Ministry of John the Baptist Begins

The event

Luke dates the start of John's public ministry with unusual precision — "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar," under the governorship of Pontius Pilate in Judea and the tetrarchies of Herod Antipas in Galilee and Philip to the north-east. Into that specific political moment, John the Baptist — son of the priest Zechariah, and the child whose birth an angel had foretold — steps out of the wilderness wearing camel's hair and eating locusts and wild honey, unmistakably evoking the prophet Elijah.

John's message was blunt and urgent: repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. He baptized crowds in the Jordan River as a sign of repentance and forgiveness, refusing to let ethnic descent from Abraham substitute for genuine change of heart, and warning that one greater than himself was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. All four Gospels identify him as the voice crying in the wilderness that Isaiah had foreseen — the appointed forerunner of the Messiah.

Dating

Luke 3:1 anchors this to the fifteenth year of Tiberius's reign. Counted from Tiberius's co-regency with Augustus (c. AD 11/12), the fifteenth year lands at AD 26-27, fitting the AD 30 crucifixion chronology this app follows; counted from his sole rule at Augustus's death (AD 14) — the way the Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio reckon his years — it lands at AD 28-29, the reading favored by scholars who date the crucifixion to AD 33 (notably Harold Hoehner). Both counts have able evangelical defenders; the difference moves the whole ministry chronology by about two years but nothing else.

Scripture references

• Matthew 3:1-12
• Mark 1:1-8
• Luke 3:1-18

Other witnesses

• Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.2 (on John the Baptist)