Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 13:1 (Oct 1963)
Article: Gospel And Judgment In The Preaching Of John The Baptist
Author: Knox Chamblin

TynBul 13:1 (1963) p. 7

Gospel And Judgment In The Preaching Of John The Baptist

Knox Chamblin

I. The Character Of John’s Message

THE LUKAN ACCOUNT of the Baptist’s teaching concludes : ‘So, with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people’ (3:18; this and other quotations are from RSV). There is little to commend H. Conzelmann’s view that εὐαγγελίζεσθαι here means simply ‘to preach’.1 Even if Luke 16:16b is limited to the preaching of Jesus (with Conzelmann, loc. cit.), there is no sufficient reason for denying that the verb retains its fundamental sense, ‘to proclaim glad tidings’, in 3 :18. (How the content of John’s message relates to that of Jesus, is another matter.) Furthermore, it will not do to restrict the ‘evangelizing’ to one part only of John’s preaching, a facet not prominent, if present at all, in the preceding verses (cf. A. Plummer in loc.). Following C. F. D. Moule (An Idiom-Book of N. T. Greek, p. 162), μὲν οῦν is ‘purely resumptive or transitional’, not ‘adversative’. ἕτερα is more naturally interpreted as ‘other ‘things’, than as ‘things of a different kind’. Both verb forms describe the total message of John (only part—but the essence—of which is preserved): παρακαλῶν calls attention more to the act of preaching, εὐηγγελίζετο to the message itself.

In Mark 1 the ministry of John is included in the ‘beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ’.2 In my judgment Luke 16:16b embraces the Baptist’s preaching.3 In Acts 13 the preaching of John (verses 24f.) is integral to ‘the message of this salvation’, verse 26.

TynBul 13:1 (1963) p. 8

And yet to many, the burden of John’s message is anything but gospel. He addresses his audience as a ‘brood of vipers’,4 and warns that failure to repent and perform good works places them in danger of ‘the wrath to come’ and of being consumed in the fire kindled by the Mightier One (