An Ancient Debate of Disciples Albert I. Baumgarten Bar Ilan University “Do Unto Others as hey Do Unto You.” With Apologies to Leviticus, Hillel, Jesus, Rabbi Akiba, and Immanuel Kant “We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.” Attributed to Heinrich Heine ”he historian knows . . . that his witnesses can lie or be mistaken. But he is primarily interested in making them speak, so that he can understand them.” Marc Bloch, he Historian’s Crat, 90. Was here an Ancient Debate of Disciples? In writing a historical account of John the Baptist, or – if that is too diicult due to the nature of the sources – at a minimum the way he was portrayed and perceived, a fundamental choice must be made at the outset. he gospels and Acts remain the prin- cipal sources on which a study of this sort must be based. Yet virtually all scholars have recognized that these texts have an explicit bias to lower the status of John at almost every possible opportunity in order to enhance the stature of Jesus. John was not only portrayed as second best, but he explicitly and repeatedly announced his inferiority to Jesus. hese circumstances found their visual expression in medieval Christian art, in which one of the standard scenes had John present at the cruciixion declaring the superiority of Jesus (against all chronological logic, since, according to the gospels, John had been executed long before). One example of this theme is the Grünewald Isenheim altarpiece, now in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar. In this masterpiece, John is pointing to Jesus on the cross, with an open book in his other hand and the lamb of God at his feet, not merely insisting that he is the forerunner of the Messiah (John 3:28), but also foretelling both his own future and that of Jesus by quoting in Latin, John 3:30: “illum oportet crescere me autem minui,” “As he grows greater I must