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"Hitherto few scholars have treated John the Baptist as an independent personality, apart from the subordinate position accorded him in the Gospels of forerunner to Jesus. The policy of the Gospel writers, crystallized in the saying put into the mouth of the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel, ""He must increase, but I must decrease,"" was consistently directed to utilizing this historic figure as the supreme witness to the Messiahship of Jesus, and then, his purpose served, to relegate him to the limbo of forgetfulness. Here and there, however, even in the Gospels, we catch a glimpse of a higher role which many of his generation assigned to the Baptist: "" The recently recovered witness of the Old Russian version of Josephus' Wars confirms the theocratic objective of the Baptist's ministry. ""He came to the Jews and summoned them to freedom, saying: God hath sent me, that I may show you the way of the Law, wherein ye may free yourselves from many holders of power. And there will be no mortal ruling over you, only the Most High who hath sent me."" This short introduction on the Baptist and his disciples will have served its purpose if it has drawn attention to the Messianic character of the life and teaching of John in the period of Jewish history which more than any other was full of Messianic expectation, and also to the undoubted fact that John was regarded as Messiah by a numerous following. The gnostic affinities of the Baptist sect in later times, and the various vicissitudes through which it passed, make it improbable that anything like a straightforward narrative of John's life (such as the Gospels provide of the life of Jesus) was ever composed, but there are evidences to show that there did once exist a book describing the marvellous birth of John in his character of Messiah, compiled by his disciples, which in parts paralleled the account of the birth of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This book, which would antedate the Gospel Nativity narratives and may have helped to produce them, is still largely recoverable from different sources. In this book an attempt has been made to resurrect the lost Book of the Nativity of John, and to show how the legends contained in it, and in the Gospel narratives of the birth of Jesus, originated."

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9783949197055

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"Hugh Joseph Schonfield was one of the most fascinating and amazing personalities of the 20th Century. He became a source of inspiration of the thinking of such celebrities as John Lennon. For some, the ideas he proposed were challenging and revealing, whilst others found them to be preposterous or even ridiculous. For certain groups they were even blasphemous and apparently worthy of death. Apart from this obviously popular side to his work, it may be less known that he was also historian of the Suez Canal and was instrumental behind the scenes in a number of high level negotiations in the Middle East. So apart from being one of the most erudite historians of New Testament times, he was politically active in a most novel way. His official work in the Republic which he had caused to come to fruition would lead him to make proposals to governments, many of which would be integrated into final agreements. It has been suggested, for example, that his ideas played a role in the passing of the Test Ban Treaty. He was a prodigious and skilled writer and researcher and was always on the look out for uncovering the truth and discovering novel interpretations. It was these efforts and particularly his work for world peace which in fact caused him to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He fought inexhaustibly for this cause to his last dying breath, convinced that there was an eternal plan for a servant people (a ""Dienstvolk"" instead of a ""Herrenvolk"") to arise as the only lasting way of saving man from seemingly inevitable disaster.. He was also the first and only Jew to have translated the New Testament into English. I might add that this rendering is also one of the most informative, beautiful and understandable versions. (From ""A Life for Mankind - The Biography of Hugh Joseph Schonfield"")"

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