Note 2 — Chapter IV · THE EPISTLES OF PAUL

The astral John Baptist And he proceeds to dilate on the thesis that the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan was “the reflection upon earth of what originally took place among the stars.” This discovery rests on an equation—pre-philological, of course, like that of “Maria” with “Myrrha”—of the name “John” or “Jehohanan” with “Oannes” or “Ea,” the Babylonian Water-god. However, this writer is here not a little incoherent, for only on the page before he has assured us, as of something unquestionable, that John was closely related to the Essenes, and baptized the penitents in the Jordan in the open air. Was Jordan, too, up in heaven? Were the Essenes there also? Mr. Robertson, of course, pursues the same simple method of disposing of adverse evidence, and asserts (p. 396) that Josephus’s account of John “is plainly open to that suspicion of interpolation which, in the case of the allusion to Jesus in the same book (Antiq., xviii, 3, 3), has become for most critics a certainty.” He does not condescend to inform his readers that the latter passage2 is absent from important MSS., was unknown to Origen, and is therefore rightly bracketed by editors; whereas the account of John is in all MSS., and was known to Origen. But as we have seen before, Mr. Robertson is one of those gifted people who can discern by peculiar intuitions of their own that everything is interpolated in an author which offends their prejudices. He has a lofty contempt for the careful sifting of the textual tradition, the examination of MSS. and ancient versions to which a scholar resorts, before he condemns a passage of an ancient author as an interpolation. Moreover, a scholar feels himself bound to show why a passage was interpolated, in whose interests. For, regarded as an interpolation, a passage is as much a problem to him as it was before. Its genesis has still to be explained. But Messrs. Robertson and Drews and Smith do not condescend to explain anything or give any reasons. A passage slays their theories; therefore it is a “vital interpolation.” It is the work of an ancient enemy sowing tares amid their wheat.