JOHN DID NOT PREPARE THE WAY FOR JESUS THE BAPTIST’S SILENT TESTIMONY

The Bible and the Church honour John the Baptist and have made him a saint. They say he was the forerunner or precursor of Christ and the “greatest prophet of all” who was to put everything right (Mark 9:12). Isaiah was and is interpreted by them as saying that John would fill in valleys and flatten mountains. It seems that John’s arrival would have a devastating physical effect on the sinful world and prepare it for Jesus. Jesus said John was Elijah, one of the greatest prophets, who the Old Testament said would return to prepare the world for judgement.

All that makes John the chief witness to the non-existence of Jesus for he did not believe that Jesus lived and was granted such a high rank in the evidence scale. Why is it that if John was so important as a witness that we have so much information about the apostle Paul instead of him? Why did early Christianity avoid saying a lot about John? Why would Paul who left no sensible evidence of being a true apostle be so much pushed to the fore?

John was a bizarre supreme prophet and precursor if all he did was to give Jesus a dip in the Jordan and speak a few sentences to recommend him to the people. He did too little. The gospels say he could not do miracles. The Old Testament says that Elijah was able to manage them.  How could John have been the new Elijah? All that makes one suspect that John never testified to Jesus at all. He knew nothing about him or despised him. But if John hated Jesus the Gospellers would not have mentioned and praised John too much for that might draw attention to John and his revealing statements. But they were hoping to present John as an apostle of Jesus who dwelt relatively in the quiet if anybody said that John never knew Jesus. So John never heard of Jesus.
 
The writings of the first century Jewish historian, Josephus never linked John with Jesus which he would have done for he was such a good and thorough historian and which he would have done had there been a Jesus. Josephus was unlikely to mention John’s works and not mention his chief role if he was really a precursor. Somebody then put in a bit about Josephus saying that Jesus was a wise miracle-working man and perhaps not a man at all who was crucified by Pilate to please the Jews and who was reported alive after he was executed and that he was the Messiah which was an obvious forgery for an anti-Messiah like Josephus. The whole thing about Jesus could be a forgery which is why we cannot rely on Josephus as evidence for the existence of Jesus.
 
Josephus has John the Baptist dying about 36 AD. The huge problem with this is that it flatly and completely contradicts the gospels which have John dying before Jesus was crucified in 33 or so AD. Herod Antipas married the wife of his brother Herod Philip after the death of this brother in 34 AD. The gospels say that John the Baptist condemned Herod Antipas for this marriage so this detail from the gospels backs up the year of John’s death given by Josephus.
 
Christians however prefer to say Josephus was the one that was wrong and the gospels were right. They have no evidence for this but they just assume it for they don’t want to admit their religion can be wrong. Josephus should be regarded as more reliable firstly because he was a professional historian and the gospellers didn’t claim to be professional historians. Josephus used records and we know he knew Jewish history well. We can’t say these things about the gospellers. Also Josephus had no agenda. The gospels had. They were promoting Jesus. Josephus then is the once who should be believed more than the gospels.
 
When the gospels lied that Jesus was alive when John died perhaps they lied about his entire connection to John. John may never have heard of him. They lied either because Jesus never existed and they wanted it to look like he did or because they wanted to take the crown of Messiah-ship from the Baptist and give it to Jesus instead. They wanted to fake evidence that John looked up to Jesus and approved his mission.

The gospels report that John approved of Jesus. John might have done so if the gospels were true for he may not have had any reason to frown upon Jesus at the early stage of the ministry. So if John would have approved then the gospels accidentally hinted that there was no Jesus. How? Because if Jesus had lived and John admired him then John would have been his disciple and been in Jesus’ entourage. His absence has a lot to say.

The Gospellers felt that Jesus could not stand on his own two feet and felt they needed a new prophet who was loved by the Jews to testify to Jesus to deal with the vacuum. They sensed that the apostles had no credibility and that the Old Testament prophecies were not enough. They felt that God would send a new prophet to say when the man who would fulfil them would come. So they invented Jesus’ association with John the Baptist and Luke even transmuted him into Jesus’ cousin. This would probably have been done when few people remembered John so that they could pull it off which suggests a late date for the writing or the publication of the gospels.

The Baptist was totally well known and very popular (Matthew 3:5). Jesus was not as popular and John was not interested in propagating faith in Jesus. Jesus would have been as popular as John and probably more had John ministered just to pave the way for him.

So, when the gospels tell us John did not know that Jesus did miracles to show he was the promised Messiah, it shows John did not believe in his miracles and had little interest in what Jesus was doing meaning he was not his forerunner. John then would have disagreed with the gospel miracle accounts and the account of the baptism of Jesus.
 
