A History of the Christian Church Author:Williston Walker Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 18 JOHN THE BAPTIST lenic and Hebrew ideas might be united, and were actually to be united, in the development of later Christian theology. In no other portio... more »n of the Roman world was the process which Philo represented so fully developed as in Alexandria. SECTION III. JESUS AND THE DISCIPLES The way was prepared for Jesus by John the Baptist, in the thought of the early Christians the "forerunner" of the Messiah. Ascetic in life, he preached in the region of the Jordan that the day of judgment upon Israel was at hand, that the Messiah was about to come; and despising all formalism in religion, and all dependence on Abrahamic descent, he proclaimed in the spirit of the ancient prophets their message: "repent, do justice." His directions to the various classes of his hearers were simple and utterly non-legalistic.1 He baptized his disciples in token of the washing away of their sins; he taught them a special prayer. Jesus classed him as the last and among the greatest of the prophets. Though many of his followers became those of Jesus, some persisted independently and were to be found as late as Paul's ministry in Ephesus.2 While the materials are lacking for any full biography of Jesus such as would be available in the case of one living in modern times, they are entirely adequate to determine His manner of life, His character, and His teaching, even if many points on which greater light could be desired are left in obscurity. He stands forth clearly in all His essential qualities. He was brought up in Nazareth of Galilee, in the simple surroundings of a carpenter's home. The land, though despised by the more purely Jewish inhabitants of Judaea on account of a considerable admixture of races, was loyal to the Hebrew religion and traditions, the home of a hardy, self-res...« less