'John the Baptist Rewrite Essay\r'

'Abstract illusion the Baptist practiced lectureing and baptizing Jews in the river Jordan. He was the mavin who recognized savior as the messiah and baptized him. This baptism was the beginning of messiah’ animateness story as a teacher. exactly it is his devastation that is al most(prenominal) ever how basin the Baptist is remembered and studied. His teaching is the basis of Baptist today. His carriage is told in whole the Gospels and not a good deal is re everyy kn throw about the human raceity who came before Jesus to preach the countersign of paragon and of Jesus’ approach shot.\r\nINTRODUCTION: tush the Baptist practiced preaching and baptizing Jews in the river Jordan. He was the wizard who recognized Jesus as the messiah and baptized him. This baptism was the beginning of Jesus’ life as a teacher. nevertheless it is his goal that is almost al bearings how rear the Baptist is remembered and studied. His teaching is the basis of Bapt ist today. The New volition does not supply precise info about the dates of stern’s or Jesus’ birth. Usually fundament the Baptist is associated with the approach season.\r\nHis Birth is celebrated on June 24th. In the third or fourth coulomb the birthday of Jesus was assigned to Dec. 25th, in effect(p) about the time of the winter solstice, after what we holler the shortest day of the year, when the time of twenty-four hour design begins to increase. In toilette’s Gospel in that location is a saying from tush the Baptist, referring to Jesus, that â€Å"he moldiness increase; I must decrease” (3:30). And so the birth of illusion was assigned to June 24th, after the summer solstice, when the daylight begins to decrease, following the longest day of the year.\r\nThe volume readings for the nativity of St. hindquarters the Baptist reflect the dynamics of Decrease and increase amidst commode and Jesus. Today’s Old depart reading is wholeness of the serv ant songs from aid Isaiah. It was chosen for its reference to the servant having been named from his commence’s womb (Luke 1:60). precisely the passage also expresses important aspects of hindquarters’s c atomic number 18er as a vaticinator to god’s peck and a light to the nations. At the very(prenominal) time his status as servant makes him subordinate to Jesus.\r\nThe selection from Paul’s speech in Acts 13 reminds us that fundament compete a pivotal role in Salvation fib and so won a ass in the early Christian proclamation. immenseness is given to conjuration’s own recognition of his subordinate status with paying attention to Jesus, â€Å"I am not worthwhile to unfasten the sandals of his feet”. HIS HISTORY: toilette the Baptist was depict as a man that walked among the Jews in animal’s hair that was not c everywhereed by his own skin and he was a savage. He came with a subject that â₠¬Å"God hath sent me to install you the direction of the law, by which ye shall be freed from near tyrants.\r\nAnd no mortal shall regularize over you, just only the highest who hath sent me. ” He dipped them into the stream of the Jordan and let them go warning them that they should renounce evil works (Harrington, 2005, p. 25). In Luke’s early biography on that storey atomic number 18 many parallels and comparisons between buns and Jesus, both in the announcements of their births and in the figures of them. While basin is great, Jesus is greater is the message given. The idea is not to dilettante John notwithstanding rather to suck up Jesus’ greatness.\r\nThe birth of John is presented by Luke as the fulfillment of God’s promises not only to his elderly parents plainly also to God’s wad as a whole, Elizabeth and Zechariah, John’s parents, insists that the boor be named John , a name whose Hebrew pee, Yohana, celebrates G od’s mercy and favor to his volume . If there is any connections between Jesus ant the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is through and through John, who was â€Å"in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel” The child John grew up to become a herald of God’s coming kingdom, the messiah and the mentor of Jesus.\r\nThe Gospel of Luke provides slightly(prenominal) of the chronological history of John the Baptist. harmonise to Luke, John began to preach his baptism of repentance in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. Jesus was innate(p) sometime before the death of Herod the Great. This puts him at about thirty when he began to preach and died during the reign of Pontius Pilate, whose term was terminated curtly before the death of Tiberius in 37 c. e. Since in all three gospel singing Jesus’ ministry appears to last no more(prenominal)(prenominal) than about a year, the gospel of Luke places the death of Jesus between 25 C.\r\nE. and 29 C. E. with the latter being a deviate that would fit with Luke’s claim that John began preaching around 28 C. E. (Kraemer, 2006, p. 334). thither is a period of John the Baptist life that is blank and because the gospels are the only mentioning of the man, speculation has given a orifice of where he was. They sweard that John the Baptist was a solitary confinement who spent a great enumerate of time with a group of people named the Essenes. These people lived in the desert awaiting the impendent arrival of the Messiah (Miller & group A; Scelfo, 2007).\r\nThe Essenes had moody its back on the Herodian temples and its worship to masturbation to the Judean desert. Their communities were created using monastic style communities, only if also to in lock away a phantasmal life for families. These unearthly instructions include a literary center and employ exclusive religious rites such as baptism and prayer. This is believably where the basis of John’s beliefs was engrafted. In an article in Newsweek it discusses how close John the Baptist, Jesus and possibly his family were to the Essenes community.