John the Baptist

John the Baptist, like Jesus after him, was a prophetic figure who urgently sought to prepare his fellow Jews for the imminent Day of Judgment, which would usher in the reign of God (see also Heavenly Judgment). Whereas the Torah prescribes ritual immersion to cleanse oneself of ritual, not moral, impurity, John the Baptist transformed the practice of ritual immersion into a “baptism” of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3) in preparation for final judgment. In an effort to appeal to his educated Roman readers, Josephus presents John as a prophetic teacher of virtue.

Each of the four Gospels of the New Testament recounts that John baptized Jesus. This suggests that initially Jesus was a follower of John the Baptist. Each of the four Gospels also includes John the Baptist’s prediction of Jesus’ coming, an important element in the canonical Gospels’ presentations of Jesus as the Messiah and John as his harbinger. John’s significance is most developed in the Gospel of Luke, wherein he is explicitly likened to the prophet Elijah (Luke 1:17), whom God promised would return “to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the LORD” (Malachi 3:23, NJPS).