01x10 - John the Baptist

[bunniefuu]

[SIMCHA] John the Baptist is an enigmatic figure...

...in the New Testament.

He was a simple man who led a simple life,

living in the desert, surviving on locusts and honey.

But he had a powerful message, Baptism.

He told his followers it could save their souls.

His fiery preaching style...

...drew massive crowds in first century Israel.

Jesus himself was impressed...

...and he went to him to be baptized.

In fact, some say in his day John was bigger than Jesus.

He was so popular that King Herod cut off his head.

But if he hadn't lost his head...

...could it have been John the Baptist Superstar?

The Gospels and tradition are full of contradictions...

...about who is more important, John or Jesus.

To this day, there is a sect of people in Iraq...

...who think John was the Messiah.

Following clues encoded in the New Testament,

Christian folklore, art,

and stunning new archaeological finds...

...we'll cut through the contradictions...

...to find the real John the Baptist.

I'll start my search in Israel...

...in a village just outside Jerusalem.

So here we are in Ein Kerem.

Ein Kerem is the traditional home...

...of John the Baptist.

As you can see it's a place full of water.

It's pouring rain. We're waiting for Yudit...

...who's a tour guide around here.

She knows Ein Kerem like the back of her hand.

There she is.

Hi. Yudit.

Yudit, How are you?

Hi. Fine, thank you.

Now, straight ahead?

This is really raining here.

[SIMCHA] This village is filled with holy sites...

...and legends of John the Baptist,

born and raised here years ago.

This is it?

This is where Saint John the Baptist was born.

The tradition says he was born here?

Yeah, he was born here.

Oh wow.

There are people praying here,

I guess because it's a holy place.

Of course. A very holy place.

Now what does&John the Baptist,

what does he mean as a person for you?

He means so much because...

...he came to prepare the way for the coming of Christ.

So you feel it here? You feel it?

So much. -Yeah.

So much.

[SIMCHA] John the Baptist and Jesus were cousins.

According to tradition,

this is where they first met...

...in the wombs of their miracle moms,

when the Virgin Mary on her way to Bethlehem,

visited the once barren Elizabeth,

mother of John the Baptist.

This is beautiful.

Some of it is natural rock.

And this is of course the most important spot,

where he was born.

[SIMCHA] A star marks the spot where John was born.

There's a very similar star at the Church of the Nativity,

in Bethlehem where Jesus was born.

And the painting is also is very beautiful.

What's interesting is that the woman...

...who is holding John is not Elizabeth, his mother,

but Mary.

She was more important; she's always wearing the blue.

She's holding John.

And Elizabeth is you can barely see her.

She's back there.

-Could there be a kind of a code?

I think it's only showing that Mary...

...was more important than Elizabeth.

-You know, historically speaking,

there's evidence that John the Baptist was in a sense,

bigger than Jesus. Maybe the painter's saying John not Jesus?

-Maybe.

Maybe if we decode it.

-Do you know anything about these codes?

Well I'm decoding this one.

There's a powerful message there,

showing Mary holding John not Jesus.

Where is Jesus?

-He's not even appearing in any of the paintings.

It's all about John the Baptist, and the cousin Mary.

In this place John the Baptist is still the star.

Yeah for sure, he's the star here. That's good.

[SIMCHA] In the early first century,

the end was always near.

Messianic fever was in the air.

The Romans under Herod were oppressing the Jews,

the elite priests were corrupt.

The people wanted a savior.

John the Baptist was thought to be that savior,

and his way to salvation was through ritual cleansing,

Baptism, to save souls from the coming fire.

I spoke to Steve Mason about John's take on Baptism.

There were lots of people at the time in Jewish circles...

...announcing that the world was about to end...

...and John was one of these people.

You had this image of terror, of coming terror.

This is what God will do.

And John the Baptist, he says:

'Look, if you don't repent, if you don't straighten out,

the mighty one is coming,

and will separate the good wheat from the chaff,

and will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.'

So what his saying is this,

'You either face a river of fire in the future,

or you can be immersed in water,

which is much more pleasant.'

[SIMCHA] One of the world's...

...largest protestant denominations...

...takes its name from John the Baptist.

Today, there are about million Baptists...

...around the world.

Like John himself, they only baptize adults...

...who choose to symbolically wash away sins,

and commit themselves to a moral, faithful life.

Baptizing his disciples is what made John famous,

but where did John do all this baptizing?

I heard about this incredible new archaeological find,

a cave near Jerusalem...

...where John may have baptized thousands of his followers.

But there's a news blackout right now...

...so the archaeologists aren't talking.

But that won't stop us. I've got to see this place.

We're going to the John the Baptist cave.

[SIMCHA] Our first obstacle, a locked gate.

