John the Baptizer: Mystery and Folklore

I didn't know about this, but I think it's folklore.

On another subject, do you guys call the man "the Baptizer" as a JW thing? I always called him "the Baptist", though of course I didn't think he was a member of the Baptist church.

John is patron saint of Xewkija-Gozo, Malta, which remember him with a great feast on the Sunday nearest to June 24.

St. John the Baptist is (along with St. John the Evangelist) claimed as a Patron Saint by the fraternal society of Free and Accepted Masons (better known as the Freemasons). [78]

He is also patron of the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem, Malta, Florence, and Genoa, Italy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_Baptist

(Red emphasis mine)

The Templars and Worship of the Head

The accusation that the Templar Knights worshipped the head was first made during the trials held against the group in the fourteenth century.

Theory suggests that the Templars were practitioners of the cult of the severed head, a cult which dates back to ancient times and which has also been associated with the Celtic cult. The Celtic cult of the head is represented in carvings of the La Tène culture, an Iron Age culture named for the archaeological site found in Switzerland, north of Lake Neuchâtel.

The Celts believed that the decapitated head represented capturing the soul’s enemy and many Celtic legends remain regarding the pursuit of Celtic bands of their enemies. The severed head was symbolic of spiritual power and was often impaled on a stick, as it was believed that the head would sing and therefore warn the Celts that their enemies were advancing.

Some experts also believe that the Templar knights worshipped the Caput Mortuum (death’s head), an alchemy symbol, to which the Templars were believed to have been exposed during the Crusades. The symbol was represented using a stylistic image of a human skull. However, some experts believe that it was unlikely that the Templars worshipped an alchemy symbol.

http://www.jesusfamilytomb.com/back_to_basic/alternative/secret/skullworship.html

There is much rumor concerning ritual drinking from a skull as an act of oath. Memorial, Euchrist, communion....whatever you want to call it....the gesture is the same and there is an oath involved. "Christianity" with it's rituals are not so different from the secret societies. You may believe it means something else, the words may have been twisted in presenting the rituals to you, but it does not represent what you have been led to believe. Christianity uses softer words like "dedication" and "committment" to replace the word 'swear'---but it's still an oath.

The quote below is supposedly taken from a society manual and involves the use of applying an oath to the skull of John the Baptist.

quote:

TEMPLAR VOW

The Knights Templar candidate is forced to swear, "If ever I wilfully violate this my solemn compact, as a brother Knights Templar, may my skull be sawn asunder with a rough saw, my brains taken out and put in a charger to be consumed by the scorching sun, and my skull in another charger, in memory of St. John of Jerusalem, that faithful soldier of our Lord and Saviour. If ever I wilfully deviate from this my solemn obligation, may my light be put out from among men, as that of Judas Iscariot was for betraying his Lord and Master."

A human skull is then placed in the candidate's hand.

He further declares, "Furthermore, may the soul that once inhabited this skull, as the representative of St. John the Baptist, appear against me in the day of judgement: so help me God and keep me steadfast in this my solemn obligation of a Knights Templar."

The US Knights Templar degree lecture sinks even lower, after drinking the final toast from a human skull, the candidates declares, "as the sins of the whole world were once visisted upon the head of our Saviour, so may all the sins of the person whose skull this once was, in addition to my own, be heaped upon my head, and may this libitation appear in judgement against me, should I ever knowingly or willingly violate my most solemn vow of a Knights Templar, so help me God" (US Manuel p. 206).

http://www.evangelicaltruth.com/knighttemplar.htm

He was of course a baptiser, so I think the witnesses have it right calling him that.

What I was wondering is what made him start baptising people. Was it a command from God or did he dream it up.

Would appreciate some help on this. Thanks

alanv: "What I was wondering is what made him start baptising people."

That is the best question anyone could ask. And no one every does. They just accept the ritual without question because "Jesus said so" and "the church says so".

I have never seen a solid, logical answer as to why John used this ritual nor what inspired him to come up with the idea. But I can guarantee you it must be something very simple and fitting to his times. I can tell you what I think it's all about.

The masses were superstitious people, no different than many people today. They were brow beaten and guilted into giving most of their income for sin debts and to "give more" to please God when they needed to ask for divine favors. Maybe even giving free labor to the church. The church beat them psychologically and sucked them dry for whatever they could take from them. The church has always been a business.

