerus, the fort previously mentioned, and there put to death; but it was the opinion of the Jews that out of retribution for John God willed the destruction of the army so as to afflict Herod.

Mark says that he was “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” In the first-century Jewish world, they looked at baptism differently than we do. We see it as a one-time event when we become saved, but this immersion was something that happened every time people were preparing to come into the presence of the holy. If you were going into the Temple and coming into the presence of the sanctified vessels and the blood and all the holy things and the consecrated priests who were on duty, then you had to become ritually clean. Ritually clean is not the same as soap and water clean. These guys were likely never that clean in their entire lives. No, this is a physical act that marks a change from one spiritual state to another. They separate themselves from the unclean world and step into a state of ritual purity. Of course, it was temporary. A soon as a married couple engaged in sexual relations, or a woman had her period, or a man had a seminal emission, or there was a skin disease or childbirth, or a death in the community, or whatever, then they became ritually impure again and they had to undergo cleansing again before they could return to the Temple.

So, John was commanding them to repent and undergo a cleansing because they were about to come into the presence of the Spirit, the Spirit that used to inhabit the Temple itself, in the person of the Messiah. It was symbolic, yes, but it was also very real. Of course, they weren’t exactly sure what was happening. They were expecting the Messiah, of course, a Messiah who would rid them of the Romans. But why were they under the oppression of Roman rule? Because of their national sin. I told you about Nehemiah’s prayer. They knew they were still slaves to foreign overlords, exiles within their own land. They attributed this to their national sins not being fully pardoned, as per Malachi’s stern warnings. So the nation was desperately seeking a national “forgiveness of sins” where God would finally wipe their slate completely clean and return them to their inheritances under a faithful Davidic King (unlike the Hasmoneans) and a purified Priesthood (unlike the corrupt priestly family of Annas). They weren’t looking for individual forgiveness, but forgiveness for the nations and their national sins against God.

This is why they listened to the Pharisees, who were at least trying to come up with a system where they could earn God’s favor back by being uber-faithful.

⁵ And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 

John was insanely popular. We do have a bit of hyperbole here because not everyone was baptized by him, but that’s how ancient literature goes. The Synoptics all make it clear that the Pharisees and Scribes did not believe John and were not baptized by him (some might have been, but certainly not all).  People were confessing their sins before John, just like those who brought offerings to the Temple would tell the priest what the sacrifice was for so that He could properly perform the correct rituals (which were different for each kind).

⁶ Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. 

John has this otherworldly feel about him in Mark’s description. He feels like an outsider, and yet at the same time, not a deviant like how outsiders were generally seen. Being a priest helped, of course, it gave him some instant credibility, but the people were languishing under Roman occupation, sick, often starving, and even terrorized sometimes. They were desperate for change and John was a huge change. He looked like a desert nomad, and the reference to the hairy garment and the leather belt is undoubtedly meant to remind us of Elijah. In II Kings 1:1-8 we see a conversation between King Ahab of Israel and his messengers:

⁷ He said to them, “What kind of man was he who came to meet you and told you these things?” ⁸ They answered him, “He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.” And he said, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.”

Why would their ears perk up at a reference to Elijah? Let’s look at the last two lines of the last of the Hebrew Bible’s prophets, Malachi 4:5-6

⁵ “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. ⁶ And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

Make no mistake—Mark is saying, right here, that John is Elijah the prophet—even though he never worked a miracle. His job isn’t to work miracles this time, it is to, “will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers”—or else. Or else what?

3 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. ² But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap…⁵ “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

Israel needs to respond positively to John, as Elijah, which we know the leadership did not do. All three synoptic Gospels are clear that they refused to believe John. But what do they need to believe?

