Matthew 3:13 Jesus and the ministry of John the Baptist, is about 30 miles using modern Highway 71. Howard Clarke notes that according to tradition Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River five miles south of the Allenby Bridge, today the site of a Greek Orthodox monastery dedicated to John the Baptist. The area is currently in a military zone and is closed to visitors. This verse differs considerably from the description of the same event in . In Luke's account, Jesus is one of the crowd that has come to see John and it does not specify who baptized Jesus. Nor
John the Baptist James the Just – all of whom they revered – were vegetarians. Epiphanius of Salamis records that this group had amended their Gospel of Matthew, known today as the Gospel of the Ebionites, to change where John eats "locusts" to read "honey cakes" or "manna". John the Baptist is considered the chief prophet of the Mandaeans, and plays a large part in some of their writings, including the Ginza Rba and the Draša D-Iahia (The Mandaean Book of John). They view John as the only true Messiah, and are opposed to Jesus. The Mandaean scriptures state: "If the carpenter [Jesus]