But this means that someway John was connected with the wilderness totally apart from the midrash on Isaiah etc in Mark 1. Marcion rejected that passage hence his knowledge of the connection John/wilderness couldn't come from the Judaizing incipit of Mark.Stuart wrote: ↑Wed Aug 12, 2020 9:40 pm Matthew then in 24.26 in fact helps us here, with Jesus giving two examples of false prophets.The first one is very obvious, John the baptizer or John the apostle / John the evangelist. Whatever the legends all seem to overlap. But the passage takes us back to Matthew 11:7-8 and Luke 17:24-25 where Jesus admonishes the crowds for going out to see John. (Robert Price counts this as part of the evidence of a rival Christ cult around John; I'm less certain, instead seeing John as a rival patron saint from another sect.) The second one we are in the Gnostic inner chambers, a theology of God's house derived I think from Jacob's ladder story, the very one referenced in John 14:2-3 -- but that's neither here nor there. The language suggests a Gnostic inner chamber for the select.So, if they say to you, 'Lo, he is in the wilderness,' do not go out;
if they say, 'Lo, he is in the inner rooms,' do not believe it.
From the other hand, the wilderness is hardly a realistic element for a prophet like John. Josephus teaches that who went to wilderness didn't return because he failed miserably. The words of Marcion talk about a successfull cult or importance of John in the wilderness. It is a miracle by which Marcion could only be embarrassed.
But what was the miracle involving John in the wilderness?
That could only be the descent of the Spiritual Christ on John or in presence of John. The "wilderness" is a code word to say that none witnessed the event because the event never happened.
The simplest explanation is that some Judaizers identified John as the man on which the spiritual Christ descended in a mysterious way, i.e. without no ocular witnesses to see the scene.
Celsus read probably something of similar in his lost gospel.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04161.htm
John witnessed a miracle in the wilderness and consequently he was the Witness par excellence of this miracle.