Stephen Turley on the Apocalyptic Backdrop of John's Baptism

I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your fetishes. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh; and I will put My spirit into you. Thus I will cause you to follow My laws and faithfully to observe My rules. (Ezek 36:25-27, 1985 JPS Tanakh)

Wash yourselves clean; Put your evil doings Away from My sight. Cease to do evil; Learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice; Aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; Defend the cause of the widow. (Isa 1:16-17, 1985 JPS Tanakh)

Commenting on John’s baptism and its Old Testament apocalyptic background and meaning, Stephen Turley wrote:

As regards John’s baptism, there are a number of scholars who see Ezekiel 36.25-7 (and Isa. 1.16-17) as the prophetic-apocalyptic backdrop necessary for its intelligibility . . . Mark identifies John’s ablutions with a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” in view of the imminent arrival of one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit (1.8). The Markan Gospel ascribes the location of John as a substantiation of Isaiah 40.3 (perhaps conflated with Exod. 23.20) in 1.2-4, serving as a wilderness stage for the enactment of traditions that spoke of Elijah’s return to avert the wrath of God and to lead Israel to repentance (cf. Mal. 4:5; Sir. 48:9-10). John’s baptism can therefore be appropriated within a trajectory of Jewish washings for theophanies, that is, ritual bathings that were applicable to the general population in preparation for a future yet imminent divine encounter (e.g. Exod. 19.10-15).

Furthermore, the locative parallel between John’s baptism and the dramatic crossing of the Jordan River under the leadership of Joshua in effect summoned all Israel to prepare for the divine judgment that was approaching. Regardless of whether the baptism of John was an initiation rite or not, in administrating a baptism that mediated the forgiveness of sins by God, John’s baptizing ministry could not have but created a distinction between two groups of people: those who were ritually prepared for the coming of God and those who were not. The baptism is, in parallel with Ezekiel 36.25-27, a corporate baptism, a cleaning of a people purified by and for God.

Finally, in addition to the pneumatic, temporal, and communal frames of reference, there is a strong emphasis on repentance and ethical transformation associated with John’s baptism, particularly evident in Josephus’ description of John’s ritual activity (Ant. 18.116-19). Josephus indicates that John’s baptism called for the Jews to “exercise virtue” (18.117, κελευοντα αρετην) with “righteousness to one another and piety toward God” (18.117, προς αλληλους δικαιοσυνη και προς τον θεον ευσεβεια) such that their bodies would be purified by the washing and their souls “thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness” (18.117, της ψυχης δικαιοσυνη προεκκεκαθαρμενης) . . . John’s baptism and the repentance that accompanies it are preparatory for the eschatological arrival of the Spirit. (Stephen Richard Turley, The Ritualized Revelation of the Messianic Age: Washings and Meals in Galatians and 1 Corinthians [Library of New Testament Studies 544; London: T&T Clark, 2018], 90-91)