Monday Review: Resurrection in the Testaments

I have started off the year reading James Charlesworth's (editor), Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine.  I'm playing with the idea of designating Mondays for a post on something I'm reading, and I'll try to move between categories.

The first chapter is by Charlesworth himself, of Princeton Seminary.  I almost said formerly because he is perhaps the last vestige of a past, historically oriented biblical studies program there.  From what I hear, don't go there any more if you're interested in this sort of stuff.  It's all theological interpretation now with a rapidly diminishing number of doctoral students in biblical studies.

Charlesworth's chapter gives a helpful catalog of how resurrection language in Jewish literature can mean a lot of things, ranging from national restoration to recovery from embarrassment. The second chapter is by C. D. Elledge (who also has a book analyzing Josephus on the subject). I found it the most concise and clear overview of the topic I've ever seen.

But my intention today is not to be helpful ;-)  I wanted to jot down some notes for my own research.  In chapter 4, Elledge overviews passages in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs that show belief in resurrection.  Here are some strings for my fingers:

• Because the book has obvious Christian interpolations and yet a soundly Jewish base, it surely represents Christian Judaism of the late first or early second century.  The documents likely started as pre-Christian Jewish documents, perhaps Essene in provenance, but they were preserved and expanded by Christian Jews even after the destruction of Jerusalem.
• This plays into my hunch that a good deal of early Christian Judaism flowed directly from an Essene background, including John the Baptist.  I'd love one day before I die to write up a hypothesis.
• The fact that Testament of Benjamin is one of the most clearly edited by Christians and yet looks to a restored temple (Benj 9.2) corroborates my theory elsewhere that Christians did not see a contradiction between the temple system and belief that Christ's death had decisive atoning significance for Israel.  Similarly, it shows that the political restoration of Israel was important in some early Christian belief after Jerusalem's destruction.
• As far as the afterlife, the Testament of Judah 25.4 has no resurrection for the wicked (who suffer in Gehenna in Zebulon 10.1-4).  While it does not preclude a total resurrection of the righteous, it focuses on resurrection for those who died in sorrow, poverty, hungry, and for the Lord.
• Judah 25.1 is very interesting because it mentions the resurrection of the patriarchs, as in the gospels (e.g., Matt. 8:11; Luke 13:28 ). The resurrected sons of Jacob rule over the twelve tribes of Israel, which is interestingly what the twelve disciples do in Matt. 19:28.

Munich's Brandhorst Museum

Went with Angie today to the Brandhorst Museum while Tom and Sophie went bowling with the church.  Few know that Angie really likes art and has always "delighted" the children with a slew of art museums in our travels.  I think if she could do anything she liked would get an advanced degree in art history and try to teach somewhere.

It's a museum of modern art featuring individuals like Andy Warhol, Sigmar Polke, and Cy Twonbly.  I don't usually enjoy this sort of art, unless someone can explain something about it to me that is clever.  To be honest, a good deal of the museum confirmed the stereotype to me--even the audio guide explanation of some of them sounded completely goofy.  I wouldn't hang anything from Cy Twonbly in my house unless you paid me (then I would--actually, Angie was reminding we do have one of the better Twombly's already in our home from when Stacy painted her own room).

However, there were some pieces I considered quite clever and stimulating, especially with explanation.  I liked this Warhol, for example:



It's meant (so the audio guide said) to show the faded reality of the communist dream of the hammer and sickle, and the sickle handle in the bottom left has the kind of stamp you would see in a US tool store.

I liked this piece by Sigmar Polke:


It's called Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité, the cry of the French Revolution.  You can see what that turned out to mean in France.  Polke insisted that it only be bought by a French museum, but no French museum would take it. ;-)

There were a couple other things I thought were clever.  I thought clever the idea of a piece of art being a showcase with stuff in it--the showcase being part of the art rather than art being in a meaningless museum showcase. But what Joseph Beuys put in the showcase completely made the piece uninteresting.

A couple of Cy Twombly's stuff could have been clever, if he hadn't completely trivialized the spark.  I thought the idea of a piece of art being a classroom chalkboard had great potential... if it didn't have his meaningless scribble on it.  I kept thinking of the scene from White Chicks where all the paint falls on the stage and splashes the audience and one of the artists in the audience thinks it is so bold, so revolutionary.

Finally, the museum currently has a couple of exhibits by Isaac Julien.  This is video art.  The second exhibit, One Thousand Waves, had 9 screens of video going on.  They juxtaposed themes ancient and modern but what I thought was fascinating was the way the screens created a panorama.

I thought of my own friend Dan Steller and how a whole new kind of movie could be shown where you had different screens going with different parts of each scene.  Some could be background (like the background Chinese forest in Julien) or with features of the scene (like the temple on some of the screens in Julien's, taken from different distances). Some could involve the center stage, but other screens could involve side conversations or even a narrator looking on (like the goddess of safety looking on in Julien).

So there were some things in the museum that, after being explained, I thought were quite clever, at least to me.  As for the rest...

Jesus and Gehenna (7)

... continued series on Jesus and judgment.
________
So Jesus preached that judgment was coming for those living on the earth, including the wicked within Israel.  My hunch is that Jesus did not emphasize this judgment in his teaching, even though it was always there in the background.  It makes sense that it may have featured more prominently in Jesus' final days on earth than it did in the bulk of his ministry. In this last section, I want to discuss another element in Jesus' equation of judgment, namely, resurrection and hell.

Again, Jesus probably didn't speak very much on either topic.  For example, we don't have too many statements by Jesus in the gospels about the resurrection. There is his well known debate with some Sadducees in Mark 12:18-27.  The Sadducees were "conservative" when it came to the subject and sided with the silence of the bulk of the Old Testament. They rejected the fairly new idea of resurrection and its sometimes revolutionary implications. [1]

Jesus disagreed. The gospels remember him teaching that there would be a resurrection involving Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (e.g., Matt. 8:11; Luke 13:28).  Certainly he also speaks of his own resurrection at points in the gospels.  Interestingly, this is surprisingly little from Jesus on a subject that is a core item of our faith. But of course the resurrection had not begun yet at that point.  Jesus was the beginning of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20), and so the resurrection has now started.

The gospels have more to say about hell, especially Matthew. We saw a couple passages earlier in the chapter where Jesus talked about those who die in the judgment being cast, body and soul, into Gehenna (e.g., Matt. 10:28; Mark 9:47). It is tempting for some to see Jesus only referring to the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem. [2] It is where they burned trash so that its fire never went out and its worms always he something to fee on (Mark 9:48).

