Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Ben, a question for you, please.

I would like to find (but I don't find it) the post where you have written that, according to you, the death of John the Baptist happened after the death of the presumed historical Jesus because, in the your view, it is probably impossible that the people considered the defeat of Herod by Aretas as a divine punition of Herod for the assassination of John, after 5, 10, 15 years from the time of that death. Therefore the Christians placed the death of John before the death of Jesus contra factum that the contrary happened. Is precisely that your view? Thanks.

(I go to memory)

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2020 11:39 am Ben, a question for you, please.

I would like to find (but I don't find it) the post where you have written that, according to you, the death of John the Baptist happened after the death of the presumed historical Jesus because, in the your view, it is probably impossible that the people considered the defeat of Herod by Aretas as a divine punition of Herod for the assassination of John, after 5, 10, 15 years from the time of that death. Therefore the Christians placed the death of John before the death of Jesus contra factum that the contrary happened. Is precisely that your view? Thanks.

(I go to memory)

That does sound familiar, but I cannot seem to locate any post of mine with that exact idea in it. Sorry.

I do think it is more likely that John's death, as narrated by Josephus, happened only a bit before the defeat of Herod's army rather than that it happened a long time beforehand. However, that is not a very strong argument on its own.

Whenever John actually died (and we may never know), I say that Christians had a good reason for assuming it was before Jesus. So, if it should be determined that John actually died after Jesus (or after the traditional date for Jesus' crucifixion), then that is the explanation I would go with.

Thanks. Very useful!