JOHN169 - Who Are the Twenty Most Mentioned Characters in the New Testament?

0:20 Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And today we're going to do a participatory exercise at the beginning. Remember, we did we did one of these a couple weeks ago. That was fun, right? We did the top 10 list of all-time highest grossing actors ever. And I think we had a really nice time.

0:36 We're going to do it again, but this one's going to be more overtly Bible-y. So put on your guessing brain hat pants because I've got a list for you. This is what I did. I put the Greek text, the eclectic text of the New Testament in front of an AI program called Claude. Some of you use Claude a lot, some of you do not.

0:59 I put the just put the whole text in front of it. The whole New Testament was like, hey, give me a tally of all the names in here and rank them in order. I want to know the top 20 most mentioned characters in the New Testament. And now that I have that list in front of me, I'm going to make you guess it.

1:19 Well, I won't make you guess all of it. I'll give you some of it. Okay, number one's easy, right? That's Jesus. So he's number one by really, really a lot. Who do you think are number two and number three? What do you got? I bet all of you right now are saying one of three things. Um, some of you are saying Peter, some of you are saying Paul, and some of you are saying, This is the first day of my life that I've ever studied the Bible.

1:45 It's my first time ever here. And you took up the only one I had, which is Jesus, and I don't know, but I would like to learn more. Thank you for letting me come to your podcast. Thank you very much. All three of you have answered very wisely. Jesus is number one, Peter is number two, he barely clears Paul, who is number three.

2:06 Now, after that, there's a pretty big drop off. Jesus is getting up close to a thousand dimensions, depending on how you count it. Peter's around 200. Paul is just barely below that. The number four character on the list is less than half of Paul. So big drop-off here between number four and number 20.

2:27 All right, who you got? Who you think might round out the top 20? I'm stalling. I'm buying you time. What have you come up with? I heard that. Mary Mother of Jesus. There's a lot of Marys in here. I think I got it to count correctly to separate out the Marys. And Mary Mother of Jesus comes in at maybe 20th, around 19 mentions, depending on how you count it.

2:48 So that's pretty dang good. Um, maybe some of you are saying Timothy. Well, Timothy comes in at 15 with 24 mentions. Here's the the rest of the list. I'm just going to give it to you. Isaac is 19. James, son of Zebedee is 18. Isaiah, Judas, Iscariot, Timothy, Jacob, Barnabas, Elijah, John, son of Zebede, the guy whose book we're reading and working on right now.

3:14 And then we get into the top 10. Herod, oh, I screwed up. There are four Herods in the New Testament. I didn't differentiate. Okay, well, maybe my list is stupid, but if you combine them all, Herod would be number 10. Number nine, Pilate. Number eight, David. Number seven, this is an interesting one.

3:32 Satan. The devil. Comes in at number seven with quite a lot of appearances. Uh, he is almost tied with number six, which is Abraham. Number five is Moses, who am I leaving out? Number four is the only one I haven't told you. Who is it? Yeah. John the Baptist, the guy we've been talking about a lot lately, and a lot here in John chapter three.

3:53 And I think that's kind of wild. Given how the history of Christianity is played out, and given how much different characters from the Bible get talked about, you would think that Mary, mother of Jesus, would probably be number four. And John the Baptist, like again, I don't know if you're new to this, maybe you don't feel the rhythm of the story of the Bible yet.

4:17 And that that's cool. I mean, we'll hang out together, we'll work on that, we'll chip away at it. You'll get to know it better. But for those of you who have been around it for a long time, it kind of feels like John the Baptist is a really big deal very early on. And then just, you know, like we talked about, he cross fades out and Jesus cross fades in, and you just kind of stop thinking about him after a while.

4:36 But you would think from looking at churches and sculptures and monuments and looking at just what people have done with church history, that Mary, Mother of Jesus, would be maybe in that fourth spot, and John the Baptist would be maybe in that 20 spot, but it's exactly the other way around. But John the Baptist, what an honor to be the fourth most mentioned character in the New Testament.

