John the Baptist

John the Baptist was a Jewish preacher who called for repentance and baptised followers in the Jordan region. The Gospels connect him with the beginning of Jesus’s ministry and describe his execution by Herod Antipas after criticism of the ruler’s marriage.

Robert Graves’s King Jesus places John the Baptist within a narrative shaped by court politics and dynastic power, religion, belief and institutional authority, and social change and the pressures of ordinary life. Margaret George’s Mary, Called Magdalene places John the Baptist within a narrative shaped by family, marriage and personal loyalty, religion, belief and institutional authority, and social change and the pressures of ordinary life.