Previously

The Life and Times of the Apostle Paul

Now,

The death of John the Baptist is recorded both in the New Testament Gospels (Matthew and Mark) and by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in his work Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18, Chapter 5).

While both sources agree that Herod Antipas executed John, they differ fundamentally in their explanations of Herod’s motives, the setting, and the political context of the execution.

Direct Comparison

Dimension	The Gospels (Matthew & Mark)	Josephus (Antiquities 18.5.2)
Primary Motive	Personal & Moral: John publicly condemned Herod’s marriage to Herodias (his brother’s wife).	Political: Herod feared John’s massive influence and eloquence would spark a rebellion.
The Instigator	Herodias and her daughter: Herodias sought revenge; her daughter requested John’s head on a platter after a dance.	Herod Antipas alone: Acted preemptively out of political self-preservation.
Location of Arrest/Death	Unspecified prison (often traditionally viewed as near Galilee or Judea).	Machaerus: A remote fortress near the Dead Sea (modern-day Jordan).
Herod’s Attitude to John	Reluctant/Fearful: Herod respected John as a holy man and was grieved to execute him, but did so to keep an oath.	Calculated/Preemptive: Herod viewed John strictly as a threat to public order and decided to strike first.
Context of Narrative	Flashback: Told to explain why Herod feared Jesus was John raised from the dead.	Explanatory Digression: Told to explain why the public viewed Herod’s military defeat by King Aretas IV as divine punishment.

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Key Similarities

• The Core Event: Both sources confirm as a historical fact that Herod Antipas imprisoned and executed John the Baptist.
• John’s Character: Both accounts portray John as a highly righteous, influential religious figure who commanded a massive public following.
• The Domestic Backdrop (Indirectly): While Josephus does not link John’s death to Herod’s marriage, he does extensively document the scandalous marriage of Herod Antipas to Herodias, which caused Herod to divorce his first wife (the daughter of Nabatean King Aretas IV).

Key Differences & Contrasts

1. Political vs. Personal Instigation

• The Gospels present a highly personal, domestic drama. John directly criticizes Herod’s marriage as unlawful under Torah law. Herodias holds a grudge, and during Herod’s birthday banquet, her daughter wins a favor through a dance. Prompted by her mother, she demands John’s head on a platter. Herod, bound by his oath to his guests, reluctantly complies.
• Josephus strips away the domestic drama and provides a cold political analysis. He writes that John was “a good man” who commanded the Jews to practice virtue and piety. Because crowds flocked to John and were deeply moved by his words, Herod feared that John’s “great influence over the people might lead to a rebellion.” Herod decided it was better to kill him preemptively than face a revolt.

2. The Location of the Execution

• The Gospels do not name the fortress or prison where John was held, though the presence of Galilee’s elite at the banquet implies a royal residence or estate.
• Josephus provides specific geographic details, stating that John was sent as a prisoner to Machaerus, a fortified palace-fortress located east of the Dead Sea, where he was subsequently put to death.

3. Historical Framing

• The Gospels use John’s death to foreshadow the fate of Jesus and highlight the moral corruption of the Herodian dynasty. 
• Josephus uses John’s death to explain a military disaster. Herod Antipas suffered a crushing defeat against King Aretas IV. Josephus notes that the Jewish populace universally believed Herod’s army was destroyed by God as a just punishment for his wicked execution of John. Christians would later claim the destruction of the 2nd temple was God’s wrath for the Jewish elite killing Jesus.

The unjust, humiliating death of John the Baptist in the gospels is a literary pair with the even more unjust, more humiliating death of Jesus.  The destruction of the second temple is seen as God’s just punishment of the Jewish elite for their wicked execution of Jesus.  If the gospels are using Josephus as some suggest, you can basically come up with the idea of Jesus by combining the Josephus account of John the Baptist with the Josephus account of Jesus ben Ananias.  Jesus ben Ananias was a doomsayer like Jesus Christ who the Jewish elite collaborated with the Romans to severely punish.

