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
Gospel of Luke sources. Luke has both expanded Mark and refined his grammar and syntax, as Mark's Greek writing is less elegant. Some passages from Mark he has eliminated entirely, notably most of chapters 6 and 7, which he apparently felt reflected poorly on the disciples and painted Jesus too much like a magician. Despite this, he follows Mark's narrative more faithfully than does Matthew. Despite being grouped with Matthew and Mark, Luke's gospel has a number of parallels with the Gospel of John. For example, Luke uses the terms "Jews" and "Israelites" in a way unlike Mark, but like John; the figures