We'll just crawl through this hole.

This is Naked Archaeology.

Come on, come on we've gotta move fast!

Okay guys, come on.

[SIMCHA] We're on our way to make an unofficial visit...

...to what archaeologists say...

...is the cave of John the Baptist.

They wouldn't come with us today but that won't stop us.

Until recently we thought John stuck to the Jordan River..

...but this cave near his hometown...

...may be the spot where his ministry began.

This is not the right key.

This is a really serious lock.

Why do they put obstacles...

...between people and the archaeology?

You think I can get through here, why not?

I think somebody can get through here.

I'm not joking. You can't get through this?

Sure you can.

[SIMCHA]Our Yoga fanatic cameraman...

...squeezed in for a closer look.

What do you see in there?

There's a bath right there.

That's a footbath.

[SIMCHA] Hey look! It's a giant pool,

a ritual bath, a mikvah.

There's a mikvah in there,

a ritual Hebrew bath.

Something he would have used.

[SIMCHA] There are supposed to be drawings...

...of John the Baptist on the walls,

but it's pretty hard to see.

There it is. There it is. It's very primitive.

I see it. There's a person there and I see a head.

-Hey Simcha, how come you're not in here?

I'm too fat.

[SIMCHA] This is one of the few times...

...we really could use an archaeologist.

That's Naked Archaeology.

[SIMCHA] In the meantime back to Ein Kerem,

to look at some paintings that may hold some clues.

According to the Gospels one of the many people...

...who came to John to be saved through baptism...

...was Jesus.

Artists love to tackle this watershed moment...

...in Christian theology.

But why do so many of these paintings...

...make John look more important than Jesus?

In St. John's church I discover another hidden message.

But what does it mean?

Was John trying to tell me something?

This is baptizing of Jesus by John the Baptist.

It was done in ,

in a tiny little village near Montreal.

You're telling me that's a Canadian painting?

-It's a Canadian painting. Yeah.

It looks amazing! French-Canadian!

-It's beautiful ... French-Canadian.

[SIMCHA] That makes sense.

John the Baptist is the patron Saint of the province of Quebec.

Can you see two beavers?

-I'm actually having a little bit of a culture shock.

Cause you're right.

There are beavers on top of the painting.

Canadians have very deep feelings for beavers...

...and it's appropriate that they would be in a place-

-of importance. -It's spiritual.

[SIMCHA] Okay, the Canadian painting is one thing.

But it's not just in paintings and churches...

...that you see what appears to be hidden meanings.

The great masters tackled this topic too.

Some of Leonardo's most enigmatic paintings...

...are of John the Baptist.

Da Vinci also seems to be highlighting John, not Jesus.

I'm meeting with Art Consultant Alberta Nokes...

...to see what she thinks about my theory.

Da Vinci makes me think, look at John again,

look at John, look at John, look at John.

Here's John, he's got the cross, he's higher level,

he didn't have to do that,

he's on a higher level than baby, the infant Jesus.

He's the one that's being embraced by the Virgin Mary.

He actually seems to me he's actually taking over the role...

...that one would expect for Jesus.

For painters like Leonardo in the renaissance,

and for early Christians,

John and Christ were pretty much equal...

...in a lot of people's eyes because the baptism...

...and the Crucifixion are absolutely linked.

It takes the two of them...

...to turn Christ into the redeemer of all mankind.

But noticed here again, call me just the code aficionado,

but noticed the blue.

Mary is all in blue and part of her blue...

...is over John's head, not Jesus.

You could perhaps argue that the blue here...

...is symbolic of greater divinity for John.

Because blue is a colour that's usually equated...

...with the Virgin in renaissance painting.

The Da Vinci John the Baptist code...

...is what we're talking about here.

I bet you believe in the Grassy Knoll theory.

[SIMCHA] Conspiracy theories aside,

it is true that John the Baptist gets a lot more ink than Jesus..

...in first century accounts other than the Gospels.

And the biggest historian of the day...

...is Flavius Josephus.

Josephus spends more time...

...on John the Baptist than he does on Jesus.

Then that tells us that he has more to say...

...about John the Baptist,

which is a very interesting historical observation.

Essentially what he said is he was a very wise man,

he taught piety and justice...

...and fair treatment of ones fellow human beings.

He taught that you should be immersed...

...and the reason he was k*lled,

according to Josephus,

is that he had a very large following.

[SIMCHA] History says John was the headliner.

Is it possible that the Gospel writers turned John...

...into a warm up act for Jesus?

He must have been very charismatic.

If he was alive today he'd have his own television show.

But Jesus is the star in this case...

...and John is the one doing the announcing.

The image that comes to mind is...

...Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson.

And here's Jesus.

