John the Baptist

135:0.1John the Bap­tist was born March 25, 7 B.C., in ac­cor­dance with the prom­ise that Ga­briel made to Eliz­a­beth in June of the pre­vi­ous year. For five months Eliz­a­beth kept se­cret Ga­briel’s vis­i­ta­tion; and when she told her hus­band, Zach­a­rias, he was greatly trou­bled and fully be­lieved her nar­ra­tive only af­ter he had an un­usual dream about six weeks be­fore the birth of John. Ex­cept­ing the visit of Ga­briel to Eliz­a­beth and the dream of Zach­a­rias, there was noth­ing un­usual or super­nat­u­ral con­nected with the birth of John the Bap­tist.

135:0.2On the eighth day John was cir­cum­cised ac­cord­ing to the Jew­ish cus­tom. He grew up as an or­di­nary child, day by day and year by year, in the small vil­lage known in those days as the City of Ju­dah, about four miles west of Je­ru­sa­lem.

135:0.3The most event­ful oc­cur­rence in John’s early child­hood was the visit, in com­pany with his par­ents, to Je­sus and the Naz­a­reth fam­ily. This visit oc­curred in the month of June, 1 B.C., when he was a lit­tle over six years of age.

135:0.4Af­ter their re­turn from Naz­a­reth John’s par­ents be­gan the sys­tem­atic ed­u­ca­tion of the lad. There was no syn­a­gogue school in this lit­tle vil­lage; how­ever, as he was a priest, Zach­a­rias was fairly well ed­u­cated, and Eliz­a­beth was far bet­ter ed­u­cated than the av­er­age Judean woman; she was also of the priest­hood, be­ing a de­scen­dant of the “daugh­ters of Aaron.” Since John was an only child, they spent a great deal of time on his men­tal and spir­i­tual train­ing. Zach­a­rias had only short pe­ri­ods of ser­vice at the tem­ple in Je­ru­sa­lem so that he de­voted much of his time to teach­ing his son.

135:0.5Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth had a small farm on which they raised sheep. They hardly made a liv­ing on this land, but Zach­a­rias re­ceived a reg­u­lar al­lowance from the tem­ple funds ded­i­cated to the priest­hood.