Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The first person of the new religion has thus become the last person of the ancient Law

Now I have understood that the emphasis of René Salm on John the Baptist is not the speculations of an amateur who builds his theorem on a figure X of the New Testament (think about what Eisenman did with James the brother of Jesus), since his research is fully inserted in a thread who starts with Robert Stahl.



(Jean Magne, From Christianity to Gnosis and From Gnosis to Christianity, p. 203-204, my bold)

The choice of midrash also proves that the repentence of sin is a later and more aggressively Judaizing corruption of the goal of John's kerygma. The former goal of John was to preach faith in Jesus as condition for baptising, so Jesus would be believed and be able to preach faith in the thitherto unknown Father. Late Judaizers illogically identify the Father with YHWH, and the Jewe's daily worries was not to know god but to please him and seek pardon for transgression of the law, using sacrifices and alms. If that had been the goal of introducing John, the gospel authors would have chosen some midrash on the central OT topic of Israel's penitence rather than one on prepareing the ways of the Lord.

It is also interesting the various ways as the three mentioned scholars, Stahl, Magne and Salm, have argued about the identity of 'John'.

• For Stahl, John was a Mandean mythological figure.

• For Magne, John was already a first judaized icon in virtue of his name, meaning: 'YHWH-gives-grace', even if he preserved still partially the functions of the original anti-YHWH Revealer of gnosis. Then 'YHWH-gives-grace' was replaced by 'YHWH-gives-salvation', i.e. Jesus/Joshua.

• For Salm, John was a historical figure from 1° century BCE, not an anti-demiurgist but a generic 'Jewish heresiarch'.

The general lesson is that any reconstruction that assumes anti-demiurgism preceding both ebionitism and catholicism has to have "John the Baptist" preceding the Jesus legend.

Then there is the curious case of André Wautier, who argued that 'Jesus Barabbas' was originally 'John Bar-Abbas', merging in himself two identities:

• 1) As "Jesus Bar-Abbas", he was the anti-demiurgist ' Jesus Son of the unknown Father', docet Stahl/Couchoud

• 2) as "John Bar-Rabbas", i.e. "John the son of the Rabbi", he was John of Gamala, the son of the pharisee Judas the Galilean, a Jewish rebel.

As the trajectory goes, John of Gamala was replaced first by "Jesus Barabbas", the marcionite "Son of Father", and after by "Jesus called Christ".