⁷ And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. ⁸ I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

The need to believe the one whom John came to go before.  This “after me comes” is an interesting expression because it hearkens back to the expression of a disciple coming along after or behind his teacher and so some people think that Yeshua/Jesus was a student of John’s but as they were only six months apart in age I figure that is a stretch. Also, John’s other disciples, John and James, Peter and Andrew, don’t seem to be aware of who he is before this.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes “coming after me” doesn’t always mean the same thing. It could also be a reference to the “coming one” of Mal 3:1, 4:5—both of which I just quoted, as well as Psalm 118:26:

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord.

But we have this expression of absolute debasement. One moment he is calling out to all Israel and rebuking the leadership (which we see in Matthew and Luke) and the next he is calling himself unworthy to do the lowliest service available toward any man—dealing with his feet and shoes. It was so disgusting—just think of walking the streets in an age without street cleaning and plumbing where animals are everywhere—that a Hebrew slave was not expected to perform this task for his Master and could not be forced to do it, according to the Talmud and other writings.

Here’s the Mekilta to Ex 21:2: “A Hebrew slave must not was the feet of his master nor put his shoes on him, nor carry his things before him…but one’s son or pupil must do so.” (Lauterbach, Vol III, pp 5f)

And from the Babylonian Talmud Ketuboth 98a, “All services which a slave does for his master a pupil should do for his teacher, with the exception of undoing his shoes.”

Both of those are quoted from William L Lane’s The Gospel of Mark, New International Commentary of the New Testament. Yes, same series as my favorite Oswalt commentary in Isaiah and the Messiah, only this is on the NT side.

So, John is saying that he is not worthy to be Yeshua’s student, because it was the student or the son who was responsible for this task. Slaves had no such obligation, and yet it was also a privilege. It is a privilege to be a son or a student, not so much to be a slave, right? With great power comes great responsibility. Yes, I just did that.

Why is the coming one so much greater than John? Well, anyone can baptize with water—there were a bazillion other priests, and good ones at that, besides John. Even with John’s special calling to baptize for repentance, it was still just repentance and just water. But John is making reference to something mentioned in Isaiah 44:3 that we discussed—which is why we went through all that because I am going to be drawing back to Isaiah 40-55 a lot.

For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

I am not going to go over this so much in context because that’s what the series was for and this was episode 39, which you can find on my podcast channel or my blog, but the jist of what was being spoken here was in the context of this Greater Exodus where the descendants of the exiles (not the exiles themselves) would have the Spirit of God poured out on them by Yahweh Himself in some way. John is saying, right here, that the one who comes after him will be Yahweh’s agent for doing just that, baptizing them with the Holy Spirit. What we have here, and throughout Isaiah 40-55 is this relationship where the Servant of Is 42, 49, 51, and 52/53 is doing things that Yahweh is being credited with, without exactly being Yahweh Himself. It is a complex sort of situation that I don’t think we are ever supposed to be able to comfortably grasp or explain—but just accept because it obviously happened and it works.

So anyway, that’s it for John and I want to do a little segment here called “Manufactured controversy time” and in this case, I want to talk about the “honey and locusts” controversy. Well, actually, the locusts aren’t controversial as they are an allowed food as per Leviticus 11. But in the Hebrew Roots Movement, there are folks who say that this has to be date honey because bees are unclean. And all the milk and honey references in the Hebrew Scriptures are likewise referring to date honey. But this is easily disproven.

The Greek word for honey is meli—which not only refers to honey but also to bees themselves. It’s where we get the name Melissa—that was the Greek Goddess of bees (I bet you didn’t know they had one for that) and Mellona is her Roman counterpart. Then there was Mellisseus—the “bee man” demi-god who was raised on milk and honey as an infant in Greek mythology. So, when the Gospel authors used meli for honey, they meant bee honey. But what about in the Septuagint? Well, ever reference to honey by the translators also used this word, “meli.” Sometimes folks who are new to the whole Torah thing sometimes get led down the garden path into disallowing things that the Bible clearly allows us to have. Unless you get it out of a dead lion’s carcass. Then it is mega-unclean. Not cool Samson. Not cool.