(i) John the Baptist
(i) John the Baptist was an ascetic. His abode was the desert; his clothing was rough; his food was spare; he baptized his penitents. Therefore, it is argued, he was an Essene. Between the premisses and the conclusion however there is a broad gulf, which cannot very easily be bridged over. |not an Essene.|The solitary independent life, which John led, presents a type wholly different from the cenobitic establishments of the Essenes, who had common property, common meals, common hours of labour and of prayer. It may even be questioned whether his food of locusts would have been permitted by the Essenes, if they really ate nothing which had life (ἔμψυχον[[460]]). And again; his baptism as narrated by the Evangelists, and their lustrations as described in Josephus, have nothing in common except the use of water for a religious purpose. When therefore we are told confidently that ‘his manner of life was altogether after the Essene pattern[[461]],’ and that ‘he without doubt baptized his converts into the Essene order,’ we know what value to attach to this bold assertion. If positive statements are allowable, it would be more true to fact to say that he could not possibly have been an Essene. The rule of his life was isolation; the principle of theirs, community[[462]].
External resemblances to John in Banus,
In this mode of life John was not singular. It would appear that not a few devout Jews at this time retired from the world and buried themselves in the wilderness, that they might devote themselves unmolested to ascetic discipline and religious meditation. One such instance at all events we have in Banus the master of Josephus, with whom the Jewish historian, when a youth, spent three years in the desert. This anchorite was clothed in garments made of bark or of leaves; his food was the natural produce of the earth; he bathed day and night in cold water for purposes of purification. To the careless observer doubtless John and Banus would appear to be men of the same stamp. In their outward mode of life there was perhaps not very much difference[[463]]. The consciousness of a divine mission, the gift of a prophetic insight, in John was the real and all-important distinction between the two. |who was not an Essene.|But here also the same mistake is made; and we not uncommonly find Banus described as an Essene. It is not too much to say however, that the whole tenor of Josephus’ narrative is opposed to this supposition[[464]]. He says that when sixteen years old he desired to acquire a knowledge of the three sects of the Jews before making his choice of one; that accordingly he went through (διῆλθον) all the three at the cost of much rough discipline and toil; that he was not satisfied with the experience thus gained, and hearing of this Banus he attached himself to him as his zealous disciple (ζηλωτὴς ἐγενόμην αὐτοῦ); that having remained three years with him he returned to Jerusalem; and that then, being nineteen years old, he gave in his adhesion to the sect of the Pharisees. Thus there is no more reason for connecting this Banus with the Essenes than with the Pharisees. The only natural interpretation of the narrative is that he did not belong to any of the three sects, but represented a distinct type of religious life, of which Josephus was anxious to gain experience. And his hermit life seems to demand this solution, which the sequence of the narrative suggests.
General result.
Of John himself therefore no traits are handed down which suggest that he was a member of the Essene community. He was an ascetic, and the Essenes were ascetics; but this is plainly an inadequate basis for any such inference. Nor indeed is the relation of his asceticism to theirs a question of much moment for the matter in hand; since this was the very point in which Christ’s mode of life was so essentially different from John’s as to provoke criticism and to point a contrast[[465]]. But the later history of his real or supposed disciples has, or may seem to have, some bearing on this investigation. |The Hemerobaptists.|Towards the close of the first and the beginning of the second century we meet with a body of sectarians called in Greek Hemerobaptists[[466]], in Hebrew Toble-shacharith[[467]], ‘day’ or ‘morning bathers.’ What were their relations to John the Baptist on the one hand, and to the Essenes on the other? Owing to the scantiness of our information the whole subject is wrapped in obscurity, and any restoration of their history must be more or less hypothetical; but it will be possible at all events to suggest an account which is not improbable in itself, and which does no violence to the extant notices of the sect.
(a) Their relation to John the Baptist.
