1 Adapted from the concept of chain of memory as used in Church of Scotland (2001) A Church Without Walls [Online]. Available at http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/ churchwithoutwalls/downloads/cwwga2001report.doc

2 A. Adam, The Liturgical Year (New York: Pueblo Publishing, 1981), p. 124.

3 P. G. Cobb, ‘The history of the Christian year’ in C. Jones, G. Wainwright, E. Yarnold and P. Bradshaw, The Study of the Liturgy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 468. Adam, The Liturgical Year, p. 130.

4 Adam, The Liturgical Year, pp. 122—24.

5 Adam, The Liturgical Year, pp. 122—23. Cobb, The history of the Christian year, p. 466. See also S. K. Roll, Towards the origins of Christmas (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995) for a deeper analysis.

6 By the end of the twelfth century, it was common for the first Sunday of Advent to be the beginning of the Liturgical year. S. Borgehammar, in T. J. Heffernan and E. A Matter, The Liturgy of the Medieval Church (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute publications, 2001), pp. 24—29.

7 Adam, The Liturgical Year, p. 131.

8 Adam, The Liturgical Year, p. 133.

9 J. A. Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian — Aspects of his teaching (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1989), p. 31. As Fitzmyer points out, once the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke and the prologue of John have been conveyed, all four gospels begin the ministry narrative with John the Baptist.

10 Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian — Aspects of his teaching, pp. 86—88.

11 B. E. Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew (Minnesota, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005), p. 24. D. Senior, Matthew (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998), p. 55.

12 The example is cited by D. Moody Smith in The Theology of the Gospel of John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 23. I am expanding his comment a little. Similarly readers look for the ‘brood of vipers’ of Matthew (3:8) and Luke (3:7) in Mark (1:1—11) and in John 1. This Liturgical understanding must be kept within a creative tension with both the theological nuance and stylistic devices of the different gospel accounts.

13 There is no mention of John the Baptist at all in Matthew’s infancy narrative. Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian — Aspects of his teaching, p. 87.

14 Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian — Aspects of his teaching, pp. 102—103.

15 See K.A. Kuhn, ‘The point of the Step-parallelism in Luke 1—2’, New Testament Studies 47, 2001, p. 39 for a detailed comparison of the two annunciations.

16 J. Marcus, Mark 1—8 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 148. The step-parallelism is not consistent as there is no parallel in John’s life for the presentation of Jesus in the Temple (2:22—28) and the story of Jesus in the Temple at the age of twelve (2:41—50). See R. E. Brown The Birth of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1993), pp. 248—53.

17 R. L Webb, John the Baptizer and Prophet (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), p. 62. There is much debate about whether John belonged to the Essenes at Qumran, had taken the vow of the Nazarite, or that John had adopted a ministry and lifestyle similar to Bannus. See J. E. Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism (Michigan, MI: William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 33—34. See also: J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke I—IX (New York: Doubleday, 1981), p. 453; Marcus Mark 1—8, p. 155; G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls (London: SCM Press, 1982), p. 219 and L. W. Hurtado, Mark (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1989), p. 24.

18 Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian — Aspects of his teaching, p. 103.

19 Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian — Aspects of his teaching, p. 97. See C. E. Joynes, ‘The returned Elijah? John the Baptist’s angelic identity in the Gospel of Mark’, Scottish Journal for Theology 58/4, 2005 for an examination of how a person could be conceived as Elijah redivivus.

20 Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew, p. 22. Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism pp. 37—38. Kelhoffer provides a fascinating discussion of the different interpretations of the diet of John the Baptist associated with John as ‘prophet, wilderness dweller, ascetic and vegetarian’. J. A. Kelhoffer, ‘“Locusts and Wild Honey” (Mark 1:6c and Matt 3:4c): the Status Quaestionis Concerning the Diet of John the Baptist’, Currents in Biblical Research 2/104 (2003). See also J. A. Kelhoffer, The diet of John the Baptist: Locusts and Wild Honey in synoptic and patristic interpretation (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).

21 Taylor , The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism, p. 38. Isaiah 20:2; Hurtado, Mark, p. 16; 2 Kings 1:8.

22 Marcus, Mark 1—8, pp. 156—57.

23 M. N. Sabin, The Gospel according to Mark (Minnesota, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005), p. 18. Marcus provides another interesting perspective, stating that the description of the appearance and lifestyle of John the Baptist has a strong eschatological flavour. He suggests that it represents a simple and pure lifestyle, evoking images of the Garden of Eden, and he states that ‘the end time will be a return to paradise, when the natural world was all that existed’. Marcus, Mark 1—8, p. 157.

24 Marcus, Mark 1—8, p. 147.

25 Marcus, Mark 1—8, p. 147.

26 M. Goulder, Isaiah as Liturgy (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2004), p. 6. Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew, p. 22.

27 Marcus, Mark 1—8, p. 148.

28 See works such as S. M. Langton, Exodus through the Centuries (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). W. Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology (Fortress: Minneapolis, MN, 1992), suggests that the exile has had an influence on Judaism that is disproportionate to the actual experience of exile (p. 184).

29 Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke I—IX, p. 461.

30 Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew, p. 23.

31 Senior Matthew, p. 53.

32 Senior Matthew, p. 53.

33 Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew, pp. 21—22.

34 Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew, p. 22.

35 Marcus comments that the early Christians would have been anxious about any putative sinfulness in Jesus and any apparent subordination to John the Baptist. Marcus, Mark 1—8, p. 164. John’s gospel suggests that the ministry of John the Baptist continued through the work of disciples, though Brown is cautious about claims that they were a rival group to the early Christians. R. E. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John (New York: Doubleday, 2003), pp. 153—57.

36 F. J. Moloney, Mark. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004). p. 61; Senior, Matthew, pp. 54—55.

37 Moody Smith, The Theology of the Gospel of John, p. 23.

38 Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism, pp. 53—54.

39 Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism, pp. 58—68.

40 Marcus, Mark 1—8, pp. 163—64.

41 Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke I—IX, p. 481.

42 Marcus, Mark 1—8, p. 166.

43 Marcus, Mark 1—8, p. 165.

44 Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew, p. 25.

45 Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke I—IX, p. 484.

46 Sabin, The Gospel according to Mark, p. 19.

47 Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew, p. 25.

48 A dialogue that, similar to Mark 1:7, ensures that the order of importance between John and Jesus is emphatically established. Senior, 1998, p. 55. Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew, pp. 24—26.

49 Senior Matthew, p. 57; Reid, The Gospel according to Matthew, pp. 24—25.

50 John’s gospel has prompted considerable debate that Jesus also practiced a form of immersion, though the meaning attached to these immersions would have been equally problematic for the early Christian community. See Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism, p. 248.

51 Moody Smith, The Theology of the Gospel of John, p. 22. B. Lindars, John (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), p. 74. Lindars points out that the verses that refer to John in the prologue (6—8; 15) appear to have been inserted into a text modelled on a Semitic wisdom poem (p. 73).

52 See the useful discussion of John and the strands of Gnosticism at that time in Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, pp. 120—22.

53 I am grateful to my colleague Leonard Franchi for his kind reminder that this physical darkness will be more applicable to the northern hemisphere.

54 W. J. O’Shea, and S. K. Roll, ‘Advent’, in B. L. Marthaler, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edn (Detroit, MI: Thomson Gale, 2003). pp. 133—35.

Prepare the way of the Lord: John the Baptist and Advent

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