ABSTRACT
Luke’s account of John’s public ministry omits the encounter between John the Baptist and Jesus and their dialogue as set forth by Matthew. Luke adds two observations concerning the people gathered around John: they were in a state of expectation, and they wondered whether John was the Messiah. Luke expands upon the baptizer’s preaching to the crowds by adding ethical preaching. This is an expansion of the baptizer’s judgment preaching in Matthew, which Luke has rewritten almost verbatim. There seems to be a vast difference between the historical relationship between the two figures and the ways in which the gospels have presented this relationship theologically. The synoptic gospels agree in recounting how John proclaimed that a later baptism will supersede his own baptism, but Luke disagrees with Mark and Matthew on the chronology of John’s and Jesus’ apparition. Luke’s modifications to the Baptist portrait reveal how Luke theologically reworked the figure and the relationship between Jesus and John.