The word ge-hinnom in Aramaic originally meant "Valley of Hinnom"--this is where the word "Gehenna" originally came from. At first, some time before Jesus came to earth, the word perhaps was used of the place where the bodies of those who died in the final conflict between good and evil would be burned. However, words usually do not stand still in their meanings, and this word went on to refer to a place of eternal torment for the wicked beneath the surface of the earth...

[1] The only place in the Old Testament that all agree refers to resurrection is Daniel 12:2-3, although there are other possibilities (e.g., Isa. 26:19).  Other passages explicitly deny a meaningful afterlife (e.g., Job 3:16-19; 7:9-10; 14:14, 21; Ps. 6:4-5; 30:9; 88:3-6; and Eccl. 3:19; 9:4-5). The idea of resurrection probably did not really gain force within Judaism until the 100's BC.  There it was perhaps first associated with those who die a martyr's death out of faithfulness to the Law (e.g., 2 Maccabees 7).  It meant that those who stand up to foreign powers out of devotion to God will come back and see the judgment of their adversaries.  Cf. J. H. Charlesworth, ed. Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2006).

[2] Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (San Francisco: HarperOne), 67-68.

Psalm 1 translation

I am much better at Greek than Hebrew, but I've kept my resolution to translate a verse of the Psalms a day this year.  I'm tweeting the verses but I finished Psalm 1 today and thought I would collect them here. This isn't anything like a finished translation, but it gives a little sense of the Hebrew.
______________
1 Oh the delights of the man
who does not walk by the counsel of wicked people,
and in the way of sinners does not stand
and in the seat of mockers does not sit.

2 Rather, in the Law of the LORD [is] his pleasure,
and on his Law he will reflect daily and nightly.

3 And he will be like a tree being planted by the rivers of waters,
which will give its fruit in its time,
and its leaf will not wither,
and everything he does will be successful.

4 Not so [are] the wicked.
Rather [they are] like chaff
that the wind will drive away.

5Therefore, wicked people will not prevail in [their] sentencing
or sinners with the jury of the righteous.

6 For the LORD knows the way of righteous people,
but the way of wicked ones will perish.
____________
This was perhaps a psalm written as a "cover letter" for the whole Psalm collection or perhaps at least "Book 1" of the Psalms (1-41). The Law is of course the Pentateuch. All in all, these factors suggest a rather late date in the post-exilic period, I suspect.

Remember Epiphany!

Today is Epiphany, often celebrated as the day when the wise men came to Jesus in Bethlehem...

(Although the impression we get from Matthew is that Jesus would be much older that 13 days when they come. Herod kills the babies under 2 years of age based on when the star appeared and giving enough time for travel from the east and for Herod to conclude they weren't coming back to him. That sounds more like Jesus being at least a year old to me.)

January 6, along with December 25, was an early date of celebrating Jesus birth.  This piece suggests that the way some early Christians (before Constantine, mind you) tried to calculate Jesus' birth date was based on:

• When he might have died, with April 6 and March 25 being two dates we early find attested
• The sense that Jesus was conceived on the same day that he died, giving a birth date nine months later of January 6 and December 25 respectively

If this is right, we cannot give Constantine the blame for the date of Christmas.  The twelve days in between December 25 and January 6 then became the twelve days of Christmas.

We don't know what date Jesus was born, but meaning is not just a matter of origin. A tradition is only as meaningful to us as, well, it is to us.  Christians have taken today as a day to think about the wise men for long over a thousand years. It's actually a bank holiday here in Germany.

There's nothing wrong with reading Matthew 2 today!

Christians and Israel today (6)

... continued from Tuesday.
_____________
... How should we as Christians today appropriate this teaching?  For one thing, the temple and Jerusalem were in fact destroyed within a generation.  Contrary to Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey, and a host of prophecy teachers, the gospels were not talking about some temple that is yet to be rebuilt. [1] Although parts of these "end times" sermons have not yet happened, the bulk of them have.

This is a very important point.  As far as political Israel is concerned, this teaching is almost completely a matter of the past.  Generally speaking, we should not use the material in the gospels in our thinking about the politics of the Middle East. People calling themselves Christians have of course in the past had both inappropriately negative and positive views on Jews and Israel.  For much of Christian history, people calling themselves Christians used material in the gospels as an excuse to hate and even persecute Jews.  It seems beyond question that these sorts of forces within Christianity are important background to the Holocaust.

But Jesus could not be anti-semitic because he was a Jew himself--for that matter his humanity remains a Jew for all eternity. [2]  We have seen in previous chapters that Jesus’ earthly ministry had as one of its top priorities the restoration of the lost sheep of Israel, not the abandonment of Israel.  He surely directed his action in the temple toward the leadership of Israel, especially its priestly establishment, not Israel itself as a nation.  His critique was a prophetic critique from the inside, not a final condemnation from the outside. [3]

It is not controversial to think that the four gospels as we have them all date from the time after Jerusalem was destroyed.  Words that sound quite combative in foresight do not sound the same in hindsight.  It is thus quite possible that some of the words that sound most anti-Jew were originally more explanations of Jerusalem's destruction looking back.  “His blood is on us and on our children” (Matt. 27:25) reads best as a foreshadowing of what happened forty years later when Jerusalem was destroyed. It certainly did not give a green light for all history to kill any Jews you find because of some racial guilt.

By the same token, other Christians today show an inordinate amount of favoritism for the political nation of Israel.  I think it is appropriate for us to honor Jews today because "Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah (Rom. 9:4-5). However, we cannot confuse political Israel today with the Israel about which Paul said, "all Israel will be saved" (Rom. 11:26). Israel's state of belief today is no different than it was at the time of Paul.

My point is that while it is appropriate for Christians to give a certain kind of honor to Jews, both Jews as individuals and as a nation are to be treated with the same expectations and obligations of any other person or nation.  We and they must love their neighbor as themselves, including the Muslim Arab world.  Israel as a nation must be expected to live in the world with justice the same as the Palestinians and all other peoples.  Injustice does not get a pass because of your race.  It is ironic to realize that, at least until recent times, there were far more Christians among Palestinians than among the Israelis, yet so many American fundamentalist churches effectively hate the one and blindly support the other.

For historic Christians, of course the greatest point of application in the "end times" passages in the gospels is the continued expectation that Christ will again return to earth.  It is a faith that we not only have to wait until the next world to see justice done but that, in God's good time, Christ will return and hit the reset button on humanity as well.  Since prophecy usually only becomes clear in hindsight, we will have to wait to see what all that entails in relation to Israel at that point.

