Being that June 24 is the feast day (nativity, as his death feast day is later) of John the Baptist, I wanted to bring light to this story found in the New Testament Apocrypha Volume 3 edited by Tony Burke. This interesting text makes it’s modern English translation debut thanks to Tony Burke and Sarah Veale. Since this translation is in copyright, I’ll do a synopsis on each chapter. I have some other John the Baptist stories I would like to get to this year as well. The Jewish preacher was quite the popular guy who is not only venerated in Christianity, but also in Islam, Mandaeism and even Freemasonry! The following story is titled The Martyrdom of Zechariah, a text of an unknown source date.
Chapter 1 – This short chapter describes the flight from Herod’s massacre of infants. It mentions that Joseph was warned by an angel, so he, Mary and Jesus fled to Egypt for twelves months and stayed at the house of Alphaeus. It is mentioned that Herod becomes mad as he can not find Jesus and orders the massacre of all infants two years or younger. This causes Elizabeth (mother of John) to take her child and head into the hills.
Chapter 2 – This chapter deals with the murder of Zechariah. It has Herod’s assassins tracking down Zechariah and demanding him to tell them where his son, John, is located. If Zechariah hands John over, he will be spared. If he does not comply, he will be brought back to Herod. Once the assassins find Zechariah, he denies their request for John and the assassins kill him in front of the temple (apparently they didn’t bother bringing him back to Herod!). Zechariah crawled into the temple and as he reached the altar, he fell over dead. A member of his congregation found the pool of blood and saw that the body had become invisible! The congregation then grieved for seven days. Chapter 2 is pretty much from the Infancy Gospel of James. I’m going to side step this story and present the Zechariah death from that infancy gospel below. Translation is by Mark Mattison:
Chapter 23: The Murder of Zechariah
(1) But Herod asked for John and sent officers to Zechariah, saying to him, “Where are you hiding your son?” But he replied, saying to them, “I’m a minister of God, and I sit in God’s Temple. How should I know where my son is?” (2) And his officers went away and reported all these things to Herod. And Herod was angry, and said, “His son is about to be king over Israel!” And he sent his officers again, to say to him, “Tell me the truth. Where’s your son? You know that your life is in my hand.” And the officers went away and reported these things to him. (3) And Zechariah said, “I’m a martyr of God if you shed my blood, because the Lord will receive my spirit, since you’ll be spilling innocent blood at the entrance of the Temple of the Lord.” And around daybreak, Zechariah was murdered, and the people of Israel didn’t know that he was murdered.
Chapter 24: Mourning for Zechariah
(1) But at the hour of greeting, the priests came, and Zechariah didn’t meet them to bless them as was customary. And the priests stood around for Zechariah, waiting to greet him with a blessing and to glorify the Most High God. (2) But when he delayed, they were all afraid. But one of them gathered the courage to go into the sanctuary and saw blood clotted beside the altar of the Lord. And a voice was saying, “Zechariah has been murdered, and his blood won’t be wiped away until his avenger comes!” When he heard this saying, he was afraid, and he went and reported to the priests what he had seen and heard. (3) And they gathered their courage and went and saw what had taken place. And the panels of the Temple cried out, and they (the priests) ripped their clothes from top to bottom. And they didn’t find his corpse, but they found his blood had turned to stone. And they were afraid, and they went out and reported to all the people that Zechariah had been murdered. And when all the tribes of the people heard, they mourned him and wept three days and three nights. (4) And after three days, the priests held a council about who should replace Zechariah. And the lot fell to Simeon, for he was told by the Holy Spirit that he wouldn’t see death until he saw the Christ in the flesh.
As you can tell, it’s pretty close. Now where the infancy gospel ends, this story will continue on….
Chapters 3 & 4 – Elizabeth carries John and head towards a mountain. She calls out “Mountain of God, receive a mother with child!” God hears this request and sends down the archangel Uriel to split open the mountain for those two to hide. Uriel hid the entrance and fortified it so no one can enter. He provided a spring of water and bread for Elizabeth, and she fed John by her breast milk. Herod’s men could not find the two despite hearing stories they were in the area. This story is sourced from the Infancy Gospel of James as well. Here is it’s excerpt:
(3) And when Elizabeth heard that John was sought, she took him up into the hills and looked around for somewhere to hide him, but there wasn’t a hiding place. Then Elizabeth groaned and said, “Mountain of God, take a mother with her child,” because Elizabeth was unable to go up higher. And immediately, the mountain split and took her, and a light shone through the mountain for her. For an angel of the Lord was with them, protecting them.
