Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

EVANS The Baptism of John in a Typological Context 65

from this bond on the sabbath day?' (Lk. 13.16). The association of the

demise of Satan and the appearance of the kingdom of God finds signifi-

cant expression in a pseudepigraphal writing composed some time in the

first third of the first century CE. After a description of a period of suffering

and martyrdom, we are told in the Testament of Moses:

Then his (God's) kingdom will appear throughout his whole creation. Then

the devil will have an end (finem habebit). Yea, sorrow will be led away

with him... For the Heavenly One will arise from his kingly throne. Yea, he

will go forth from his holy habitation with indignation and wrath on behalf

of his sons (10.1, 3).^33

The passage continues in w. 4-6 with apocalyptic imagery that contains

echoes of Isaiah 40. The phrase finem habebit ('he will have an end') in

T Mos. 10.1 is the equivalent of TEXOS e'x£l in Mk 3.26 ('he has an end').^34

Thus, we find here dictional as well as thematic coherence between the

teaching of Jesus and the eschatological anticipations of the author of

T Mos. 10. Jesus' linkage of his ministry of exorcism with the appearance

of the kingdom is not an innovation but evidently an element of eschato-

logical expectation that was circulating in Jewish Palestine in his own day,

an element with which John may have been familiar and Jesus almost

certainly was familiar.

5. Strict view on divorce and remarriage. John's strict view on divorce
   and remarriage, over which he suffered martyrdom for having dared to
   address it to Herod Antipas and Herodias, evidently was held by Jesus
   also. The question put to Jesus, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?'
   (Mk 10.2), suggests that the interlocutor had reason to believe that Jesus
   did not think it was lawful, despite its provision in Scripture. On the basis
   of Deut. 24 most interpreters felt it was lawful to obtain divorce and then
   remarry. As we have seen, John the Baptizer did not think so, though on
   what basis he held this view we are not told. It was suggested above that
   coherence with themes and imagery in Malachi makes one think of Mai.
   2.16. John may also have thought of Gen. 1.27 ('male and female he cre-
   ated them') and 2.24 ('a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves
   to his wife, and they become one flesh'), just as Jesus does in his reply in


6. Translation J. Priest, 'Testament of Moses', in J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old
   Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1983-1985), I, pp.
   931-32.


7. As noted by J. Tromp, The Assumption of Moses: A Critical Edition with Com-
   mentary (SVTP, 10; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), p. 229. The phrase in Mk 3.26 is ren-
   dered finem habet in the Vulgate.