John the Baptist: God’s Angel or “One Born of Women”?

Until recently, I had never noticed that in some iconographic images of John the Baptist, he is depicted with wings. Often, the icon will show him either holding his own head or standing next to it.

The common explanation within Orthodox Christianity for these unusual features is somewhat reasonable, I suppose. First, the wings simply refer to the Baptist’s angelic life. He is the forerunner not only of the Christ, but of all Christian ascetics who would follow on long after he passed from the scene. But what about the extra head? Well, icons represent the eternal world. The resurrected, transfigured, immortal John is contemplating his own mortal, severed head.

However, we could posit another explanation (at least for the wings), namely that the text of Mark’s Gospel implies that he is indeed an angel of the Lord. Something else I didn’t know until recently was that older Catholic translations like the Douay-Rheims explicitly translate τὸν ἄγγελόν μου as “my angel,” wherein the speaker is clearly God himself.

Of course, more recent careful English translations use the word “messenger” instead of “angel.” This dedication for making scripture say the right thing extends to interlinear translations, where the student of Greek is prudently led to the correct translation without the slightest hint that τὸν ἄγγελόν μου could mean anything but my messenger in this case.

This zealotry for accuracy extends back to the quotation from the book of Malachi. In other cases, when the translators see the term “my angel/messenger,” either in Greek or in Hebrew, they (correctly) presume God is talking about one of his angels. But the prophecy in Malachi is a special case.

Of course, doctrinal issues raised by the passage in Mark’s Gospel have no influence over translators of the Tanakh. The Complete Jewish Bible renders Malachi 3:1 like this:

Behold I send My angel, and he will clear a way before Me. And suddenly, the Lord Whom you seek will come to His Temple. And behold! The angel of the covenant, whom you desire, is coming, says the Lord of Hosts.

That sounds to me like a correct and entirely uncontroversial translation. However, for most Christian translators, it simply can’t be right. It “must” refer to John the Baptist. Hence nearly every English translation replaces the word angel with messenger. For example:

“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty. (NIV, emphasis mine)

The second appearance of the word messenger seems a bit jarring. “Messenger of the covenant”? Surely God must be referring to an angel here. By the way, the correct translation of the last few words of that verse is, obviously, Lord of Hosts. I swear, sometimes it seems as if the NIV translators aren’t even trying.

We can see clear evidence that a doctrinal belief has guided Christian translators to go back and “fix” passages in the Hebrew Bible. And we are left wondering: “Is it even possible to translate the Bible without a confessional bias — without being constrained by preconceived beliefs?”

We should note, moreover, the anxiety over the angelic nature of John seems to have appeared early on. Specifically in Matthew’s gospel, we have Jesus complimenting the Baptist like this:

Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Matt. 11:11, ESV, bold emphasis mine)

You doubtless remember Paul’s description of Jesus in Galatians 4:4-5.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (ESV)

Historicists have latched onto this verse as proof of the author’s understanding of an Earthly Jesus, against the notion of a mythical Christ, crucified in some celestial domain. Consider, however, the tone of this sentence. Paul’s statement about Jesus has a confessional, almost credal, quality rather than a mere description. It seems to be pushing against early heretical ideas, affirming that Jesus was a human being, specifically a Jew.

Within the sect of Christians that survived, members had to confess certain details as bedrock facts. Some of these facts dealt with the death and resurrection of Jesus, along with how these events are tied up with the salvation of humankind. But inserted within these and other confessional facts are statements designed to deny certain dangerous heresies. For example: Jesus truly suffered and died. Jesus truly had a corporeal body. And finally, Jesus was a begotten son, not a created being — a human, not an angel.

Every statement of what is true and salutary carries with it the implication of what is false and dangerous.

My thoughts about the nature of John the Baptist as portrayed in Mark began to change upon reading Christine E. Joynes’ provocative article “The returned Elijah? John the Baptist’s angelic identity in the Gospel of Mark.” I will quote the abstract here:

Assertions of John the Baptist’s identity as the returned Elijah are commonplace in New Testament scholarship. Attention has then tended to focus on whether the returned Elijah was regarded as the forerunner of the Messiah or of God himself. Surprisingly, the logically prior question of how someone could be regarded as Elijah returned has received scant investigation. This article explores what it might mean to describe John the Baptist as the returned Elijah, suggesting that we need clearly to distinguish this concept from Elijah typology. If, as is argued here, the expectation of Elijah’s return in Mark’s Gospel points to John the Baptist’s angelic identity, this has interesting ramifications for other NT issues such as Christology and eschatology.

This subject matter deserves more attention than it has received over the intervening years since this article’s publication, and I hope to dig into the details in future posts. Until then, what are your thoughts?

Christine E. Joynes (2005). The returned Elijah? John the Baptist’s angelic identity in the Gospel of Mark. Scottish Journal of Theology, 58, pp 455-467 doi:10.1017/S003693060500150X

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