Category talk:John the Baptist (subject)
Joel Marcus, John the Baptist in History and Theology (2018)
Special Issue of the Journal JSHJ (edited by Michael Daise): Articles by Albert Baumgarten, Jonathan Klawans, Cecilia Wassen, Clare Rotshschild, Erin Roberts, Robert Myles, Fedrico Adinolfi e Joan Taylor.
Sessions:
DAY 1 :
(-) Introduction: Who is my John the Baptist? Contemporary Scholarly Portraits.
Joel Marcus, Joan Taylor, Edmondo Lupieri, Gabriele Boccaccini, Nivka Nir
(1) John the Baptist, the Temple, and the Priesthood
Was John a priest? What was his attitude towards the priesthood? Was his teaching or his baptism in opposition to the Temple?
(2) John the Baptist, Qumran, and the Essenes
Was John an Essene? Was he at Qumran? Which are the major similarities and differences between John and the Dead Sea Scrolls? How is John’s relationship to Essenism to be revised in light of the latest studies on the Essenes, the Scrolls and Qumran?
Day 2 -
9:00 - Welcome 9:15 - 10:00 - Recap session.
(3) 10-11:45John the Baptist and Jewish Apocalypticism (Enoch literature)
(4) 12:30pm-2:15John as a Prophet: his Eschatological and Messianic Vision
How is John to be located within the various forms of Jewish prophetism and revelatory practices? Was John a “mystic”? What was John’s eschatological outlook? Was his message mostly/all about judgment or was he first and foremost a prophet of restoration? Did he talk about the kingdom of God? Who was the Coming/Stronger One he announced? (The Davidic Messiah? A superhuman Messiah, e.g. the Son of Man? YHWH?) What did John think of himself? Did he claim to be the Elijah redivivus?
(5) 3-4:45John's Baptism and the Forgiveness of Sins
For whom was John’s baptism devised: for all and everyone (i.e. all Israel) or specifically for the sinners? What is the precise relationship between John’s immersion, the repentance of those who undertook it, and the forgiveness of sins? Which description of his baptism deserves more credit: Josephus’ or Mark’s? Was John’s baptism an ‘eschatological sacrament’ mediating forgiveness and effecting atonement and salvation? Did it impart the Holy Spirit?
DAY 3 -
9:30am - Recap session
(6) John and the Law: Purity and Other Halakhic Matters
What was John’s stance on the much debated question of purity in light of the other halakhic views known to us? How did he articulate the relationship between ritual/bodily (im)purity and moral/inner (im)purity? Did he considered sinners to be ritually unclean (and defiling?) as long as they remained unrepentant and unrighteous? Did he somehow conflate the two, so that immersing in water was seen as cleansing not only the body from ordinary levitical uncleanness – or perhaps some special kind of sin-generated impurity – but also the heart from sin? How are Mark’s reports on John eating locusts and wild honey and wearing a garment of camel’s hair to be understood from a legal point of view? Do they testify to a peculiar halakhah and a claim of expertise on subtle legal questions on John’s part?
(7) John and Politics
How did John react to the social, economic, and political troubles of his time? Did John have a social program? What was his attitude towards the wealthy? What was his attitude to Roman imperialism, the Jerusalem aristocracy and the Herodian house? Did John’s message have clear political implications, perhaps even revolutionary? What weight should be given to his political death in trying to reconstruct John as a truly historical person of his time rather than in more or less theological terms? What was his attitude toward Gentiles?
(8) John and the Historical Jesus
What was the relationship between John and Jesus? Was Jesus one of his disciples or did he simply approve John’s work ‘from outside’? Did Jesus subsequently break with John or in any case left John’s vision and concerns behind him in favor of a very different kind of message and activity? Or is Jesus’ ministry rather to be seen as a programmatic and consistent continuation of John’s work? What are the main aspects of continuity and discontinuity? How much of John’s teaching was taken up by Jesus? Was the Lord’s Prayer originally taught by John? Did Jesus baptize at first? If so, did he ever stop? Should Jesus’ purificatory healings of lepers and people possessed by ‘unclean spirits’ be seen as a departure from or rather an extension of John’s (and Jesus’) interest in purifying repentant sinners through immersion?
Day 4 -
9:30am - Recap session
(9-10) The Memory and Legacy of John in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Gospels, Acts, Josephus, Pseudo-Clementine literature, Gnostic Literature, Mandaeism)
How was the memory of John reshaped by the various groups and authors who in various ways valued his figure for their own ‘agendas’? Do the sources testify to the existence of a messianic “Baptist sect” in competition to the Jesus movement? If so, at what stage? [to be completed]
(10) "John the gnostics, and the Mandeans
Wrap-up session
Edmondo Lupieri, Eric Noffke, Daniele Minisini
Knut Backhaus e Robert Webb e direi anche Benjamin Snyder e Nathan Shedd che hanno da poco completato delle tesi di dottorato rispettivamente su battesimo e purità rituale (https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/1429/ ) e sulla decapitazione del Battista (https://research.stmarys.ac.uk/id/eprint/3503/ )
Poi non so... c'è Jaroslav Rindoš che qualche anno fa ha pubblicato un buona monografia sul Battista ed Elia in Luca: http://www.slavu.sav.sk/en/en_rindos.php
Prospective Participants
- @# Federico Adinolfi
- @# Gabriele Boccaccini
- @# Michael Daise
- @# Edmondo Lupieri
- @# James McGrath
- @# Daniele Minisini
- @# Eric Noffke
- @# Joan Taylor
- @ Albert Baumgarten
- @ Cecilia Wassen
- Knut Backhaus
- Brian Dennert
- Jonathan Klawans
- Robert Myles
- Nivka Nir
- Jaroslav Rindoš
- Erin Roberts
- Clare Rotshschild
- Nathan Shedd
- Benjamin Snyder
- Robert Webb
- Joel Marcus