Note 69 — Chapter I · RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST.

From the foregoing considerations, it is inconceivable that John should ever have held and pronounced Jesus to be the Messiah: but it is easy to show how a belief that he did so might obtain, without historical foundation. According to Acts xix. 4, the Apostle Paul declares what seems sufficiently guaranteed by history, that John baptized εἰς τὸν ἐρχόμενον, and this coming Messiah, adds Paul, to whom John pointed was Jesus (τουτέστιν εἰς Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν). This was an interpretation of the Baptist’s words by the issue; for Jesus had approved himself to a great number of his cotemporaries, as the Messiah announced by John. There was but a step to the notion that the Baptist himself had, under the ἐρχόμενος, understood the individual Jesus,—had himself the τουτέστιν, κ.τ.λ. in his mind; a view which, however unhistorical, would be inviting to the early Christians, in proportion to their wish to sustain the dignity of Jesus by the authority of the Baptist, then very influential in the Jewish world.69 There was yet another reason, gathered from the Old Testament. The ancestor of the Messiah, David, had likewise in the old Hebrew legend a kind of forerunner in the person of Samuel, who by order from Jehovah anointed him to be king over Israel (1 Sam. xvi.), and afterwards stood in the relation of a witness to his claims. If then it behoved the Messiah to have a forerunner, who, besides, was more closely characterized in the prophecy of Malachi as a second Elias, and if, historically, Jesus was preceded by John, whose baptism as a consecration corresponded to an anointing; the idea was not remote of conforming the relation between John and Jesus to that between Samuel and David.