[1] Tim LaHaye, Left Behind series; Hal Lindsey, Late Great Planet Earth.

[2] See Terence Donaldson, Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament: Decision Points and Divergent Interpretations (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2010) for a survey of interpretive issues.

[3] Cf. Luke 13:31-35.

Traveling Europe Cheaply with Family

In the last four months my wife, myself, and two of our kids have managed to visit Berlin, Florence, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Budapest, and Prague pretty much on a shoestring budget.  We haven't bought a lot of souvenirs to be sure, but we have the pictures and memories.  Much of the time, we were on a $100-200 budget a day for 4 people.  Here's our formula.

Transportation
1. First you have to get there.  The plane tickets will be the biggest expense.  Most will know Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, Air Gorilla, Priceline, etc.

2. Eurail is of course ideal for long trips (e.g., to Italy from Munich or from Paris to Stuttgart).  Depending on which kind of ticket you get, they are good for several days in the countries you select within a 2 month window.  They must be purchased in the States before you go.  You do get to travel first class.

Reservations for specific seats are separate and important for the high speed trains (not necessary for the locals).  In Italy, they'll fine you if you haven't made a reservation at a train station, even though you have a ticket.  In other places you just have to find an seat that isn't reserved.  It can cost almost 10 Euros a person sometimes for a reservation, but it saves the hassle of trying to find an open seat--especially one where your family can sit together.  There are overnight trains for long hauls but don't do it unless you can reserve a sleeping compartment--trust me.

3. We found buses to be very nice when going into eastern Europe.  We took buses from Vienna to Budapest and from Munich to Prague.  Eurolines is dependable and has nice buses.  We noticed a Eurolines going from Budapest down to Athens and were jealous.  You can often make round trips for less than 50 Euros a person on these sorts of bus lines.

4. Twice we rented a car.  It can be fairly inexpensive (e.g., 50 some Euros) but you must have a credit card and they will usually block three times the rental amount until the car gets back safely and they get it through the system (which can take some time).  As in the States, they may or may not take a debit card.

Also, they often won't let you go to eastern Europe with one.  The cheapest will be manual transmission.  Diesel ones are of course cheap on gas (you can spend a 100 Euros easily on normal even in a day). I used Orbitz both times.  The insurance may be worth it.

5. Know the local deals.  The Bayern ticket in Munich can be purchased for less than 30 Euros and will take up to 5 people anywhere in Bavaria and even to Salzburg--6 if two of them are children.  In Budapest you can get a two day family ticket for something like 12 Euros (I forget how many Florints).

6. Google maps is awesome.  We walked straight from the international bus station to our hostel in Prague following the clear path Google maps worked out for us before we left home.  You will almost certainly want a map of any city, though, once you get there.  Many hostels give them out for free.

7. For a lot of Americans, the amount of walking the Europeans are used to can be a big adjustment.  If you're not prepared to walk a lot and take public transportation, forget about doing it cheaply.  There are usually tickets to be bought in the big cities that will allow you to hop on and off any subway, tram, or bus for the day (or several days).  Most Americans aren't used to subway and tram charts, but once you get the hang of them they're pretty much the same everywhere in Europe.

Beware of pick pockets, especially in Rome.  The subway there is horrible and squashes everyone like a sardine.  Keep your wallet in a front pocket or somewhere inaccessible.  Don't be loud Americans.  Don't expect everyone to do it your kind of normal.  Just knowing please and thank you in whatever language will get you miles in better attitudes and service.

Money
By now most know that the best way to get money in a foreign country is at an ATM.  Most of the conversion stands are a cheat.  If the rate is reasonable (check Google before you go), they'll slap on a commission.  If they don't have a commission, the rate may be bad.

Make sure your bank lets you take money from a debit card overseas (not all do) and warn them you're traveling in advance (or they may block it and try to call you at home, which would be unfortunate if you're half way around the world).  Also be aware that banks often only let you take out a certain amount of cash each day electronically (e.g., $200).  That can be a nice budget... or it can cause serious problems if, as is often the case, no one seems to take credit cards.

Housing
1. Housing is a major expenditure if you stay at a normal Western style hotel.  Orbitz and those sorts of sites again will find you good deals.  Certainly Rick Steve's and the travel books can give suggestions too.

2. With four of us, however, we ended up doing several hostels (Florence, Budapest, Vienna, Prague).  There are sites like hostelbookers.com.  But just doing a google search "Hostels Prague" and you'll find the roads most traveled.  Make sure the hostel will take older people.  Usually they want paid in cash up front.  But if you have four people, you can usually book a whole room for your family (rather than sharing one).  It's en suite.

We had great experiences at the hostels we stayed at in Florence, Vienna, and Prague.  The one in Budapest seemed a little dodgy, but we survived intact.  They can be noisy.  Most of the time the en suite ones have a private bathroom but not always.  The breakfast also may not be overwhelming, but you can often get some sort of breakfast included.

We stayed in Prague for about 65 Euros as a family.  I think it was something like 45 Euros in Budapest.  Vienna and Florence were higher but still well less than 100 a night for four people, I believe.

Food
It's horrible to say but you can always count on McDonalds for a predictably priced meal... and language is usually not a problem.  In any language, a family of four can eat at McDonalds for about 25 Euros.

Italian is fairly predictable in price too.  A "pizza margarita" or cheese pizza for one or two will cost 6 or 7 Euros.  Spaghetti bolognese, napoli, or carbonara will usually be less than 10.  Watch how much the drinks cost, even water.  50 Euros for a family of 4 is not surprising.

You'll want to try some local food.  Beware the restaurants in the middle of things.  The restaurant on the town square will cost you.  Find the restaurant on the side alley or a good half a kilometer from the city center.  A hostel may very well have advertisements up.  We ate at the "Iron Curtain" in Prague following a flier in the hostel at 6 Euros a person (600 Crowns for four of us).

Touring
Another big expense are any museums or entrance fees. Plan on it.  There are usually lots of things to see wherever you're going... and almost all of them will want their pound of flesh.

Some advice hot off of Prague and the secret to my family's own shoestring tourism.

Jan Hus, Prague, and Random Thoughts

One of the last things on my hubby to-do list was to take my wife to Prague before we left Germany (the others included Rome and Budapest).  So we've made a quick 5 hour trip here from Munich.

So here's the Jan Hus part.  He was burned at the stake in the early 1400's for translating the Bible into Czech and arguing for a number of reforms.  100 years later, maybe he like Luther would have survived.  Then again, perhaps not.  The Catholic Hapsburgs put the brakes on the Hussites here in the early 1620's.

