Or, “This is my Son, the beloved.” Slight textual evidence may be cited (cf. p. 146) for the reading “thou art” instead of “this is” (cf. Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22).

 This statement combines the words and ideas of Ps. 2:7 and Isa. 42:1. According to Matthew, the Father, using the third person apparently, addressed John and a few bystanders (see on Matt. 3:16), whereas according to Mark and Luke, the Father addressed Jesus directly (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). Some have seen in this difference a discrepancy in the Gospel record. On this and other alleged discrepancies see Additional Notes at end of chapter, Note 2.

 Upon three occasions during the life of Christ the Father’s voice was heard from heaven testifying of His Son—at His baptism, at the Transfiguration (Matt. 17:5; 2 Peter 1:16-18), and as He departed from the Temple for the last time (John 12:28).

 Compare the words of Isa. 42:1.

Note 1

 According to Matt. 3:4 and Mark 1:6 the diet of John the Baptist consisted of “locusts [Gr. akrides, plural of akris] and wild honey.” Whether the Gospel writers meant that John ate nothing else, or only that these constituted his principal articles of diet, we do not know. It is also possible that “locusts and wild honey” were considered to be the distinguishing diet of a prophet, even as “raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle” marked him a successor to the ancient prophets (see DA 102). John may have subsisted on “locusts and wild honey” only at such times as other foods were not readily available. Again, “locusts and wild honey” may simply be representative of various articles of food available in the wilderness, and the expression thus a graphic Oriental way of giving emphasis to his lonely, abstemious life, far from the haunts of men.

Because the English word “locust” properly denotes both an insect and certain kinds of trees, the question naturally arises as to what, with honey, constituted the diet of John.

Elsewhere in the Scripture, and also in contemporary Greek literature, for that matter, the word akris always refers to an insect, the locust. This undeniable fact has led most commentators today to conclude that in the record concerning John the Baptist this insect

 is intended. It is also a fact that the locust has been part of the diet of the peoples of the Middle East from ancient times. According to the law of Moses certain kinds of locusts are clean food (Lev. 11:22), and would therefore be permissible in the diet of a Jew. These facts have led commentators in our day quite uniformly to the conclusion that akris in Matthew and Mark should be understood as designating the insect by the name “locust” rather than a species of tree.

However, from very early Christian times there has come down a tradition, widespread, emphatic, and persistent, to the effect that, in Matthew and Luke, the word akris denotes something other than an insect. Small wild birds, crabs, crayfish, wild pears or other fruit, cakes of bread, carob pods, etc., have been suggested. Tatian’s Diatessaron (see p. 122) reads “milk” instead of “locusts.” Most of these are obviously mere guesses, but for one—the carob pod—there appears to be a basis of linguistic and anthropological evidence.

 The carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua) is cultivated extensively in lands bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, and is common in Palestine from Hebron northward. Its fruit, which matures in the late spring, is borne in flat pods somewhat the shape of the Lima bean, and from six to ten inches in length. The pods and beans may be eaten raw, cooked, or ground into flour and made into bread. They may be dried and preserved indefinitely. Though not particularly palatable, the carob has a substantial nutritive value, and has long been a staple article of the diet of the poorer classes in the Near East. The Tosephta (Ma‘aseroth 2. 19 [84]) lists carob pods as a kind of food, and the Mishnah (Ma‘aseroth 1. 3, Soncino ed. of the Talmud, p. 256) specifies that, as a food, they are to be tithed. The “husks” fed by the prodigal son to the swine were carob pods (see on Luke 15:16). Incidentally, in English, the carob is commonly known as a locust, and its beans are popularly called “St.-John’s-bread.” English grain dealers are said to supply carob pods as feed for cattle under the name “locusts.”

