The eleventh passage of the Sefer Yeshua is based on Mt 11:2, Lk 7:20 (John sends his apostles to Yeshua to question him); Mt 11:6, Lk 7:23 (‘fortunate is the one who isn’t scandalised’), Lk 10:23 (‘his eyes see’). The likely source of the words in both Mt and Lk is the theorised Q-gospel.
11. 1Yeshua was speaking to the people about false teachers and their teachings, ones who would lead people away from the kingdom of God, 2when two of Yochanan’s emissaries approached him and said, ‘Teacher, then what do you say of our Master, Yochanan?’
3Now, they had spoken like this to him, because it was not widely known that Yeshua had once been a Nazorayyan – a follower of the Immerser.
4So Yeshua considered carefully, and answered them, saying, ‘How fortunate is he who isn’t scandalised by my words! Because his eyes see, and his ears hear.’
Overview
This passage commences a short section of sayings in the Sefer Yeshua about true and false teachers. It begins with Yeshua’s views on Yochanan the Immerser (‘John the Baptist’), who was a teacher and a prophet in his own right. He had his own followers (or ‘disciples’), and his own emissaries (or ‘apostles’). In SY passage 11, Yeshua is questioned by two of Yochanan’s emissaries. The midrash contextualises the conversation as being part of a wider commentary on the teachings of others. In the style and manner of a Jewish prophet, he may have been pointing out the faults and dangers of certain other religious teachers. So we can surmise that, rather apprehensively, Yochanan’s followers ask Yeshua what he thinks of their own master.
They are pleasantly surprised to hear that Yeshua has not a bad word to say about Yochanan – “How fortunate is the one who is not offended by me!” We can surmise that Yeshua had not merely been immersed by Yochanan; he had actually been a disciple of Yochanan, and displays the respect that a student would have for his master.
Yeshua says that Yochanan’s “eyes see, and his ears hear”. This is the Jewish way of saying that Yochanan fully understands and appreciates what God is trying to convey in what Yeshua is teaching. Yeshua is implying that, because Yochanan does have this understanding of God’s Message, he doesn’t feel compelled to speak against him.
Editorial Notes 1: Elijah and the one who is to come
In the two gospel sections this SY passage is based on (Mt 11:2-6 & Lk 7:19-23), John’s disciples question Jesus, asking him if he is ‘the one who is to come, or should they wait for another’ (this scenario is replicated at the end of SY passage 12). In the gospels, Jesus’s response is that he has been performing many miracles, with the unspoken inference that yes, he is ‘the one who is to come’.
The emphasis in the verses from Matthew and Luke is on confirming that Jesus is the ‘Christ’, supposedly proved by the great plethora of miracles he is performing; in the Sefer Yeshua, the emphasis is instead on Yeshua’s opinion of Yochanan the Immerser, because Yochanan was a prophet in his own right.
In Pharisaic and rabbinic theology, there is a belief that the prophet Elijah himself will physically return from heaven to announce the imminent coming of the messiah (in spite of the biblical Yahwist belief that no human being can return from heaven, eg Job 14:10-12). Because of this rabbinic belief, Christians therefore believe that the sole purpose of John the Baptist was merely to announce the coming of ‘Christ’, and that ‘Christ’ was greater than John. However, this belief that Elijah will physically return from heaven comes from the traditions of the Oral Law, and is not found anywhere in the Hebrew Bible.
The biblical purpose of a prophet like Elijah, is to warn people of an imminent tribulation (Mal 4:5, ‘the Day of YHVH‘), not to announce the coming of a messiah. The arrival of a prophet like Elijah is therefore something to be worried about, not eagerly welcomed (as it is in the rabbinic community).
Elijah is not returning from heaven; a realistic interpretation of Malachi 3:23 (Xtian bibles Mal 4:5) is that a prophet will come who will preach in the spirit of Elijah (i.e. this prophet’s style of preaching will be like that of Elijah), not that Elijah will come from heaven back to earth. After all, Yeshua personally believed that Yochanan was the promised prophet like Elijah (Mk 9:13, Mt 11:14) – he would not have believed such a thing if the interpretation of Mal 4:5 should be that Elijah himself was returning in person.
