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This transcript has been edited for clarity and space.
James McGrath
Hi, I’m James McGrath, and I am the Clarence Goodwin Chair of New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States. I have the privilege of teaching texts and topics that I just love. I got into Biblical studies as a way of exploring my own faith, trying to learn more. I had a profound, life changing religious experience in my teens, and was trying to figure out what exactly that meant for my life. What does that mean for what I’m going to do with my life? It started out that way as a journey of exploration but has led to me having the privilege of writing things, teaching, giving talks and doing things that give me a chance to both facilitate for others having the chance to do a similar kind of exploration. And it also provides resources for them.
If someone takes a look at my bookshelves, they will see books on a wide array of topics. I am mostly a New Testament professor. But I also do things on side interests like the intersection of the Bible and music, religion and science fiction. And so, I’m one of those people that has a wide array of interests.
David Capes
Dr, James McGrath, James, good to see you. It’s your first time on The Stone Chapel Podcast.
James McGrath
Yeah, I’ve been listening and at the very least reading the notes. I’ve been a follower for a very long time.
David Capes
Thanks. That’s good to know. I do appreciate it. The transcripts are often very helpful for those of us who need a quiet moment and don’t have a chance to listen but have a chance to read. So, you mentioned music earlier. Tell us a little bit about that side of you, the musical side.
James McGrath
Before this experience that shifted my direction, I was thinking maybe I would go and study music. I got to it late in life and was thinking about that as a possibility. It was actually an invitation to a concert that led to my connection with that church, that led me to personal faith, commitment and born-again experience. Things like that resulted and music has continued to be important to me, in terms of enriching my life. Sometimes, when I’m thinking about God as transcendent and beyond anything that we can describe, music as you know, connects in that way that gets beyond words, and you feel like it’s
moving me, it’s touching me. And words would not do justice to this. It’s almost like a sacrament for me.
David Capes
Music does that. It touches a part of the brain; touches part of us that other things can’t touch.
Today we’re going to be talking about your book. It’s a great book. It’s called Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist, and it’s just come out. I love the cover and you’ve done a wonderful job. When did it dawn on you that you should be the guy who writes a new biography of John the Baptist?
James McGrath
This has been on my radar. I wasn’t sure that it was going to be a biography at that stage but knew that I was going to need to write about John the Baptist. And dig into his life and what we know about him. One of the many things that has distracted me from being focused just on New Testament in of itself, along the course of my career is doing some work on a group known as the Mandaeans, who are essentially an ancient group that consider themselves followers of John the Baptist.
David Capes
Where do they live today? Are they scattered all over the planet or concentrated in a particular place?
James McGrath
Historically, it was Iran and Iraq. But nowadays there are huge diaspora communities in places like San Antonio, Texas, San Diego, California, Sydney, Australia, Boston and a sizable group in Sweden as well.
David Capes
So why are they called the Mandaeans?
James McGrath
If we think about the Qumran group, or even probably Christians originally, a label gets affixed that wasn’t the one that they chose for themselves. First, it was a term used for laypeople, as opposed to the priests. Those are the people who are really initiated into the esoteric knowledge. Mandaeans basically means “gnostic.” And that really is the character of their religion. There is debate among academics about whether “gnostic” is an appropriate term, but there’s at least one group, and it’s the only ancient gnostic group to survive that are actually happy with the term, because that’s what they understand their name to mean.
David Capes
You call them a Gnostic group, and you said that they really have a fidelity to John the Baptist. Now, how does Jesus figure into that?
James McGrath
The thing that makes them unique in terms of religions, is that they are crazy about John the Baptist, and consider themselves to be followers of his. Whether they’re faithful adherents and that whole question is one that you can research historically. You can get into interreligious polemic about that, obviously, but that’s how they view themselves. And they view Jesus and Christians as having essentially departed from and distorted John’s legacy.
And so that makes their sources potentially interesting. Not necessarily more authentic or closer to John, per se, but I argue the case, in the book that’s coming out in October, that they have preserved some traditions and things related to John along a different route. Probably there were followers of John the Baptist who didn’t become Christians that fed somehow into this movement. And the point is not that that’s a more authentic perspective on John, as though not believing Jesus makes you closer to John.
But the thing is that when we have more than one angle on something when we’re trying to get a history, it can help us to look at Jewish perspectives on Jesus that were not aligned with him. It can help enrich and inform our portrait, whether it’s Josephus or later still, things like the Talmud. I think they need to be brought into the picture more than they have been in recent years.
David Capes
You entitled the book, and I’ve not heard this term before, Christmaker. I may have been sleeping under a rock for a number of years, but it’s not an honorific I have heard. Tell us where that came from.
James McGrath
Book titles are tricky things, as you and I both know. Trying to come up with something that’s not already the name of an album by some obscure band, and what people will find instead of your book., I’ll be quite honest that I was brainstorming and trying to think of what to call this book, and I had this as one of the ideas. And I talked with the publisher, and with other people who thought, that’s good. But I actually had some serious misgivings for two reasons. I thought that while this title that is catchy and distinctive, it might alienate Christian readers. And Mandaean readers who might say, don’t blame John
for Jesus. It’s not John’s fault. And Christians are going to question the term Christ-“maker”.
David Capes
Yes, did John make him Christ?
James McGrath
Yes, here’s the thing that made me persuaded in the end, other than the catchiness. Part of it is that I think John actually influenced a number of what we might call messianic movements. Including figures in this time period, in particular, Jesus, but not only him. And in that sense, I think that whatever your view about John’s direct or indirect role in influencing these figures and setting the stage for them, he did that. That’s accurate historically, looking back on the role he played. And so, in that sense, I think the term works, and hopefully helps as well.
David Capes
Yes, and though not original to me, I’ve used the term forerunner for years. He’s the forerunner to Jesus, right? He’s the one who, in a sense, announces him. One of the things I like that you say early in the book is that John the Baptist could have been famous in his own right, but he’s ultimately overshadowed, at least in the Christian tradition, in the West by Jesus. But there’s enough there that could have made him famous in his own. He is, among the Mandaeans, among other people as well, particularly to the east. It seems like John’s influence very much extended far.
