The article by the same title as this page at the BAS Library provides pros and cons as well as “a way out” of the debate. It is by Otto Betz. Bible Review 6.6 (1990). It is also a great summary of the varying beliefs of the different Essene communities. This page is for our personal use only and is not intended for the public. All italised text was extracted from the article.
A short second article by Betz is at the bottom of this page and provides a good concise summary. That article came from his article linked in the next paragraph.
For Betz’s presentation of John’s life with many links see St. John the Baptist, Jewish prophet and Christian Saint.
Otto Betz (d. 2005) served as a Professor of New Testament at Chicago Theological Seminary from 1962 to 1967. He then taught New Testament and ancient Judaism at the University of Tübingen in Germany from 1967 until his retirement in 1983.
As portrayed in the Gospels, John the Baptist stands at the threshold of the Kingdom. He marks the transition from Judaism to Christianity. Not only is the Gospel picture generally consistent with Josephus, but the four canonical Gospels are themselves in general agreement. In the case of John, there is little room for historical skepticism.
The Gospels portray John as a prophet who came out of the Judean wilderness to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to call for repentance. It seems clear that he had a successful ministry of his own, baptizing with water those who repented.
John’s stature is reflected in the fact that when Antipas is informed of Jesus’ ministry and wondrous deeds, his first thought is that John had been resurrected and had come back to life (Matthew 14:1–2; Mark 6:14–16; Luke 9:7–9).
- The Gospels portray John as the forerunner of Jesus. Jesus himself proclaims John’s stature: “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11; compare Luke 7:28).
- John, Jesus tells the crowd, is “more than a prophet” (Matthew 11:9; Luke 7:26). Indeed, “he is Elijah to come” (Matthew 11:14), the traditional precursor of the Messiah.
- Jesus himself was baptized by John (Matthew 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22).
- It is clear that the populace considered John a true prophet (Matthew 21:26; Mark 11:32; Luke 20:6).
- Years after Jesus’ death, Paul encountered a man in faraway Ephesus (in Asia Minor) who “knew only the baptism of John” (Acts 18:25) John’s movement apparently endured (see Acts 19:3).
Support for John being or having been an Essene:
- The Essenes were thus led to the wilderness by the same scriptural directions that motivated the life and ministry of John. The early Christians understood John as “ ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’ ” (Mark 1:3). This passage from Mark quotes the same words from Isaiah 40:3 that are quoted in the Qumran Manual of Discipline.
- The Qumran settlement and the adjacent caves where the scrolls were found are located in the vicinity of the traditional place of John’s activity near Jericho.
- Luke’s account of John’s birth ends with the astonishing remark: “And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness till the day of his manifestation to Israel” (Luke 1:80).
- Baptism/immersion is the same:
- For John – “outward sign of the reality of repentance and the assurance of God’s forgiveness“(Mark 1:14).
- At Qumran – “In the Manual of Discipline (3:3–8) we read that cleansing of the body must be accompanied by purification of the soul.”
- John may be compared with the most influential man in the Qumran movement, the Teacher of Righteousness. This great anonymous figure announced the events that would come upon the last generation, but the people who “do violence to the covenant” did “not believe” his words (Commentary on Habakkuk 2:2–9).
- Both the Teacher of Righteousness and John the Baptist:
- remained faithful to the laws of purity; they both
- practiced them in a radical, even ascetic, way.
- Both the Teacher of Righteousness and John the Baptist practiced the purification of body and soul in such a strict way.
- The prophetic call for repentance and the apocalyptic expectation of the end of history led to the radicalization and generalization of the priestly laws of purity.
- Believed that the messianic age and the final judgment were soon to come.
- John’s disciples were known to fast (Mark 2:18) and to recite their special prayers (Luke 11:1). These two acts of piety also appear in the Qumran texts.
Support for John NOT being or having been an Essene:
- First, John is never mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been published so far. [written in 1990].
- John is never called an Essene in either the New Testament or in Josephus. The absence of such a reference is especially significant in Josephus, because in both Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War Josephus discusses the Essene sect several times as a Jewish “philosophy” on a par with the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
- Even more significantly, John the Baptist was outspokenly critical of the civil government, which would be uncharacteristic of an Essene.
- the Essenes seem to have withdrawn from public life in order to work out their own salvation. They never developed missionary activity, but preferred simply to wait for those whom God chose to join their community of salvation. John the Baptist, on the other hand, dared to address all the people. He became the incarnation of the divine voice, calling from the desert into the inhabited world: “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness” (John 1:23).
- John did not relegate people to a sacred place in the desert, nor did he incorporate them into a holy community with monastic rules.
There is a way to reconcile the pros and cons.
- there is no clear-cut conflict between the priestly way of life (= Essene) and the prophetic. Both biblical traditions—the priestly one and the prophetic one—influenced the Essenes just as they did John the Baptist.
- [Betz] believe that John grew up as an Essene, probably in the desert settlement at Qumran. Then he heard a special call of God; he became independent of the community—perhaps even more than the Essene prophets described by Josephus.
Betz’s great concluding paragraphs:
But the Essenes also incorporated the traditions of the prophets into their beliefs. The prophet had little if anything to do with the Temple and sacrifice; the prophet tried to accomplish atonement through his personal commitment and effort to change the hearts of his audience. Because the Essenes were a movement of repentance, they adopted the prophetic tradition, despite their leadership of priests. Their Teacher of Righteousness was a priest who acted in a prophetic way.
This was true as well for John the Baptist. He was the son of a priest and practiced the laws of priestly purity in a radical way. But in his ministry for Israel he acted as a prophet, as the Elijah redivivus [come back to life] to announce the coming of the Messiah. In his baptism, both traditions were combined, just as they were in the Essene philosophy: the priestly laws of ritual purity were combined with the prophetic concern for repenting, returning to God and offering oneself to Him. Accordingly, it is reasonable to conclude that John the Baptist was raised in the tradition of the Essenes and may well have lived at Qumran before taking his message to a wider public.
Possible relationship with the Essenes of St. John the Baptist
Extracts below were written by John Strugnell and published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Last Updated: Aug 1, 2024
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls drew attention to the numerous parallels between John’s mission and that of the Essenes, with whom John may have received some of his religious training. Both were priestly in origin, were ascetic, and had intense and, in many respects, similar expectations about the end of the world. But John neither belonged to nor intended to found any organized community, he did not stress study of the Mosaic Law, and his message was more widely directed (to the poor, to sinners) than was that of the Essenes.
Jesus, who was baptized by John, saw in John the last and greatest of the prophets, the one who prepared for the coming of God’s kingdom (Mark 9, Matthew 11, Luke 7), and in many ways his ministry continued and developed John’s. Whether John, who probably expected a divine Son of Man, recognized him in Jesus is not clear, but many of his disciples later followed Jesus.
