Chapter XLIV.—Of the Order in Which the Accounts of John’s Imprisonment and
Death are Given by These Three Evangelists.
92. Matthew then proceeds with his narrative in the following terms: “For Herod laid
hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias’ sake, his brother’s wife;”
and so on, down to the words, “And his disciples came and took up the body, and buried
it, and went and told Jesus.”1043 Mark gives this narrative in similar terms.1044 Luke, on the
other hand, does not relate it in the same succession, but introduces it in connection with
his statement of the baptism wherewith the Lord was baptized. Hence we are to understand
him to have acted by anticipation here, and to have taken the opportunity of recording at
this point an event which took place actually a considerable period later. For he has first
reported those words which John spake with regard to the Lord—namely, that “His fan is
in His hand, and that He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into His
garner; but the chaff He will burn up with fire unquenchable;” and immediately thereafter
he has appended his statement of an incident which the evangelist John demonstrates not
to have taken place in direct historical sequence. For this latter writer mentions that, after
Jesus had been baptized, He went into Galilee at the period when He turned the water into
wine; and that, after a sojourn of a few days in Capharnaum, He left that district and returned
to the land of Judæa, and there baptized a multitude about the Jordan, previous to the time
when John was imprisoned.1045 Now what reader, unless he were all the better versed1046
in these writings, would not take it to be implied here that it was after the utterance of the
words with regard to the fan and the purged floor that Herod became incensed against John,
and cast him into prison? Yet, that the incident referred to here did not, as matter of fact,
occur in the order in which it is here recorded, we have already shown elsewhere; and, indeed,
Luke himself puts the proof into our hands.1047 For if [he had meant that] John’s incarcer-
ation took place immediately after the utterance of those words, then what are we to make
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of the fact that in Luke’s own narrative the baptism of Jesus is introduced subsequently to
his notice of the imprisonment of John? Consequently it is manifest that, recalling the cir-
cumstance in connection with the present occasion, he has brought it in here by anticipation,
and has thus inserted it in his history at a point antecedent to a number of incidents, of
which it was his purpose to leave us some record, and which, in point of time, were antecedent
to this mishap that befell John. But it is as little the case that the other two evangelists,
1043 Matt. xiv. 3–12.
1044 Mark vi. 17–29.
1045 John ii. 1, 12, iii. 22–24.
1046 The reading in the mss. and in Migne’s text is, quis autem non putet qui minus in his litteris eruditus
est; for which some give, quis autem non putet nisi qui minus, etc.
1047 Luke iii. 15–21.
Of the Order in Which the Accounts of John’s Imprisonment and Death are Given by These Three Evangelists.
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Of the Order in Which the Accounts of John’s Imprisonment and Death are…