Evidence tending to favor the fruit of the carob tree as the “locusts” that John the Baptist ate is as follows:

 1. Available evidence indicates that the insect locust is a very poor source of food and that it would be incapable, in itself, of sustaining human life. According to Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (art. “Locust”), “the nutritious value of the insect locust is extremely small, and insufficient, [even] with honey, to support life.” The fact that the “locusts” John ate seem to have constituted a major element of his diet is against the insect locust and tends to favor the fruit of the carob tree. This fact concerning the inadequacy of insect locusts as food must be accorded considerable weight in the argument that some other food than the insect is indicated by the word akris.

 It is an interesting fact that carob beans were a food of the very poor in various Near Eastern lands, and still are. Anciently the Jews had a saying that “when a Jew has to resort to carobs, he repents” (Midrash Rabbah, on Lev. 11:1, Soncino ed., p. 168). It is not irrelevant to remark in this connection that John was the great preacher of repentance, and that a diet of carob beans and wild honey would certainly be appropriate in the light of the then-current concept of what a preacher of righteousness would eat. As already noted, the austere diet of John may, like his rude clothing, have been intended to characterize him in the popular mind as resembling the prophets of old.

 2. Among the earliest to challenge the idea that John’s diet included insect locusts were the Ebionites, a Jewish-Christian group of Syria whose origin may be traced to the Judaizing elements of NT times. Like the Essenes (see p. ), they were somewhat ascetic in their tendencies and advocated a vegetarian diet. Apparently the Ebionites omitted mention of “locusts” altogether in ch. 3:4, though Epiphanius, a Christian writer of the 4th century, charges that they substituted egkrides, “cakes,” for akrides, “locusts” (see M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 9; H. A. W. Meyer, Commentary on the New Testament, on Matt. 3:4). It does not seem that the Ebionites had received Gospel manuscripts reading egkrides, but that they may have made this substitution or alteration in harmony with their dietary principles. All extant ancient Bible manuscripts read akrides.

 3. The Greek Church Fathers, who may be presumed to have had a better knowledge of the usage of Biblical Greek than later writers, were very far from agreeing that akris in Matthew and Mark means the insect we know as locust. Most of them, in fact, seem to have thought otherwise. For example, many considered the akrides (or akridas) of the Gospels to be equivalent to akrodrua, “fruits,” or the tender tips of the branches of trees or herbs.

 In a sermon on the prophecy of Zacharias erroneously attributed to Chrysostom (c. A.D. 400) a comparison is drawn between Elijah and John the Baptist in which it is said that “the one lived in the mountains, the other spent his time in the desert; the one was fed by ravens, the other ate plant locusts [akridas botanōn].” The phrase akridas botanōn is translated into the Latin as herbarum summitates, meaning the “tips” or “shoots of plants” (see Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 50 cols. 786, 787). In another sermon similarly attributed to Chrysostom, on John the Baptist, the expression akridas ek botanōn occurs in a description of his diet, and is translated into Latin as summitates plantarum, “shoots of plants” (ibid., vol. 59, col. 762). A note to the Latin translation explains that the Latin Vulgate has locustas for akrides, and adds that by locustas the Vulgate means not only locusts but also summitates plantarum, “tips of plants.” A note to the Greek text states that Isidore of Pelusiota, repeatedly, and many other writers, give the same explanation of akrides. Isidore of Pelusiota (c. A.D. 425) specifically states (Epistle 132) that “the locusts which John ate are not as some ignorant persons think, scarab-[beetle-]like creatures. Far from it, for in reality they are the tips [Gr. akremones; Latin summitates] of plants or trees” (ibid., vol. 78 col. 270). In Epistle 5 Isidore again speaks of John’s food as “the tips of plants and of leaves” (ibid., cols. 183, 184). In his Commentary on Matthew (on ch. 3:4), Theophylact of Bulgaria (c. A.D.1075) observes, “Some say the locusts [akrides] are plants, which are called black-horned; others [say they are] wild summer fruits” (ibid., vol. 123, cols. 173, 174). In his Ecclesiastical History (i. 14) Callistus Nicephorus (c. A.D. 1400) says that John “retired to the remote wilds, making use of the tender parts of trees for food” (ibid., vol. 145, cols. 675, 676). Numerous others might be cited to the same effect. The Greek writers and their Latin translators both apparently understood the “locusts” of ch. 3:4 to be a vegetarian article of diet.

