The Baptizing Activity of Jesus Himself
(John 3.22, 26; 4.1-2)
It is a curious fact that the editor responsible for
4.2 (the disclaimer that Jesus actually did not baptize people, but left it to
his disciples) left 3.22, 26 standing without comment. How far does 3.22-30
rest on tradition and how far does the evangelist expand the tradition as in
1.29-34? Verses 27-30 may be assigned to the process of Johannization, and
within v. 26 ‘to whom you bore witness’ belongs to this process. What of vv.
22-26?
These verses describe an overlap of ministries between
the Baptist and Jesus, clearly before the former’s imprisonment (v. 24). It
seems highly improbable that at v. 23 the evangelist has invented Aenon and
Salem (whose exact location is difficult to determine today). Did he invent the
overlap of ministries as a background to a further witness from the Baptist?
The more we are prepared to accept a polemic in the Fourth Gospel against a
John the Baptist movement, the less likely seems the inventing of a statement
that Jesus baptized as the Baptist had. It would run the risk of giving the
impression that Jesus had copied the Baptist.
These references in Jn 3.22, 26; 4.1 suggest, then,
that Jesus was making disciples and baptizing those who responded, and all this
while the Baptist was still active and before he was imprisoned. There is no
mention of this at all in Mark, according to whom Jesus began his ministry after
the Baptist’s imprisonment and in Galilee, and not once does Mark
mention Jesus’ practice of baptizing. Does this mean that the move to Galilee
coincided with Jesus’ giving up the practice of baptism? Had baptism come to
have too much of the Baptist’s message associated with it (Escaping the wrath
to come)? Had it come to have a connotation of separating those who received it
from the rest of Israel and thus contributing to a ’separtist’ movement? Sadly,
the paucity of evidence does not permit definitive answers. We certainly have
to steer a middle course between seeing it merely as a continuation of John the
Baptist’s baptism and seeing it as Christian baptism. (The evangelists’s
comment at 7.39 rules out the latter and prevents Jesus’ baptizing being seen
as a fulfilment of 1.33.)
Whatever the uncertainties that surround the assessment
of the texts under discussion, scholars writing on Jesus ought to take them
into consideration, while on the theme of Christian baptism the fact that Jesus
had at one stage baptized is probably one of the clues that help
explain why the earliest Christians in Jerusalem adopted baptism from the
start. (John E. Morgan-Wynne, “References to Baptism in the Fourth Gospel,” in Baptism,
the New Testament and the Church: Historical and Contemporary Studies in Honour
of R.E.O. White, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Anthony R. Cross [Journal
for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 171; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1999], 120-21)
