Elizabeth (mother of 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.

135:1.1John had no school from which to grad­u­ate at the age of four­teen, but his par­ents had se­lected this as the ap­pro­pri­ate year for him to take the for­mal Nazarite vow. Ac­cord­ingly, Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth took their son to En­gedi, down by the Dead Sea. This was the south­ern head­quar­ters of the Nazarite broth­er­hood, and there the lad was duly and solemnly in­ducted into this or­der for life. Af­ter these cer­e­monies and the mak­ing of the vows to ab­stain from all in­tox­i­cat­ing drinks, to let the hair grow, and to re­frain from touch­ing the dead, the fam­ily pro­ceeded to Je­ru­sa­lem, where, be­fore the tem­ple, John com­pleted the mak­ing of the of­fer­ings which were re­quired of those tak­ing Nazarite vows.

135:1.2John took the same life vows that had been ad­min­is­tered to his il­lus­tri­ous pre­de­ces­sors, Sam­son and the prophet Samuel. A life Nazarite was looked upon as a sanc­ti­fied and holy per­son­al­ity. The Jews re­garded a Nazarite with al­most the re­spect and ven­er­a­tion ac­corded the high priest, and this was not strange since Nazarites of life­long con­se­cra­tion were the only per­sons, ex­cept high priests, who were ever per­mit­ted to en­ter the holy of holies in the tem­ple.

135:1.3John re­turned home from Je­ru­sa­lem to tend his fa­ther’s sheep and grew up to be a strong man with a no­ble char­ac­ter.

135:1.4When six­teen years old, John, as a re­sult of read­ing about Eli­jah, be­came greatly im­pressed with the prophet of Mount Carmel and de­cided to adopt his style of dress. From that day on John al­ways wore a hairy gar­ment with a leather gir­dle. At six­teen he was more than six feet tall and al­most full grown. With his flow­ing hair and pe­cu­liar mode of dress he was in­deed a pic­turesque youth. And his par­ents ex­pected great things of this their only son, a child of prom­ise and a Nazarite for life.

135:2.1Af­ter an ill­ness of sev­eral months Zach­a­rias died in July, A.D. 12, when John was just past eigh­teen years of age. This was a time of great em­bar­rass­ment to John since the Nazarite vow for­bade con­tact with the dead, even in one’s own fam­ily. Al­though John had en­deav­ored to com­ply with the re­stric­tions of his vow re­gard­ing con­tam­i­na­tion by the dead, he doubted that he had been wholly obe­di­ent to the re­quire­ments of the Nazarite or­der; there­fore, af­ter his fa­ther’s burial he went to Je­ru­sa­lem, where, in the Nazarite cor­ner of the women’s court, he of­fered the sac­ri­fices re­quired for his cleans­ing.

135:2.2In Septem­ber of this year Eliz­a­beth and John made a jour­ney to Naz­a­reth to visit Mary and Je­sus. John had just about made up his mind to launch out in his life­work, but he was ad­mon­ished, not only by Je­sus’ words but also by his ex­am­ple, to re­turn home, take care of his mother, and await the “com­ing of the Fa­ther’s hour.” Af­ter bid­ding Je­sus and Mary good-bye at the end of this en­joy­able visit, John did not again see Je­sus un­til the event of his bap­tism in the Jor­dan.

135:2.3John and Eliz­a­beth re­turned to their home and be­gan to lay plans for the fu­ture. Since John re­fused to ac­cept the priest’s al­lowance due him from the tem­ple funds, by the end of two years they had all but lost their home; so they de­cided to go south with the sheep herd. Ac­cord­ingly, the sum­mer that John was twenty years of age wit­nessed their re­moval to He­bron. In the so-called “wilder­ness of Judea” John tended his sheep along a brook that was trib­u­tary to a larger stream which en­tered the Dead Sea at En­gedi. The En­gedi colony in­cluded not only Nazarites of life­long and time-pe­riod con­se­cra­tion but nu­mer­ous other as­cetic herds­men who con­gre­gated in this re­gion with their herds and frat­er­nized with the Nazarite broth­er­hood. They sup­ported them­selves by sheep rais­ing and from gifts which wealthy Jews made to the or­der.

135:2.4As time passed, John re­turned less of­ten to He­bron, while he made more fre­quent vis­its to En­gedi. He was so en­tirely dif­fer­ent from the ma­jor­ity of the Nazarites that he found it very dif­fi­cult fully to frat­er­nize with the broth­er­hood. But he was very fond of Ab­ner, the ac­knowl­edged leader and head of the En­gedi colony.

