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
Historical Jesus might lead to Roman intervention is an alternate explanation for his arrest regardless of his preaching. "He was, perhaps, considered a destabilizing factor and removed as a precautionary measure." Jesus began preaching, teaching, and healing after he was baptized by John the Baptist, an apocalyptic ascetic preacher who called on Jews to repent. Jesus was apparently a follower of John, a populist and activist prophet who looked forward to divine deliverance of the Jewish homeland from the Romans. John was a major religious figure, whose movement was probably larger than Jesus' own. Herod Antipas had John executed as a threat