The Hussites, I believe, remain a catholic church but one that is not connected with the Roman Catholic Church.

 
Now for random thoughts I've had today:

• The lines we humans draw around land are funny.  The trees know no lines.  A walk in the forest knows of no "countries," yet suddenly the languages change and the letters on the signs.
• As with Hungary, it is fascinating and sad to think that this region was pretty much the same as Germany or Austria up until the days of the Soviet Union.  I saw a house built in the 1700s' in the pre-Napolean Holy Roman Empire days and it pretty much looked like a German house. In fact the architecture reminds me a lot of Bavaria.  The Soviets pretty much killed its economic and technological development.
• The Moravians were from even east of here.  Again, this wasn't a "backward" part of the world until the ignoramic communists took over.
• Czech seems further along with post-communist development than Hungary to me.  Nevertheless, I see the faces of people and marvel that I live such a good life as an American.  There are Americans in need to be sure, but it boggles the mind to think of how different your life is through no merit of your own--just where you were born.
• Glad this place wasn't bombed to heck in WW2.

Judgment of Israel (5)

... continued from last year. ;-)
____________
Some have suggested that Jesus' action in the temple meant to enact its coming destruction symbolically. [1]  No doubt at least looking back many Christians understood it this way.  The Synoptic gospels remember Jesus predicting the temple's destruction.  Whether it was entirely clear to them at the time is another question.

The key passage here is Jesus' "end times" sermon in Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21.  These gospels all present Jesus' teaching on coming judgment in the context of the Jerusalem temple and a prediction that its stones will all be torn down (e.g., Mark 13:2). Jesus begins to tell of a coming distress and then of the coming of the Son of Man.

The first part of the sermon is about a distress that is coming on Israel.  Given the way Mark introduces this teaching, we know that it involves the destruction of the temple.  In fact, Luke 21:20 paraphrases Jesus' teaching to make it clear that the destruction of Jerusalem is the desecration Jesus is predicting.  The way Mark puts it is much more ambiguous: "when you see 'the abomination that causes desolation' standing where it does not belong" (Mark 13:14).

So there may be some element of hindsight in the way the gospels present Jesus' teaching here. The sermon itself does not actually mention the temple's destruction--only its desecration is implied. [2]  The Jerusalem Christians in Acts worship in the temple without much of a sense of its impending doom, and Paul's enigmatic teaching in 2 Thessalonians 2 only speaks of a man of lawlessness setting himself up in the temple as god (2:4).

The second part of the sermon concerns the coming of the Son of Man and presumably the final judgment (e.g., Mark 13:24-31).  We know now--as the early Christians came to know--that there is a significant gap of time between the first and the second part of the sermon.  The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in AD70, but we still wait for Christ's return. Luke in particular seems to bring out this distinction in the way he paraphrases the teaching.  He speaks of a "times of the Gentiles" that intervenes (Luke 21:24).

How should we as Christians today appropriate this teaching? ...

[1] E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism...


[2] So John Kloppenborg, "Evocatio Deorum and ***) JBL.

Acts 23:8 and Resurrection

"For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection--neither angel nor spirit--but Pharisees confess both."

This verse is a surprisingly scarce comment in ancient literature about the beliefs of Sadducees and Pharisees on resurrection, and it has engendered some interesting discussion.  Here are my positions.

1. First, I agree with David Daube (1990 article) that the grammar points to angel and spirit modifying resurrection, implying that Acts thinks of angel and spirit as forms of resurrection.  Since this is pretty much the only verse people use to say Sadducees didn't believe in angels, that old story goes down the tubes.  Sadducees probably did believe in angels--just not angels that were resurrected people.

2. Second, I agree with N. T. Wright (Resurrection) that the use of angel elsewhere in Acts points to angel here potentially relating to the dead prior to some future resurrection event (the "intermediate state").  When Peter showed up at the door of the prayer meeting, they wondered if it might be his angel (Acts 12:15), meaning that an angelic form for Acts can be an after death/pre-future resurrection event form.

3. Finally, passages like this one are leading me to reject the common wisdom on what the word "resurrection" meant.  I strongly suspect that we must close the chapter of recent scholarship (especially that of Wright) that insists resurrection as a word always implied a physical body in continuity with the previous corpse.

4. So here is where I'm at.  I suspect that the word "resurrection" cannot be so neatly pinned down as so many have wanted to.  It implies a rising but it cannot as a word be limited in use to an embodied rising or some future rising event at the end of history.  While Luke-Acts seems to look to a future resurrection of the dead at the end of time, it apparently can also call intermediate rising in angelic form as "resurrection" and it can speak of disembodied spirit risings as "resurrection."  These are both prior to the biggie resurrection, which Acts also apparently teaches.

Rather messy... as the truth usually is.

Obligatory Resolutions Post

Wow, I remember writing last year's post... doesn't seem like a year!  Similar feelings, with some differences.  For one, with the grace of a sabbatical I actually caught up with all my delinquent writing this year.  Philosophy's off.  I'm not behind on anything with WPH.  I'm actually on the front end of any new books and have chapters written ahead of any new contracts...

1. I come back from Germany quite determined not to live the way I was living before.  Because I wanted the curricular dream of the seminary to make it to reality (including onto Blackboard), I funneled all the design down to the details through myself the last two and a half years.  No more.  The baby is birthed and, for good or ill, the umbilical cord is cut.  I can die now...

Or at least, I do not intend to kill myself any more.  That means I resolve this year to do the administrative half of the Dean's job during daylight hours.  That means delegation.  It means a new approach to emails.  It means discipline and focus.

For example,

• manageable to do list each morning, broken down into micro-tasks of about 20-30 minutes each 
• work on one pressing but not "must do today" task a day
• only reading/answering emails in between micro-tasks

2. Last year I resolved not to try to write more than 6 pages toward writing projects a week.  Wow.  What a good idea... that I somehow forgot.  I need to renew that one.  It probably means less blogging.  It will be hard not to want to try to write more but my goal for this year is to slow down and set manageable goals.

3. Last year I resolved to read about 30 pages a week of something scholarly.  Failed that one too.  This year I'd like to say 30 pages a week of something.  It's not really a lot of reading.  In fact, it's a depressingly small amount.  But I've learned that the turtle goes a lot further by slow, consistent movement than the hare sitting around thinking about big goals but not doing a lot of running.

