4 - The Baptist in the Fourth Gospel and in the Synoptics

Summary

The foregoing investigation has led to the probable conclusion that in giving his account of the ministry of John the Baptist and its relation to the Ministry of Jesus Christ the Fourth Evangelist has drawn largely upon material which reached him in traditional form. Some of it overlaps with material known to us in the Synoptic Gospels, but there is no sufficient reason to suppose that they served as sources to our author. The tradition which he followed doubtless transmitted more information than he has chosen to include. We have noted at least one slight pointer to the kind of thing which he has excluded: the curious note about a controversy with Jews περὶ καθαρισμοῦ (iii. 25). It seems that in another passage, viii. 39–41, we have reminiscences of teaching attributed to the Baptist in Matt. iii. 9, Luke iii. 8, though the teaching has here been incorporated in a discourse of Jesus. Both these scraps would seem to have belonged originally to a body of material which referred to the work of John as a reformer within Judaism. In that side of his work our evangelist is not interested. What he has given is the result of a process of severe selection, governed by his avowed purpose, to exhibit the Baptist as the great witness to Christ.