Jesus had many followers. But who did Jesus follow?
For many historians today, the answer is obvious: he was a follower of John the Baptist. But upon a surface reading of the gospels, this point is far from clear.
Not only did the shaggy-haired prophet adopt a very different lifestyle to Jesus, the Gospels always portray John as inferior to him. To think that Jesus was first of all a disciple of John seems to get their order of importance the wrong way round.
So why are many historians convinced that Jesus was a follower – even disciple – of John? In this piece, I want to untangle the knotty question of their relationship.
a. Similar Teachings & Practices
In his recent popular-level biography of John the Baptist, Christmaker, James McGrath paints Jesus as deriving much of his teaching, praxis and vision from John.
McGrath appeals to a host of ways in which Jesus may have been influenced by John:
They shared the same eschatological message: Repent, the Kingdom is near!
Their disciples may have prayed in a similar fashion. This is indicated by one place Jesus’ disciples come to him and ask him to teach them to pray, as John taught his disciples (Lk. 11:1-4).
They were both ‘rebellious’ anti-establishment figures. John offered forgiveness outside of the Temple cult; Jesus did the same and prophesied its destruction.
Jesus saw himself calling fishers of men and John is remembered as teaching the same.
John is said to have taught that people could not rely upon their Jewish ancestry for salvation; the very same idea is found in Jesus and comes through in Paul.
John taught in biting, pithy sayings and parables, and Jesus did the same.
John’s movement was known as ‘The Way’, the same phrase used of Christians.
I think it is historically plausible that Jesus did pick up on certain traits from John.1 Yet I must confess to being sceptical of the more ‘maximalist’ vision of this influence McGrath presents. My reasons for doubt are mostly methodological.
First, McGrath is reliant for some of these parallels on the Mandaean Book of John, the work of a second century gnostic-group which revered the Baptiser. McGrath thinks that this work can be mined for information from John – for example, John’s claim to be a ‘fisher of men’, which then was taken up by Jesus. I am highly suspicious that this late text can deliver what McGrath claims.
Secondly, some of McGrath’s parallels are highly imaginative. For instance, McGrath claims that John’s movement “seems” to have been known as “The Way,” but he offers no evidence for this position. We also have no good evidence that John taught in parables, or that the Lord’s prayer was inspired by John’s wilderness experience.
The third reason for doubt is that many of these parallels do not necessarily betray a genetic connection. Jesus was not the only first century Jew who believed that the Kingdom of God was near. Just because they had the same idea, does not mean then that one borrowed it from another. There may be a careful way to argue that Jesus was dependent on John, but I don’t believe that McGrath’s maximalism achieves it.
b. Jesus the Baptiser?
So far, we have amassed a litany of potential parallels between Jesus and John. Yet we have suggested that at least some of these are conjectures, while others could be attributed to a shared milieu, rather than a close relationship between either figure. They do not offer us much in the way of clear data about Jesus and John’s connection.
In my view, a more intriguing insight into their relationship emerges in the Fourth Gospel. In an often overlooked remark, the evangelist tells us that Jesus himself was a baptiser (3:22) and was baptising more than John (4:1) – although curiously, John later clarifies that ‘it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized’ (4:2). We have heard of John the Baptiser – but Jesus the Baptiser? What is going on here?
For some scholars, this line – it was not Jesus himself but his disciples but baptised – is a fantastic example of the principle of embarrassment.2 John had a historical memory that Jesus was a baptiser during his earthly ministry, but he does not want to give the impression that Jesus was simply an imitator of John. He therefore plays it down.3
In this is correct, we have an instance of the Fourth Gospel protesting too much. By revealing that Jesus was a baptiser (but not actually a baptiser), we find a ‘tell’ that Jesus was indeed baptising. On this reading, it is plausible that Jesus had his start in the Baptist’s movement as a baptist himself. The evangelist could not get rid of this memory (which was helpful for his anti-John aims), so he re-interpret it instead.
c. Jesus on John
Another obvious place to look for the Jesus-John connection is their commentary on each other. When we turn to Jesus’ own words on John, we find some evidence which support the idea of Jesus as John’s disciple. Notably, when Jesus is challenged on his own authority in the Temple, he appeals to John’s own divine authority (Mk. 11:30). As Joel Marcus states, this only makes sense if John and Jesus were somehow linked.4
Elsewhere, Jesus has other positive things to say about the baptist. In ‘Q’, he calls him a ‘prophet and more than a prophet’, and in another saying, that that ‘of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist,’ yet goes on to qualify this by saying ‘yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he (Lk. 7:28; Mt. 11:11).
Assuming the latter saying goes back to Jesus, it may suggest that his ministry constituted a break from the baptist’s own ideas. For Jesus, the one who in the Kingdom is (already!) greater than John, yet John may not have seen his own ministry in this way, especially if he viewed his baptism as a sacrament of forgiveness.