Editorial Notes 2: ‘No one is greater than Yochanan’
Furthermore, it is self-evident that Yeshua himself believed that no one was greater than Yochanan (Mt 11:11, Lk 7:28), and that he was following in Yochanan’s footsteps (suggested by Mt 10:24; if Yeshua had indeed been a disciple of Yochanan, then his saying of, ‘a disciple is not greater than his master’ would naturally apply to his own relationship to Yochanan as well). However, the author of Matthew recognised the danger of portraying John as greater than Jesus, so he has to have Jesus say, “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”, thus ensuring that John is relegated to the lowest possible position in God’s creation (ostensibly because John isn’t sure of who Jesus is – that is, he was unable to recognise the messiah). Personally, I really don’t think that Yeshua, in reality, would have expressed such a negative view of his mentor – there is a suspicious inconsistency in how the gospels portray Jesus’s view of John.
An alternative view by some commentators (eg Bock, Stein) is that the reference to ’the least in the kingdom’ is an oblique reference to himself, being the younger of the two in the relationship (the student is the least or ’younger one’ to his master), but that this ’least’ or ’younger’ person is still greater than John. I am not convinced by this, since it would imply a negation of Yeshua’s view that ’the disciple is not greater than his master’.
In the gospel-verses which this passage is based on, the disciples of John do not ask specifically if Jesus is the messiah; they simply ask if he is ‘the one who is to come’ (they do not even clarify who this ‘one’ is supposed to be); it is Matthew’s own narrative that mentions ‘Christ’ (Mt 11:2), and Luke doesn’t mention ‘Christ’ at all, calling him only ‘Lord’.
This makes me think that the likeliest scenario is that Yochanan was told by God that a prophet would be chosen to succeed him, in order to carry on his work. This would have been a great comfort and consolation to Yochanan, who was facing prison and death. So I think that Yochanan sent two of his emissaries to ascertain whether Yeshua was indeed this prophet that God promised would succeed him, rather than if he was the messiah.
Did Yochanan personally know Yeshua?
The Gospel of Luke makes out Jesus and John to be related; the other gospels do not mention such a connection. Luke’s gospel suggests that they therefore knew each other because they were cousins. However, the questions of John’s disciples suggest that John did not know Jesus.
Most people are not aware that the historical Yochanan had a ministry in his own right; he had his own followers and emissaries (‘disciples’ and ‘apostles’). The Mandaean sect of Iraq have a tradition which says that Yochanan’s followers called themselves ‘Nazorayyans’ (alternatively spelt Nasoraeans), which helps explain the wording on Yeshua’s cross (Iesous ho Nazoraios, Jesus the Nazorayyan, not Iesous ho Nazarenos, Jesus the Nazarene).
It‘s possible that some of Yochanan‘s followers joined the Zealots to take revenge for their master‘s execution, and that consequently the term ‘Nazorayyan‘ evolved to become synonymous with ‘Zealot‘, and that‘s why it was written at the head of Yeshua‘s cross. If this is the case, it may explain why Yeshua was reluctant to make people aware that he himself had been a Nazorayyan; in the gospels, he neither confirms nor denies that he was once a follower of Yochanan.
If Yeshua had genuinely been a follower of Yochanan, then Yeshua would obviously have known who Yochanan was, but Yeshua would just have been one of thousands of followers, and so in all likelihood, Yochanan did not know Yeshua personally. The question posed by Yochanan’s followers suggests that he did not know who Yeshua was, which in turn suggests that Yeshua’s immersion (‘baptism’) was uneventful, at least in Yochanan’s eyes.
According to Josephus, Yochanan had a ministry of performing regular immersions – his followers did not just have one single immersion, but performed regular, purificatory immersions as a sign of repentance (just as Jews of that time had to immerse themselves every single time they visited the Temple, not just once). As a follower of Yochanan, we can therefore assume that Yeshua also had multiple immersions at Yochanan’s hands.