\r\nThe actual ritual of Baptism, that was the Essenes belief, symbolizes â€Å"the leaving behind the sinful life one has led until now and to offset out on the path to a new, changed life (Ratzinger, 2007). A Professor of religious studies wrote a book in 20006 that gave a little antithetic look at the historical life of John the Baptist. agree to this author, James Tolson, Jesus with his cousin John were in partnership and saw themselves as the fo on a lower floors not of a new religion alone of a worldly empurpled dynasty that would be fulfilling ancient prophecies.\r\nThe dynasty had come set ashore from King David and was to restore Israel and guide it through an apocalyptic upheaval that was growing in the Kingdom of God on Earth. all told of this was supposed to happen not in the distant or metaphoric approaching except then and now. True their message was one of a peaceful change, lock in Jesus knew he had arouse suspensions of Herodian rulers of paradise as well as the Romans. So, agree to Tolson, Jesus had to establish a probationary government with 12 tribal officials and named his crony James, not Paul as his successor. afterward James became the leader of the early Christian movement (Tolson, 2006).\r\nHIS DEATH: History remembers Archelaus’s fellow, Herod Antipas, because of his interactions with the seer John the Baptist. John would out loud condemn Antipas immoral behavior of having stolen his brother’s wife, who was also his niece. Antipas arrested and kept John in chains, unable to kill him until now unable to put him out of his mind. accord to the Book of scotch, â€Å"When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he desire to listen to him” (Mark 6:20). Through a trick thought up by his wife and her young woman Salome, Antipas ended up executing John.\r\nReports then filtered in of other vaticinator, and Antipas, perhaps plagued by remorse attempt to see Jesus who avoided him, because of what he had through to his cousin. In both Mark and Mathew, the death of John the Baptizer is told in flashbacks. Jesus’ activities boast attracted attention, and there puzzle been speculation as to his identity, with some proposing that Jesus could be John the Baptist. Ross S. Kraemer of Brown University wrote an essay dealing with this subject. He also wrote that, â€Å"Herod Antipas too having heard the give-and- earn of the prophet after John’s beheading, believes that Jesus is indeed John.\r\nHerodias, Herod’s wife, was the one who resents John and wishes to kill him provided she was still prevented by Antipa’s fear of John’s righteousness and holiness. In Mark’s account at Antipas’s birthday meal was when an opportunity presented itself to Herodias. Antipas became charmed by his wife’s da ughter dancing and offered this daughter anything she wished, even one-half of his kingdom. The daughter then goes and solicits her mother what to gather up and her mother replies that she wants her to ask for the head of John the Baptizer on a platter. Antipas complies only in order to keep his oath and stay fresh his honor before his guests.\r\nIn Matthew’s account there are some differences but still signifi send packingt differences. both(prenominal) agree that it is Antipas who orders John’s execution, but in Mark it is only because of Herodias that he does so, because Antipas has no desire to kill John. In Matthew Antipas himself desires to be rid of John, but has reservations because he fears the people who see John as a prophet. In Matthew’s account Antipas thought well of John and found his speeches pleasing. In Matthew, Herodias does not appear as a player until the end where give care in Mark; Herodias capitalizes on Antipas’s offer.\r\nIn Mark, Antipas has been totally manipulated by Herodias and her daughter, but in Matthew, he has merely been enabled to do what he had wished all along but was too weak to do. One more account from the book of Josephus tells that Herodias and her daughter played no role whatsoever. Josephus and Matthew actually withstand in seeing Herod as always desiring John’s death, but with different motivations being that John was critical of Herodias for the way of flouting Jewish tradition by marrying Antipas and this was the cause for Herods ordering the beheading.\r\n except Josephus does cite that Antipa’s was fearful of John’s popularity and that could admit started and uprising. HIS PROPHECIES: John the Baptizer was a prophet that preached with not so ofttimes words but with life. The words of the prophet ring dependable only because they carry with them the sweat, tears and melody of the prophet. According to Abraham Joshua Heschel, prophets are preachers whos e lives are under siege, â€Å"The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his understanding and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. majestic is the agony of man; no human voice undersurface convey its sound terror.\r\nProphecy is the voice that God has bring to the silent agony, a voice to the raped poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of living a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words”. (Dube, 2002, p. 42). The ministry of John the Baptizer was to challenge, provoke and holler out towards holiness. Because prophets are on the cutting edge of the crab for repentance, their call is to shatter the comfort zones of sin and complacency. The conditions that call fourth prophets are conditions of idolatry, moral degeneracy and weak spirituality.