5:01 And while at first that might seem a little counterintuitive, when you go and you start digging around in history and actually looking at the Bible beyond just a raw count of names, it sort of starts to come into focus. It squares upon closer examination. I mean, first of all, Jesus said incredibly nice things about John the Baptist all over the place, but particularly in Matthew chapter 11.

5:28 John has been arrested at this point, and his disciples are going to Jesus and they're like, yo, our guys in jail, and we're all kind of confused. And pretty clearly John the Baptist had nudged them, like, go behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Go check with Jesus. You know, maybe John's disciples were asking him, like, Well, is it Jesus?

5:48 Is he the one? And maybe John was like, Hey, why don't you go ask him if he's the one, gang? So they do, and Jesus replies, Well, go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.

6:07 Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me. So Jesus says back to John, what John would like delight in all the things that the very prophet that John used to draw his own name from, Isaiah, is the very prophet Jesus is referencing here to describe all these amazing things that are happening that demonstrate that indeed John was the forerunner, the voice of the one calling out in the desert, make way the straight make straight the way for the Lord, and Jesus was the Lord.

6:37 But then Jesus goes on. He talks up John, just as John's disciples are leaving. Jesus says, I tell you the truth, among those born of women, there is not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. So there's two giant things going on there.

6:55 One, he's saying, God, like, this is the best, like most important, all-out human ever. What an amazing endorsement that Jesus gives to John. But why is Jesus giving him that endorsement? Because of what John got the honor of pointing directly to, which is Jesus, who is God in the flesh, truest, realist thing.

7:19 But then it's also very interesting that Jesus shifts gears and he's like, and you know, so that's how great John is up to this point. Yet he who's least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. So what's Jesus saying there? He's saying that John crossfaded out, pointed to Jesus, and Jesus is initiating this kingdom of God, this kingdom of heaven, this new family of faith.

7:40 And as a result of it, like even the lowliest member of that family of faith is in a better, more blessed position than the greatest Old Testament style prophet in all of history, which is John the Baptist. So that's one reason that when I go and actually look at the Bible, John the Baptist being number four in terms of mentions, kind of squares.

8:03 You know, I see it because of the things Jesus said about John himself. Another reason it squares is because John the Baptist, like Jesus is hinting at here in Matthew 11, is he is kind of like the last of the Old Testament prophets. He's the last messenger of God under that old set of ground rules, that old paradigm.

8:25 And in these hundreds of years between the Old Testament and the New Testament, we haven't had prophets, especially not like the prophets of old. And now something wakes up and stirs with the character of John the Baptist. I just got done watching a show I don't recommend that you watch called Widow's Bay.

8:44 It won all the awards this year and is very well acted, terribly offensive. I watched it so that you wouldn't have to have to know. It's a kind of a spook comedy. But the idea, the premise of the show is that there's this island with this ancient force. You know, it's an evil force, so it's like the exact opposite of what we're talking about here with John the Baptist.

9:07 But it's been slumbering for a long time, and now it has awakened, and that is what drives the plot of the season. I don't recommend that you watch that or anything, but in that same sense of awakening something that is very old, that's what we get with John the Baptist. I mean, this voice of one in the wilderness saying the God, the redemptive plan, the whole God thing is on.

9:29 This is real. Just like he said back in days of your he will do this thing, he will redeem. Well, he is redeeming, and get ready, repent for the kingdom of heaven. It is at hand. Now, hold on a minute. I'm looking at the clock. I wrote a nice little list. I have three points. I'm proud of my three points.

9:48 I think they're lovely, I think they support my thesis very well. My thesis, of course, is that I think upon closer examination, it makes a ton of sense that John the Baptist is the fourth most mentioned character in the New Testament, a position of great esteem. But we only got through two of the points today, and I don't want to rush the third one.

10:08 So rather than cramming in the third one and shortchanging it, because I think the third one is really interesting, I'm just gonna save the third one for tomorrow. Okay, more on why John the Baptist makes the Mount Rushmore of mentioned names in the New Testament next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast.

10:25 Let's do this again soon.