How often do you find yourself thinking about what happened to the head of John the Baptist?
If you answered "a lot," then you've come to the right place, because we're about
to explore the untold truth of one of the most important figures of the New Testament.
In the New Testament, the four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles all discuss John the Baptist in
varying levels of detail. All of these texts more or less paint him as a precursor to Jesus
and oftentimes compare him to Old Testament prophets. His baptism of Jesus is usually
marked as the beginning of Jesus' ministry and the Christian era. But the Gospels writers were
also careful to not give John the Baptist too much credit, lest he overshadow Jesus.
John is a forerunner who had, in the words of Jesus himself in the Gospel of Mark,
"come first to restore all things." But it seems that being the herald of someone like Jesus
comes with the added indignity of obscurity, at least within one's own lifetime. That includes
a disgraceful death. And within the Gospel of John, he's even reduced from a towering
prophet to a more humble preacher whose baptism of Jesus isn't even mentioned.
Considering that the events of Jesus and John the Baptist's lives happened about 2,000 years ago,
finding non-Biblical confirmation of their lives can be tricky. But that doesn't mean
that it's completely non-existent. The 1st century Jewish historian Josephus mentions
John in his account of the reign of Herod Antipas of Galilee. During an
account of Herod's marital switch-ups, Josephus mentions "John, that was called the Baptist."
In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus writes that John, quote,
"was a good man" who encouraged the Jewish people to act righteously and thereby garnered a rather
large following. Herod was perhaps thinking about how strongly motivated crowds had
ended the lives of other rulers, so he then had John killed. Critically, Josephus' account doesn't
have much of the same drama of other stories that tell of the end of his life. But he does
note that many Jewish people saw some of Herod's subsequent troubles as a sign of God's judgment,
and also kept alive the tradition of baptism established by John.
While John the Baptist may seem like a rather singular figure,
the truth is that he wasn't the only preacher working in the region at the time,
as Jesus could eventually attest. As it turns out, Jesus, and by extension John, were drawing
upon what were already well-established Jewish traditions of gathering, preaching, and prophecy.
Even when it came to his lifestyle, John the Baptist wasn't entirely alone. He
was well-known for his spiritual discipline, with his desert home,
rough clothing, and a highly restricted diet that consisted of locusts and foraged honey,
as described by the Gospel of Matthew. But that was already an established practice for
a few dedicated Jewish people. Many people were especially focused not just on denying
themselves sensual pleasures and basic needs, but also specifically on fasting and abstaining
from many types of food. For his followers, John's lifestyle may have been extraordinary
compared to many peoples' everyday lives, but it wouldn't have been completely unusual.
The common story often relayed in sermons and Sunday school lessons is that John the
Baptist and Jesus were cousins. But "cousin" is a bit of a tricky term in this case,
as Hebrew didn't really have a word that directly translates to our modern usage.
All we can be sure of is that the Bible says that John's mother Elizabeth
and Jesus' mother Mary were somehow related and thus so were their sons.
Beyond their blood relation, there are deeper similarities between Jesus and John's ministries
and how they were received. John clearly preceded Jesus by some period of time,
considering that Jesus came forth to be baptized by him. In fact,
it could be that Jesus was a follower of John for some time, though that idea remains speculative.
Jesus may have taken some of his cues from John's preaching and also may have snagged
some of John's followers. We know for sure that he paid his respects to John multiple
times in the Gospels. And both men were clearly invested in preaching of a coming
change and the much longed-for Messiah who would liberate the Jewish people.
"Greater than all of us! One whose sandals I am not worthy to carry."
Palestine was an unsettled place at the time of John the Baptist. Local rulers like Herod and his
successors were still allowed to reign, but they did so under the watchful eye of the Roman Empire.
After Herod's death, his kingdom of Judea was split into constituent parts, with some
going to more heavily Jewish areas and others populated primarily
by non-Jewish Gentiles. Roman governors were eventually sent in to manage the region,
often collaborating with Jewish high priests to maintain order and bolster Rome's interests.
It's no wonder then that there was also a fair amount of religious anxiety and competition.
A couple of verses from the Gospel of John hint at a rivalry between Jesus and John the Baptist,
or at least they say that Jesus was gaining more followers than John.
But lest you think that this was the beginning of a knock-down,
drag-out fight between potential religious liberators, it was really nothing like
that. The book John the Baptist in History and Theology suggests that this could be viewed as
more of a good-natured rivalry, or at least one that never boiled over into accusations
of falsehoods. And within the context of the Bible, John is nearly always carefully
framed as a precursor to Jesus who talks glowingly about the former's true divinity.
Though John the Baptist is depicted as an independent preacher, some scholars
think that he may have connections with groups like the Nazirites or Essenes.
The former weren't exactly a cohesive group, but were instead individuals who'd taken vows
of religious observation and abstinence for either a lifetime or for a set period of
time. They were typically marked by their long, uncut hair and abstinence from wine. Many also
lived separately in the desert. All factors seem to link them to John, including a line
in Luke chapter 1 in which an angel tells John's father that his coming son shouldn't drink wine.