(2)

There is a striking and highly specific parallel at the end of Plutarch’s Life of Cleomenes that closely mirrors the crucifixion narrative of Jesus in the Gospels, particularly regarding the post-mortem conversion of onlookers.

While Cleomenes III was a Hellenistic Spartan king who died by honorable suicide in Egypt in 219 BCE, his body was subsequently ordered to be flayed and hung on a cross by Ptolemy IV.

The Specific Parallel: Post-Mortem Miracles and Onlookers’ Reactions

The exact scene occurs in Chapter 39 of The Life of Cleomenes. Plutarch writes that a few days after Cleomenes was crucified, a massive snake coiled itself around his head, protecting his face so that no birds of prey could touch it.

The reaction of the onlookers and the authorities matches the themes of the Gospel accounts perfectly:

• The King’s Terror: Ptolemy is seized with “superstitious fears” and realizes he has executed a man who was “a favourite of the gods, and something more than mortal.”  
• The Onlookers’ Proclamation: The Alexandrians crowd to the execution site and worship Cleomenes, explicitly declaring him to be “a hero and a child of the gods.”

This aligns remarkably well with the Gospel of Matthew and Mark, where the Roman centurion and the soldiers guarding Jesus’ cross exclaim:

“Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39, Matthew 27:54)

Other High-Level Parallels

In addition to the “conversion at the cross,” scholars of comparative literature and biblical studies have occasionally noted other structural similarities between the two accounts:

1. The Core Companions: Right before his failed uprising and subsequent death, Cleomenes breaks out of his quarters accompanied by a core group of thirteen friends/followers
2. The “Tragic Hero” Virtue: Plutarch frames Cleomenes as an idealized, highly virtuous reformer who sought to save his people from corruption but was ultimately betrayed, rejected, and executed in a foreign land.

Rationalization: Pagan vs. Christian Explanations

Though the literary similarity is uncanny, Plutarch offers a rationalization for the event that firmly grounds it in ancient Greek biology. He notes that local philosophers put a stop to the citizens’ worship by explaining that human corpses naturally produce snakes as their bone marrow decomposes—much like dead oxen breed bees.  Jesus was thus a new and greater Cleomenes

Because Plutarch wrote his Parallel Lives between 98 and 120 CE, roughly the same era the Gospels were being written and circulated, academic debate exists over whether these parallel motifs were drawing from a shared Hellenistic literary tradition regarding the deaths of “divine men” (theioi andres), or if the gospels are imitating Plutarch?  We set the earliest date of Mark usually around 70CE due to the destruction of temple imagery, but of course Mark could be much later and imitating Plutarch.

Only the Gospel of Matthew explicitly attributes the soldier’s conversion to the earthquake.

While both Matthew and Mark mention the three hours of darkness, they isolate entirely different triggers for the centurion’s famous exclamation:

The Gospel of Matthew: Triggered by Earthquakes & Cosmic Signs

In Matthew 27:54, the text explicitly links the conversion to the terrifying supernatural events taking place around the cross:

“When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!'”

The Gospel of Mark: Triggered by the Way Jesus Died

Mark does not mention an earthquake at all during the crucifixion sequence. Instead, Mark 15:39 focuses entirely on the unique, powerful manner of Jesus’ final moments:

“And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!'”

Comparison Table

Attribute	Gospel of Matthew (27:45-54)	Gospel of Mark (15:33-39)
Three Hours of Darkness?	Yes	Yes
Earthquake?	Yes (splits rocks and opens tombs)	No
Direct Catalyst for Centurion	Seeing the earthquake and cosmic events	Witnessing how Jesus cried out and died.  He was a paradigmatic soldier following God’s orders despite terror

The Gospel of Luke introduces three major shifts to this scene, fundamentally altering both the theological meaning of the centurion’s proclamation and the overall atmosphere at the foot of the cross.