4. Here's a new one.  I was thinking I might start trying to read through Psalms in Hebrew this year, just a verse a day at first.  I'm not sure how far I'll get but why not start.

Do any of you have a major New Year's resolution to share?

Happy New Year from Germany!

We brought in the new year with the Blakes over at their almost 20 story high rise. The fireworks were amazing all over the city. In fact, at 1:22am they are still going strong outside our flat. It struck me as what a war zone must sound like. I thought of "shock and awe" in Iraq, although it obviously wasn't quite that powerful. Never seen anything like it. Then I experimented with time travel and was successfully able to call into the past. I called my parents in last year. I'm thinking of patenting the time machine. Happy New Year, America, from the future year 2012!

Jesus in the temple (4)

... continued from yesterday.  This series is on Jesus and Judgment.
_________
3. Judgment of Israel
So far in the chapter, I've argued that Jesus did likely teach that judgment was coming to those alive on the earth, even if it was not the focus of his preaching.  Additionally, Jesus seems to have had a prophetic message of judgment against the temple leadership of Israel, at least in the final week of his ministry.  The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all understood Jesus' words and actions in this regard to predict the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

More than anything else, it was probably Jesus' action in the temple during passion week that set in motion the concrete political mechanisms that ended in the crucifixion.  Jesus certainly came into conflict with various people during his ministry, as we saw back in chapter 4.  But it doesn't seem likely that he tangled much with the temple leaders or chief priests until that day he walked into the temple courts and overthrew the tables of those who were changing money and selling animals for sacrifice.  More than anyone else, these were the people who had the kinds of connections with the Romans that could get a person killed.

On the one hand, it was generally necessary to have such a service. [1] It simply wasn't practical for someone to bring a goat or lamb with them for sacrifice from half way around the Mediterranean.  And to buy such things, money was needed (again, bringing something with you to trade from around the world wasn't practical) and it would need to be exchanged to the right currency.  Clearly something about the scene angered Jesus, but it surely was not the practice of buying and selling itself. Surely it was the way they were doing it--or where--that angered him.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all link Jesus' action to two Scriptures.  The first is Isaiah 56:7, "My house will be called a house of prayer."  Instead, what Jesus saw was Jeremiah 7:11: "a den of robbers."  Some focus primarily on the first verse to explain what angered Jesus.  The context of Isaiah 56:7 is all the nations of the world coming to worship at the temple.  In fact, Mark 11:17 gives the part of the quote that says the temple should be a house of prayer for all nations.

So some see Jesus angry primarily because of where they were selling things.  Foreigners who might otherwise worship God in the temple courts were instead confronted by buying and selling there.  At the same time, it is surely significant that neither Matthew nor Luke give the part of the quote that says, "for all nations."  They were likely using Mark as a source and yet seem to have deliberately left this part of the quote out.  Also, the Gentiles were arguably not the focus of Jesus' earthly ministry (cf. Matt. 10:5).

So others might focus more on the second Scripture from Jeremiah.  It comes in the context of the approaching destruction of the temple in 586BC.  There is of course a striking similarity here in the sense that Jesus is also remembered as predicting the destruction of the temple, which took place in AD70.  Jeremiah's complaint is the the priests of his day had made the temple into a "den of robbers."  Jeremiah accused the leaders of day of hiding their injustice behind the temple.  They were murderers, adulterers, thieves, perjurers, idolaters, and yet somehow thought the fact that they ran the temple would protect them from coming judgment (Jer. 7:9-10).

This second focus does indeed fit the emphases of Jesus ministry very well, as we have seen. Of course the gospels are not video recorders. They are unpacking the event.  One may or may not talk too much when you are angrily overturning tables and chasing people.  And the kinds of things that spark anger are usually more complex and emotional than a matter of logical argument and ideas.

Accordingly, both the answers above may have some truth to them.  Jesus is confronted by a scene of merchandising when the temple should be for worshiping God.  And it should be for everyone, not just for those who have the coinage necessary to buy sheep and doves.  The situation evokes key elements of his prophetic message for Israel, especially the way those who are rich and powerful couldn't care less about the vast majority of the people, the lost sheep of Israel...

[1] So E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism ***.

What should I read?

A number of blogs and sites have posted their best reads of 2011.  I thought I would ask you, whoever you are, what you would like me to read and blog through this year.  I'm up for a wide variety of possibilities but I want to spend some time this year reading.

Here are three I have in mind so far as an example of diverse interests:

• Tom Wright for Everyone
• The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell
• Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews

Others have floated through my head.  What would you like to see discussed here?  No promises ;-)

Son of Man (3)

Yesterday I jotted down a few thoughts on Jesus and the judgment of the earth.  By the way, I edited the last couple paragraphs of yesterday's to fill out my impression a bit.  Today I continue that train of thought.
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... Perhaps the best evidence for a judgment on earth comes from the "Son of Man" imagery of the first three gospels.  There is a remarkable agreement among even many who are very skeptical that Jesus used this phrase as a way of talking about himself.  Take Luke 9:58: "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."  There is no special meaning to the phrase "Son of Man" here.  It just seems to be the way Jesus often referred to himself as if to say, "I have no place to lay my head."

And Jesus is almost the only one who calls himself "Son of Man" in the New Testament.  The phrase is almost never found outside Matthew, Mark, and Luke and even then it was not a title by which others referred to Jesus.  No one seems to get upset that Jesus calls himself this name, which probably means it was not a phrase widely used at the time for anything.  It is a puzzle.

However, it gets even more puzzling when we get to some of the connotations the phrase has in some parts of the gospels and some contemporary Jewish literature.  Take what Jesus says to the high priest when he is on trial in Mark 14:62, "You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."  This verse is a clear allusion to Daniel 7:13, where someone like a "son of man" comes with the clouds of heaven.  This figure receives power and authority from God so that all nations and peoples worship him and he brings a kingdom that will never be destroyed.

We find a lot of potentially troubling verses when we get to this topic.  What does Mark 7:1 mean, which says that some standing there with Jesus will not die before the kingdom has come with power?  What does Mark 13:30 mean when it says that generation will not pass before things like the coming of the Son of Man takes place?  It sounds similar to what Jesus tells the high priest: YOU will see it. What I want to point out here is merely that these pictures of things that are coming seem to involve the living on the earth.

One of the most striking Son of Man passages is in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt 25:31-46).  The Son of Man comes, the nations are gathered for judgment.  There is no mention of resurrection.  The picture is of the Son of Man coming from heaven to earth and gathering all those of the earth to be judged, with the kingdom of the Son of Man immediately commencing thereafter.  I mentioned this picture back in chapter 3 on Jesus and the Poor.

