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John the
Baptist
By John A. Tvedtnes
[Supplement to Gospel Doctrine New Testament
lesson 4]
Joseph Smith taught that “The Lord promised
Zacharias that he should have a son who was a descendant of
Aaron, the Lord having promised that the priesthood should continue
with Aaron and his seed throughout their generations. Zacharias
was a priest of God, and officiating in the Temple, and John
was a priest after his father, and held the keys of the Aaronic
Priesthood, and was called of God to preach the Gospel of the
kingdom of God. The Jews, as a nation, having departed from
the law of God and the Gospel of the Lord, prepared the way
for transferring it to the Gentiles” (History of the Church
5:256; see also D&C 84:27).
The prophet also taught that:
John, at that time, was
the only legal administrator in the affairs of the kingdom
there was then on the earth, and holding the keys of power.
The Jews had to obey his instructions or be damned, by their
own law; and Christ Himself fulfilled all righteousness in
becoming obedient to the law which he had given to Moses on
the mount, and thereby magnified it and made it honorable,
instead of destroying it.
The son
of Zacharias wrested the keys, the kingdom, the power, the glory
from the Jews, by the holy anointing and decree of heaven...
John was a priest after his father, and held the keys of the
Aaronic Priesthood, and was called of God to preach the Gospel
of the kingdom of God… John was a priest after the order
of Aaron, and had the keys of that priesthood” (History
of the Church 5:256-8).
In a discourse delivered on 23 July 1843, the
prophet said that “John held the Aaronic Priesthood, and
was a legal administrator, and the forerunner of Christ, and
came to prepare the way before him... The Levitical Priesthood
is forever hereditary — fixed on the head of Aaron and
his sons forever, and was in active operation down to Zacharias
the father of John. Zacharias would have had no child had not
God given him a son. He sent his angel to declare unto Zacharias
that his wife Elizabeth should bear him a son, whose name was
to be called John. The keys of the Aaronic Priesthood were committed
unto him.”1
From a revelation on the priesthood, we learn
that only the firstborn line of Aaron “holds the right
of the presidency over this [Aaronic] priesthood, and the keys
or authority of the same” (D&C 68:17) and that this
constituted the office of bishop, which only a firstborn descendant
of Aaron or a high priest after the order of Melchizedek could
hold (D&C 68:14-21; D&C 107:13-17, 68-76).
Yet, from the New Testament, we learn that the
Jews of John’s day had a high priest named Annas, who
was succeeded by his son-in-law Caiaphas. It seems, then, that
John held the keys of the Aaronic priesthood and that those
recognized as claiming the office of high priest after the Aaronic
order were not of the firstborn line of Aaron (see the verbiage
in Luke 3:2.
How could this happen?
To understand, we must look at the history of
the office of high priest in the few centuries preceding John’s
birth and mission. The principal sources are the Old Testament;
Josephus, a late first-century A.D. Jewish historian and priest;
and other early Jewish sources, notably the books of the Maccabees
and other books of the Apocrypha.
We learn that the firstborn priestly line descending
from Aaron has been interrupted at least twice. The first time
was when the high priest Eli declined to action against his
two wicked sons and was told by young Samuel that the priesthood
would be removed from his family and transferred to a righteous
priest. Thus, the office of high priest was transferred from
the line of Aaron’s son Eleazar to that of another of
his sons, Ithamar2. By the time of Solomon, it was returned to
the line of Eleazar in the person of Zadok, the high priest
who presided at the temple in Jerusalem.
The second major interruption in the priesthood
line was when the high priest Onias III, a descendant of Aaron,
was deposed in 175 B.C. and died three years later. He was succeeded
by his nephew Jason, who was deposed in 172 B.C. by one Menelaus,
whose ancestry is unknown, though some believe he was not even
of the tribe of Levi.
It was a time when the Jews were pawns in the
political struggle between the Seleucids of Syria and the Ptolemys
of Egypt, both descended from generals who had served under
Alexander the Great when he conquered the known world. Jewish
high priests were appointed by civil rulers.
One of the Seleucid kings, Antiochus IV Epiphanes,
took special pains to subdue the Jews. He forbade circumcision
and practice of the faith, under penalty of death, and desecrated
the sacrificial altar by the offering of swine’s flesh.
A priest named Mattathias, son of Hasmon, accompanied by his
four sons, led a revolt against the Seleucids and an independent
Jewish kingdom soon arose.
One of Mattathias’s sons, Judas, rededicated
the temple in 165 B.C. and other family members established
themselves in the offices of king and high priest3. A line of
Hasmonaeans remained high priests under the Romans and Herod
the Great, while the firstborn sons of Aaron became lost to
history until the rise of John the Baptist.
An early text preserved by the Mandaeans, who
claim to be descendants of the disciples of John the Baptist
(whom they call by his Arabic name Yahya), sheds light on his
priestly role. Called Haran Gawaitha, the text says of John
that “when he was seven years old, [the angel] Anush cUthra
came and wrote the ABC (a ba ga) for him, until when he was
twenty-two years old, he had learnt all the priestly-craft (nasirutha).4”
According to another Mandaean text, John was
taken away as a child by uthras (angels) to be raised to the
age of 22. There, “They clothed me with vestures of glory
and veiled me with cloud-veils. They wound round me a girdle,
of [living] water a girdle, which shone beyond measure and glistened.