135:3.1Along the val­ley of this lit­tle brook John built no less than a dozen stone shel­ters and night cor­rals, con­sist­ing of piled-up stones, wherein he could watch over and safe­guard his herds of sheep and goats. John’s life as a shep­herd af­forded him a great deal of time for thought. He talked much with Ezda, an or­phan lad of Beth-zur, whom he had in a way adopted, and who cared for the herds when he made trips to He­bron to see his mother and to sell sheep, as well as when he went down to En­gedi for Sab­bath ser­vices. John and the lad lived very sim­ply, sub­sist­ing on mut­ton, goat’s milk, wild honey, and the ed­i­ble lo­custs of that re­gion. This, their reg­u­lar diet, was sup­ple­mented by pro­vi­sions brought from He­bron and En­gedi from time to time.

135:3.2Eliz­a­beth kept John posted about Pales­tinian and world af­fairs, and his con­vic­tion grew deeper and deeper that the time was fast ap­proach­ing when the old or­der was to end; that he was to be­come the her­ald of the ap­proach of a new age, “the king­dom of heaven.” This rugged shep­herd was very par­tial to the writ­ings of the Prophet Daniel. He read a thou­sand times Daniel’s de­scrip­tion of the great im­age, which Zach­a­rias had told him rep­re­sented the his­tory of the great king­doms of the world, be­gin­ning with Baby­lon, then Per­sia, Greece, and fi­nally Rome. John per­ceived that al­ready was Rome com­posed of such poly­glot peo­ples and races that it could never be­come a strongly ce­mented and firmly con­sol­i­dated em­pire. He be­lieved that Rome was even then di­vided, as Syria, Egypt, Pales­tine, and other prov­inces; and then he fur­ther read “in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a king­dom which shall never be de­stroyed. And this king­dom shall not be left to other peo­ple but shall break in pieces and con­sume all these king­doms, and it shall stand for­ever.” “And there was given him do­min­ion and glory and a king­dom that all peo­ples, na­tions, and lan­guages should serve him. His do­min­ion is an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion, which shall not pass away, and his king­dom never shall be de­stroyed.” “And the king­dom and do­min­ion and the great­ness of the king­dom un­der the whole heaven shall be given to the peo­ple of the saints of the Most High, whose king­dom is an ev­er­last­ing king­dom, and all do­min­ions shall serve and obey him.”

135:3.3John was never able com­pletely to rise above the con­fu­sion pro­duced by what he had heard from his par­ents con­cern­ing Je­sus and by these pas­sages which he read in the Scrip­tures. In Daniel he read: “I saw in the night vi­sions, and, be­hold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and there was given him do­min­ion and glory and a king­dom.” But these words of the prophet did not har­mo­nize with what his par­ents had taught him. Nei­ther did his talk with Je­sus, at the time of his visit when he was eigh­teen years old, cor­re­spond with these state­ments of the Scrip­tures. Not­with­stand­ing this con­fu­sion, through­out all of his per­plex­ity his mother as­sured him that his dis­tant cousin, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, was the true Mes­siah, that he had come to sit on the throne of David, and that he (John) was to be­come his ad­vance her­ald and chief sup­port.

135:3.4From all John heard of the vice and wicked­ness of Rome and the dis­so­lute­ness and moral bar­ren­ness of the em­pire, from what he knew of the evil do­ings of Herod An­tipas and the gov­er­nors of Judea, he was minded to be­lieve that the end of the age was im­pend­ing. It seemed to this rugged and no­ble child of na­ture that the world was ripe for the end of the age of man and the dawn of the new and di­vine age—the king­dom of heaven. The feel­ing grew in John’s heart that he was to be the last of the old proph­ets and the first of the new. And he fairly vi­brated with the mount­ing im­pulse to go forth and pro­claim to all men: “Re­pent! Get right with God! Get ready for the end; pre­pare your­selves for the ap­pear­ance of the new and eter­nal or­der of earth af­fairs, the king­dom of heaven.”

135:4.1On Au­gust 17, A.D. 22, when John was twenty-eight years of age, his mother sud­denly passed away. Eliz­a­beth’s friends, know­ing of the Nazarite re­stric­tions re­gard­ing con­tact with the dead, even in one’s own fam­ily, made all ar­range­ments for the burial of Eliz­a­beth be­fore send­ing for John. When he re­ceived word of the death of his mother, he di­rected Ezda to drive his herds to En­gedi and started for He­bron.