While Matthew and Mark focus on Jesus’ divine status, Luke focuses on Jesus’ moral innocence and the deep remorse of the surrounding crowd.

1. The Proclamation Shifts from “Son of God” to “Innocent”

In Luke 23:47, the centurion does not declare Jesus to be divine. Instead, he addresses Jesus’ legal and moral righteousness:

“Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, ‘Certainly this man was innocent!’“ (Alternatively translated as “Certainly this was a righteous man!”)

• The Context of Luke’s Gospel: This change fits Luke’s broader narrative goal. Throughout his Gospel, Luke repeatedly emphasizes that Jesus is politically and legally innocent of the charges brought against him. Pontius Pilate declares Jesus innocent three times, and even Herod Antipas finds no fault in him. The centurion’s final verdict provides the ultimate Roman confirmation of this innocence.

2. The Nature of the Darkness is Explained

Both Matthew and Mark mention that darkness fell over the land, but Luke 23:44–45 provides a specific, cosmic reason for it:

“It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed.” (Historically translated in some manuscripts as “the sun was eclipsed”).

• Note on the Veil: Luke also moves the tearing of the temple curtain before Jesus dies, focusing on the guilt of those who condemned Jesus, whereas Matthew and Mark place it after his death. In Luke, the cosmic signs act as a prelude to his final breath rather than a post-mortem reaction.

3. The Onlookers Beat Their Breasts in Remorse

Unlike Matthew and Mark, where the surrounding crowd mocks Jesus or flees in terror from an earthquake, Luke 23:48 focuses on a collective wave of guilt and mourning among the Jewish onlookers:

“And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts.”

• The Connection to Cleomenes: This specific detail brings the scene even closer to the Plutarch account of Cleomenes we asked about initially. In Luke, the crucifixion isn’t just a site of execution; it becomes an immediate site of mass public conviction and mourning, just as the Alexandrians crowded the execution site to worship the crucified Spartan king.

Direct Comparison: The Centurion’s Verdict

Gospel	The Centurion’s Exact Words	The Core Theme
Mark 15:39	“Truly this man was the Son of God!”	Theological Revelation: Recognizing Jesus’ divine identity through his suffering.  Jesus is a paradigmatic soldier following his commanding officer God’s orders despite terror
Matthew 27:54	“Truly this was the Son of God!”	Cosmic Vindication: Terrified reaction to the apocalypse, earthquakes, and open tombs.
Luke 23:47	“Certainly this man was innocent!”	Moral/Legal Verdict: The Roman executioner confirms the injustice of the execution.

(3)

Jesus says no one is greater than John the Baptist, but that the least in the Kingdom is greater than him. This is conveying lofty status on Christians.  If John the Baptist was a paradigmatic holy man who suffered a humiliating unjust death, why was his death not salvific like Jesus’ was?  It was a question of choice.  Jesus was God’s specially chosen and beloved (agapetos) who God appointed to restore the Davidic crown, until the world turned on him.  Jesus died a more tortuous and humiliating death than John. Likewise, Jesus’ forgiving death in Luke parallels Stephen’s forgiving death in Acts, the love of Christ on the face of Stephen leading to Paul’s vision in Acts. 

John the Baptist is portrayed as the new and greater Elijah and Jesus as the new and greater Elisha, fitting a Plutarch-ish parallel life.  Similarly, there is Jesus as the new and greater Dionysus in the gospel of John where while Dionysus turns out to be a god in Euripides’ Bacchae, Jesus turns out to be the one True God in John.

Mark says “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ ; as it is written in the prophets.” Mark immediately interprets John the Baptist as a forerunner of the Messiah (a la Elijah in II Kings 1:8). Mark then clothes John similar to Elijah (Mark 1:6. II Kings 1:8.) He then says John ate locusts and wild honey,the food of the wildernes in which Elijah lived (and so on and so on).  Price and Miller note “in view of parallels elsewhere between John and Jesus on the one hand and Elijah and Elisha on the other, some (Miller, p. 48) also see in the Jordan baptism and the endowment with the spirit a repetition of 2 Kings 2, where, near the Jordan, Elijah bequeaths a double portion of his own miracle-working spirit to Elisha, who henceforth functions as his successor and superior.”