[SIMCHA] Even Jesus calls John the greatest...

...man ever born of woman.

So how did John get to be runner up?

If you look at the Gospels in the order they're written,

John gets smaller with every retelling.

Well, the Gospel accounts, for example,

are increasingly trying to do two things with John.

They're trying to show that he was a friend of Jesus,

but at the same time they're trying to show...

...that he was clearly subordinate to Jesus.

Someone might think he was a follower.

That Jesus was a follower of John, exactly.

[SIMCHA] And why not?

John had thousands of followers in his day.

He still has followers.

I think it's time to meet some of them.

[SIMCHA] John the Baptist,

first century superstar Christian prophet,

is famous for baptizing Jesus.

He led a very simple life; he lived in the desert,

wore camel hair shirt and survived...

...on a diet of locusts and honey.

Can a man in the desert really survive on that?

In Yemen, people still eat locusts.

I tracked down a locust eating Yemenite medicine man...

...to see if this New Testament story makes sense.

First he healed my energy.

Then we talked locusts.

You know it says, the Christians,

they talk about John the Baptist...

...living in the desert eating honey.

John the Baptist was eating honey and locusts.

Very good. It's the best health in the dessert.

-You ate it?

-Yes! When I was young I was eating!

And what does it taste like?

Chips!

French fries? -Yeah.

-When you say chips you mean like potato?

Salmon.

-It Tastes like Salmon?

Yeah.

And you know which one is kosher and which one is not?

Yeah, the big one. All them is kosher.

To eat honey and locusts...

...is the best thing to eat in the desert?

Yeah okay. You have to cook it.

Then you eat it like, hot spicy, honey.

Whatever you want, yeah.

But it's good for the man.

It's very tasty, what's the difference...

...between chicken and this one?

[SIMCHA] Yum! Locusts honey roasted!

Available everywhere where snacks and plagues are found.

In his day John, like Jesus,

was just one of many possible Messiahs.

Both men were contenders.

The Apostle Paul tells...

...of a Church of John the Messiah in Turkey.

Paul goes to Ephesus in Western Turkey,

he encounters a group of students of John the Baptist.

And Paul says to them:

"Well have you received the Holy Spirit?"

And they say:

"We haven't even heard of the Holy Spirit.

What are you talking about?"

And then Paul has to explain to them,

"Well what John was really talking about...

...was this Holy Spirit.?

You guys missed the boat.

Jesus is coming, yeah.

But Paul has to explain to them.

[SIMCHA] In Iraq today...

...there were about , people...

...who still follow John the Baptist's teaching...

...called Mandeans.

They believe that John, not Jesus, is the true Messiah.

John the Baptist's story continues to inspire.

I'm on the way to a couple of his modern disciples.

We're going to an area...

...where John the Baptist used to go to be alone.

Used to go to be alone?

In the caves and the mountains of Judea, and so on.

And since he went there years ago,

all these strange people come,

they say there's really special energies there.

Special energies?

And they come to live there.

Really? -Yeah.

They wanna connect to John the Baptist?

Something like that. Yeah.

[SIMCHA] Like John, Barbara and her husband...

...gave up the good life.

They sold all their possessions...

...and moved from Europe to this cave,

near John's hometown.

Wow, this is amazing!

You mind if I make myself at home?

-Please! Be careful it's an ascetic bed, it's hard.

Don't throw myself on it?

Oh, it's an ascetic bed.

I see what you mean.

If you throw yourself on it, you break your bones.

Okay, so this is very cozy,

this is totally within John the Baptist.

It is totally.

You two are in his tradition, he was a beautiful man.

He was beautiful and humble.

His beauty was his humility.

It's written he was one of the biggest prophets there are,

and he lost his head because of a woman.

Of a dance of a woman.

[SIMCHA] The most popular story of John's demise...

...is that of Salome, Herod's stepdaughter who,

when spurned by John asked for his head on a platter.

She got it as a reward for some dirty dancing.

This story is actually not true.

It's just a figment of playwright Oscar Wilde's imagination.

In reality, according to Josephus,

King Herod chopped off John's head...

...because he was becoming too popular.

Very close to Barbara and John's cave...

...is an ancient crusader church where Elizabeth,

John the Baptist's mother is said to be buried.

This, actually if you have a little fantasy,

was all forest and wilderness.

And here in the middle of this forest...

...is where John the Baptist buried his mother.

So we can go inside, here's the cave.

Were there Templars here?

Because the Templars they were involved in Da Vinci code.

[SIMCHA] During the th century...

...the Knights Templar were put on trial for heresy.

Under t*rture many confessed...

...to worshiping the head of John the Baptist.

This is the grave.

John the Baptist buried his mother here.