What is interesting is that the imagery here is very similar to something found in another Jewish book of the period, 1 Enoch. [1] In 1 Enoch 62, the "Son of Man" sits on a throne and judges the world as well.  It is such a strikingly similar picture that some connection seems almost certain.  Was Jesus alluding to this tradition when he called himself the Son of Man?  Did those who wrote this part of 1 Enoch know about Jesus?  Did Matthew paraphrase this passage because he knew this tradition or did those who wrote this part of 1 Enoch know Matthew?

These are difficult questions to answer.  On the one hand, the tradition of 1 Enoch could not have been widely known at the time of Jesus or it would have provoked more of a reaction and Jesus wouldn't have used the phrase casually so often.  Does Jesus' use of this expression fall in the category of hiding his messianic identity from the crowds?  The inner circle would know what Son of Man meant, but it would be an ambiguous phrase to most outsiders.

I merely want to draw two conclusions.  The one is that Jesus was remembered as preaching that a judgment was going to come to the earth.  The other is that at least the gospel writers compared Jesus' role in that judgment to the role of the Son of Man in the traditions of Enoch.  Jesus would be God's agent of judgment when he returned from heaven, the king-judge of Daniel 7.

[1] In particular, a section of 1 Enoch called "The Parables of Enoch."  This part of the book was not present among the Dead Sea Scrolls, leading most experts to think it was written later than the other scrolls, perhaps as late as the first century AD.

Coming Judgment 2

Yesterday I wrote on Judging Others.  Today I want to look on what Jesus likely preached about the coming judgment.
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Way back in chapter 1 I argued that John the Baptist's baptism of repentance was not only in preparation for the coming restoration of Israel but also to ensure salvation in a coming judgment.  I don't think Jesus' message to the crowds focused on this judgment nearly as much as John's did, but it was almost certainly part of his message.  After all, Jesus endorsed John's teaching when he was baptized, and we do find this teaching in the gospels.

It makes sense to think that most of Jesus' teaching on the coming judgment took place in his final days, particularly in Jerusalem.  This is how the first three gospels remember it. [1]  They connect Jesus' action in the temple with the impending destruction of Jerusalem and each includes a final sermon on coming judgment in Jesus' final week.

In fact, the Gospel of Mark is arranged so that it has a turning point just before Jesus heads for Jerusalem at the end of his ministry. Up to that point, the tone is optimistic and Jesus tells good news to the crowds that flock to him.  After Mark 8, however, Jesus looks toward Jerusalem and the gospel takes on a tone of foreboding.  Jesus seems to withdraw more from the crowds and spend more time privately with his key followers.

So what was this coming judgment?  The next section looks at Jesus and the judgment of Israel.  In this one, I'm arguing that Jesus focused on the coming judgment of the earth.  The final section of this chapter looks at what Jesus might have said about the afterlife.  But I don't think that Jesus actually preached much on that topic.  Rather, like the rest of the New Testament, he focused on something that was going to happen on earth.

Some of the verses I most enjoy in the Bible are the weird ones.  The reason is because I suspect that these are the passages that most expose the spots where our own assumptions are slightly off, where our own glasses make it difficult for us to see the original meaning as it actually was.  Take Mark 9:47: "If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell."  A couple things strike me about this verse.

First, will the kingdom really involve one eyed people?  To be sure, Jesus is not speaking literally here.  It's hyperbole--making a point with exaggeration.  Paul makes it clear that we will have transformed bodies in the kingdom (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:50).  But the very concept of entering into the kingdom with one eye sounds like my body is entering in right here from earth.  It doesn't sound like I'm going up to heaven to enter it and it certainly doesn't sound like something that happens after I die.

In other words, the judgment sounds like an event that will take place on earth.  I get the same impression from the other person with two eyes who is thrown into hell, into "Gehenna." It reminds me of another verse in Matthew where Jesus says that his followers should not fear the person who can only kill their bodies.  Rather they should fear the God who can destroy both their souls and bodies in Gehenna (Matt. 10:28).  We at least get the impression that the judgment starts right here on earth and involves the physical bodies of the wicked. [2]

[1] John does not have an "end times" sermon like Matthew, Mark, and Luke do.

[2] Most translations rightly translate Gehenna as hell, but it is interesting to wonder if any of Jesus' audience thought of the valley gehinnom just outside Jerusalem, where they burned the trash of the city.  This is the place from which Gehenna in fact got its name.

To Judge or Not to Judge 1

I've been thinking about what Jesus had to say about the afterlife, so I thought I would jump to my thoughts on Jesus and judgment, maybe the second to last chapter. It seems a chapter like this one should start with the well known passage in Matthew 7 on not judging.
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In the not too distant past, Matthew 7:1 was probably one of the best known sayings of Jesus in all the gospels: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."  I say "past" because the tone of much of American Christianity has arguably changed in the aftermath of 9-11 and other events thereafter.  Very many Christians today feel quite comfortable drawing conclusions about the righteousness of others, especially those in the public sphere.

However, there was a time not too long ago when many Christians were at the opposite extreme.  The logic went like this.  Jesus tells us not to judge others.  After all, we're all sinners and "all sin is sin," so I'm as guilty as the next person.  I have no right to be down on others for the problems I think they have because my problems are basically the same.  I would be a hypocrite to point out someone else's sin.

There was a great deal of truth in this line of thinking.  While there are a few problems with the logic, it does indeed capture the spirit of Jesus fairly well.  Human nature being what it is, we are more prone to be judgmental and critical in our spirit than to be generous and forgiving.  In that sense, Jesus would surely rather us err on the side of not judging than on the side of judging.

But Jesus does judge and Paul also judges.  That is, they draw conclusions about whether others are in the right or wrong.  Matthew 23 is an incredibly strong pronouncement about the hearts of the Pharisees. And "discipline" is part of Christian community.  Matthew 18 gives a process by which a member of the community is confronted and potentially shunned.  Whatever it means not to judge in Matthew 7, it does not preclude the judgment of Matthew 18 and 23.

For example, you can know that someone has done something wrong and be loving about it, or you can know others have done wrong and have a bad attitude toward them.  Similarly, a person can enjoy paying back someone who has done wrong or you can discipline with the sincere desire that a person be redeemed, reconciled and reclaimed.  If we witness a murder, it is not judgmental to draw the conclusion that the murderer has done wrong.  The difference is that Jesus is sad for the murderer as well as the victim, while the "judger" enjoys the thought of the murderer frying.

