Baptist John

John the Baptist, called the Forerunner in Eastern Christianity, was a Jewish ascetic preacher of the early first century whose life is recorded in the New Testament Gospels and, independently, by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. According to the Gospel of Luke, he was the son of Zechariah, a priest of the division of Abijah who served in the Jerusalem Temple, and of Elizabeth, a woman of Aaronic descent and a relative of Mary the mother of Jesus. Luke situates his conception in the reign of Herod, king of Judea, and describes his birth as the unexpected child of an aged, previously barren couple, announced to Zechariah by the angel Gabriel. The family is placed in an unnamed town in the hill country of Judea; from late antiquity Christian tradition has identified that town with Ein Karem, west of Jerusalem, but the New Testament itself does not name the place, and no source supplies a verifiable calendar year of birth.

In adulthood John lived in the wilderness of Judea, clothed in camel's hair with a leather belt and feeding on locusts and wild honey, in a prophetic manner often compared to Elijah. He preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins along the Jordan River and drew crowds from Jerusalem, all Judea, and the Jordan region. The Gospels present him as the appointed forerunner of Jesus of Nazareth: he baptized Jesus in the Jordan, and in the Fourth Gospel he identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God. Jesus, according to the Synoptic tradition, declared John more than a prophet and the Elijah who was to come. John gathered disciples of his own; some later followed Jesus, while a distinct following of John's disciples appears still to have existed in the following decades.

John's denunciation of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, brought about his imprisonment and execution. Mark and Matthew report that John condemned Antipas's marriage to Herodias, his brother's wife, and that Herodias harbored a grudge against him. At a birthday banquet, Herodias's daughter danced before the tetrarch, who swore to grant her whatever she asked; prompted by her mother, she requested the head of John the Baptist, and John was beheaded in prison. Josephus, writing later in the first century, states that Antipas had John imprisoned and put to death at the fortress of Machaerus, east of the Dead Sea, because he feared that John's hold on the people might lead to revolt. Josephus does not recount the banquet episode and stresses political alarm rather than the marital dispute; the two reports differ in emphasis but agree on execution by Antipas. The Gospels add that John's disciples took the body and laid it in a tomb. Late antique Christian writers locate a tomb of his body at Sebaste in Samaria; claims concerning the relic of his head have been made for several sites, including Damascus, Rome, and Amiens.

Veneration of John is apostolic in origin and became universal in East and West. The feast of his nativity on 24 June is among the oldest fixed commemorations in the Christian calendar, already widespread by the fourth and fifth centuries; his beheading is kept on 29 August, and Eastern churches observe additional days, including a synaxis on 7 January. He is patron of baptism and of converts, of monastic life, of the Knights Hospitaller, and of cities and regions including Florence, Genoa, Turin, Quebec, and French Canada, as well as of lambs, tailors, and those afflicted by epilepsy or hail. No ancient source records a wife or children; the tradition consistently portrays him as a celibate desert ascetic. In Islam he is honored as the prophet Yahya. He was never subject to the later formal processes of beatification and canonization, having been venerated as a saint from the earliest Christian generations.