Frederick Baltz

I barely liked this book. Very interesting but infuriatingly bloody-minded.

Frederick Baltz believes that the New Testament 19s Gospel According John is history although he also admits that it is plotted to within an inch of its life and contains spiritual meanings that are either allegorical or almost allegorical (not to mention numerological), but, then, Baltz is evidently a man who likes to have things both ways. The Christian community in Ephesus, where he tells us the Gospel of John was published, knew the true identity of the Beloved Disciple 14the most mysterious figure in the gospel 14but they maintained his anonymity (much as the Essenes, the sect that gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls, hid the identity of their 1CTeacher of Righteousness 1D). Eventually, however, his identity was forgotten and misconstrued. In 1996, Baltz published his first book on this subject, 1CLazarus and the Fourth Gospel, 1D in which he proposed that the Beloved Disciple (B.D.) was Lazarus, contrary to the tradition that he was the Apostle John the son of Zebedee.

I am sympathetic to this interpretation, which has many adherents even if we do not by any means form a majority. Adherents come in many theological and ideological flavors from pious, like Baltz, to liberal, like April DeConnick, to proto-New Age, like Rudolf Steiner. In common, they all perceive that, plot-wise, the Gospel of John drops clues all over the place that the B.D. is Lazarus, but belief in the tradition that he is the Apostle John trumps the obvious literary clues. My agreement with Baltz on this point notwithstanding, I am exasperated by the way he tries to rescue the tradition by reconciling the two views in this 2011 revision his Lazarus theory, 1CThe Mystery of the Beloved Disciple. 1D Essentially, the previous theory is watered down with very tenuous evidence that 1Cthe Beloved Disciple 1D could refer to either or both of two different men, one of whom was Lazarus and the other a close relative of Lazarus who could have been his nephew and who could have been named John and could have substituted for a High Priest on some occasion.

The key piece of evidence seems to be a letter from Bishop Polycrates of Ephesus to Rome in the year 195 in which he described a Christian leader in Ephesus a century earlier who was named John and had been a priest in the Jerusalem Temple and had worn the 1Cpetalon 1D (translated in English as 1Cmitre 1D but it actually suggests an emblem worn on the headdress of the High Priest of the Temple). Polycrates also said that this John was the very one who reclined beside Jesus at the Last Supper (that is, he was the Beloved Disciple).

After criticizing the 1Cconvoluted 1D theory of a fellow Lazarusian named Robert Eisler for having to 1Ccorrect 1D ancient texts so that they support his theory, Baltz proceeds to correct Polycrates testimony by pointing out that after a century of the tradition being handed down, it is possible that the good bishop got some things right and others wrong, mixing up two men. It turns out that Baltz 19s theory that someone named John 14but not the Apostle John 14wrote or rewrote the Gospel of John is based on speculation that has no more basis than the manipulation of Polycrates 19 after-the-fact testimony. The bishop wrote about someone named John who sounds as if he was a priest or High Priest, who became a Christian, and led the Christian community in Ephesus where some think that the Gospel of John was first published. Baltz 19s 1996 theory was that Lazarus was none other than Eleazar ben Boethus, a High Priest. In this earlier theory, Lazarus/Eleazar was also the figures in the gospel referred to cryptically as 1Cthe disciple Jesus loved 1D and 1Cthe other disciple. 1D The reason for this is that 1) the Twelve Apostles were not the only disciples; there were dozens and hundreds who followed Jesus and those whom Jesus loved like family 14such as not only Lazarus but his sisters as well 14were his disciples, too; 2) Lazarus hosts a dinner for Jesus at the beginning of John 12 and 1Cthe disciple Jesus loved 1D appears to be the host of the last supper as well, reclining as he does beside the guest of honor; 3) 1Cthe other disciple 1D has high enough social standing to walk into the trial of Jesus in the Sanhedrin; 4) chapter 21 of the gospel tells us that the beloved disciple and the other disciple are one and the same, although it still does not give him any name.

Baltz has more recently rethought his earlier theory of the identification of the B.D. and decided that Eleazar 19s nephew has to be an alternate or simultaneous candidate. Eleazar had an unnamed nephew who was a priest and could have (emphasis on 1Ccould have 1D) substituted as a High Priest when one was temporarily ritually disqualified. (The nephew could only have been a substitute and not a High Priest because there are lists of known High Priests and Eleazar 19s nephew cannot be anyone on those lists.) Nevertheless, Baltz uses Polycrates 19 late testimony to suppose that the nephew 19s name could have been John. Thus, the Beloved Disciple could have been Eleazar sometimes and his nephew 1CJohn 1D other times, and both of them could have been responsible for the production of the Gospel of John, thus rescuing the 1Caccuracy 1D of the accepted title since at least one of its authors was a John. Eleazar would have provided notes or an early draft and his nephew would have edited and added to it. Thus Baltz has squared the circle by attesting to the indications in the narrative of the gospel that Lazarus is the B.D., but that the attribution of the gospel to someone named John who was also the B.D. is rescued from the charge of biblical errancy. (Baltz has an elastic notion of what saves the Bible from being mistake-ridden; after pointing out his reason for thinking that a factual mistake crept into the Acts of the Apostles for honest reasons 14it was an honest mistake, you see 14Baltz says, 1CThis explanation 26 becomes an additional reason for confidence in the factual integrity of the Acts of the Apostles. 1D Or maybe not.)

