Colin's blog post 1

 John the Baptist was born some time before the birth of christ and died sometime shortly before or after his death based on the gospels of the bible and the writings of the jewish roman historian josephus. John the Baptist was born to an older couple according to Luke 1. His father was Zecharias a jewish priest and his mother was Elisabeth, who was the cousin of Mary. His birth was announced by the angel Gabriel, who appeared to Zacharias while he was burning incense at the temple. His birth was miraculous because in the wording of the King James Version Zecharias and Elizebeth were “stricken in years” and Elisabeth was “barren”.  As far as the childhood of John the Baptist I have not found much. The bible only gives us one verse at the end of Luke chapter one  in verse 80 which says “And the child grew, waxed strong in spirit, and was in the desert till the day of his showing unto Israel”. We can guess that he had a powerful religious education  because his father was a priest and he likely taught his son, but there isn't much we can extrapolate. 

The only contemporary reference to John the Baptist I found was in the antiquities of the jews by Josephus where we get a similar account of his death as in Mark and luke. According to Josephus, Herod had John beheaded because he protested his marriage to the wife of his brother. The only difference between this and the biblical account is that in the bible herod's stepdaughter asked him to do it. Lastly there are legitimate questions as to whether or not John the Baptist was a christian, but for brevity I will save that topic for another post when I am more researched.

My Non-christian mystic that I am studying is Zoroaster. Zoroaster is the founder of Zoroastrianism and similar to John the Baptist in the way that he was a religious reformer. Zoroaster was born in north eastern Iran and was born to a minor nobel family called Spitaman somewhere between 1500 bc and 1000 bc under the Avestan religion. The name Zoroaster means “he who can manage camels” (Boyce 1996.).  His father was named Pourusaspa and his mother was named Dughdhova.From a young age Zoroaster was dedicated to becoming a priest. He likely had an exceptional education and based on the writings in some of his hymns probably received a mystical education in mantic lore. Lastly, Zoroaster had three wives and many children and died at the age of 77 according to tradition.All of my research to this point was done in the books “A History of Zoroastrians” and “Zoroastians” by Mary Boyce. If  you are interested in this topic I highly recommend these books.

My mystics had stable childhoods, however johns was likely more bizarre because his parents were very old and his mystical involvement happened very early on. Both of these mystics have very similar backgrounds and families, both were born during tumultuous times historically and  received powerful religious educations and were dedicated to their faiths at a very young age. The biggest difference between the two in terms of family and childhood is that Zoroaster got married three times and had children while by all accounts John led a life of abstinence.