According to Lk., John was the son of Zacharias, a iniest of the course of Abijah (see art. Z.\CH- AEIAS), and his wife Elisabeth who belonged to the family of Aaron (l^^-). Elisabeth was a kins- woman (not ' cousin,' see Plummer, op. cit. p. 25) of the Virgin Mary (1*^), who paid her a three months' visit immediately before the birth of John (v.*, cf. w.'*- ^- *•). John was the senior of Jesus by six months (1^-", cf. 2«). The name John, properly Johanan (Iudi'V7)s = [:riv, cf. Heb. text and LXX of 1 Ch 3=*, 2 Ch 28'=), was given to the child by his parents in obedience to a Divine direction (1"), and in spite of the opposition of neighbours and kinsfolk {vv.^'^).
Regarding the place of John's birth there has been much discussion. Lk. describes the house of Zacharias as in * a city of Judah ' which lay in ' the bill country ' (vv.39- ■10). A number of commentators have assumed, without any warrant, that this must have been Hebron, as being a priestly town in that region. Others have suggested that Tc>if 'lovJac is a corruption for toAj? 'U>ra (Reland, Pal. p. 870; Robinson, JIRP^ ii. 2i)6), so that the Baptist s birthplace would be Jutah or Juttah, to the south of Hebron (Robinson, op. cit., ib., and i. 495), which is men- tioned in Joshua as having been allotted to the priests (2116). A tradition as early as the Crusades assigns the honour to 'Ain Karim, a village which lay between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. All this, however, is purely conjectural, and it is best to be c^ontent to say that John was born in a town unknown, in the hill country of Judah. See, further, art. Jcd.\h.
Of the external incidents of John's childhood and youth Lk. gives no information. All that is toW us bears upon his spiritual growth. Accord ing to an announcement of the angel Gabriel, h( was to be 'filled with the Holy Ghost from hii mother's womb' (1'^). That a peculiar Divine blessing did rest upon him from the first is implied in the words, ' the hand of the Lord was upon him ' (v.™i ; that this Divine presence made itself mani- fest in the development of his character is evident when the Evangelist adds, ' and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit ' (v.*).
But whatever the outward tenor of John's way in that priestly house in the hill country of Judah, a great crisis must have come at last, followed by a sudden break in his manner of life. A priest's son, he Avould naturally, according to all Jewish traditions, have stepped into the priestly office, and enjoyed the honours, abundance, and com parative ease that were parts of his birthright. But spiritual instincts and powers which had long been unknown in Israel began to make themselves felt in the young man's heart, and this son of a priest went forth into the deserts to be shaped in solitude into a • prophet mightier than Elijah or Isaiah Of the precise nature of the impulse which first led him t(i ^vithdraw himself from his fellows, tl duiation of his stay in the wilderness, and the
fashion of his life while there, no Evangelist has anything to tell us. But it is certainly a grotesque mistake to suppose that he left liis home and the haunts of men in order to become an Esseue (see the excellent remarks of Godet on this point, Com. onLk. i. p. 117 f.).*
There was absolutely no resemblance between John, the desert solitary, as he is described to us in the pages of the Gospels ( Mt 3* H 11'"- II 11'^ 1!), and the Essenes with their white garments and their cenobitic establishments, as we come across them in the pages of Josephus (BJ II. viii. 2-13, Ant. XVIII. i. 5). All that can be said is that John was an ascetic as the Essenes were, and that in both cases the revolt against prevailing luxury and corrup- tion sprang out of the deep seriousness which marked the more earnest spirits of the time (see Riiegg, art. 'Johannes der Tiiufer' in PRE^). John's withdrawal into the wilderness indicated his disapproval of society as he found it, it signi- fied more especially an absolute break with the prevalent Pharisaic tj'pe of piety. But in his case it meant much more than this, much more even than the adoption of severely ascetic habits in the interests of his own spiritual life. It was as one who was conscious that he was set apart for the office of a prophet (cf. Lk l"-!?. 76it.)^ and who felt himself called in particular to take up in Israel a work of reformation similar to that of Elijah (Lk 1"; cf. Mt 11" 17'=, Jn 1='), that John betook himself to the deserts (Lk 1™) and there lived the life of one who hides himself from men that he may the better see the face of God. Locusts and wild honey were his food, while his clothing was a loose cloak ^ev5v^La) of woven camel's hair and a leathern girdle about his loins (Mt 3^ Mk 1" ; cf. 2 K 18).t
How long John remained in 'the deserts,' by which is doubtless meant the awful solitudes of the Wilderness of Judsea, and how he grew into the full sense of the precise nature of his prophetic vocation as the forerunner and heralef of the Messiah, we cannot tell. But the Holy Ghost who had been working in him, and the hand of the Lord which had been laid upon him from the first, his OA\'n constant brooding over words of ancient pro- phecy (Jn 1==, cf. Mt 3^11), and a deep intuitive reading of the signs of tlie times, would gradually bring him to a clear knowledge both of his function as a prophet and of the time when he must begin to exercise it. And so came at last the day of his 'shewing' (dvaSeitis) unto Israel (Lk 1*).