Zacharias

Abstract

Zacharias (or Zechariah or Zachariah), a Jewish priest, appears in Luke 1 and receives a vision promising him and his aged wife, Elizabeth, a son. That son is John the Baptist. Zacharias celebrates the child ‘s birth with the hymn known to Christianity as the Benedictus. So much for the New Testament references to Zacharias. But, like many such figures in the New Testament, Zacharias became the subject of later tradition. At the end of the Protevangelium of James, a book largely given over to the birth and childhood of the Virgin Mary and to the birth of Jesus, the story changes from the escape of the infant John and his mother at the time of Herod ‘s Massacre of the Innocents to a scene in which John ‘s priestly father, Zacharias, is murdered in the Jerusalem Temple by command of Herod. It is likely that the story was a late appendix to the Protevangelium and is an elaboration of Jesus ‘ prophecy to the Jews in Matthew 23: 35: ‘On you will fall the guilt of all the innocent blood spilt on the ground, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. ‘ Whoever that Zechariah was, the apocryphal tradition obviously identified him with the Baptist ‘s father and thus created the story below which would be seen as a fulfilment of the prophecy. It is interesting to note that after Zacharias ‘ murder his successor as priest is said to be Simeon, another character taken from Luke ‘s infancy narrative.