CHAPTER XII.

EMBASSY TO JESUS FROM JOHN IN PRISON—DEATH OF JOHN—THE RELATIONS OF HIS SCHOOL WITH THAT OF JESUS.

Whilst joyous Galilee was celebrating in feasts the coming of the well-beloved, the disconsolate John, in his prison of Machero, was pining away with expectation and desire. The success of the young master whom he had seen some months before as his auditor had reached him. It was said that the Messiah predicted by the prophets, he who was to re-establish the kingdom of Israel, had come, and was making known his presence in Galilee by marvellous works. John wished to inquire into the truth of this rumour, and, as he was allowed to communicate freely with his disciples, he chose two of them to go to Jesus in Galilee.

The two disciples found Jesus at the height of his fame. The appearance of happiness which reigned around him surprised them. Accustomed to fasts, to earnest prayer, and to a life full of aspirations, they were astonished to see themselves transported suddenly into the midst of welcome rejoicings. They told Jesus their message: “Art thou he that should come? Or do we look for another?” Jesus, who from that time hesitated no longer respecting his peculiar character as Messiah, enumerated to them the works which ought to characterise the coming of the kingdom of God—such as the healing of the sick, and the glad tidings of a salvation near at hand preached to the poor. He had done all these works. “And 115blessed is he,” said Jesus, “whosoever shall not be offended in me.”

We do not know whether this answer reached John the Baptist, or into what temper it threw the austere ascetic. Did he die consoled and certain that he whom he had announced already lived, or did he retain some doubts as to the mission of Jesus? There is nothing to inform us. Seeing, however, that his school continued to exist a considerable time side by side with the Christian churches, we are constrained to believe that, notwithstanding his regard for Jesus, John did not regard him as the one who was to realise the divine promises. Death came, moreover, to end his perplexities. The untamable freedom of the ascetic was to crown his restless and troubled career by the only end which was worthy of it.

The indulgence which Antipas had at first shown towards John was not of long duration. In the conversations which, according to the Christian tradition, John had had with the tetrarch, he did not cease repeating to him that his marriage was unlawful, and that he ought to send Herodias away. We can easily imagine the hatred which the grand-daughter of Herod the Great must have engendered against this importunate counsellor. She only waited an opportunity to ruin him.

Her daughter, Salome, by her first marriage, and like her ambitious and dissolute, entered into her designs. That year (probably the year 30) Antipas was at Machero on the anniversary of his birthday. Herod the Great had caused to be constructed in the interior of the fortress a magnificent palace, in which the tetrarch frequently resided. He gave a great feast there, during which Salome executed one of those character dances which were not considered in Syria as unbecoming a distinguished person. Antipas, being greatly delighted, asked 116the dancer what she most desired, who, at the instigation of her mother, replied, “Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger.” Antipas was sorry, but he could not refuse. A guard took the charger, went and cut off the head of the prisoner, and brought it.

The disciples of the Baptist obtained his body and placed it in a tomb. The people were much offended. Six years later, Hâreth having attacked Antipas, in order to recover Machero and avenge the dishonour of his daughter, Antipas was completely beaten; and his defeat was generally regarded as a punishment for the murder of John.

The news of John's death was brought to Jesus by the disciples of the Baptist. The last step John had taken in regard to Jesus had succeeded in establishing between the two schools the most intimate bonds. Jesus, fearing an increase of ill-will on the part of Antipas, took the precaution to retire to the desert. Many people followed him thence. Thanks to a strict frugality, the holy band succeeded in living there, and in this there was naturally seen a miracle From that time Jesus always spoke of John with redoubled admiration. He declared unhesitatingly that he was more than a prophet, that the Law and the ancient prophets had force only until he came, that he had abrogated them, but that the kingdom of heaven in turn had superseded him. In fine, he assigned him a special place in the economy of the Christian mystery, which constituted him the link of union between the Old Testament and the advent of the new reign.