It cannot be said of these Fathers of the church that their thinking was influenced, as that of the Ebionites seems to have been, by any hesitancy to accept the idea that John the Baptist ate flesh food. So far as is known, Church Fathers were not vegetarians. It would seem most difficult to provide a valid explanation for the rather general agreement of the Fathers that the akrides of the Gospels designates something other than insect locusts unless there was some foundation linguistically or in the habits of the people of the early Christian centuries.

 4. It appears that the name “St.-John’s-bread,” as applied to the fruit of the carob tree, was introduced into various European languages by medieval pilgrims returning from the Holy Land. In the German, for instance, this is the specific name for that fruit.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary “St.-John’s-bread” appeared in an English-Spanish dictionary of the year 1591, as a synonym for “carob.”

 5. T. K. Cheyne, an eminent Bible scholar who wrote at the turn of the century, takes the position that John the Baptist’s food consisted of carob beans and wild honey.

He reasons that the word akrides, in all known instances of its use, means specifically the insect, that insect locusts have been eaten from ancient times, but that “common sense, however, tells us that locusts would not have been preferred by the Baptist as his habitual food to nourishment supplied by the soil. Humility would not pass over the ordinary food of the poorest class, viz. carob-pods” (Encyclopaedia Biblica, art. “Husks”).

 6. Confusion as to the meaning of akris in the Gospels seems to be related to the fact that, in various languages, the word “locust” designates both a species of insects and a species of trees. The English word “locust” is from the Latin locusta, which originally denoted a lobster or similar crustacean, and later, because of some resemblance in shape, the insect locust as well. The true locust is an insect belonging to the family Acridiidae, a term derived through the Latin from the Gr. akrides.

Accounting for the application of the term “locust” to the carob and certain other trees, the Oxford English Dictionary comments: “The Gr. name akris, properly denoting the insect, is applied in the Levant to the carob-pod, from some resemblance in form; and from very early times it has been believed by many that the ‘locusts’ eaten by John the Baptist were these pods” (art. “Locust”). In modern Arabic the word nabat, designating the insect locust, is similarly applied also to the fruit of the carob tree. The appropriateness of applying the term “locusts” to carob pods is evident from the fact that, in Greek, they are called keratia, literally, “little horns,” a name descriptive of their shape, and that the type of locust properly called akris, of the family Acridiidae, is “characterized by short horns” (Oxford English Dictionary, art. “Locust”). This resemblance in shape appears to be the basis for the double meaning of the word “locust” in the English language as well as in colloquial Levantine Greek and Arabic. According to Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, art. “Locust,” “the resemblance between the insect and the bean is the reason for the identity of name [in English].”

 7. Whether the same resemblance was reflected by the Hebrew and Aramaic we cannot say. However, it may be noted that the Heb. chagab, “locust” or “grasshopper,” is translated akris by the LXX in Lev. 11:22; Num. 13:33; 2 Chron. 7:13; Eccl. 12:5; Isa. 40:22. In Mishnaic Hebrew charub denotes the carob pod, and is equivalent to the Arabic kharrūb, from which our word carob comes, and to the Gr. keratia. Some have suggested that in Palestine and Syria, where the Aramaic was long used by Christians, the consonantal form ch-r-b may at some time have been confused with ch-g-b, because of a similarity of sound and spelling. According to this explanation, charub, “carob,” became chagab, “locust,” and this substitution was reflected in the Greek text of Matt. 3:4 and Mark 1:6.

 Some, suggesting that the Heb. cheryonim of the Masoretic text should read charubim, have thought that carob pods are referred to in 2 Kings 6:25 (see comment there). They also suggest that the Heb. chereb, rendered “sword” in Isa. 1:20, should be charub, “carob.” In the Hebrew consonantal text the two words are identical. The translation would then be, “you shall eat the carob,” which agrees well with the context. Some have thought that Matthew, with a Hebrew background, and thinking of the charub, “carob,” by its colloquial name chagab, “locust,” may have selected the Gr. akris, “locust,” when writing. It is also possible that a similar colloquial terminology existed in Greek at that time.

