Why didn John the Baptist commit himself to Jesus as a disciple?
In the Synoptic Gospels a significant interval seems to exist between the time John the Baptist was arrested, his hermeneutic suspicion about Jesus’ messiahship, and his killing. John’s Gospel notes how two of John’s disciples join Jesus as his disciples and yet how after this both John and Jesus continued functioning with their respective communities of disciples and, indeed, if you follow one redaction, with their respective baptisms. There is no biblical evidence indicating that John the Baptist ever became a disciple of Jesus, even though it seems he had plenty of time to do so. In fact, to this day, a community of disciples of John the Baptist still exists in the Middle East. A more critical reading of Luke and, especially, Matthew points to the possibility that John’s “pre-understanding” vis-a-vis the Messiah kept him from making the leap of faith to become a disciple of Jesus.
