The Diet of John the Baptist: "Locusts and Wild Honey" in Synoptic and Patristic Interpretation

Front Cover
Mohr Siebeck, 2005 - 256 pages
James A. Kelhoffer offers a comprehensive analysis of Mark 1:6c par. Matt 3:4c in its socio-historical context, the Synoptic gospels and subsequent Christian interpretation. The first chapter surveys various anecdotes about John's food in the Synoptic gospels and notes that there has never been a consensus in scholarship concerning John's locusts and wild honey. Chapters 2 and 3 address locusts as human food and assorted kinds of wild honey in antiquity. Chapter 4 considers the different meanings of this diet for the historical Baptist, Mark, and Matthew. Contemporary anthropological and nutritional data shed new light on John's experience as a locust gatherer and assess whether these foods could have actually sustained him in the wilderness. The last chapter demonstrates that the most prevalent interpretation of the Baptist's diet, from the third through the sixteenth centuries, hails John's simple wilderness provisions as a model for believers to emulate.
 

Contents

Introduction and the status quaestionis concerning
1
B The status quaestionis si autem est quaestio concerning John
12
LocustGrasshopper Eating in Ancient Near
36
AlDamīrī on Locust Eating and Islam
59
Plutarch Athenaeus
74
The Baptists Wild Honey
81
Locusts and Wild Honey in the Synoptic
100
Mark 16c
121
6 The Baptist Jesus and Elijah
129
B Early Interpretations of the Baptists Diet
137
Figurative and Allegorical Interpretations of Johns Diet
148
Alexander Ross
189
Locusts and Wild Honey in Retrospect
195
Bibliography
207
Indices
235
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2005)

James A. Kelhoffer, is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Saint Louis University (Missouri, USA).

Bibliographic information