JOHN THE BAPTIST is a perennially fascinating figure, and a new book on him, designed for general readers, is always welcome. Josephine Wilkinson has arranged this study in crisp, clear chapters and sections: The Wilderness, Baptism, The Coming One, Jesus the Baptiser, The Kingdom of God, The Death of John the Baptist, “More than a Prophet”, Into the Underworld, and Saint John the Baptist.

This last takes us through to various themes from the Middle Ages and beyond: John and miracles, healings, midsummer, fertility rites, herbs, and mistletoe. Each chapter begins methodically with an overview of the sources. The aim of this book is “to further the study of the historical relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus”, adding to standard research by incorporating the traditions that arose in the early centuries after John and Jesus lived, to show how “various interpretations of Jesus influenced the redefinition and re-evaluation of John the Baptist.” There are 27 widely varied illustrations in colour, a bibliography, and an index.

The book is engagingly written and makes its points well. It may, then, seem churlish to wonder whether it is quite as friendly towards its likely readers as it might be. Wilkinson introduces Q at the start with only a bare explanation, and then, without explanation, adduces it throughout with the standard scholarly device whereby (for example) Q7.19 refers to a Q-saying at Luke 7.19. (Luke is widely believed to have kept closer to Q’s order than Matthew and so provides Q’s hypothetical order; Matthew, closer to Q’s wording.) Multiple attestation to any story or saying dissolves where Matthew and Luke are dependent on Mark.

The book has pages with more than 30 citations from the Bible, Qumran (again, unexplained), and elsewhere, but with no quotations to help the reader. Wilkinson does not air the natural suspicion that John’s Gospel is polemically aimed at diminishing the Baptist and isolating his followers (not least in the Prologue itself, at the trenchant John 1.6-8); nor are the Mandaeans acknowledged as the Baptist’s followers, right through to the present day, and now the victims of a sad and perhaps terminal persecution. Joan Taylor has argued that the “wilderness” of John’s ministry was probably a well-populated riverbank of villages.

The closing Renaissance section is perhaps arbitrary in its choice of material: there is, for instance, nothing on the Baptist’s patronage of Florence or on Domenico Cavlca’s biography, nor on the great mystery of the Madonna of the Rocks. It is slightly strange to read an extended comparison of the Baptist’s treatment in Jacopo da Voragine’s Golden Legend, in its famous translation by Caxton, and in an article in a modern encyclopaedia of saints. The long discussion of the miniature of Philippe d’Orléans does not ask why it flattered him to be depicted as the Baptist.

There is a wealth of information in this book, and much to enjoy. Many readers may find that it helpfully and accessibly fills a gap in their knowledge, and will be grateful for its collection and arrangement of so much evidence.
 

The Revd Robin Griffith-Jones is Master of the Temple Church, in London.

John the Baptist: His life and afterlife
Josephine Wilkinson
Amberley £20
(978-1-4456-9896-0)
Church Times Bookshop £18