5th November is recognised as the joint saint’s
day for Zacharias and Elizabeth, whose story is told in the Gospel of St Luke,
and nowhere else. Elizabeth is described by Luke as being a cousin of Mary, the
mother of Jesus, but Elizabeth is “stricken in years” whereas Mary has
traditionally been regarded as being very young, possibly as young as 14 or
even 13. Although a wide age difference between first cousins is not
impossible, the word “cousin” might have to be read as meaning “related by
blood” albeit not particularly closely.
In Luke’s story, Elizabeth was the wife of an elderly priest
named Zacharias, living in a city “in the hill country” of Judaea. They had no
children and had given up hope of ever having any, due to their age. However, Zacharias
was visited by the angel Gabriel who assured him that Elizabeth would conceive
and that they were commanded to call him John. Zacharias expressed doubts that
this could happen, and the angel promptly struck him dumb.
Luke describes a visit that Mary paid to Elizabeth after the
former had had a similar visit from Gabriel and Elizabeth was six months’
pregnant. This visit leads Mary to declare the speech that is usually known as
the Magnificat.
When Elizabeth had her baby and the time for circumcision
and naming arrived, her relatives and neighbours expected that he would be
called Zacharias, after his father. However, Elizabeth insisted that he would
be called John, and Zacharias, still dumb, wrote on a clay tablet to confirm
this, after which he got his voice back and delivered a celebratory poem of his
own, which is generally called the Benedictus. The assumption must therefore be that Zacharias
told Elizabeth about the visit of Gabriel by the same means of writing it down.
The son grew up to become John the Baptist.
It all makes a good story, and how much credence one gives
to it is up to the individual. Of the four surviving gospels, Luke’s is the
only one that tells it, and that is also true of many of the details
surrounding the birth of Christ. Luke seems to have had a penchant for filling
in the gaps of the established facts, and for relating stories that appear to
fulfil ancient prophecies. There are clear parallels between the story of
John’s conception and those of Samuel and Isaac in the Old
Testament. Could this be yet another example of Luke attempting to link his gospel to precedents and prophesies from ancient Jewish tradition?
Testament. Could this be yet another example of Luke attempting to link his gospel to precedents and prophesies from ancient Jewish tradition?
Another story told about Zacharias, but not by Luke, is that
he was later murdered by Herod’s soldiers for refusing to divulge the
whereabouts of his infant son during the Massacre of the Innocents following
the birth of Jesus. This story is not inconsistent with the Luke story, given
that Elizabeth and Zacharias are described as living in Judaea, which is also
where Bethlehem is.
© John Welford
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