But there is nothing in Josephus’s John the Immerser passage about John being in the desert, or being solitary. You are getting that from the Gospel of Mark. That is not in the Josephus passage, which is what my article is about. (Nor was Hyrcanus II a warrior or general in the time relevant to the Josephus John the Immerser discussion, the 30s BCE; he was “high priest emeritus”, of worldwide stature and reputation among Jews, likely located in the same time and place the sectarian texts of the Qumran texts were written, Jericho–text compositions which inexplicably seen to end the same time Hyrcanus II ends.)
Although I purposely did not take up the Gospel of Mark in the article, I think composition of the Gospel of Mark postdates the publication of Josephus’s Antiquities and that that Gospel’s stories and legendary material of John preserve no independent information concerning Hyrcanus II external to its use of Josephus’s John passage, which the authors of the Gospel of Mark, no more than Josephus, did not realize was a displaced tradition of Hyrcanus II. In short the Gospel of Mark–the desert, the eating locusts, the dance of Salome, the head on the platter, all that embellishment in a world of stories–is irrelevant to understanding Josephus’s John the Immerser.
On the other hand, I perceive that the John figure with which the Fourth Gospel opens may not draw from Josephus and may be a different John altogether: the Johannine John known to Papias of Asia Minor. I do not even assume that the purification by immersion of Josephus’s John–nothing other than routine first-century BCE Jewish purification in mikvehs or running water as I read it–was the same as the late-first-century CE proto-Christian baptism-initiation rite of the Fourth Gospel’s John and disciples of Jesus.
In any case, as noted at the start of the article, “as a matter of method the Gospels are set completely to one side and the focus is solely on analysis of the Josephus passage”. Thanks for your comments. I also appreciate Neil’s discussions of all of the articles of this worthy volume edited by Emanuel Pfoh and Lukasz Niesiolowski-Spano in honor of our teacher Thomas Thompson.
(my bold)
I have rapidly remembered about the Stuart's view on the same Johannine John, about which he wrote:
Stuart wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2020 12:08 am
Granted, there is strong evidence of an apostle named John who baptized, and he is associated with Asia Minor as a rival to Paul. Robert Price wrote a few books which reference this battle for Asia (basically Eastern Turkey today). Ephesus seems to be the epicenter.
But Price draws conclusions I cannot agree with, such as "brand X" baptism per 1 Corinthians 1:12, and 3:4. But I think 1:12 was written after 3:4 or that it was expanded from the Marcionite text, as DA 1.8 quotes 1:12-13 without ἐγὼ δὲ Χριστοῦ (and 'I am of Christ'), as a misunderstanding by the redactor, a blunder. 3:4 only refers to Paul and Apollos. The language refers to each as sect leaders or (arch)bishops (== Apostles), which we see in 3:22-23. Price rather than see it as a blunder by a redactor, sees it as a rabbit hole he can go down and like Alice in Wonderland, discovering a whole new world.
There are many possibilities, and I think the simplest is John was a rival with Paul for patron saint of Asia Minor, and specifically Ephesus. It has also been suggested that Apollos (Ἀπολλῶς) is a thinly disguised Apelles (Ἀπελλῆς), and Paul in the Marcionite collection is an alter ego for Marcion (aka, "Mark"?). If that is the case then Marcion is the builder of the foundation, and Apelles the one building onto it, or that Marcion is the one that plants and Apelles the one who waters (his successor or a splinter group leader?). This is of course all symbolic.