Christian Texts and History • John the Baptist, redivivus of a 2015 article

Hi Neil, thank you for this discussion. I am glad to see that the 2015 article is seen as a valuable point of reference for discussion of the passage about John in the 18th book of the Antiquities. Since I am not a reader on a regular cadence, please drop me a line next time to let me know.

Without responding to everything you have written, I would like to make a comment on the purpose of my article. I took up the same pattern as my article on the Testimonium – at https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/testimonium.html – where I am inclined to regard both references to Jesus as spurious. Which is to say, I attempted to canvas all of the arguments with which I am familiar. These arguments may be “of various quality” (as also in the Testimonium article). I did not omit arguments that agreed with the conclusion I reached even if I viewed some of them as indecisive, weak, or possibly even inconsequential.

For this article on the passage regarding John, I gave a guide to the reader on which arguments I considered to stand out as more than “slight indications.” I gave credit to “The Statements Regarding Baptism and Sin in the Passage” as an argument for inauthenticity. And I referenced these arguments for authenticity:

(2) The Unlikelihood of an Interpolation on John Being Inserted First
(3) The Unlikelihood of a Christian Interpolation on John Saying Nothing of Jesus
(6) A Poor Chronological Fit with the Timeline of the Gospels
(7) The Reason for the Execution of John in Disagreement with the Gospels
(8) Political Contextualizing More Characteristic of Josephus
(13) The Word for “Sin” in the Passage Characteristic of Josephan Usage
(14) The Word for “Baptism” in the Passage Uncharacteristic of Christian Usage
(15) Ant. 18.120 Incongruous without Ant. 18.116-119 (and Appropriate As-Is)

Accordingly, if it is directed at me, I take some exception to the comment (without considering myself a serious scholar in any case), “The serious scholar of ancient texts should never adopt a defensive position against the possibility that any particular passage might be an interpolation.” I wrote here, “This argument by itself is certainly not decisive … The most that _might_ be said, on this basis alone, is that a suggestion of interpolation here should require some decent arguments to substantiate it.” This was only a modest affordance to the person who might want to try to take up this point, in an attempt to give a fair account.

For (5), I write explicitly “This particular argument, however, is not completely sound” and “Credit for this point thus does not rightfully belong in the authenticity column, in the final accounting.” The unfortunate reply to my section (5) is: “And the gospels disagree among themselves about the baptism of John. Yet Kirby overlooks at this point that Nir explains at some length that the baptism described in the Josephan passage was entirely consistent with other Christian and fringe Jewish sects (the kind Josephus would not be favourable towards) at the time.” This is an argument that was introduced only to be explicitly rejected. Not only that, but I also explicitly give credit to Nir in this section. I wrote, “Indeed, the lengthy article by Rivka Nir and one of the points made by Robert Price, in favor of interpolation, as well as the earlier discussion of Israel Abrahams (responding to an argument similar to that of Nir and Price), revolve around precisely this.” Furthermore, this was the argument for inauthenticity (“The Statements Regarding Baptism and Sin in the Passage”) that I specifically remarked upon as being cogent in the conclusion to the article.

Regarding matters of style, most of them were relegated to being no more than slight indications in the conclusion. This includes both points that you reply to specifically, i.e. (11) and (12). Based on the conclusion – trust me, I’m going based only on what I can read because I don’t remember much from what I was thinking in 2015 – only the points (13) and (14) were given real credit in this regard. Yet (11) and (12) receive comments, while (13) and (14) get no specific comments.

Taking it the other way, looking at what I called out as arguments for authenticity, I can see:

(2) has a response based on Rivka Nir that suggests that Origen was not referring to the passage on John in the 18th book of the Antiquities. I must agree with you that I hadn’t considered that suggestion when I wrote my essay, which must explain why I presented the argument based on the assumption that Origen did.

(3) also has a response that quotes Rivka Nir: “Conversely, had the author presented John in connection to Jesus and the Christian gospel, and had his testimony been fully aligned with the Gospel account, Eusebius’s proof for the veracity of the Gospel narratives (‘confirming the description of him contained in the gospel narrative’) would be weakened considerably and the forgery would not achieve its purpose—to prove John’s historical existence independently of Gospel events.” I don’t agree that Rivka Nir has made an effective rebuttal here, but that can be a separate discussion. It seems to be the crux of your response, so more than a brief comment would be warranted.

(6) gets no comment other than a reference back to (3).

(7) also gets no comment other than a reference back to (3).

(8) also references back to (3). That quote from Rivka Nir quote is doing a lot of work. This also elicits another quote from Nir, which includes: “How could Josephus claim that the Jews credited Herod’s defeat to John’s death, which preceded it by six years?” There are several assumptions here: the implied assumption that this is a valid argument against it having happened, the assumption regarding a particular dating of the death of Jesus, and the assumption that John died before Jesus did (which is necessary for the point to have force – the gospels could just have the time John died wrong). Would that Nir could be put under the same magnifying glass.

(13) and (14) receive no specific comment, and (15) does receive discussion from you in some detail, in the next blog post, which stands out for the virtue of presenting detailed interaction with the points I made, with specificity and via your own discussion.

My original article is quite long, and I understand the inclination towards brevity in your response to it. I do recommend that anyone interested review it themselves. There’s quite a bit more to it than the article’s headings that give title to the arguments.

As I wrote above, your response to (3) appears to be the crux here. If someone agrees with you and/or Rivka Nir, that the passage has been crafted to give confirmation for the veracity of the historicity of John, without being “stupid,” whittling away what can make it look like it came from someone with the concerns of a Christian, adding back what would make it look like it came from someone with a perspective like that of Josephus, and doing so quite effectively, then sure, they could also agree that this waves away completely several arguments for the passage being authentic. For now, since this is quite long enough for a comment and since that point is deserving of fuller treatment, let the reader decide.