The death of John the Baptist in Josephus is highly comparable to the historical execution of Jesus. In fact, many historians view Josephus’s account of John’s death as one of our best structural parallels for understanding why Jesus was executed by the Romans.

While Jesus was executed by a Roman governor (Pontius Pilate) and John by a Roman-backed client ruler (Herod Antipas), both deaths fundamentally stem from the same anxiety: first-century rulers viewed charismatic religious leaders as immediate threats to public order and potential instigators of sedition.

Here is how the two executions compare when viewed through a historical, political lens.

1. Preemptive Action Against Sedition

• John the Baptist: Josephus explicitly states that Herod Antipas did not wait for an actual rebellion to start. Because John commanded such massive crowds, Herod feared his influence might lead to a revolt. He acted preemptively out of political self-preservation to “prevent any mischief he might cause.”
• Jesus: The historical Jesus was crucified under the Roman charge of being the “King of the Jews,” which was an explicitly political crime (sedition against Caesar). Like Herod, Pontius Pilate likely acted preemptively during Passover—a high-tension holiday when Jerusalem was crowded with religious pilgrims—to crush a potential uprising before it could escalate.

2. The Danger of “The Crowd”

In the ancient Roman world, popular religious movements were inherently political.

• In Josephus, John’s threat is not his theology, but his audience. Josephus writes that “the others came in crowds about him, for they were very greatly moved by hearing his words.”
• Similarly, the Gospels and historical reconstructions of Jesus highlight his large following, particularly his disruptive action in the Temple courtyard and his entry into Jerusalem. To the ruling elite, any figure who could command the absolute loyalty of a crowd was a security threat.

3. Religious Message with Political Consequences

While both John and Jesus preached messages focused on righteousness, repentance, and the Kingdom of God, these messages had radical political implications in first-century Judea:

• John’s baptism created a distinct, unified community of followers outside the control of the state.
• Jesus’s kingdom preaching implicitly relegated Roman imperial authority to a secondary status.

To modern eyes, these are religious movements; to Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate, they were movements of social unrest that required elimination.

Key Contrast: The Method of Execution

While the motive (fear of sedition and crowd control) was identical, the method reflects who was in power:

Figure	Executing Authority	Method of Execution	Political Meaning
John the Baptist	Herod Antipas (Jewish Tetrarch)	Beheading (in a remote fortress)	A quiet, swift political elimination by a domestic ruler trying to avoid a public scene.
Jesus	Pontius Pilate (Roman Governor)	Crucifixion (on a public highway)	A brutal, highly visible Roman state punishment designed specifically to terrify the public and deter future sedition.

Ultimately, looking at Josephus’s account of John shows that in first-century Palestine, you did not need to pick up a sword to be executed for sedition. Simply having the ear of the crowd and preaching a message of radical change was enough to make rulers strike first.

By contrast, just as John the Baptist was doomed for embarrassing elites in the Gospels, Jesus was doomed because of the scheming of the Jewish elite at the Jewish trial.  Hamilton notes the trial violated Jewish custom on numerous points, but the experts in the law kept finding loopholes:

