The NLT and the intrusive Baptist
Wayne Leman today draws attention to an insertion in the text of the New Living Translation of John’s Gospel.
I’d like us to reflect on the wording of John 1:6 in the NLT:
God sent a man, John the Baptist
There is a footnote on “the Baptist” noting that the underlying Greek “a man named John.” What is gained in the NLT by adding “the Baptist”? Clarity is gained.
The NLT does it again in 3:23, inserting the words “the Baptist” into the text. Unlike Wayne, I do not think clarity is gained by this insertion. I think that the fourth evangelist has intentionally avoided the “title”, and that its insertion works against John’s emphasis.
I have posted previously on the question of John, and the increasing apparent embarrassment in the gospels about Jesus’ baptism by John. The argument in that post forms part of the backdrop to this. John the evangelist, I think, is well aware of the fame of John the Baptist, and of a continuing circle of John’s disciples who have not come to follow Jesus. (Josephus is a useful additional witness to the continuing fame of John in his own right.) He therefore takes pains to stress the complete subordination of the Baptist’s ministry to Jesus. There is no purpose to John’s baptism except as a preparation for Jesus, and therefore the evangelist avoids any title that might seem to make it a ministry in its own right. Furthermore he portrays Jesus and his disciples administering more baptisms than John and his disciples (4:1-2) – an often neglected verse.
For the fourth evangelist, John is not “the Baptist” but one who baptizes in preparation for Jesus, whose ministry is also a baptizing one, and a more successful one. The NLT’s attempt at clarity is actually a confusion, because it works against the thrust of the original text.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Compelling observations, Doug.
I’d just leave open the possibility that with our “original text” from John, there are two other layers of rhetoric here.
First, the ostensible antisemitism gives clues to a later editor. Here’s how Willis Barnstone unmasks this, for example, as he translates and comments on John 1:6-8 and then 1:19 in The New Covenant, pages 305, 307:
“There was a man set from God.
His name was Yohanan.
He came as a witness in testimony of the light
so that all might believe through him.”
((note Barnstone’s ambiguity of the final pronoun above in English — also in Greek — which gets clarified in the next verse, making John unambiguously subordinate as you suggest Doug))
“He was not the light,
but came to testify about the light.”
((Now v 19))
“And this is the testimony of Yohanan the Dipper when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Yerushalayim to ask him, ‘Who are you?’”
((Now Barnstone’s comment on v 19))
“The Jews. All the people in these scenes are Jews. The appellation ‘Jew’ here and in most places in John has two functions: to distinguish Jews who do not believe Yeshua to be the son of God from those who do; and to cast hatred on and condemn the unbelievers to immediate and eternal punishment at the day of judgment. Such usage of ‘Jew’ cannot reflect initial texts of John but is an anachronism of later interpolaters. The followers of Yeshua were initially few in number among the many sects that made up the Jewish population. All thought themselves Jews–Jews and Christian Jews. Therefore, naming the Jews as a hated community alongside Yeshua and his follower Jews is linguistically unlikely. Such usage reflects the later competitive period of nascent Christianity when the Jews had expelled Christian Jews from the synagogues and when the traditional Jews, in turn, became the vilified enemy.”
For what it’s worth, I’ll add a third layer to (1) your hypothesis that John the author is subordinating John the Baptizer to Jesus; and (2) Barnstone’s suggestion of an interpolator infusing antisemitism at this point. The third layer is the rhetoric of our English translations. You and Barnstone do not go far enough in interpreting all that’s going on here.
John’s gospel, whether your “original text” or Barnstone’s interpolated and then translated text, is full of word play that so far is not well translated for its full rhetorical shock. I’ve gone on far too long here, but let me for now just point to the parallels in John the author’s introduction of the other John (i.e., in 1:6) and Nicodemus in 3:1, with 2:12 - 2:25 as the lead in. The εγενετο ανθρωπος phrase is key. Isn’t John and/or his interpolator making the same kinds of subordinate constrasts between both men and Jesus?
January 7th, 2008 at 12:11 am
[...] at Metacatholic brought up some excellent issues in his post The NLT and the intrusive baptist. The author of John apparently did not see the need for clarity here, and in fact may have had some [...]