Whereas Jesus is a divine person first sent to Paradise and again under Tiberius to teach the path of salvation and institute the eucharist, the sacrement of gnosis, John, according to the hermetist myth of baptism in the crater (C.H. IV,4-6, see Logique des sacrements, p. 105-140) is simply a man chosen by the Father to proclaim baptism, the sacrament of noûs, the "intellect" or "spirit", a faculty of supernatural knowledge, the faculty of acquiring gnosis.
In accordance, therefore, with the logical precedence of the faculty of knowing over the acquisition of knowledge, baptism will precede the eucharist and John will be the forerunner of Jesus. It was easy to find biblical passages applicable to this situation: "Behold, I send a messenger before you" (Ex 23.20); "He will prepare the way before you" (Mal 3:1); "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the Way of the Lord" (Is 40.3), quoted in Mk 1.2-3 and plls, the bad break in the last quotation gives it the meaning sought, which resulted in making John preach in the wilderness of Judaea.
As the Jews believed that Elijah who was taken to heaven (2 Kings 2.1) would one day return (Mal 4.5), John was invested with his coat of hair and leather belt (2 Kings 1.8; Mk 1.6).
In the infancy gospels John will be Jesus' cousin and necessarily his elder. He will die before him to leave him a clear field, and will be decapitated to symbolize, according to the Fathers, the cessation of the prophecy.
The first person of the new religion has thus become the last person of the ancient Law.
In accordance, therefore, with the logical precedence of the faculty of knowing over the acquisition of knowledge, baptism will precede the eucharist and John will be the forerunner of Jesus. It was easy to find biblical passages applicable to this situation: "Behold, I send a messenger before you" (Ex 23.20); "He will prepare the way before you" (Mal 3:1); "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the Way of the Lord" (Is 40.3), quoted in Mk 1.2-3 and plls, the bad break in the last quotation gives it the meaning sought, which resulted in making John preach in the wilderness of Judaea.
As the Jews believed that Elijah who was taken to heaven (2 Kings 2.1) would one day return (Mal 4.5), John was invested with his coat of hair and leather belt (2 Kings 1.8; Mk 1.6).
In the infancy gospels John will be Jesus' cousin and necessarily his elder. He will die before him to leave him a clear field, and will be decapitated to symbolize, according to the Fathers, the cessation of the prophecy.
The first person of the new religion has thus become the last person of the ancient Law.
(Jean Magne, From Christianity to Gnosis and From Gnosis to Christianity, p. 203-204)
Too much divine coincidence here, the existence of all that symbolism above and the historical existence of a Baptizer (title surprisingly never explained by “Josephus”) who was just decapitated (a priori, the symbol of a drastic separation, rupture, breakage).
Conclusion: John the Baptist never existed.