Uriel was not named as such, but the story is the same. Speaking of this cave, there is a pilgrimage site dedicated to it! You can check it out here: https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2021/06/the-cave-where-saint-elizabeth-hid-with.html
Chapter 5 – After John had been in the desert for four months, the Lord went from Egypt with the archangel Gabriel to Bethlehem into the temple where Zechariah had died. He ordered Uriel to get John and bring him there. Once there, all four archangels, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael and Michael, came out and brought forth the body of Zechariah. The lord blew onto him and gave him life. The Savior commanded that water come from the spring within the Holy of Holies in the temple. He baptized John first and immediately afterwards Zechariah. The angels shouted various praises to God before eventually burying Zechariah below the altar in the church. I don’t believe this particular part of the story originates from any known story outside of this one. The appearance of the four archangels is a nice touch. The interesting part of this chapter is the fact that John was baptized by Jesus/God. This is never mentioned as such in the Gospels. It is typically assumed John was never baptized, as we now think of it (i.e. a Christianized way). So this bit of information adds a twist to the story of John.
Chapter 6 – The Lord goes back to Egypt with Gabriel and John hitches a ride with Uriel back to Elizabeth in the desert. Once with his mother, John was able to get up and walk around! At nine months old, Uriel tells Elizabeth to quit feeding John her milk but rather his food will be wild honey and locusts. This gives the reader the “origin” of why John eats the way he does. Personally I just think John lives very humbly and eats whatever comes to him in the wild.
Chapter 7 – Once John hits 13 months old, an angel said to Elizabeth that Herod is dead and they came leave their mountain hide out. The same angel (unnamed in the story) informs Joseph in Egypt about Herod’s death and that Archelaus now rules. This causes Joseph and his family to flee to a town called Nazareth, where Elizabeth and John are now at.
Chapter 8 – John has apparently been given over to Uriel and at five years of age, John obtained his traditional clothing of camel’s hair and a leather belt. This would be his outfit for the rest of his life.
Chapters 9 & 10- This starts with a problematic time frame. It states John is twelve years old and then begins to talk about John’s imprisonment due to his rebuking of Herod IV. The translator has a note regarding this issue and states it may be in error or missing information. Personally, I’m just going to ignore that part and figure he is much older. The story presented in these two chapters is pretty on par with tradition of John’s rebuke of Herod becoming desirous of Philip’s wife. This causes John’s imprisonment.
Chapter 11 – This chapter is about Jesus being baptized by John. In the narrative of the story, this should have been placed before the previous two chapters. The first line of Matthew 21:25 is quoted in this chapter. Those who don’t know the verse off hand, it states:
The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ (ESV)
But for us readers of the story, we DO know where the baptism of John came from! Back in chapter 5, John was baptized by God/Jesus!
Chapter 12 – C12 accounts the beheading of John. This particular story states that the daughter of Herod was named Herodias, and it was she who danced and requested the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Now we all know the traditional story is that Herodias is the wife of Philip, and that Salome was her daughter, and it was Salome who made the request (on behalf of her mother) to Herod. The names got switched up here. So in that aspect, let’s adjust the names to their proper form and go with that. 😉 At the end of the chapter, it mentions that the dogs in the audience took the head of John and delivered it to his disciples. Good dogs!
Chapter 13 – The archangel finds Elizabeth and led her to John’s disciples. Uriel tells her to bury John where his father lies. She did not know where Zechariah was buried however Uriel led her to the temple that housed his body. John was buried under the altar near his father. Uriel proclaimed that John’s death will be avenged.
Chapter 14 – This chapter includes the gruesome deaths of Herod and Salome for the death of John. The introduction to this text mentions that this comes from various early tradition texts. This is my first time reading it, so I will have to take their word on the matter. It mentions that the daughter was decapitated as she fell into a well and was stuck. Herod died from chocking. Herodias became blind in her left eye. Apparently Herod’s former wife distributed all the property of Herod’s to the poor.
Chapter 15 – This ends the story by mentioning that it was “I, Eurippios, the disciple of holy John, the second of his disciples in strictness, wrote so that….” who wrote out this story regarding John. The translator mentioned that in another manuscript, the name is spelled out as Herpios.
While the story was named for John’s father, it was definitely more about the life of the baptist. Even though a few details were messed up, I thought it was a pretty entertaining read. I do like the gathering of the four archangels. The baptism of John was really interesting though. Be sure to pick up the book this story is featured in. It is a great resource of extremely rare apocrypha.
Infancy Gospel of James: https://www.gospels.net/infancyjames
Featured artwork is of Zechariah and John, a medieval Georgian fresco from the Monastery of the Cross, Jerusalem.
-bP
Culmination of Wisdom 