(a) We must not hastily conclude, when we meet with certain persons at Ephesus about the years A.D. 53, 54, who are described as ‘knowing only the baptism of John,’ or as having been ‘baptized unto John’s baptism[[468]],’ that we have here some early representatives of the Hemerobaptist sect. |John’s disciples at Ephesus.|These were Christians, though imperfectly informed Christians. Of Apollos, who was more fully instructed by Aquila and Priscilla, this is stated in the most explicit terms[[469]]. Of the rest, who owed their fuller knowledge of the Gospel to St Paul, the same appears to be implied, though the language is not free from ambiguity[[470]]. But these notices have an important bearing on our subject; for they show how profoundly the effect of John’s preaching was felt in districts as remote as proconsular Asia, even after a lapse of a quarter of a century. With these disciples it was the initial impulse towards Christianity; but to others it represented a widely different form of belief and practice. |Professed followers at a later date.|The Gospel of St John was written, according to all tradition, at Ephesus in the later years of the first century. Again and again the Evangelist impresses on his readers, either directly by his own comments or indirectly by the course of the narrative, the transient and subordinate character of John’s ministry. He was not the light, says the Evangelist, but came to bear witness of the light[[471]]. He was not the sun in the heavens: he was only the waning lamp, which shines when kindled from without and burns itself away in shining. His light might well gladden the Jews while it lasted, but this was only ‘for a season[[472]].’ John himself lost no opportunity of bearing his testimony to the loftier claims of Jesus[[473]]. From such notices it is plain that in the interval between the preaching of St Paul and the Gospel of St John the memory of the Baptist at Ephesus had assumed a new attitude towards Christianity. His name is no longer the sign of imperfect appreciation, but the watchword of direct antagonism. John had been set up as a rival Messiah to Jesus. In other words, this Gospel indicates the spread of Hemerobaptist principles, if not the presence of a Hemerobaptist community, in proconsular Asia, when it was written. In two respects these Hemerobaptists distorted the facts of history. |The facts of history distorted by them.|They perverted John’s teaching, and they misrepresented his office. His baptism was no more a single rite, once performed and initiating an amendment of life; it was a daily recurrence atoning for sin and sanctifying the person[[474]]. He himself was no longer the forerunner of the Messiah; he was the very Messiah[[475]]. |Spread of Hemerobaptist principles.|In the latter half of the first century, it would seem, there was a great movement among large numbers of the Jews in favour of frequent baptism, as the one purificatory rite essential to salvation. Of this superstition we have had an instance already in the anchorite Banus to whom Josephus attached himself as a disciple. Its presence in the western districts of Asia Minor is shown by a Sibylline poem, dating about A.D. 80, which I have already had occasion to quote[[476]]. Some years earlier these sectarians are mentioned by name as opposing James the Lord’s brother and the Twelve at Jerusalem[[477]]. Nor is there any reason for questioning their existence as a sect in Palestine during the later years of the Apostolic age, though the source from which our information comes is legendary, and the story itself a fabrication. But when or how they first connected themselves with the name of John the Baptist, and whether this assumption was made by all alike or only by one section of them, we do not know. Such a connexion, however false to history, was obvious and natural; nor would it be difficult to accumulate parallels to this false appropriation of an honoured name. Baptism was the fundamental article of their creed; and John was the Baptist of world-wide fame. |A wrong use made of John’s name.|Nothing more than this was needed for the choice of an eponym. From St John’s Gospel it seems clear that this appropriation was already contemplated, if not completed, at Ephesus before the first century had drawn to a close. In the second century the assumption is recognised as a characteristic of these Hemerobaptists, or Baptists, as they are once called[[478]], alike by those who allow and those who deny its justice[[479]]. Even in our age the name of ‘John’s disciples’ has been given, though wrongly given, to an obscure sect in Babylonia, the Mandeans, whose doctrine and practice have some affinities to the older sect, and of whom perhaps they are the collateral, if not the direct, descendants[[480]].
(b) Their relation to the Essenes.
(b) Of the connexion between this sect and John the Baptist we have been able to give a probable, though necessarily hypothetical account. But when we attempt to determine its relation to the Essenes, we find ourselves entangled in a hopeless mesh of perplexities. The notices are so confused, the affinities so subtle, the ramifications so numerous, that it becomes a desperate task to distinguish and classify these abnormal Jewish and Judaizing heresies. |They were at first distinct, if not antagonistic.| One fact however seems clear that, whatever affinities they may have had originally, and whatever relations they may have contracted afterwards with one another, the Hemerobaptists, properly speaking, were not Essenes. The Sibylline poem which may be regarded as in some respects a Hemerobaptist manifesto contains, as we saw, many traits inconsistent with pure Essenism[[481]]. In two several accounts, the memoirs of Hegesippus and the Apostolic Constitutions, the Hemerobaptists are expressly distinguished from the Essenes[[482]]. In an early production of Judaic Christianity, whose Judaism has a strong Essene tinge, the Clementine Homilies, they and their eponym are condemned in the strongest language. The system of syzygies, or pairs of opposites, is a favourite doctrine of this work, and in these John stands contrasted to Jesus, as Simon Magus to Simon Peter, as the false to the true; for according to this author’s philosophy of history the manifestation of the false always precedes the manifestation of the true[[483]]. And again, Epiphanius speaks of them as agreeing substantially in their doctrines, not with the Essenes, but with the Scribes and Pharisees[[484]]. His authority on such a point may be worth very little; but connected with other notices, it should not be passed over in silence. Yet, whatever may have been their differences, the Hemerobaptists and the Essenes had one point of direct contact, their belief in the moral efficacy of lustrations. When the temple and polity were destroyed, the shock vibrated through the whole fabric of Judaism, loosening and breaking up existing societies, and preparing the way for new combinations. |But after the destruction of the Temple|More especially the cessation of the sacrificial rites must have produced a profound effect equally on those who, like the Essenes, had condemned them already, and on those who, as possibly was the case with the Hemerobaptists, had hitherto remained true to the orthodox ritual. |there may have been a fusion.|One grave obstacle to friendly overtures was thus removed; and a fusion, more or less complete, may have been the consequence. At all events the relations of the Jewish sects must have been materially affected by this great national crisis, as indeed we know to have been the case. In the confusion which follows, it is impossible to attain any clear view of their history. At the beginning of the second century however this pseudo-baptist movement received a fresh impulse from the pretended revelation of Elchesai, which came from the farther East[[485]]. Henceforth Elchesai is the prominent name in the history of those Jewish and Judaizing sects whose proper home is east of the Jordan[[486]], and who appear to have reproduced, with various modifications derived from Christian and Heathen sources, the Gnostic theology and the pseudo-baptist ritual of their Essene predecessors. It is still preserved in the records of the only extant people who have any claim to be regarded as the religious heirs of the Essenes. Elchesai is regarded as the founder of the sect of Mandeans[[487]].