James McGrath

Dr. James F. McGrath is the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University in the United States. He is the author of Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist, and John of History, Baptist of Faith: The Quest for the Historical Baptizer. Both will be published by Eerdmans this year

Sunday

James McGrath

The enigma of John the Baptist

From our UK edition

You’ve seen him in pictures and maybe also on TV. Dressed in rags, eating bugs, shouting angrily at people. You understood why eventually he was locked up and died in prison. You never looked closely at him. Why would you spend your time on someone like that? For Christians, John remains something of a puzzle, even 2,000 years on The fact that I could equally be talking about a homeless person in your city, or John the Baptist as most people imagine him, might not surprise you – but it should. The New Testament records that John’s followers could be found in places like Ephesus in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and Alexandria in Egypt, roughly 600 miles away from Jerusalem in either direction (Acts 18:24-25; 19:1-3).

Sunday

James McGrath

The mystery of the Mandaeans, the gnostic sect that worships John the Baptist

From our UK edition

Gnosticism – the belief that the creation of the material world was a mistake, and the creator deity a bungling lesser entity distinct from the supreme God – has been vigorously opposed by both Jews and Christians down the centuries. Yet even when censured, the gnostics' views retained a certain appeal. They said that human beings have a spark of light from above and, with the right preparation for the journey, can hope to ascend beyond this broken material prison to the celestial realm of light. We can see the impact of that viewpoint in popular thought about the afterlife, even among those who reject Gnosticism's other teachings as heresy. Remarkably, in a troubled part of the Middle East and elsewhere throughout the world, a small gnostic religious group endures to this very day.