135:4.2On re­turn­ing to En­gedi from his mother’s fu­neral, he pre­sented his flocks to the broth­er­hood and for a sea­son de­tached him­self from the out­side world while he fasted and prayed. John knew only of the old meth­ods of ap­proach to di­vin­ity; he knew only of the rec­ords of such as Eli­jah, Samuel, and Daniel. Eli­jah was his ideal of a prophet. Eli­jah was the first of the teach­ers of Is­rael to be re­garded as a prophet, and John truly be­lieved that he was to be the last of this long and il­lus­tri­ous line of the mes­sen­gers of heaven.

135:4.3For two and a half years John lived at En­gedi, and he per­suaded most of the broth­er­hood that “the end of the age was at hand”; that “the king­dom of heaven was about to ap­pear.” And all his early teach­ing was based upon the cur­rent Jew­ish idea and con­cept of the Mes­siah as the prom­ised de­liv­erer of the Jew­ish na­tion from the dom­i­na­tion of their gen­tile rulers.

135:4.4Through­out this pe­riod John read much in the sa­cred writ­ings which he found at the En­gedi home of the Nazarites. He was es­pe­cially im­pressed by Isa­iah and by Malachi, the last of the proph­ets up to that time. He read and reread the last five chap­ters of Isa­iah, and he be­lieved these prophe­cies. Then he would read in Malachi: “Be­hold, I will send you Eli­jah the prophet be­fore the com­ing of the great and dread­ful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the hearts of the fa­thers to­ward the chil­dren and the hearts of the chil­dren to­ward their fa­thers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” And it was only this prom­ise of Malachi that Eli­jah would re­turn that de­terred John from go­ing forth to preach about the com­ing king­dom and to ex­hort his fel­low Jews to flee from the wrath to come. John was ripe for the procla­ma­tion of the mes­sage of the com­ing king­dom, but this ex­pec­ta­tion of the com­ing of Eli­jah held him back for more than two years. He knew he was not Eli­jah. What did Malachi mean? Was the prophecy lit­eral or fig­u­ra­tive? How could he know the truth? He fi­nally dared to think that, since the first of the proph­ets was called Eli­jah, so the last should be known, even­tu­ally, by the same name. Nev­er­the­less, he had doubts, doubts suf­fi­cient to pre­vent his ever call­ing him­self Eli­jah.

135:4.5It was the in­flu­ence of Eli­jah that caused John to adopt his meth­ods of di­rect and blunt as­sault upon the sins and vices of his con­tem­po­raries. He sought to dress like Eli­jah, and he en­deav­ored to talk like Eli­jah; in ev­ery out­ward as­pect he was like the olden prophet. He was just such a stal­wart and pic­turesque child of na­ture, just such a fear­less and dar­ing preacher of righ­teous­ness. John was not il­lit­er­ate, he did well know the Jew­ish sa­cred writ­ings, but he was hardly cul­tured. He was a clear thinker, a pow­er­ful speaker, and a fiery de­nun­ci­a­tor. He was hardly an ex­am­ple to his age, but he was an elo­quent re­buke.

135:4.6At last he thought out the method of pro­claim­ing the new age, the king­dom of God; he set­tled that he was to be­come the her­ald of the Mes­siah; he swept aside all doubts and de­parted from En­gedi one day in March of A.D. 25 to be­gin his short but bril­liant ca­reer as a pub­lic preacher.

122:8.4The sec­ond day af­ter the birth of Je­sus, Mary sent word to Eliz­a­beth that her child had come and re­ceived word in re­turn invit­ing Joseph up to Je­ru­sa­lem to talk over all their af­fairs with Zach­a­rias. The fol­low­ing week Joseph went to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­fer with Zach­a­rias. Both Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth had be­come pos­sessed with the sin­cere con­vic­tion that Je­sus was in­deed to be­come the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, the Mes­siah, and that their son John was to be his chief of aides, his right-hand man of des­tiny. And since Mary held these same ideas, it was not dif­fi­cult to pre­vail upon Joseph to re­main in Beth­le­hem, the City of David, so that Je­sus might grow up to be­come the suc­ces­sor of David on the throne of all Is­rael. Ac­cord­ingly, they re­mained in Beth­le­hem more than a year, Joseph mean­time work­ing some at his car­pen­ter’s trade.

122:2.1Je­sus’ life­work on Uran­tia was re­ally be­gun by John the Bap­tist. Zach­a­rias, John’s fa­ther, be­longed to the Jew­ish priest­hood, while his mother, Eliz­a­beth, was a mem­ber of the more pros­per­ous branch of the same large fam­ily group to which Mary the mother of Je­sus also be­longed. Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth, though they had been mar­ried many years, were child­less.