They set me within a cloud, a cloud of splendour, and in the
seventh hour of a Sunday they brought me to the Jerusalem region.5”
The investiture in priestly clothing resembles
the account in Testament of Levi 8:2-10, in which the Baptist’s
ancestor tells of being visited by seven angels who washed,
anointed, and dressed him in priestly robes, ordaining him to
be a priest.6
The idea that at a young age John the Baptist
was visited by one or more angels who ordained and trained him
in the priesthood is in general agreement with D&C 84:28,
where we read that John “was baptized while he was yet
in his childhood, and was ordained by the angel of God at the
time he was eight days old.”
An extract from the Life of John, written by
the early Christian bishop Serapion (died 211), indicates that
John the Baptist was orphaned at an early age by the death of
his parents Zacharias and Elizabeth. Distraught at learning
of the death of her cousin Elizabeth, Jesus’ mother Mary
wanted to bring John to live with her family in Egypt.
But the boy Jesus told her, “This is not
the will of my Father who is in the heavens. He [John] shall
remain in the wilderness till the day of his showing unto Israel.
Instead of a desert full of wild beasts, he will walk in a desert
full of angels and prophets, as if they were multitudes of people.
Here is also Gabriel, the head of the angels, whom I have appointed
to protect him and to grant to him power from heaven.7”
Even the Muslim Qur’an 19:12 has God saying
that he had endowed John the Baptist with wisdom while yet a
child and gave him the heavenly book.
On 15 May 1829, John the Baptist appeared to
Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery on the banks of the Susquehanna
River in Pennsylvania and ordained them, saying, “Upon
you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah I confer the
Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering
of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by
immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be
taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer
again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness” (D&C
13:1; 27:7-8; Joseph Smith — History 1:69-72).
Oliver Cowdery recalled John’s words with
a slight variation: “‘Upon you my fellow servants,
in the name of Messiah, I confer this Priesthood and this authority,
which remain upon earth, that the sons of Levi may yet offer
an offering unto the Lord in righteousness!’” By
use of the word “until,” Joseph’s version
has suggested to some that the Aaronic priesthood will one day
cease, while Oliver’s words make the restoration of that
priesthood necessary to the offering of righteous sacrifice
by the Levites. This latter view corresponds to the Old Testament
passage that John was citing.
The source of the Baptist's verbiage, which
is Malachi 3:3-4, reads, “And he shall sit as a refiner
and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi,
and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto
the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering
of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the
days of old, and as in former years.” The verbiage of
verse 3 is also found in D&C 128:24, which speaks of building
the temple and of having a book with the names of those for
whom baptisms were performed vicariously. (Compare this with
the “book of remembrance” in Malachi 3:16 and mention
of the temple in Malachi 3:1.)
To me, it is fascinating that John the Baptist should cite part
of this passage when giving keys to Joseph Smith and Oliver
Cowdery, especially when one considers that verse 1 (“I
will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before
me”) is paralleled by John the Baptist as a forerunner
in Matthew 3:1-3 (the name Malachi means “my messenger”
using the Hebrew term often rendered “angel”8). Verse
10 of Malachi 3 speaks of tithing, which was given to the Levites
(Numbers 18:24-26; Nehemiah 10:37-38), of whom John the Baptist
was one.
For additional material relating to this lesson, see:
For an introduction to the books of the New Testament and in-depth
discussions of each verse in the New Testament, see Kevin L.
Barney (ed.), John H. Jenkins, and John A. Tvedtnes, “Footnotes
to the New Testament for Latter-day Saints,” go to: http://feastupontheword.org/Site:NTFootnotes
1 Joseph Fielding Smith, ed., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1979), 318-9, citing a discourse from a manuscript in the Church Historian's Office.
2 Aaron's two eldest sons sinned and died childless in the tabernacle (Numbers 3:4), so Eleazar was the eldest of the remaining sons and was made high priest by Moses (Numbers 20:25-28; Deuteronomy 10:6). The Lord promised that Phinhas, the son of Eleazar would bear an “everlasting priesthood” (Numbers 25:11-13).
3 Meanwhile, Onias IV, son of Onias III, fled to Egypt, where he led exiled Jews in the building of the Jewish temple at Leontopolis.
4 E. S. Drower, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (photomechanical reprint, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962), 4.
5 G. R. S. Mead, The Gnostic John the Baptizer: Selections from the Mandaean John-Book (London: John M. Watkins, 1924), 57-8.
6 The passage reads: “And I saw seven men in white clothing, who were saying to me, “Arise, put on the vestments of the priesthood, the crown of righteousness, the oracle of understanding, the robe of truth, the breastplate of faith, the miter for the head, and the apron for prophetic power.” Each carried one of these and put them on me and said, “From now on be a priest, you and all your posterity.” The first anointed me with holy oil and gave me a staff. The second washed me with pure water, fed me by hand with bread and holy wine, and put on me a holy and glorious vestment. The third put on me something made of linen, like an ephod. The fourth placed . . . around me a girdle which was like purple. The fifth gave me a branch of rich olive wood. The sixth placed a wreath on my head. The seventh placed the priestly diadem on me and filled my hands with incense, in order that I might serve as priest for the Lord God.” James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), 1:791.
7
Wilhelm Schneemelcher (translator R. McL. Wilson), New Testament Apocrypha (revision, Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 1:468.
8 Joseph Smith was aware of the connection, as we learn from one of his discourses recorded in History of the Church 4:211-212.
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