In the New Testament, John the Baptist was portrayed as the only person holy enough to be able to baptize Jesus of Nazareth at the inauguration of his ministry. The story (present in all four gospels) has Jesus requesting the ceremony at one of John’s baptism services. John seems to be reticent about performing the rite as he does not believe himself worthy. Jesus convinces him otherwise and shortly thereafter Jesus receives divine blessing as Messiah (in increasingly miraculous ways as each gospel tells is.) John then disappears into the unknown not being mentioned again until he is executed by the tetrarch.

These accounts of the baptism of Jesus along with John’s “origin story” of his pregnant mother meeting an also pregnant Mary represent the entirety of our knowledge about this rather strange man. By all descriptions, he was an itinerate ascetic preacher. He both lived in and survived off of the wilderness eating his signature dish of locusts and honey. His message spread like wildfire at his pop-up services at various spots along the banks of area rivers. One of those drawn to his message was our boy, Jesus of Nazareth.

We don’t know for how long Jesus was a follower of John. We do know though that he subscribed to the message enough to get baptized by him. The new testament has John the Baptist equivocating a bit needing some prodding in order to perform the ceremony. It was at this moment that God spoke to Jesus. This varies as a voice that only Jesus hears (Mark 1:11) to a grand splitting of the sky, descending dove and booming audible voice for all to hear in the other gospels.

As soon as Jesus dried off, he was sent by John to baptize people in areas that John couldn’t get to. At this point, he is a disciple of John. It may have even been in the name of John that he occupied the Temple courtyard and overturned the tables of the money-changers; perhaps leading to John’s arrest. It is shortly after this arrest and later execution of John (possibly up to six months later) that Jesus begins his ministry as we know it.

This is the main points of the story as told by followers of Jesus in the gospels. What did the followers of John have to say? Didnt they all instantly become followers of Jesus. As it turns out, No. They didn’t.

The followers of John continued in decent numbers in parallel to those of Jesus throughout the ensuing two millennia. Today known as Mandaeans, Sabians or Nasoreans, they remain the only “gnostic” church still in existence. At one time they were actually erroneously referred to as St. John’s Christians. As you will soon see, there could not have been a worse way of describing them.

Mandaeans are not Christians. In fact, they view Jesus as a false prophet and deceiver. They revere another man as their chief prophet. That’s right, they follow John the Baptist as the chief and final prophet of their religion. His story is contained in the Mandaean Holy Books (The Mandaean) Book of John as well as in the Ginza Rba.

John’s origin story parallels its counterpart in the New Testament more or less. A messenger informs Zechariah that his wife will give birth. Zeek was shocked by this information as she had been previously believed to have been barren. The mother’s name in both stories is Elizabeth. Another loose parallel is John’s reluctance to baptize Jesus. The New Testament portrays his reluctance to be out of a feeling of inadequacy; lowly John couldn’t possibly be worthy to baptize the holy Son of God. The Mandaean Book of John portrays it in a drastically different manner. John hesitates so Jesus tells John that if he grants him the baptism, he will mention John favorably in his forthcoming “epistle.” John does not want to baptize Jesus into the movement because he sees the Nazarene as being troublesome.

Why does any of this matter? Well, the message that John was preaching (that Jesus apparently subscribed to) seems to differ wildly from the Paul meddled gospel of the New Testament. If the modern Mandaeans are correct, John was preaching a message that would be far closer to the Essenes and early gnostic groups. With Jesus carrying on John’s ministry or even using it as a basis for his own gives us a framework to re-examine his actual words from the Q-source.

It also serves to add yet another contemporary group preaching similar messages using the same characters. We have the Jerusalem Church / Nazarene / Ebionites (?) , the Pauline version of the gospel and its converts and finally what we now call Mandaeans. This is not to mention the various gnostic groups popping up in the late first to early second century, Essenes and so on. The modern Christian view of Christians vs Jews and Romans is wildly over-simplistic and doesn’t not represent the landscape of the faith of the day.