John the Baptist

John the Baptist, known in Eastern Christian tradition as John the Forerunner, was a Jewish preacher and ascetic active in the Jordan valley in the early first century. The principal Christian sources for his life are the four canonical Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles; the principal non-Christian source is the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who discusses him in the Antiquities of the Jews. According to the Gospel of Luke, John was the son of Zechariah, a priest of the division of Abijah who served in the Temple in Jerusalem, and of Elizabeth, who was of priestly descent and a relative of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Luke recounts that the angel Gabriel announced John's birth to Zechariah, that Elizabeth conceived in her old age, and that John was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. The same evangelist places John's birth about six months before that of Jesus, during the reign of Herod the Great. The New Testament does not name the town of his birth, describing it only as a city in the hill country of Judah; later Christian tradition, from the Byzantine period onward, has identified the site with Ein Karem near Jerusalem. No extra-biblical source confirms his parentage or the circumstances of his birth, and no precise year of birth can be established from the surviving evidence.

John's public activity is associated with the wilderness of Judea and the region of the Jordan River. The synoptic Gospels present him as proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and as announcing that one more powerful than he was about to come, whose sandals he was not worthy to carry. He is described as wearing a garment of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist and as eating locusts and wild honey, details that evoke the prophet Elijah and the word of Malachi that Elijah would be sent before the great and terrible day of the Lord. Large numbers of people from Jerusalem, Judea, and the Jordan region came to him and were baptized in the river, confessing their sins. The Gospels record that he baptized Jesus of Nazareth; in the Gospel of John he also identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Josephus, writing independently, portrays John as a good man who exhorted the Jews to exercise virtue, to practice justice toward one another and piety toward God, and to come together for baptism. Josephus emphasizes that the baptism was not for the remission of sins in itself but for purification of the body, the soul having already been cleansed by righteousness. Both the Gospels and Josephus agree that John's following was large enough to attract the attention of the ruling authorities.

The circumstances of John's death are reported in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew and, with a different emphasis, by Josephus. According to Mark and Matthew, Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, had imprisoned John because John declared that it was not lawful for Herod to have Herodias, the wife of Herod's brother. At a birthday banquet, the daughter of Herodias danced before Herod and his guests; pleased, Herod promised her whatever she asked. Prompted by her mother, she requested the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Herod, though distressed, ordered the execution. The Gospels do not name the daughter; later tradition calls her Salome. Josephus locates the imprisonment and beheading at the fortress of Machaerus, east of the Dead Sea in Perea, and attributes the killing to Herod's fear that John's eloquence and popularity might lead to a revolt. Josephus does not mention the banquet, the dance, or Herodias's grudge. The two accounts are not necessarily irreconcilable, but they cannot be fully harmonized from the surviving texts. The date of the execution is uncertain; it took place during the tetrarchy of Antipas, generally placed in the late twenties or early thirties of the first century. The Gospels state that John's disciples came, took the body, and buried it; the place of burial is not specified in the earliest sources.

From the first Christian generations John was venerated as the prophet who prepared the way of the Lord, as the baptizer of Jesus, and as a martyr. His nativity on 24 June is among the oldest feasts of the Church and is one of the few nativities, besides those of Christ and of Mary, to receive a liturgical commemoration. The beheading is kept on 29 August. Eastern churches also observe other related days, including the conception of John. Relics, especially of the head, have been claimed by a number of churches and mosques, among them sites in Rome, Amiens, and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus; none of these claims can be verified historically. John occupies an important place in Islam as the prophet Yahya ibn Zakariya, and in Mandaeism he is a central revelatory figure. He was not the object of a later papal process of canonization or beatification; his cult belongs to the apostolic and patristic period. He is invoked as patron of baptism and of converts, of the city of Florence and of other communes, of the Knights of Saint John, and of various trades and places associated with his name and feast.