Note 49 — Chapter I · RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST.

Thus the above considerations are not decisive, and we therefore turn to the expressions concerning the premundane existence and heavenly origin of the Messiah, with the question: Could the Baptist have really held such tenets? That from the words, John i. 15, 27, 30: He that cometh after me is preferred before me; for he was before me, ὁ ὀπίσω μοῦ ἐρχόμενος ἔμπροσθέν μοῦ γέγονεν, ὄτι πρῶτος μου ἦν, nothing but dogmatical obstinacy can banish the notion of pre-existence, is seen by a mere glance at such expositions as this of Paulus: “He who in the course of time comes after me; has so appeared in my eyes, ἔμπροσθέν μοῦ, that he (ὅτι—ὥστε, premiss—conclusion!) deserves rather from his rank and character to be called the first.”49 With preponderating arguments more unprejudiced commentators have maintained, that the reason here given why Jesus, who appeared after the Baptist in point of time, had the precedence of him in dignity, is the pre-existence of the former.50 We have here obviously the favourite dogma of the fourth Evangelist, the eternal pre-existence of the λόγος, present indeed to the mind of that writer, who had just been inditing his proem, but that it was also present to the mind of the Baptist is another question. The most recent expositor allows that the sense in which the Evangelist intends πρῶτος μοῦ, must have been very remote from the Baptist’s point of view, at least so far as the λόγος is concerned. The Baptist, he thinks, held the popular Jewish notion of the pre-existence of the Messiah, as the subject of the Old Testament theophanies.51 There are traces of this Jewish notion in the writings of Paul (e.g. 1 Cor. x. 4. Col. i. 15 f.) and the rabbins52; and allowing that it was of Alexandrian origin, as Bretschneider argues,53 we may yet ask whether even before the time of Christ, the Alexandrian-judaic theology may not have modified the opinions of the mother country?54 Even these expressions then, taken alone, are not conclusive, although it begins to appear suspicious that the Baptist, otherwise conspicuous for exhibiting the practical side of the idea of the Messiah’s kingdom, should have ascribed to him by the fourth Evangelist solely, two notions which at that time undoubtedly belonged only to the deepest messianic speculations; and that the form in which those notions are expressed is too peculiarly that of the writer, not to be put to his account.