[SIMCHA] Now the French crusaders who built this,

they had all kinds of secret societies

Yes, yes, yes.

You think there's a secret code here? In this tomb?

There is a secret code.

There is? -Yeah.

What is it? -It's secret.

It's a secret? -It's a secret.

Can I get a clue about the secret code?

-You put pressure on me.

That's my job.

Is it a secret code from the time of John the Baptist...

...or is it a secret code from the time of the crusaders?

No, from the time of John the Baptist.

Yeah? -Yes.

Did you let your husband John into this?

He knows, he knows!

He knows?

I know nothing!

You find it.

I will find the secret code you think?

[whispers secret code]

You just told me what it was.

I can play that tape over and over again and figure it out.

[whisper] -What?

[SIMCHA] We may not have figured out the secret code,

but now the news blackout is lifted,

and the archaeologist is ready...

...to show us around the John the Baptist cave.

Maybe he has the keys to the puzzle.

You have to protect yourself,

there's like also filmmakers that try to...

...sneak into these kinds of things.

Are you admitting something?

No, no. I'm just saying.

There are those kinds of people...

...and you've got to protect yourself from it.

[SIMCHA] I'm back at the John the Baptist cave...

...with Shimon Gibson the archeologist who discovered it.

He's been digging here since .

Let's go in and have a look. Luckily I got keys here.

Keys are very important.

And it's important to protect archaeological sites...

...from intruders.

I wanna point out something.

A skinny person could make his way...

...right through here. Not me. Not me.

Like a two-foot person.

No, like a skinny cameraman.

[SIMCHA] Along with the tons of earth,

stones and remains of pottery...

...removed from the cave,

Shimon and his team have recently...

...drained the water in order to better examine the site.

It's a beautiful cave.

It's meters in length, five meters wide and meters deep.

When I discovered it back in ,

I was all the way up here, close to the roof,

and I kept on banging my head on the ceiling.

What was here?

It was full of soil.

[SIMCHA] Shimon shows me an ancient footbath...

...that he believes may have been used...

...by John the Baptist himself.

So what we've found here was at the bottom here,

we found in the level which is...

...associated the time of John the Baptist.

You see here, there is a round insulation here,

slightly larger than feet.

So I'll put my right foot into it...

...and you can see right there like Cinderella...

...it fits perfectly.

So one sec, so somebody would take oil...

...and say here you've been baptized.

Yes, yes.

Go on your way, be a good man.

What's interesting is there's a possibility that...

...feet as represented in the story of Jesus,

may have actually started from something,

which the Jesus group of disciples adapted...

...from the John the Baptist.

This could have started here.

[SIMCHA] One of the most compelling finds...

...depicts John the Baptist.

You have this figure with up-way-arms,

he is holding a staff in his left hand.

But what's important here is that...

...this person is wearing a hairy kilt.

-Hairy kilt? -You see these?

There's nicks here...

...showing that this garment was hairy.

Now you could say,

well that could indicate that he was a hermit,

that he was some sort of holy man, an ascetic.

But when you take this figure and you look at it...

...in combination with the other drawings here,

then it all fits together.

You have two other symbols,

which have to deal with John the Baptist...

...because they don't appear in Byzantine iconography.

His relic head and his relic arm.

-But how do you know?

Where do you have a tradition of an arm?

I've counted. There's heads, arms,

and many amount of just bone material,

unidentified bone material,

which appear as relics in churches,

traditional churches of John the Baptist.

He was like an octopus? A human-octopus.

Yes. The point I'm making...

...is not that any one of these heads or arms is real,

but that the head and the arm...

...are symbols of John the Baptist

I could see that somebody could...

...come and argue against,

that's not a staff that's a hockey stick,

and he was wearing a helmet and this is ancient hockey.

Or they could say that's not a head, it's a crown,

that's not the staff that's Jesus on the cross.

You could pick away bits there.

But to me once you have a collection of things,

then it's very hard to argue against a collection of things.

The facts are very, very clear.

You have people who are baptizing here in this cave...

...at the time of John the Baptist,

and then later Byzantine monks come here...

...and they celebrate a specific individual who has symbols,

his head and his arm.

And the only figure, which comes to mind...

...is that of John the Baptist.

[SIMCHA] We will never know...

...whether John could have rallied a bigger following...

...than Jesus, because his career was cut short.

The fact is he was a big part of the messianic fervor...

...that gripped Judea at the time of the Romans.

And historians gave him lots of ink.

Now archaeologists are digging up evidence of his importance,

uncovering this huge site...

...where he may have baptized thousands.

He still has faithful followers from Africa to Quebec to Iraq.

And bigger than Jesus in his day...

...John popularized a ritual that made a huge splash.

Baptism is just about the only thing about John...