A Visible Difference Between John and the Synoptic Gospels

August 19, 2009, 7:26 am by dc-agape.

John Chapter 3:22 – 35

It is interesting that the segue into John the Baptist’s sermon on Jesus starts due to an argument about ceremonial washing.  Their question is about Jesus’ baptism verse John’s baptism.  Yet ceremonial washing, from the Jewish context, is not about redemption.  Ceremonial washing was a Tradition of Man (Mark 7:3, John 2:6) that it would seem John was teaching his disciples as baptism!  If he was not teaching this concept the argument would not have come up.  So even though John was teaching repentance baptism, he was still only considering it a Tradition of Man designed as a ceremonial washing. 

Their bigger gripe seemed to be that they were losing followers to Jesus!  This would indicate that John the Baptist expected this and accepted the outcome.  I find one of his apologies quite interesting:

John 3:31 “The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth.  The one who comes from heaven is above all.

Now other than John’s repetition the central line is quite telling.  Those of us from earth can only talk about what is here on earth!  This would mean that no one here on earth can speak about heaven or YHWH.  Yet many of our religious leaders do exactly that.  Yet they are not qualified to do so, not even the Apostles (especially Paul) are included in this realization.  Yet for some reason Pauline Christianity has superseded Jesus’ teachings!  I will be posting on this concept further this Saturday.

John the Baptist does continue the same line of teaching that Jesus used in the earlier part of the same chapter.  With very little variation.  The one question that arises is whether John (the author) is now with Jesus or with John the Baptist.  This, of course, is not important to the TrueBeliever™.  Their argument would be something along the lines that John was either still with John the Baptist, or that John returned to John the Baptist.  Isn’t funny how often the same name is used for different people, kinda like the author of the Gospel of Matthew and the Apostle Matthew?  It can also be quite confusing since surnames were not used, and only titles such as “the Baptist” or “Apostle” differentiate the different people with the same name. 

One other interesting topic is introduced in this section.  The location of John the Baptist’s ministry is actually documented.  This is the only Gospel that give a direct location, the Synoptic Gospel give a vague “Desert of Judea”.  Yet the Tradition of Man places John’s ministry closer to the Dead Sea!  Now it is possible that John the Baptist wondered up and down the Jordan, so that both are correct, yet John’s (the Apostle) account is much more accurate than that of the Synoptic writers.  And using John’s account makes the stories that he gives about Jesus’ initial ministry much more stream-line.  Especially when you look at the following chapter where Jesus is in Samaria (which is left out of the Synoptic Gospels).  Of course, John would focus on different things within the three to four years of Jesus’ ministry, but reading these from the perspective of a non-believer John’s seems to be a much better eyewitness than the Synoptic Gospels!  Which would make sense, since we know that neither the Gospel of Mark nor Luke were written by the actually followers of Jesus.  Instead, the Gospel of Mark was written by a disciple of Peter and Paul.  Whereas the Gospel of Luke was written by a disciple of Paul.  What this tells the Atheist is that the Tradition of Man that the Gospels were eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ life is a lie!  With how confusing the naming of people were in this period of time and the fact that certain names were used repeatedly, we cannot be certain that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was truly Levi the tax collector!  As a result, only the Gospel of John stands as an unbiased (everyone agrees) eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry.  Yet it is neither the focus nor the first book in the NT!  And as the issue of John the Baptist’s location of his ministry points out, the Tradition of Men has corrupted even this obvious source of data.

I, myself, had grown up with the idea that Jesus was baptized closer to the Dead Sea.  Yet John clearly indicates that this was not the case.  All because of the fallacy documented in the Synoptic Gospels that became a Tradition of Man!  No wonder Jesus despises the Traditions of Men and warns about false teachings so often…Yet would seem that even the Word of God has allowed many Traditions of Men to creep in (I have posted on the section in Mark that was added later and can be easily seen to be an addition).

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