I imagine that John, and later Jesus, persuaded the people to believe that they did not have to accept the guilt and punishment from the church. All one had to do for forgiveness was "go to their brother" with an apology or restitution. They could take matters up directly with "God" and so Jesus taught them how to pray so that they would not need the holier than thou Pharisees as their intercessor. And to seal the deal that they were remorseful for past deeds and would try to live a better life, the baptism was an outward show of "becoming clean". It appealed to their superstitious nature of needing to have some type of ritual of confirmation that they had been forgiven. I think that is the key to it. Wiping the slate clean, leaving behind the baggage, and making a fresh start in life. It also gave them independence from the heavy yoke of church doctrines and rituals. They no longer needed the church.

There were also secret society groups even before Jesus's time. And during Jesus's lifetime, I find evidence that leads me to believe the secret societies had infiltrated the Sanhedrin. Sometimes the common people are recruited into a lower rank of these secret groups because the elite need spies and footsoldiers where they cannot go. For those members, it was especially dangerous to make an outward show that they were breaking their bonds of an oath sworn on their own life. But it was an opportunity for them to free themselves from the darkside. Superstition played a part even with them as they believed the act of baptism would bring them under the protection of a God more powerful than the brotherhood.

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In my opinion, organizations like WT have turned baptism into a legalistic manuever, which is not what it was ever intended to be.

Religions have changed what was intended to be an expression of freedom from the bondages of religion, to an incorporation of legalism. It is only through the act of baptism, that you now become a church member or a WT slave. It is because of baptism that the state and courts cannot help you out of any matters dealing with abuse from religion. The baptism of today has become a visual oath, a seal of contract, that you now, willingly, give your religion and it's declarations, authority over your life. This is why you are expected to write a DA letter to "break your contract". And guess what? Without written acknowledgement and acceptance of your DA by the other party, you are still considered under contract! It must be reciprocal to be legally broken.

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Here is some idiocy put out by religions as to the meaning of baptism:

"Baptism is a burial in water to symbolize Christ's burial." (Odd explanation considering someone else started it before Christ even knew about it and there is no scriptural basis for this statement.)

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According to Online Etymology Dictionary:

Baptism

Baptize

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In thinking about the etymology of the the word, "Baphomet" comes to mind, probably because of the similarilty of the word and its uniqueness.

The name Baphomet first appears around 1195 .. ...

The name Baphomet comes up in several of these confessions, in reference to an idol of some type that the Templars were alleged to have worshipped. The description of the object changed from confession to confession. Some Templars denied any knowledge of it. Others, under torture, described it as being either a severed head, a cat, or a head with three faces. [ 4 ]

The following is from "Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography", by John Dominic Crossan, pages 35 - 36.

Antipas's execution of John cannot be explained by a simple appeal to Mark 6:17-29, even if one took that marvelous fiction as historical fact. Mark's account is best seen as his own creation, allowing him to emphasize certain parallels between the fate of John and Jesus, especially how both were put to death at the insistence of others by a reluctant and almost guiltless civil authority — Antipas for one, Pilate for the other.

In life, death, and even burial by disciples, John is, for Mark, the precursor of Jesus. And, probably, he was deliberately recalling an earlier and well-known Mediterranean horror story. When, in 184 b.c.e., Cato was one of the two official censors at Rome, he had Lucius Quinctius Flaminius expelled from the senate despite his con­sular rank. His crime is described by the orator Cicero, who died in 43 b.c.e.; again by the historian Livy, who died in 17 c.e.; and finally by the rhetorician Seneca the Elder, who died in 40 c.e. Here is one of the two versions in Livy's history of Rome, Book 3943:3-4.

At Placentia a notorious woman, with whom Flaminius was desperately in love, had been invited to dinner. There he was boasting to the courtesan, among other things, about his severity in the prosecution of cases and how many persons he had in chains, under sentence, whom he intended to behead. Then the woman, reclining below him, said that she had never seen a person beheaded and was very anxious to behold the sight. Hereupon, he says, the generous lover, ordering one of the wretches to be brought to him, cut off his head with his sword. This deed ... was savage and cruel: in the midst of drinking and feasting, where it was the custom to pour libations to the gods and to pray for blessings, as a spectacle for a shameless harlot, reclining in the bosom of a consul, a human victim sacrificed and bespattering the table with his blood!

The point was not that the man was innocent; he was going to be executed in any case. But it should still not be done just to please a mistress, and not at a banquet. The story was clearly a well-known example of how not to exercise power. Mark's cre­ation intends, most likely, to recall that classic model.

cameo- d

Thanks for the explanation. May well be right