Month: September 2024

Week 37  Matthew 3

John is called The Baptist because he baptized people.
I was wondering if baptism was a brand new development or if it was an already-known practice.
It’s possible that baptism was one of the things that had developed in the long years between Malachi & Matthew (I do know that a lot of things start showing up – almost like out of thin-air – as soon as I start reading the NT).
Anyway I remember that the books of Moses have instructions & regulations about ceremonial washing. That’s a bit different from John’s baptism – in the NT John actually took people into the Jordan River (where they were maybe submerged in the water).
I checked a word book to find where the OT mentioned baptism. I found baptism & Baptist & baptize & baptized are used in Matthew (never in the OT). Baptizes is used once in John. Baptizing in Matthew 28. None of the words are used in the OT. And I don’t really think the idea is either.
That leaves me with two choices: a) baptism started to be practiced in the long interval between Malachi & Matthew or b) John the Baptist invented baptism as a brand new thing.
Personally I like b) (it’s pretty nice to think of John as the Founder & Originator of Baptism). But I don’t think that I legitimately can because it’s possible that baptism somehow evolved during The Big Silence between the OT & NT – and that I just don’t know about it.

Week 37  Matthew 2

Starting to read the NT I get a reminder of the big information gap between Malachi & Matthew.
In Matthew 2 foreign astrologers arrive in Jerusalem and ask King Herod: where is the newborn king of the Jews?
Herod had no idea. But he’d heard rumours about a mysterious hero called The Messiah that Jewish people talked about. Herod called in Jewish religious specialists: where did the prophets say the Messiah would be born?’ (he didn’t ask where is the newborn king of the Jews?)
The religious leaders quoted Micah (even though Micah said nothing about The Messiah): out of you (Bethlehem Ephrathah) will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel. 
That’s because over the centuries the reputation  of Micah’s ruler-over-Israel had been elaborated. He’d been enlarged & transformed into a figure that Jewish people called The Messiah. Herod had heard about the mysterious and – for him – worrisome Messiah and he knew enough to ask where he’d be born. (The religious teachers didn’t correct Herod…didn’t say “oh, Micah didn’t say anything about a Messiah! He just said ruler-over-Israel”. Because over the years Micah’s ruler-over-Israel had evolved into Matthew’s Messiah.
Anyway…Point #1 is that during the silent years between the OT & NT Micah’s Ruler had been pretty dramatically transformed & enlarged & renamed. He’d become the NT’s Messiah.
And Point #2 is a reminder about how much I’m in-the-dark about several centuries worth of changes that went on in the ancient Near East.

Note: quotes from Matthew 2:2-3 (NLT))