Life of John the Baptist Philip’s wife Herodias." Life of John the Baptist The Life of John the Baptist is a book from the New Testament apocrypha, allegedly written in Greek by Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis in 390 AD. The text is an expanded biography of the biblical John the Baptist. Tony Burke, Associate Professor of Early Christianity, at York University describes the vita as: "begins with a harmony of details about John’s birth taken from the Gospel of Luke and the Infancy Gospel of James, finishing with the death of Zechariah and Elizabeth fleeing from Herod’s soldiers into the desert. After five years, when
Biblical and Quranic narratives (Walter Wreszinski, Ägyptische Inschriften aus dem K.K. Hof Museum in Wien, 1906, J. C. Hinrichs' sche Buchhandlung). The story of Zechariah is told in the Gospel of Luke 1:5–80 and Luke 3:1–22 and in the Quran 19.2–15. Zechariah and his wife reached an old age without bearing children. God spoke to Zechariah and told him his wife would conceive, despite her barrenness, and his name would be John. As a sign that this would happen, God struck Zechariah mute until John was born though he communicated using signs. John became a great and righteous prophet and came to confirm God's