It might seem that we are being led down useless paths, but if his conclusions are taken with a grain of salt, Baltz shares some interesting observations along the way. For example, the classic assumption that Lazarus and/or the B.D. were necessarily young is based on such things as that the B.D. 1Coutran 1D Peter to Jesus 19 tomb (John 20:4); but the Greek text actually says that the B.D. 1Cran ahead 1D (proedramen) of Peter, not that he ran faster. Baltz notes that this could mean that the B.D. led the way to the tomb because he knew where it was while Peter, who had been in hiding since Jesus 19 arrest, did not. At John 19:26 we read that the B.D. stood with Jesus 19 mother at the foot of the cross, and presumably he would have stayed on to watch Joseph of Aramathea and Nicodemus take the body and entomb it (19:38-42).

Another good observation is that Jesus 19 1Clove 1D for Lazarus, his sisters, and the B.D. is expressed using different words. 1CPhileo 1D means 1Cto love affectionately 1D as a friend while 1Cagapao 1D means 1Cto love spiritually or divinely. 1D Lazarus tends to get the 1Cphileo 1D treatment when he is mentioned singly (John 11:3), but gets the 1Cagapao 1D treatment when grouped together with his sisters (11:5). The B.D., on the other hand, gets the 1Cagapao 1D treatment singly (13:23). Baltz is right that this could mean something, whether it has to do with a difference in the person or a difference in the context. (After all, 1Cagapao 1D is used with reference to the B.D. after Lazarus has been raised from the dead.)

The author makes another good point. Even though Matthew, Mark, and Luke tend to tell similar stories about Jesus while John is usually the odd man out with a completely different version, sometimes this is not the case. Baltz makes a comparison of the story of the woman who anoints Jesus during a dinner party, and his comparison points up that Luke 19s version arguably has more differences from the other three while John is in agreement with Matthew and Mark on more points than usual; yet John and Luke agree on one point (that the woman anointed Jesus 19 feet) and together disagree with Mark and Matthew (who both say she anointed his head).

Baltz is nothing if not ingenious, and that demands some degree of admiration. For example, he notes that Simon the Leper 14the host in some versions of that anointing story 14could have had something to do with Lazarus, perhaps being a relative. You see, the word for leprosy in Hebrew is 1Ctsara 1D and the place where lepers were pronounced to be clean was called the 1Cmetsora. 1D Now, the word for Egyptian in Hebrew was 1Cmitsry. 1D* Two facts needed to understand the connection are that 1) the family of Eleazar ben Boethus had lived for some time in Egypt and was still considered by some to be Egyptian (and not technically eligible for the High Priesthood), and 2) Hebrew usage has long bred a fondness for sometimes wicked plays on words. Calling someone 1CSimon the Leper 1D instead of 1CSimon the Egyptian 1D is a typical kind of slur in Hebrew. In other words, it might be a stretch, but such slurs can make long stretches. (Baltz gives the example of Simon bar Cochba being redubbed 1CSimon ben Kosiba 1D or 1CSimon, son of the Lie. 1D)

In the end, where I am uncertain of the merits of what Baltz has to say, I do not know whether to trust him. Perhaps unrelated to this 14or not 14is the number of typos of which some are serious. There are a couple of places where incorrect Bible verses are cited (for example, on page 58, John 19:22 ought to be 19:12).

Take Baltz 19 last line in his argument: 1CIf the Beloved Disciple was Eleazar the High Priest, and later the priest John whom tradition also identifies as a High Priest, his office did indeed make him superior in one respect to Peter. 1D The bother with this is that I rather doubt that Jesus put much store in social rankings of this kind. As far as Jesus was concerned, Peter and the B.D. were equals in terms of how they were born if not in how they behaved as disciples.

Finally, I can hardly agree with Baltz negative evaluation of the so-called 1CSecret Gospel of Mark. 1D I tend to consider it authentic (with some quibbles beginning with the title) while he does not. I am more than willing to accept this difference of opinion, but I do believe that Baltz could be more consistent in his: 1CThe Secret Gospel of Mark tends to support what I have claimed in this book, though its value for some revision of the history of Jesus 19 ministry appears non-existent. 1D Thus Baltz wants to have it both ways on many counts. He wants the gospels to be simultaneously historical and allegorical and he wants texts he would otherwise drum out as unreliable to be accepted as evidence if only they support his own theories.

*This is particularly delicious to me, if irrelevant to this review, because I recently read about the history of the pop tune 1CMiserlou, 1D which is based on an old eastern Mediterranean song whose title derives from the Turkish 1CMisirli, 1D which means 1CEgyptian. 1D… (plus d'informations)