 8. From the strictly linguistic point of view the argument favors equating akris with the insect. But in view of all the contrary evidence here summarized, it is far from certain that this is the correct understanding of the term in Matt. 3:4 and Mark 1:6. Available evidence does not warrant a dogmatic conclusion as to precisely what foods John ate. It is worthy of note that Ellen G. White characterizes John as a vegetarian (3T 62; CH 72).

Note 2

In various places in the Gospels the writers report differently the words of Christ. They also give different accounts of certain matters, for example, the inscription on the cross. These variations have been seized upon by skeptics as proof that the Gospel writers are unreliable, even false, and thus certainly not inspired. A careful examination proves the opposite. Those who wrote the Gospels, along with the other followers of Christ, considered themselves witnesses of the events of our Lord’s life. They staked everything on the truthfulness of their witness.

 Now in a court, today, if witnesses all testify precisely the same regarding an incident, the conclusion is, not that they are truthful, but that they are perjurers. Why? Because experience teaches us that no two people see an event exactly alike. One point impresses one witness; another point impresses another. Again, they may all have heard exactly the same words spoken in connection with the event, but each reports the words a little differently. One witness may even report certain parts of a conversation that the other witnesses do not report. But so long as there is no clear contradiction in the thought or meaning of the variant statements, the witnesses may be considered to have told the truth. Indeed, apparently contradictory statements may often prove to be not contradictory at all, but rather complementary. See on Matt. 27:37; Mark 5:2; 10:46.

It has been well remarked that only an honest man can afford to have a poor memory. Those who have a false story to foist on the public must keep rehearsing their story to make it hold together. The honest man may not retell his story each time in exactly the same language—almost certainly he will not—but there is an inner consistency and harmony to the story that is evident to all. What is more, such a story lives and sparkles before our eyes because the teller of it is reliving the spirit and feeling of the incident. But when a man tells and retells a story with phonograph-like sameness, the most charitable thing we can say regarding him is that he has become a boresome slave to a mere form of words, and does not present a living picture of what actually happened or what actually was said. And if we are not charitably-minded, we may even become suspicious of his veracity, or at least sure of his senility.

All experience, and especially the experience of the courts through the long years, leads to the conclusion that truthful witnessing need not be—indeed, should not be— equated with carbon-copy identity of testimony of the different witnesses to an event, including their testimony as to what was said at the particular event.

 Hence, the charge that the Gospel writers are unreliable because their reports differ, stands revealed as groundless. On the contrary, those writers provide the clearest proof that there was no collusion between them, that they independently reported what most particularly impressed their divinely illumined minds regarding the life of Christ. They wrote at different times and in different places their more or less different accounts. Yet there is no difficulty in discovering harmony and unity in what they wrote regarding incidents and events, including the words of our Lord and, for example, the inscription on the cross (see on ch. 27:37).

In the light of these facts the related charge that their variant reporting of Christ’s words proves the Gospel writers uninspired, seems pointless. What warrant does the skeptic have for assuming that if they were inspired they would give verbatim the words of our Lord? None whatever. Words are merely a vehicle for expressing thought, and unfortunately, human language is often inadequate to express fully a speaker’s thought. Might not the very fact that the Gospel writers stated our Lord’s words in variant forms provide in itself a proof of their inspired insight into the range and intent of His words? Incidentally, Christ spoke in Aramaic; the Gospels were written in Greek. And is it not true that different scholars may produce most faithful translations of a certain man’s writings and yet differ in the words used? Indeed, slavishly literal translations generally sacrifice something of the real thought or intent of the mind of the original writer.

We may here apply, with proper adaptation, the words of Scripture: “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” There is a life-giving spirit that breathes through the four Gospels, a spirit that might easily have been smothered or stifled had the writers conformed to the skeptics’ artificial standard of reporting—a slavishly identical form of words. God inspired His penmen thousands of years before carbon paper was invented.