The Jesus Itinerary

[Lion IRC]

Are you seriously trying to claim that it makes perfect sense that the followers of John the Baptist would continue to revere him as the messiah even though he kept telling them not to? ...

The existence of modern day Mandaeans, (about whom we know relatively little and whose historical documentation is very sparse,) does not support your contention about alleged
internal contradictions in the Gospel.

I am having a hard time understanding why you need to appeal to a tiny, gnostic sect, miniscule in popularity compared to early Christianity, in order to support your theory that John the Baptist did not identify Jesus as The Lamb of God. What was John preaching? For whom was he preparing the way and making straight paths? Why bother repenting and being baptised?

If John the Baptist - a Jew - had told every single one of his followers NOT to follow Jesus, then where did Jesus’ followers come from and why did they grow in number so rapidly?

Your theory would depend on the (false) assumption that every single one of John’s early followers was told NOT to follow anyone else (but John the Baptist) and that the faithful Mandaeans
were the only ones who obeyed what John told them NOT to do. Isnt it much more likely that the Mandaeans were a small group of folk who only got part of Johns (pre-Jesus) sermons or who, like many other Old Testament Jews, agreed with “the voice crying in the wilderness” but didn’t think Jesus fit their idea of Messiah and so were left with no one else but John the Baptist to revere
as a messenger of God. (The same God worshipped by Jesus’ followers in case you had forgotten.)