Nov 3: Rakes

Despite what you may have been taught in seminary, textual evidence of Christian soldiers appeared a LOT earlier than the second or third century. Try Luke 3…

Judean Forces

Based on the political context Luke’s account provides, John the Baptizer preached in the region around the Jordan River starting around the late 20's. Herod Antipas was in charge of Galilee, a 'tetrarch' who held power with the blessing of Rome, which had annexed the region in 6 BCE. The Romans trusted Antipas and allowed him to maintain a force inherited from his father, Herod I.

There were three basic types of armed forces active in the 1st century, with numerii being the least beholden to imperial interests. These forces were “barbarian hordes” subject to Rome through a local political ally, like Antipas. Above them were auxilia, locally recruited forces commanded by Greek-speaking, low-status citizens incentivized by a steady income, decent food, and, at the end of a 25 year term, veterans benefits and Roman citizenship. At the top were legionarii, Italian-born citizens under the direct command of an imperial appointee whose presence produced vice economies (without the carrot of citizenship, Rome all but encouraged them to extort locals).

The soldiers (at) baptism

John has been attracting swarms of people to his message, not with honey, but vinegar, calling those who come to him in the wilderness “a brood of vipers.” (v.3) Out of what seems like exasperation, several people ask, “What then should we do?”, including a small number of either Herodian numerii or auxilia from Roman Syria. The soldiers were not fair-skinned foreigners, but local recruits familiar with regional customs. Whatever the attitudes were when the Gospels were written, before the Jewish Revolt of 66 CE, there was no legionarii stationed in Roman Judea.

The Galilee did not have as high a concentration of Jews as the area closer to Jerusalem, but even gentiles would have had some familiarity with what John was doing. Christians call it baptism, but to Jews it was a new-ish liturgical practice called miqvê, a ritual bath required of all converts to Judaism. The oldest such pool (mikvoth) was recently discovered near the area John was active, about 20km north of Nazareth…

Anyway, these local recruits ask the same question the crowds and the tax collectors before them did; What do we need to repent of? From what must we convert in order to “see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6)? There are two ways to interpret the soldiers' remarks; insincere or authentic. Either they 1) felt superior to John, therefore seeking his advice ironically, or 2) they were genuinely repentant.

Sycophants?

It's hard to tell how John views the exchange, and maybe he himself is unsure how to respond given the ambiguity. At first glance, his reply seems straightforward - he tells them to stop doing the thing soldiers in the region around the Jordan were most hated for. Not violence, but extortion. And he doesn’t stop there, adding a Greek term that might be familiar if you sound it out, sykophanteō, “do not falsely accuse anyone.” (NRSV) That doesn’t really capture what’s going on here, and there’s no other reference to soldiers accusing people of things they didnt do.

Translated literally, he advises them not to be fig-polishers (from sykon, fig, and phainō, brighten). The word has carried forward to English as sycophant, a false flatterer. My bet is that John hears a hint of condescension in their words, a bit of ego. So he gives them a direct answer but adds, "‘Don’t polish my figs, mother fµ¢kers, you should feel bad for robbing the poor!” After all, they were probably there on a bodyguard detail for the curious tax collectors. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t sincere. We can easily determine if so, it’s no mystery. If they were sincere, then they would have submitted themselves to John’s “baptism of repentance.” (v. 3:3)

Don’t get yer undies in a knot - the penitent has no halo, so it can’t be Jesus.

…or Rakes?

Luke is particularly friendly toward soldiers, maybe because he identifies as a gentile himself. A few chapters later, we hear about these soldiers again, this time in the midst of another soldier story (we’ll get to that tomorrow). In Luke 7, Jesus has healed the servant of a centurion and John sends people to ask his cousin ‘Dude, 🥃💃🦊? Does The Messiah do favors to soldiers?’ Whereas John had been happy to see grunts repent, Jesus took a softer tack - he didn’t call anyone a viper, crooked, or even dangle salvation in front of them.

Then we get our answer. Luke 7:29 makes it clear that “all the people” back in chapter 3 “had been baptized with John’s baptism.” Even the tax collectors. As participants in John’s baptism, they were penitents. Before Greek became the language of the faith, they would have been referred to in Hebrew as rāḵaḵ. A rake is a lovable scoundrel; scoundrels because they probably extorted and threatened people, but lovable because they were baptized into repentance. That means that the soldiers of Luke 3:14 were baptized by John, the first Christian soldiers.