122:2.6Ga­briel ap­peared to Mary about the mid­dle of Novem­ber, 8 B.C., while she was at work in her Naz­a­reth home. Later on, af­ter Mary knew with­out doubt that she was to be­come a mother, she per­suaded Joseph to let her jour­ney to the City of Ju­dah, four miles west of Je­ru­sa­lem, in the hills, to visit Eliz­a­beth. Ga­briel had in­formed each of these moth­ers-to-be of his ap­pear­ance to the other. Nat­u­rally they were anx­ious to get to­gether, com­pare ex­pe­ri­ences, and talk over the prob­a­ble fu­tures of their sons. Mary re­mained with her dis­tant cousin for three weeks. Eliz­a­beth did much to strengthen Mary’s faith in the vi­sion of Ga­briel, so that she re­turned home more fully ded­i­cated to the call to mother the child of des­tiny whom she was so soon to pre­sent to the world as a help­less babe, an av­er­age and nor­mal in­fant of the realm.

122:2.2It was late in the month of June, 8 B.C., about three months af­ter the mar­riage of Joseph and Mary, that Ga­briel ap­peared to Eliz­a­beth at noon­tide one day, just as he later made his pres­ence known to Mary. Said Ga­briel:

122:2.3“While your hus­band, Zach­a­rias, stands be­fore the al­tar in Je­ru­sa­lem, and while the as­sem­bled peo­ple pray for the com­ing of a de­liv­erer, I, Ga­briel, have come to an­nounce that you will shortly bear a son who shall be the fore­run­ner of this di­vine teacher, and you shall call your son John. He will grow up ded­i­cated to the Lord your God, and when he has come to full years, he will glad­den your heart be­cause he will turn many souls to God, and he will also pro­claim the com­ing of the soul-healer of your peo­ple and the spirit-lib­er­a­tor of all man­kind. Your kinswoman Mary shall be the mother of this child of prom­ise, and I will also ap­pear to her.”

122:2.4This vi­sion greatly fright­ened Eliz­a­beth. Af­ter Ga­briel’s de­par­ture she turned this ex­pe­ri­ence over in her mind, long pon­der­ing the say­ings of the ma­jes­tic vis­i­tor, but did not speak of the rev­e­la­tion to any­one save her hus­band un­til her sub­se­quent visit with Mary in early Febru­ary of the fol­low­ing year.

122:2.5For five months, how­ever, Eliz­a­beth with­held her se­cret even from her hus­band. Upon her dis­clo­sure of the story of Ga­briel’s visit, Zach­a­rias was very skep­ti­cal and for weeks doubted the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence, only con­sent­ing half­heart­edly to be­lieve in Ga­briel’s visit to his wife when he could no longer ques­tion that she was ex­pec­tant with child. Zach­a­rias was very much per­plexed re­gard­ing the prospec­tive moth­er­hood of Eliz­a­beth, but he did not doubt the in­tegrity of his wife, not­with­stand­ing his own ad­vanced age. It was not un­til about six weeks be­fore John’s birth that Zach­a­rias, as the re­sult of an im­pres­sive dream, be­came fully con­vinced that Eliz­a­beth was to be­come the mother of a son of des­tiny, one who was to pre­pare the way for the com­ing of the Mes­siah.

122:2.7John was born in the City of Ju­dah, March 25, 7 B.C. Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth re­joiced greatly in the re­al­iza­tion that a son had come to them as Ga­briel had prom­ised, and when on the eighth day they pre­sented the child for cir­cum­ci­sion, they for­mally chris­tened him John, as they had been di­rected afore­time. Al­ready had a nephew of Zach­a­rias de­parted for Naz­a­reth, car­ry­ing the mes­sage of Eliz­a­beth to Mary pro­claim­ing that a son had been born to her and that his name was to be John.

122:2.8From his ear­li­est in­fancy John was ju­di­ciously im­pressed by his par­ents with the idea that he was to grow up to be­come a spir­i­tual leader and re­li­gious teacher. And the soil of John’s heart was ever re­spon­sive to the sow­ing of such sug­ges­tive seeds. Even as a child he was found fre­quently at the tem­ple dur­ing the sea­sons of his fa­ther’s ser­vice, and he was tremen­dously im­pressed with the sig­nif­i­cance of all that he saw.

123:3.4Be­fore Je­sus was six years of age, in the early sum­mer of 1 B.C., Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth and their son John came to visit the Naz­a­reth fam­ily. Je­sus and John had a happy time dur­ing this, their first visit within their mem­o­ries. Al­though the vis­i­tors could re­main only a few days, the par­ents talked over many things, in­clud­ing the fu­ture plans for their sons. While they were thus en­gaged, the lads played with blocks in the sand on top of the house and in many other ways en­joyed them­selves in true boy­ish fash­ion.