Coincidence 2: How Did John the Baptist Know That Jesus Was the Son of God?
The Alleged Coincidence
In the Gospel of John, John the Baptist makes the following declaration about Jesus to a crowd:
I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God. (John 1:32– 34) 1
McGrew points out a puzzling feature of this testimony by the Baptist: “There is no statement here that John the Baptist received a revelation that the one he was waiting for was the Son of God.” 2 She continues: “What he recounts as a personal revelation is that the person on whom the Spirit descends is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. Nothing about being the Son of God.” So how did the Baptist know Jesus was the Son of God?
For McGrew, the answer comes from the Synoptic Gospels. In their accounts of Jesus’s baptism, when the Spirit descends there is a voice from heaven that declares, “This is my Son, the Beloved” (Matt. 3:17). 3 As McGrew explains:
Now John’s words are explained: John the Baptist and all who witnessed the scene at the baptism had reason to think that Jesus was the Son of God because a voice from heaven said that he was the Son of God. If we take it that the events recounted in the other Gospels actually occurred, this explains the words of John the Baptist in the Gospel of John. (Original emphasis)
Thus, by explaining how the Baptist knew Jesus was the Son of God, the Synoptics explain, and thereby coincide with, John.
First Failure: Probably Not a Coincidence
I agree with McGrew that there is an undesigned coincidence here—but only if John’s text originally had the Baptist calling Jesus “the Son of God”. However, there’s a textual variant that makes it likely that McGrew is barking up a tree that isn’t even there. Instead of “Son of God”, the original text of John 1:34 probably said, “Chosen One”. As John P. Meier explains:
Granted the reading “Son of God,” there is no reason why Christian scribes would have changed this thoroughly Johannine phrase to “chosen one of God,” which never occurs again in John’s Gospel or indeed—in this precise form—anywhere else in the NT. . . . Given the totally unparalleled “chosen one of God,” Christian scribes accustomed to the terminology of the Fourth Gospel and to the Synoptic versions of Jesus’ baptism would naturally change eklektos [chosen] to huios [son].” 4
Apparently the editorial board of the updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version agrees, because they’ve chosen the reading “Chosen One”. Obviously, if “Chosen One” is the original reading, then there is no coincidence with the Synoptics’ version of events.
Second Failure: No Evidence for Reliability
But let’s have some fun and assume the text originally said “Son of God”. In that case, I agree with McGrew that the Baptist’s words in John are alluding to the events that are narrated in the Synoptics. But does that mean the two accounts are reliable? That the Baptist really had a revelation about the descending Holy Spirit, that the Spirit really did descend upon Jesus, that a heavenly voice really did declare, “This is my Son”?
No. Although Jesus was almost certainly baptized by John the Baptist, I think the descending Spirit, the heavenly voice, and the Baptist’s speech are later inventions by Christian storytellers. These details are supernatural, making them implausible, and have clear theological purposes, making them suspect. That the Baptist’s speech in John presumes and alludes to the heavenly voice in the Synoptics doesn’t give me a reason to believe both are reliable; instead, it gives me a reason to think that whoever came up with the Baptist’s speech knew the story of the heavenly voice at Jesus’s baptism, and wanted the Baptist to declare that Jesus is the Son of God.
Third Failure: No Evidence for Eyewitness Testimony
McGrew, however, argues that invention cannot explain the coincidence. Explaining the Baptist’s speech as invention “does not explain the omission of the voice from heaven from John the Baptist’s words in John” (original emphasis). According to her, a storyteller who invented the speech would’ve been sure to include the heavenly voice. He’d have realized that, by leaving it out, he’d raise “unnecessary questions”—namely, how does the Baptist know that Jesus is the Son of God?—and miss an opportunity to be “more dramatic and theologically profound”.
These objections, however, seem equally problematic for McGrew’s hypothesis. If the Baptist really gave this speech, shouldn’t we expect him to mention the voice for the same reasons?
For McGrew, the answer is no. She thinks that, if the Baptist’s speech is historical, then “it is not surprising at all” that he doesn’t mention the heavenly voice. “Like most eyewitnesses,” she writes, “John the Baptist does not tell everything. He selects details.” According to her, the Baptist “simply happens to leave out the voice from heaven” because he is so focused on conveying to the crowd “his progressive understanding of who Jesus is” and “how his interior revelations concerning the descent of the Holy Spirit were fulfilled in what he saw at the baptism”.
None of these reasons explains why the Baptist left out the voice; he could have accomplished all those goals while including the voice. However, even if these speculations could explain why the Baptist “simply happens to leave out” the voice from heaven, the same reasons can also explain why a storyteller who invented the speech might have omitted the heavenly voice. Like all storytellers (and eyewitnesses), he selected certain details and omitted others. He too could have decided to focus on the Baptist’s “progressive understanding of who Jesus is” and “how his interior revelations concerning the descent of the Holy Spirit were fulfilled in what he saw at the baptism”. 5
McGrew, then, fails to provide a reason to think the Baptist might omit the voice but that a later storyteller wouldn’t. In fact, McGrew has things backwards. It’s far harder to explain how the Baptist, if he really did hear a voice from heaven, would fail to mention it. After all, a voice from heaven is not the sort of thing someone “simply happens to leave out”! Therefore, it’s far more plausible that a later storyteller omitted the voice.
But even if McGrew could explain why the Baptist omitted the heavenly voice, she’d still have to explain why the Gospel’s author doesn’t mention the voice. According to her, the author either heard the heavenly voice himself or spoke to people who had. By not mentioning the voice anywhere in his account, he is raising the same “unnecessary questions” and missing the same opportunity to be “more dramatic and theologically profound” as an alleged storyteller. And if he can overlook these problems, then surely a later storyteller inventing the speech or passing along oral traditions can overlook them as well.
Conclusion: A Failure in Plain View
This coincidence fails to be evidence for reliable eyewitness testimony. It’s based upon a textual variant that is probably not the original text of John. But even if “Son of God” is original, the coincidence still isn’t evidence of reliability or eyewitness testimony. Baptist’s speech could have been invented by a storyteller who knew the story of Jesus’s baptism, as found in the Synoptics. And the absence of the heavenly voice from the Baptist’s speech provides no reason to think the speech is historical and accurately recorded. Indeed, the absence makes it more likely that the speech was invented.
- Although I usually use the NRSVue for all biblical translations, here I’m using the NRSV. There is a textual variant in this passage that significantly affects McGrew’s coincidence, as I’ll explain later in the post. ↩
- I’m using the Kindle version of McGrew’s book, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (DeWard, 2017), making page numbers useless. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from McGrew in this post come from Chapter I, section “2. How did John the Baptist know that Jesus was the Son of God?”. ↩
- NRSVue. McGrew chose to quote Matthew’s version. Mark and Luke say the voice said, “You are my Son, the Beloved” (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). ↩
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 185n13. ↩
- McGrew also explains the absence of the heavenly voice from the Baptist speech by postulating that the Baptist is giving this speech “about six weeks” after Jesus’s baptism. This is only true if one assumes the Synoptics are correct that Jesus really spent forty days in the desert after his baptism, an event not mentioned in John’s Gospel. But even so, how could someone forget about a voice from heaven, or consider it unimportant, after six weeks? And if the voice might be omitted after six weeks, then surely it might be omitted after 3,120 weeks! (The Gospel of John was likely written sixty years after Jesus’s death.) ↩