Harold W. Attridge agrees with Crossan that John was an apocalyptic preacher. Attridge says most contemporary scholars would see the idea of John as the "forerunner" of Jesus as a construct developed by the early church to help explain the relationship between the two. For the early church it would have been something of an embarrassment to say that Jesus, who was in their minds superior to John the Baptist, had been baptized by him, and thereby proclaimed some sort of subordination to him, some sort of disciple relationship to him..."