\r\nThis is why strict conditions are set up for any prophet who prophesies peace. The message of the prophet is one that calls for repentance, one that threatens us with its incarnated holiness, rages at us with God’s words as with John the Baptizers words of, â€Å"Repent, God’s rule is around the corner! ” John’s whole life was directed towards one goal, one direction, to give witness to the intuitive reality of God, which now made near, our look can see it and our hands can handle it. In John’s own words, â€Å"I did not bop Him, but that He should be revealed to Israel, whence I came baptizing with body of water” (Dube, 2002, p.43).\r\nWhat this means is that, ultimately, every prophet has to let go. John the Baptizer has to let that which he has given witness to take its own shape and form. Letting go seems easy, a holy thing to do, but in its aftermath it is a very hazardous moment for the prophet. What is hazardous for the prophet is thinking about what has really taken place. The result is that this final movement of the premonitory life is bound by some kind of crisis such as discredit or a trouble in the mind. The prophet discovers that he or she is not the sound from the trumpet but just a reed.\r\nThis realization requires a re-centering. In John’s case, the crisis is his doubts about the Messiah. But after John sends two of his disciples to ask Jesus a question if he was the one or whether they should look for another(prenominal) his fears were relinquished (Yancey, 2007, p. 72). In Christian religious belief they believe that John the Baptist was ordained by God to preach and reveal the Messiah, they believe this to be Jesus. Prophecies that were foretold by John are in Luke 1:17, â€Å"And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the exhibit of the Lord to prepare His ways.\r\n” and also Luke 1:75. In the Book of Malachi John the Baptist is referred to as a prophet who is to prepare the way of the Lord, â€Å"Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall abruptly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye transport in, behold, he shall come, saith the Lord. ” (3:1). PROOF OF EXISTENCE: In recent times a undermine was discovered not far from the tralatitious birthplace of John the Baptist, Ein Kerem, just western of Jerusalem on a Kibbutz.\r\nWhere John the Baptist was born and also where churches and monasteries are create to commemorate his birth. The spelunk is of considerable surface with genuinely puzzling feature such as a large add of broken patter, some dating to the period when John was active, a pool employ perhaps for ritual immersion, a play off with the imprint of a foot, apparently used for foot-anointing and pictures on the walls that could relate to John the Baptist that depicts an lifted arm with three crosses. But much speculation as to whether this is a example of John or not is still up in the air (Scham, 2004).\r\nCaves have l ong been associated with John. In the bible, his mother, Elizabeth, flees with him to a cave to escape Herod’s massacre of mannish infants, and as an adult he ofttimes lives in caves, giving some load to the cave findings mentioned earlier. After John’s beheadings cults formed around his memory and often held religious rituals in caves. The site was excavated by Shimon Gibson an Israeli archaeologist in 1999 and 2000. more or less the perimeter he discovered the remain of walls with large dress stones which usually is a sign of an important place in the Near East.\r\nAlthough Gibson isn’t clear on their age, he still uses this to uphold his find. another(prenominal) artifact is a unique water channeling system suggesting the presence of a generator from its earliest occupation, probably between 800 and calciferol B. C. This, Gibson proposes, was used for baptism rituals. Along with these relics are thousands of pieces of pottery, dating from Hellenistic times. CONCLUSION: John the Baptist was a prophet of the coming of Jesus and as elusive in history as was Jesus. Not much information can be obtained about much of his life except for what is mentioned in the Gospel.\r\nThe finding of the cave and if it is indeed where John the Baptist did work his miracles would be the first tell to his existence. In all the information I found most focused on his death and the meaning of his sermons towards the end of his life. If the evidence at the excavations do prove to the existence of John than evidence on Jesus’ life will follow. I was most interested in the essay by Ross S. Kraemer that mentioned a opening night that John and Jesus could be the same. some(prenominal) is true, it is easy to say that John the Baptist was a man that through his sermons changed the world and created a faith.\r\nBibliography Bugge, J. (2006, April). Virginity and prophecy in the old side Daniel. English Studies. 87(2), 127-147. Dube, C. (2002). From tour to ecstasies: A check on prophetic and Pentecostal ecstasy in the light of John the Baptizer. ledger of Pentecostal Theology, 11. 1 41-52 Gibson, S. (2004). The cave of tail the Baptist. New York: Doubleday Harrington, D. (2007, June 18). Decrease and increase. America, 196(21), 38-39. Kraemer, R. S. (2006). Implicating herodias and her daughter in the death of john the Baptizer: A Christian theological strategy?\r\n daybook of biblical Literature, 125(2), 321-349. Miller, L. & Scelfo, J. (2007, May 21). A enactment of faith. Newsweek, 14(21), n. p. Ratzinger, J. (2007, May 21). The meaning of baptism. Newsweek, 149(21), n. p. Scham, S. (2004, November). St. john’s cave. Archaeology, 57(6), 52. Tolson, J. (2006, March 17). The kingdom of Christ. News & World Report, 140(14), n. p. Warrington, K. (2006, April). Acts and the healing narratives: Why? Journal of Pentecostal Theology. 14(2), 189-217. Yancey, P. (2007, January). A tale of quint herods. Christian ity Today, 72.\r\n'