Here, we find Jesus recognising John’s authority while also putting him in his place. We might think that this is good evidence that John was not Jesus’ disciple. Yet as Marcus has shown using analogies in the history-of-religions, a disciple or successor will sometimes acknowledge their master’s authority while competing with it.5
d. John on Jesus
So far, we have amassed some indirect evidence that Jesus followed John. But what did John think about Jesus? In a telling remark, John claimed that ‘the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I, and I am not worthy to carry his sandals’ (Mt 3:11).
In the setting of the gospels, this clearly refers to Jesus as the Messiah. Yet did John himself see Jesus in this way? Most scholars think he probably did not, which is betrayed by John’s later question about whether Jesus was the Christ.
Even if John did not believe that Jesus was the Christ, however, it is possible that he saw this ‘one coming after him’ as among his followers, and conceived of Jesus as playing a special role. One intriguing possibility is that John, who styled himself on the prophet Elijah with his unkempt hair and leather belt, came to see Jesus as an ‘Elisha’ figure: his prophetic successor, filled with the Spirit.
Admittedly, this suggestion is speculative. The Elisha-Elijah/Jesus-John parallel is obvious within the gospels, but this does not mean it goes back to the lifetime of the baptist. Yet if John did see Jesus as an Elisha figure, this would constitute further evidence that John may have seen Jesus as both his disciple and even successor.
I am personally sceptical that John saw Jesus as his successor – not only because of the lack of clear evidence, but because many who followed the Baptist did not transfer their allegiance to Jesus. Followers of the baptist continued to revere him independently of Jesus well into the second century. This may lead us to question how direct or glowing an endorsement John provided of Jesus within his own lifetime.
Questioning the Argument
While I think the evidence makes it more likely than not that Jesus started out as a follower in John the Baptist’s orbit, I think we must sound four notes of caution.
The first is that we do not have any direct evidence in which Jesus is called John’s ‘disciple’. Yet admittedly, we might question whether we should expect such a description. The Gospels (particularly John) seem anxious to show Jesus’ superiority to John. Given this is the case, we would not expect to find in them a claim that Jesus was John’s disciple.
The second is that Jesus’ approach differed considerably from John’s. Though both were anti-establishment, their approach was different: John was an ascetic prophet, while Jesus would came ‘eating and drinking.’ This does not rule out Jesus as John’s disciple (a student often does not follow their teacher in every respect), yet it does suggest that Jesus was not imitating John the Baptist through direct imitation.
The third note of caution we have already noted: not everything which Jesus shares with John must derive from John. Some of the ideas and expectations they shared came from their shared milieu. One must be careful by over-attributing Jesus to John.
Finally, there is much that remains speculative about the relationship between these men. Did Jesus stay with John and for how long? What was the nature of John’s influence on Jesus? What did John think of Jesus? Was there a rift between them? Even these basic questions are impossible to answer given the limits of our data.
Jesus as a Follower of John
For some readers of the gospels, it can be strange to think that Jesus himself owed some of his ideas and practises to John. On both ‘Great Man’ and some theological readings of the gospels, Jesus stands as a figure beyond history, who descended like a bolt from the blue. Jesus himself influenced others – but he was influenced by no one.
Yet this view does not hold up. Luke describes that Jesus ‘grew in wisdom and stature’ (2:52) and Jesus emerges from critical study as a figure at home within his Jewish context. As I have suggested here, part of that Jewish context was John. Jesus was initially drawn to John’s ministry, even if his own would take a very different path.
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Further Reading
Academic: Joel Marcus, John the Baptist in History and Theology. Columba, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2018.
Popular: James F. McGrath, Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2024.
For instance, they shared a similar ethical vision. Luke suggest that John taught to share resources, not to extort and to be content with one’s pay (3:11, 13-14).
Here I draw passim from James F. McGrath, Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2024), which I have only as an e-book.
See Joel Marcus, John the Baptist in History and Theology (Columba, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2018), 86-87. Maurice Casey offers a different perspective. He states that John’s idea that Jesus was baptising is ‘so unlikely’ that a later redactor of the text corrected him. Yet to bring this Jesus’ ministry of baptism would arguably have raised more problems than it solved if it was not rooted in memory. See Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 178.
Marcus notes that the indirect nature of the rebuttal and its lack of a strong christological assertion suggest that this saying may go back to Jesus himself. See Marcus, Baptist, 88.
See Marcus, Baptist, 91-96.
For further reading, I would highly recommend Dr. Joan Taylor's book on John the Baptist, for me this is still the best.
If Jesus did start out under John, that makes the baptism in the Jordan even more like a passing of the torch — except in this case, the torch immediately started preaching, multiplying bread, and ignoring fasting schedules. No wonder the Gospel writers scramble to flip the hierarchy. Nothing unsettles the myth of the lone, heaven-sent teacher like remembering he once stood in someone else’s line, waiting for his turn in the water.