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
Historical reliability of the Gospels had been added to the original gospel. Both Luke and Matthew date Jesus' birth to within the rule of King Herod the Great, who died in 4BC. However the Gospel of Luke also dates the birth ten years after Herod's death, during the census of Quirinius in 6 AD described by the historian Josephus. Raymond E. Brown notes that "most critical scholars acknowledge a confusion and misdating on Luke's part." Some conservative Christian biblical scholars and commentators still believe the two accounts can be harmonised, arguing that the text in Luke can be read as "registration before Quirinius was governor