• However, the Synoptic chronology is not impossible, for as [Josef] Blinzler says, the prohibition of legal proceedings on feast days was less strictly enforced than that of holding courts on the Sabbath, ‘therefore it is quite thinkable that it did not seem to the Sanhedrists an infringement of an important rule to start a legal trial even on the night of the Pesach’. It is the argument of this article that all the Gospels witness to such a trial which, while viable in its date, contravened accepted practice as subsequently enshrined in the Mishnah at many points, as Blinzler shows. For example, the proceedings took place in the house of Caiaphas, not in the Temple, and though Jesus had not actually pronounced the Name of God, he was condemned as a blasphemer. He was not offered an advocate; the witnesses were not warned before being examined; nor were they called to account for false witness. The members of the Sanhedrin, although witnesses of the alleged blasphemy, took part in the passing of the sentence, though it was not legal for them to do so.
• As Blinzler says, one is not able ‘to spare the Sanhedrin the reproach of very serious infringement of the law’. The question is, why did they do this?‘ It will not do to suggest that the occasion was a sham—the proceedings were undoubtedly carried through before a competent bench of judges’. Nor can their contraventions of the Mishnaic code be simply dismissed by saying that it was not yet in force. It is true that it was not codified until about 200 AD, and reflects conditions which obtained then, but it certainly enshrines earlier practice to a considerable extent. For example, Segal says that in describing Temple ritual, it may be employed with confidence. May not the same apply to legal practice?… Before the Feast of the Passover Caiaphas is reported to have said in council: ‘It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish’ (Jn. 11:50). Expediency was the factor which determined his conduct. When the opportunity unexpectedly presented itself to secure Jesus’ death, he and the priests avidly took it. Spurred on by their hatred of him; persuaded that as he was a false teacher, his execution on a feast day would be appropriate; and pressurized by shortage of time, they held his trial on the paschal night. In this trial they contravened normal legal practice at many points. The fact that they could do this in the legal sphere makes it likely that they could, because of the exceptional circumstances, also contravene ritual practice. For the exigencies of the case demanded that they work through the night. Early next morning therefore, they still had not eaten their paschal meal [emphasis mine]. (Hamilton, 1992, pp. 335-336).
• Certainly therefore, an execution would have been contrary to the sabbatical nature of the first paschal day. However, Deut. 17: 12-13 prescribes the death penalty for anyone who opposes the decisions of the priests, to be carried out so that ‘all the people shall hear and fear’, and the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 11:4) gives special instructions for the execution of a rebellious teacher: ‘He was kept in guard until one of the three feasts, and he was put to death on one of the three feasts’. This shows that in certain circumstances executions were permitted on feast days. Moreover, [Paul] Billerbeck says that where an example is required ‘to protect the Torah from wilfully severe transgressions, an execution may, as an exception, supersede a feast day’. (Hamilton, 1992, p. 335)

This reflects one of the temptations of Jesus where the devil tries to twist scripture. The Gospel of John notes the Jewish elite weren’t allowed to kill Jesus.

In the famous Testimonium Flavianum passage from his work Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18, Chapter 3), the first-century historian Flavius Josephus states that Jesus was accused and condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate “at the suggestion of the principal men among us” (the Jewish elite).  Scholars note that Josephus’s use of “among us” reflects his own background as a member of the Jerusalem priestly aristocracy, connecting him socially and historically to the elite circles who were active during the time of Jesus’s trial.

Many ancient Jews viewed the wealthy Jewish elite and the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem as corrupt and overly cozy with their Roman occupiers.

The Dead Sea Scroll Community: The Essenes and the community at Qumran rejected the Jerusalem high priesthood entirely, viewing them as illegitimate and defiled, and retreated to the desert to await God’s judgment.

The Jewish historian Josephus accused the high-priestly families of using bribery, extortion, and violence to steal tithes meant for lower-tier priests.

Later rabbinic writings (such as Tosefta Pesachim) preserve sharp critiques of the wealthy priestly monopolies in Jerusalem, lamenting their physical violence and greed.

 Jesus’ dramatic action overturning the tables in the Temple reflects a broader, populist critique of the commercialized and oppressive nature of the Temple establishment.

The point of the Jesus story is that the 2nd temple was destroyed by Rome under God’s will because God had sent his especially beloved son to restore the Davidic throne, and not only was this son rejected, but also executed as the lowest type of criminal.  Matthew expresses this by saying his blood is on us and our children.  It’s unclear whether the historical Jesus knew John the Baptist as the gospel writers seem to be repurposing Josephus’ account of John.