But was John part of a wider or at least more organized community? Some believe that he may have
had some connections to the Essenes, who were a group of ascetics, including one particular group
living at Qumran. It's possible that John may have trained with them or taken his cues from their
apocalyptic and baptism-focused beliefs. He may have also been linked to them through his family's
priestly heritage, as some members of the Essenes were themselves Jewish priests. Then again,
John's work also drew in a wider range of people, and considering his use of rivers for baptizing
instead of ritual baths, he may have been at least a little less intensely focused on ritual purity.
Though John the Baptist's focus on baptism was such a big part of his
practice that it became a part of his name, he wasn't exactly an innovator in this area.
Ritualized immersion in water was already part of Jewish tradition. Variations on baptism and
washing were practiced by a variety of different groups and religious sects,
including the Qumran community that may have had links to John.
That said, John's specific teachings around baptism were notably unique. He had a particular
focus on prophecy and a coming apocalypse that was tied to the immersion ritual. For him,
baptism was a highly symbolic representation of someone's contrition ahead of divine judgment.
It was a significant step away from previous conceptions of bathing or
immersion, where ritual purity was the main focus.
But baptism, at least how it was interpreted in John's practice,
wasn't a free ticket into Heaven. The baptized still would've been expected to
keep themselves on the straight and narrow. Moreover, once the apocalypse happened,
they could expect a second baptism of sorts via fire delivered by the Holy Spirit.
"Repent! There's one coming who will baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit."
There's some disagreement among scholarly sources about exactly how John died.
According to Josephus, he was killed for having too many dedicated followers,
which made Herod Antipas rather nervous. Wanting to nip a potential rebellion in the bud,
he reportedly had John imprisoned and then killed. It was a brutal move,
but an understandable one. It's also worth remembering that Herod was operating under Roman
oversight. If he revealed himself as a weak ruler who couldn't control his own people,
then perhaps the imperial overlords would see fit to replace him with someone more to their liking.
The Gospels have more to say about the end of John the Baptist's life. They generally
claim that he was beheaded for calling out the troublesome marriage of Herod Antipas.
Herod had divorced his first wife and married his half-brother's widow Herodias, which was a
violation of Jewish law. In the Gospel of Mark, Herodias uses the opportunity of her husband's
birthday to garner favor with Herod, utilizing her daughter Salome's dancing to get the king
to grant the younger woman any wish she desires. Clearly coached by her mother, Salome asks for
John the Baptist's head and thus the prophet's life is ended in a rather operatic fashion.
"Away!"
A big part of John the Baptist's story is his imprisonment and eventual beheading courtesy of
an order from Herod Antipas. And strictly speaking, the Biblical tale on him ends
at this point. But many people throughout the centuries haven't been able to help wondering:
what exactly happened to John the Baptist's head?
"The head of John the Baptist has been thrust forward into our space."
The path of his disembodied cranium gets rather murky after it was reportedly presented to Herod
on a platter. The Gospels don't bother to elaborate and neither does Josephus.
Popular tradition posits that the rest of his body was buried in modern-day Palestine,
but that doesn't necessarily mean that his head was also included
in the burial. At least four different locations claim to now hold his head.
Of course, only one of these locations could possibly be the right spot,
if any of them are right, that is. The possible locations include the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus,
Rome's Church of San Silvestro, and Munich's Residenz Museum. Additionally,
Amiens Cathedral in France also contains a human skull displayed in an elaborate reliquary,
which was collected by a French crusader in the 13th century. But there's no way of accurately
confirming whether or not one of these skulls is actually that of John the Baptist. There
are no DNA samples to compare them to, after all. Thus, the fate of John's head remains a mystery.
It's not just his head that is a big deal to Biblical treasure hunters,
as there are quite a few relics that purport to be sourced from various parts of John the
Baptist's body. And considering the history of venerated body parts in the Christian church,
relics like these can potentially be pretty big deals. Relics are essentially tourist attractions,
and a town or city that can display a piece of a major saint or at least an
object associated with them could conceivably make a pretty penny.
Considering his close ties to Jesus Christ, it's no wonder that various sites claim to
have bits and pieces of John the Baptist. As reported by History.com, various museums
and monasteries claim to have his right arm and right hand, which he used to baptize. Germany's
Aachen Cathedral also purports to hold the cloth that swathed John the Baptist's head immediately
after his execution, along with what's believed to be Jesus' swaddling cloth and his loincloth.
One Bulgarian church has perhaps the best claim to genuine relics of John the Baptist.
As reported by National Geographic, in 2010 bones were discovered in a marble reliquary within the
church's ruins. They included a tooth, part of a right hand, a section of cranium, a forearm,
and a rib. Larger animal bones were also included in the mix, perhaps to bulk up what
would otherwise be a rather scanty array. Dating and DNA testing of the knucklebone
indicate that it belonged to a 1st century A.D. man who lived somewhere in the Middle East.
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