The historically verifiable purpose of Yochanan’s immersions is why the gospels have a problem with Jesus being baptised. Since early Gentile Christians believed that Jesus was sinless and perfect, but were also aware that John’s baptism was specifically as a sign of repentance from sin (Mt 3:6), they somehow needed to put words into John’s mouth that suggested baptism wasn’t necessary for Jesus (“I need to be baptised by you, and yet you come to me?” Mt 3:14). Jesus then gives the strangest and most peculiar explanation – that the baptism is simply “to fulfil all righteousness” (that it was only to show that Jesus was following all the rules and protocols of Judaism). Elsewhere, John doesn’t know who Jesus is, but John’s words at his baptism suggest that he does – both premises cannot be correct; one had to be made up for purely theological reasons.
The overall likelihood that Yochanan didn’t know who Yeshua was, suggests to me that this conversation at the time of immersion never took place, and was made up by the gospel writers to explain why a sinless Jesus needed to be baptised (when your beliefs grate against known facts you cannot avoid, just make something up).
False teachers
During the late Second Temple Period in which Yeshua’s ministry was set, there were many teachers who preached their messages of apocalyptic doom in the Temple at festival times. They were much like modern preachers whose only goal is to fill their pockets with money from their followers by frightening them. Some teachers, like the Essenes, were preaching salvation only for the chosen few; others may have been preaching messages which took people away from the ideals of the Kingdom of God, rather than encourage people to embrace them.
‘He who is not scandalised by my words’
We can surmise from Yeshua’s response to Yochanan’s followers, that if Yochanan was not ‘scandalised’ by Yeshua’s words, logic suggests there must have been those who would have been scandalised by what Yeshua was regularly saying in his sermons; therefore, that Yeshua may have been previously speaking about what he thought of various teachers.
The Greek verb in Mt 11:6 and Lk 7:23 is σκανδαλίζω skandalizó, which literally means, ‘to cause to stumble’, and in a passive sense means to be shocked or be offended by someone, or to be caused to become indignant by what someone is saying (‘blessed is he who is not offended by me’). The unrecorded implication is that, in what Yeshua has previously been saying about various religious teachers, he has been causing these teachers to become indignant at his ministry, or to be offended by his words.
When asked about Yochanan, Yeshua implies that Yochanan will not be offended by him. What’s more, the underlying tone in what he goes on to say, suggests to me that Yeshua has great respect for Yochanan.
‘Eyes to see, and ears to hear’
This phrase is a biblical quote, which came to mean that someone not only understands what is being told to them, but also takes on board what it means (it seems to have been one of Yeshua’s favourite biblical metaphors). Dt 29:4 says, “yet until this day, YHVH has not given you a mind to understand, nor eyes to see, or ears to hear.” Anyone in Yeshua’s audience who knew Torah well would have recognised this saying, which Yeshua alludes to in all three synoptic gospels (eg Mk 8:18, Mt 13:15-16, Lk 8:8).
Conclusions
The deeper you go into exploring Yeshua’s and Yochanan’s relationship, the more inconsistencies you find in the gospels. Either he respected Yochanan (“no one born of woman is greater than John”), or he didn’t (“the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he”). Either Yochanan knew who Yeshua was (eg with John recognising Jesus at baptism), or he didn’t (thus necessitating sending his disciples to ascertain who he is).
I suspect that early Gentile Christians were faced with the fact of Yeshua being a disciple of Yochanan (which must have been widely suspected), but that this didn’t fit in with their messianic beliefs about Yeshua (that he was beneath no one). Once you remove all the strange inconsistencies in the overall story, what is left must be the truth: that Yeshua was once a follower of Yochanan, but that Yochanan didn’t know Yeshua personally; that they weren’t cousins, and that Yeshua retained a great respect for Yochanan, even after Yochanan’s death.