So there are both truths and problems with the popular interpretation of Jesus' instructions not to judge.  You will not find anywhere in the Bible where it teaches that "all sin is sin."  Some sins are worse than others because sin is primarily a matter of intent, not of the act itself.  The more defiant your intent is against God or the more hateful your intent is against your neighbor, the greater the sin. [1]

Similarly, "judging" others is either good or bad depending on our intent.  Here it gets very tricky.  We are prone to lie not only to others but to ourselves about our intentions.  "I'm talking about what they did because I'm concerned, not because I'm judging."  If we are in doubt, we are best not to talk about the possible sins of others at all.

And this is a particularly important point.  While in many cases we observe someone doing something wrong or perhaps they even confess to us that they have done something wrong, in far many more cases we do not know for sure what the motives or intentions of someone were.  It is in such cases that Jesus' instructions not to judge become particularly important.  We may know what we would have been thinking if we did something, but other people are different from us.  We need to be very careful not to assume we know what someone else intended.

At the same time, the excuse that "we are all sinners" won't cut it with the New Testament.  There is no verse in the New Testament, when rightly interpreted, that indicates that intentional wrongdoing is normal in the life of a Christian.[2]  The words of Hebrews are some of the strongest in the New Testament: "If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left" (10:26).  The "Christians are just as much sinners" line doesn't work for Paul and it certainly doesn't work for Jesus.

In the end, we take away at least three things from Jesus' instructions not to judge.  First, we as humans are prone to hypocrisy.  This is really what Jesus' statement is most about.  The problem is that those who most like to point out the faults of others often have the same or worse problems themselves. Psychologists call it "projection."  When we feel guilty for some fault, we may be very hard on others who have the same or similar ones.  We make ourselves feel better by putting others down.

So Jesus tells the crowds in Matthew to take the "plank" out of their own eye before they worry about the "speck" in someone else's.  Someone else once put it this way, for every one finger you point at someone else there are usually at least three pointing back at yourself.  While we should never consider sin normal for a Christian, we all have faults and weaknesses.  We would be wise not to spend too much time dwelling on the faults of others.

A second take away is to be extremely careful about how we "fill in the blanks" about the intentions and motives of others. We usually think we're smarter than we are when it comes to such things.  And those of us who are used to being lied to can get hardened to where we don't trust anyone.  Jesus surely doesn't want us to be gullible and stupid in our dealings with others ("be as shrewd as snakes," Matt. 10:16).  But surely even more he wants us to look for the best in others and to give them the benefit of the doubt when at all possible.

Finally, as followers of Jesus we should be more interested in mercy than in justice.  To be sure, it is not loving always to let someone out of the consequences of their actions.   Justice can be loving when it is meant to protect society at large and when it tries to steer the lives of those off track in the right direction.  But a Jesus follower should have no interest in justice for its own sake.  "Mercy triumphs over judgment" (Jas. 2:13).

So there is a time to draw conclusions and administer discipline in the church.  There is a time to draw conclusions about the actions of others.  There is a time to confront, especially when we are in authority.  However, most of the time we should presume the best of others and leave to others their own relationship with God.  Most of the time the urge to judge comes from hypocrisy and faulty priorities.

I should spend significant time searching my own heart and motives before I ever confront.  I should examine carefully whether it is my place to confront.  Most of the time it is not my job.  I must be aware that different Christians have different understandings and that in many respects I stand before God as an individual conscience.  Am I willing for my motives and intentions to undergo the same scrutiny that I would bring to bear on others?  If not, then I had best be silent.

[1] An easy example of this fact is 1 John 5's distinction between a "sin to death" and a "sin not to death."  In addition, there is the differing way Paul treats different sins.  The man sleeping with his step-mother is immediately kicked out of the church in 1 Corinthians 5, while the carnal Corinthians of chapter 3 merely are told to grow up.

Ultimately, the "all sin is sin" position likely comes from the popular belief in eternal security combined with Paul's "all have sinned."  Before we believe, all sin means we need God's grace.  The situation does not change after believing for those who believe in eternal security, for no sin knocks you out.  However,  Paul does not teach eternal security (cf. 1 Cor. 10).

[2] The case is quite to the contrary.  Most experts on Romans now agree that Romans 7 is a dramatized expression of a Jew who wants to keep the essence of the Jewish Law but does not have the power of the Spirit to do so. Paul's position is rather that believers are no longer slaves to sin (Rom. 8:1), do not fulfill the desires of their sinful nature (Gal. 5:16), and that those in the flesh cannot please God (Rom. 8:8).  1 John 3:9 similarly says that those who are born of God will not live a life full of sin.

Reflections on John the Baptist

Follows on yesterday.
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Probably the thing that strikes me most about John the Baptist is how much differently things must have seemed to him than they seem to us.  Our understanding of John as the "opening act" before Jesus arrived is crystal clear.  John was also clear that the messiah would follow him, but John probably wasn't expecting the messiah to get crucified.

John probably was looking for the almost immediate restoration of Israel as a political kingdom with its own king.  It didn't happen.  Even after Jesus rose from the dead, his followers were still expecting this sort of kingdom (Acts 1:6).  It still hasn't happened some two thousand years later. [1] Some of the New Testament may still look to such a kingdom of Israel after Christ returns (e.g., Rom. 11:26).

Later Christians took John's message and made it universal, which may very well be what God wants us to do as well.  For example, John's message was not directed at non-Jews.  It is doubtful the thought ever popped into his head that a Gentile might get baptized.  We now see his message of baptism played out in Christian baptism, where we prepare not for the restoration of Israel but we act out our inclusion in God's kingdom.

For the moment, this kingdom is not political but is a spiritual kingdom.  We live in two kingdoms, the kingdom of our God and the kingdom of this world.  Our loyalty is solidly to the first, and we choose it over the second when the two are in unresolvable conflict.  But we also live in the second kingdom and we render to Caesar what is Caesar's.

The situation with baptism is slightly different than it was with John.  When the movement started, no one was baptized.  He called all Israel to baptism, even those trying to keep the covenant.  After all, he was looking to the repentance of a whole people, even more than mere individuals.  This is one reason we can participate in confessions of sin in church even when we have not intentionally done wrong all week--it is a corporate confession of the church as a whole.

Now of course we have children born into families of faith.  Some thus would have them baptized as children, to claim them for Christ from the very beginning, knowing of course that they will have to appropriate that act personally as well later.  Others focus on the individual and want the child to wait until he or she can understand at least a little of what baptism signifies. The eternal destiny of the child is of course something separate from these debates.