John sent his men to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah after having told Jesus and prophesied that Jesus was the Messiah at his baptism. Or at least the gospels say that. There can be no question about it, John did not believe Jesus was the Messiah at all. The gospels lie. John’s question is tantamount to a denial that Jesus was a real miracle worker, a real prophet and a good man. A prophet of God would know what Jesus was and wouldn’t need to ask. John then was contradicting most of what the gospels say. He was denying their Jesus existed.

So, when the people thought Jesus was the risen John it shows that the gospels are lying when they said that Jesus was as much a superstar as John before John died. The gospels are more likely to be truthful about John for he was not their idol than about Jesus. If Jesus did not exist before John died then he probably did not exist after it either!

Josephus said that John baptised to purify the body when the soul had already repented. His baptism was not an expression of repentance leading to forgiveness like the gospels say. Also, John, according to Josephus, taught that “they must not employ it to gain pardon for whatever sins they committed, but as a consecration of the body implying that the soul was already thoroughly cleansed by right behaviour” (page 37, He Walked Among Us). This challenges Jesus and Paul’s negative attitude to human ability to do good. They thought nobody could stay out of sin. And it is hard to believe that John who was chiefly a baptiser could be a precursor for a religion and a man like Jesus? It shows the gospels are lying when they say that the Jews didn’t know what to say when Jesus asked them if John’s baptism was divine or human? It was just a religious symbolic rite so they could have said what they liked.

Josephus recorded that Herod had John thrown in Machaerus and then murdered in case he would lead a revolution for he had so many disciples – which shows that Jesus could not have gotten away with having a big fan-club either. A precursor prepares the people for somebody’s coming so Jesus would have got all John’s following and more if John was his precursor. This contradicts the gospels which say Herod killed John to please the daughter of Herodias because he promised her whatever she wanted in front of the guests and could not go back on it. It is hard to believe that John would have been killed if he were considered to be so dangerous for exile would have been a better and safer solution. Why was he not arrested and killed or incarcerated before he got so many disciples? Probably John was able to escape too well so they couldn’t get him and when they got him they thought it was best to kill him.
 
The gospels account makes no sense whatsoever. They contradict each other for if John was so popular, Herod would not have killed him just to keep a promise especially when we are told he was terrified of harming John in case he would get bad luck. Herod told the girl she could have half of his kingdom which is more embarrassing than breaking a promise to kill. He was not shamed at the thought of breaking it. And it is impossible to believe that the girl would not have taken the half of the kingdom and Machaerus and had John disposed of herself! Why go to all that trouble and reject so much over a man in jail who couldn’t do Herodias any harm any more? Herod would have been drunk when he promised half of his kingdom and so could have got her executed instead of John despite Herodias. Or he could have excused his oath on the grounds that he was intoxicated so he had no need to keep it even to save face for everybody could see he was drunk anyway and he had already embarrassed himself. Or he could have blackmailed the girl to say the oath was just made in jest.

He Walked Among Us page 38 surmises that Herod wanted to kill John but only got the guts to do it when the girl manipulated him and removed his softness which does not conflict with Josephus who only says John was incarcerated and executed to avoid insurrection. This is worthless speculation and how could John be put to death for that when he could do no harm in Machaerus? It was an invincible stronghold and if Herod feared a rescue attempt he would have been discreet about where John was. Therefore, Josephus is saying that John was not imprisoned in Machaerus but was taken there for execution. Josephus never said that John was imprisoned there. The gospels lied about John’s imprisonment.

What Josephus wrote is more probably true than what we read in the gospels. If John really testified to and worked for Jesus then we would be reading that Jesus was the next to be dispatched to Machaerus for without John, John’s disciples would turn to him. But Josephus mentions John’s execution and his editor says at this time Jesus appeared. Jesus did not appear until after John had died which contradicts the gospels but may explain why many thought that Jesus was John back to life. Christians say at this time means John’s time in general and not the time of his execution. That is improbable. The forger of the data about Jesus in Josephus would not have written at this time if he meant the time John died for it would have been better to mean the latter. The forger said that the gospel version of Jesus never existed at least until John was out of the way.

When the gospellers tell such lies about John what else were they lying about? They made up the miracles surrounding the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan and said that John knew Jesus then as in knew who he was, the Christ and the Son of God. The Gospels say that what Jesus did and said before John died and it is all lies because Jesus was not known before that time. Do you see the implications of this, Mark 1-8, nearly half of the oldest gospel is untrue. Matthew 1-13 is lies for in chapter 14 the people start thinking that Jesus is the late Baptist resurrected. And there are only twenty-eight chapters in Matthew. Need I go on? There are too many lies for Jesus to have existed.

When people who knew the Baptist well were saying that Jesus was John back from the dead and that was why he had miraculous powers (Mark 6:14) that shows how incredibly gullible the gospellers knew they were especially when John never did any miracles. So he was credited with miracle powers after his death. And the gospellers depended on these to get their data if the traditional view that they acted like historians has any truth in it at all.
 
John the Baptist virtually shouts at us that he never heard of a Jesus and that nobody did.
 
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