John the Baptist

The Gospels tell us he was the son of Elisabeth, an elderly woman of the daughters of Aaron, and Zacharias, a temple priest in Jerusalem.

The writings of Flavius Josephus, the Jewish chronicler who wrote in the last quarter of the 1^st century AD, may reveal the true reason for John’s imprisonment and death.

Herod on learning of the extraordinary power with which the Baptist was able to persuade men to his way thinking, feared that he might incite a revolution among the reactionary movements fighting against the Roman occupation of Palestine. John was arrested, placed in chains within the fortress of Machaerus in Peraea, a Roman province bordering Arabia and Egypt, and separated from the other parts of Judea by the river Jordan, and after that he was put to death.

Josephus also gives the name of Herod’s stepdaughter. The daughter of Herodias was Salome.

John the Baptist was venerated on two separate feast days:

• His nativity, was celebrated June 24^th at the time of midsummer
• His ‘decollation’ or death was held on August 29^th.

I was born June 24^th and I love Midsomer Murders.