When we look at how differently our situation is than John's, it is a bit sobering to wonder how much of what we think we have figured out might be a little off on the details or out of perspective.  Certainly most of us as Christians will believe that something unique was happening at the time of Jesus, a new revelation that will never come again.  Someone might also point out that we now have the New Testament, which transcends the misunderstandings of any one early Christian.

But if we're honest with each other, Christians probably disagree more with each other today over what the Bible means than the early Jesus followers disagreed with each other.  It calls for a certain humility.  And it calls us back to first principles.  Jesus would both express and model the two basic principles of Christian life, to which all our specific beliefs must submit.  These are the twin principles of complete surrender to God's will, which more than anywhere else is seen in the second principle of concretely loving all others as we would normally want others to treat us.

[1] While a nation of Israel is currently restored, it is not a kingdom that affirms Jesus as messiah, which from a New Testament perspective would be an essential part of a truly restored Israel.

Visit to Dachau

Went to Dachau with the family yesterday. Third time I've visited but had a guide this time. I shouldn't be surprised that a people could do such things. After all, it still goes on around the world today. It could happen anywhere under the right conditions--economic despair, someone who comes along and makes you feel special as a nation, someone who feeds your insecurity about all the foreigners around, a need to bring order to society and squelch rampant liberalism.

Then a communist burns down parliament.  There's a declaration of martial law. Camps are set up to remove the lawless from the flow of society, to re-educate those who can be re-educated and put the rest to work. The sadists who are always present in society gravitate to such camps. Doctors do experiments on criminal guinea pigs for the benefit of the troops.

No modern society is so evolved that it could not happen again anywhere.

After John the Baptist...

Continued from here.
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We know what happened to John.  Herod Antipas arrested and then beheaded him.  Rulers don't take nicely to those who announce that another king is coming who is going to replace their kingdom with a better one. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are sometimes called the Synoptic gospels, Jesus does not start proclaiming the kingdom until John is arrested.

But the impact of John the Baptist seems to have continued for decades after he died. For example, there were some people who were still following his teaching at Ephesus in Acts 18-19.  The first is Apollos in Acts 18:24-28.  He is instructed in the "Way of the Lord" and proclaimed the coming of Jesus, but was only aware of the baptism of John. Apparently, John the Baptist must have proclaimed "the way of the Lord."  It is interesting that both Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3 use the word "way."  These are the passages the gospels remember in relation to John's prophetic ministry.  So it is not a stretch to say that John must have proclaimed quite literally "the Way of the Lord" as one of his key messages.

Followers of the Way were thus individuals who believed John's message--whether they believed in Jesus or not.  Apollos could be a follower of the Way and know very little about Jesus.  What he knew was John the baptizer's prediction that the "anointed one," the messiah, was coming.  The Gospels also remember this message as part of what John proclaimed: "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals" (Mark 1:7, NRSV).

Acts 19:1-7 reinforces this interpretation.  Paul finds certain "disciples" at Ephesus.  These individuals only know the baptism of John.  They do not seem to know much of anything about Jesus.  When Acts calls them "disciples," it must not mean followers of Jesus but followers of the Way, followers of the movement started by John the Baptist.

For Acts, receiving the Spirit is the big distinction between the two movements.  The Jesus movement was part of the Baptist movement.  Both were followers of the Way.  But the Jesus movement believed Jesus was the messiah John predicted, and it involved the Holy Spirit.  Jesus' followers received the Holy Spirit.  At some point, John's baptism became distinguished from baptism "in the name of Jesus," so much so that Paul has the followers of the Baptist get re-baptized so they will receive the Holy Spirit in Acts 19.

The Gospel of John indirectly supports interpretation.  One of the intriguing features of the Gospel of John is the extent to which it downplays John the Baptist in relation to Jesus.  John never actually mentions John baptizing Jesus.  John's presentation implies that the Baptist's mission is basically over once Jesus arrives (e.g., 1:36-37; 3:30).  Only John's gospel tells of Jesus' followers baptizing at the same time as the Baptist.  Finally, in contrast to Matthew 11:14, the Gospel of John denies that John the Baptist is Elijah (1:21).

Why would the Gospel of John downplay John the Baptist so much more than the other gospels?  A possible answer is that, as we see in Acts 18-19, there were followers of John the Baptist at Ephesus who not only did not follow Jesus. There may have been followers of the Way there who opposed the Jesus movement, who opposed the idea that Jesus was the messiah.  John and Acts are thus written in such a way as to make it clear that Jesus is the one John predicted. [1]

So not only did John proclaim the coming judgment of God and the potential restoration of political Israel.  He was one of those Jews who also predicted the coming of a king to rule Israel in this coming kingdom, the messiah. [2] In preparation, he called Israel to repent and to wash themselves in the Jordan, symbolizing the washing and forgiveness of their sins.

What a massive movement he must have started!  We do not know much about it apart from those of his followers who went on to believe Jesus was the messiah John was predicting.  But at the time his movement must have paralleled that of Jesus and may have been even bigger.  Some in this movement of the Way may have known very little about Jesus at all.  It must not have been clear at the time that John endorsed Jesus as the one he predicted.

In fact, we can read passages like Matthew 11:2-6 as the Baptist himself having some uncertainty.  John is in prison but sends some of his followers to ask Jesus if he is the one.  The things he is doing make him a prime candidate.  But John must not have been entirely certain. [3] Perhaps John was expecting Jesus to be more "political" and "military" than he was.

What is clear is that all four gospels see Jesus' ministry in continuity with that of the Baptist.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is baptized by John, which indicates that Jesus at least mostly endorsed John's message.  As many Jesus scholars have argued, this fact has enormous implications for how we understand Jesus' own mission and message. [4]  We must understand Jesus' words not as wise sayings a philosopher might say but as words said against this historical background.

[1] The incident in Acts 19 is thus not about entire sanctification (as many holiness revivalists preached in the late 1800s/early 1900s).  Still less is it about the necessity of tongues as evidence of truly being converted (certain Pentecostal groups).  Acts 19, including its added evidence of tongues, was originally a polemic against followers of John the Baptist who did not believe Jesus was the messiah.

[2] Again, if we have to pick a Jewish group his message best fits, it would be the Essenes.

[3] This scene has of course given rise to much speculation as to John's motives, especially if you bring Luke 1 and John 1 into the conversation.

[4] One of the first to point out this fact was A. E. Harvey, Jesus and the Constraints of History E. P. Sanders' Jesus and Judaism then built on this approach.