The Man in the River

Words to Know

Baptize — to dip someone in water as a sign of starting over.

The Jordan — the river my people crossed to enter their land. Crossing it again was a kind of theater.

Extort — to squeeze money out of somebody by using your power over them.

I was about thirty when I began.

Before that, nothing is recorded. Your Bible has me in the Temple at twelve years old (Luke 2:42) and then says nothing at all until I am “about thirty” (Luke 3:23). Do that subtraction and you get about eighteen years. I was in Nazareth the whole time, doing ordinary work.

Then I walked south, about seventy miles, down into the dry country of the lower Jordan valley, to stand in a river with a man named John.

Who John was.

He was not gentle. He lived in the wilderness, wore rough clothes, and ate what he could find (Mark 1:6).

He was dipping people in the Jordan river.

That river matters. It is the river my people crossed under Joshua to enter their land in the first place, after Egypt (Joshua 3).

So John had people walk out of the settled country, into the desert, and back through the water. He was acting out the whole story again.

He was saying: this nation is so far gone we have to start over from the beginning.

That is a reading, and I will mark it as mine. Here is what supports it. He did not set up at a well, or at a pool beside a town, which would have been easier for everyone. He went out to the one river in the country with that story attached to it and made people walk to him — and Mark says they came out from all of Judea and from Jerusalem to do it (Mark 1:5).

Nobody walks into a desert by accident.

What he told people to do.

The crowds asked him what they should do. His answer is almost comically practical (Luke 3:10–14):

• If you have two coats, give one away. Same with food.
• Tax collectors asked. He said: collect no more than you are supposed to.
• Soldiers asked. He said: do not extort people, do not accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your pay.

That is the whole program. No doctrine. Give away your spare coat. Stop skimming. Stop shaking people down.

Why I went to him.

Here is something honest. The men who wrote about my life were uncomfortable with this, and you can watch them squirm.

I went to John, and John dipped me, which puts me in the position of the student.

Watch how each account handles it. But before you do, here is one thing you need, because four lessons in this book lean on it.

Which gospel is the oldest.

You were probably taught that Matthew came first, because it is printed first. Most people who study these books put Mark first, written around the year 70, with Matthew and Luke written in the twenty or thirty years after that, and John last of all.

Here is the reason, and you can check it yourself with three Bibles open on a table.

Mark is much the shortest of the three. Almost the whole of Mark turns up again inside Matthew and Luke, frequently word for word. And where they differ, Matthew and Luke tidy Mark up — they smooth his awkward sentences, and they soften the lines that make me or my followers look bad.

Copying and tidying runs one direction. It is far easier to believe that two writers polished Mark than that Mark took Matthew and Luke and carefully took the good parts out.

So when this book says “the earliest account,” it means Mark, and that is why. ¹

• The earliest one just says John baptized me (Mark 1:9).
• The next one adds a conversation where John protests that I should be baptizing him (Matthew 3:14–15).
• The third mentions it almost sideways, after John is already in prison (Luke 3:19–21).
• The fourth never says it happened at all (John 1:29–34).

Stories do not usually get more awkward as time passes. When each retelling works harder to explain something away, the thing being explained away is usually the part that really happened.

The plain reading is simple. I went to John because I agreed with him.

Then the government killed him.

The man who did it was Herod Antipas — the same Antipas from Lesson 3. The man who taxed Galilee. The man who built Sepphoris four miles from my house.

One man, doing all of it. Your church tells you these as three separate stories, and you never get to add them up.

Here is what your Bible says the reason was. John said out loud that Antipas’s marriage was unlawful, because Antipas had taken Herodias, his own brother’s wife (Mark 6:17–18). Then comes the palace story: the birthday feast, the dance, the girl’s request, the head on a platter (Mark 6:19–29).

Now the other account. That account comes from a Jewish historian you met in Lesson 3. He has a name, and you should have it, because he is the single most important non-Christian witness in this whole book. He is Josephus — a Jewish commander in Galilee during the war against Rome in AD 66, captured by the Romans, who spent the rest of his life in Rome writing the history of his own people in Greek. His big book, the Antiquities of the Jews, was finished around AD 93, within living memory of my death.

Josephus gives a blunter reason. Antipas killed John because John was drawing enormous crowds, and Antipas was afraid a crowd that size would turn into a rising. Josephus also tells you where it was done: the fortress of Machaerus, east of the Dead Sea (Antiquities 18.116–119). ²

The two reasons are not enemies. A ruler who wants a popular critic dead is grateful for a reason he can say out loud.

That is the moment I began.

Take that in.

The man I had gone to. The man whose message I had accepted. A man preaching that people should give away their spare coats and stop cheating each other.

Executed by the government for being too popular.

Since then I have watched a great many people do the same arithmetic I did that week. Someone you respect is destroyed for saying something true. And you have two choices: go quiet, or pick it up.

I picked it up.

And your own Bible says so, in almost exactly those words: after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God (Mark 1:14).

After. It is right there in the first chapter of the earliest gospel. I have never once heard anybody preach on it.

One thing I did differently.

John made people come out to him, into the desert, away from their lives.

I went the other way. Into the villages. Into people’s houses. To the table.

That difference got noticed immediately, and it was used against me. So I said it back to them. John came without eating or drinking, and you said he had a demon. I came eating and drinking, and you called me a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 11:18–19).

Look at the actual accusation. Not heresy. Not blasphemy.

The company I kept at dinner.

They were not wrong about the facts. They were only wrong about whether it was a crime.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Luke 3:10–14.

You will find: John’s instructions. Notice there is no doctrine in them at all — only coats, food, and not cheating people.

Then look up: Mark 1:14. Notice the first word.

The Short Version

• I began by going to John and agreeing with him.
• John’s whole program was: share what you have and stop cheating people.
• The government executed John for drawing crowds.
• I started preaching right after that. The Bible says so plainly.

Think About It

1. Why would the writers of the gospels be uncomfortable that I was baptized by someone else?
2. If somebody you admired was destroyed for telling the truth, what would you do next?