The prophet Malachi, whose opinion in this matter was soon brought to bear, had persistently declared a precursor of the Messiah, who was to prepare men for the final renovation, a messenger 117who should come to make straight the paths before the elected of God. This messenger was none other than the prophet Elias, who, according to a widely-spread belief, was soon to descend from heaven, whither he had been carried, in order to prepare men by repentance for the great advent, and to reconcile God with His people. Sometimes they associated with Elias either the patriarch Enoch, to whom for one or two centuries they had been attributing high sanctity; or Jeremiah, whom they regarded as a sort of protecting genius of the people, constantly occupied in praying for them before the throne of God. This idea, of two of the old prophets rising again, to act as precursors to the Messiah, is discovered in so striking a form in the doctrine of the Parsees that we feel much inclined to believe that it comes from that source. Be that as it may, it formed at the time of Jesus an integral portion of the Jewish theories in regard to the Messiah. It was admitted that the appearance of “two faithful witnesses,” clothed in garments of repentance, would be the preamble of the great drama about to be unfolded, to the astonishment of the universe.

We can understand that, with these ideas, Jesus and his disciples could not hesitate about the mission of John the Baptist. When the scribes raised the objection that it could not yet be a question of the Messiah, inasmuch as Elias had not yet appeared, they replied that Elias had come, that John was Elias raised from the dead. By his manner of life, by his opposition to the established political authorities, John recalled, in fact, that strange figure in the ancient history of Israel. Nor was Jesus silent in regard to the merits and excellences of his forerunner. He said that among the children of men none greater had been born. He vehemently blamed the Pharisees and the 118doctors for not having accepted his baptism, and for not being converted at his voice.

The disciples of Jesus were faithful to these principles of their master. Respect for John was an unquestioned tradition during the whole of the first Christian generation. He was supposed to be a relative of Jesus. His baptism was regarded as the most important fact, and, in some sort, as the prefatory obligation of all gospel history. In order to establish the mission of the son of Joseph upon testimony admitted by all, it was stated that John, at the first sight of Jesus, proclaimed him the Messiah; that he recognised himself his inferior, unworthy to unloose the latchets of his shoes; that he refused at first to baptize him, and maintained that it was he who ought to be baptized by Jesus. These were exaggerations, which are sufficiently refuted by the doubtful form of John's last message. But, in a more general sense, John remains in the Christian legend that which he was in reality,—the austere forerunner, the gloomy preacher of repentance before the joy on the arrival of the bridegroom, the prophet who announces the kingdom of God and dies before beholding it. This giant in primitive Christianity, this eater of locusts and wild honey, this rugged redresser of wrongs, was the absinthe which prepared the lip for the sweetness of the kingdom of God. His beheading by Herodias inaugurated the era of Christian martyrs; he was the first witness for the new faith. The worldly, who regarded him their true enemy, could not permit him to live; his mutilated corpse, extended on the threshold of Christianity, indicated the bloody path in which so many others were to follow.

The school of John did not die with its founder. It existed some time distinct from that of Jesus, and from the first on good terms with the latter. 119Many years after the death of the two masters, people were still baptized with the baptism of John. Certain persons were members of the two schools at the same time,—for example, the celebrated Apollos, the rival of St. Paul (about the year 54), and a goodly number of the Christians of Ephesus. Josephus entered in the year 53 the school of an ascetic named Banou, who presents a striking resemblance to John the Baptist, and who was perhaps of his school. This Banou lived in the desert, and was clothed with the leaves of trees. His only nourishment was wild plants and fruits, and he baptized himself frequently, both day and night, in cold water, in order to purify himself. James, who was called the “brother of the Lord,” practised a similar asceticism. Later, about the year 80, Baptism was in conflict with Christianity, especially in Asia Minor. The author of the writings attributed to John the evangelist appears to combat it in an indirect manner. One of the Sibylline poems seems to proceed from this school. As to the sects of Hemerobaptists, Baptists, and Elchasaïtes (Sabiens, Mogtasila of the Arabian writers), who in the second century filled Syria, Palestine, and Babylonia, and whose representatives still exist in our days among the Mendaites, called “Christians of St. John,” they had the same origin as the movement of John the Baptist rather than being an authentic descent from him. The true school of John, half Christian in its character, became a small Christian sect, and died out in obscurity. John had distinctly foreseen the destiny of the two schools. If he had yielded to a pitiful rivalry, he would to-day be forgotten in the crowd of sectaries of his time. By his self-abnegation, he has attained a glorious and unique position in the religious pantheon of humanity.