Timeline of the Bible · The Life of Christ
John the Baptist
Life · About 3 BC–AD 30
The Years
- Born 3 BC
- Six months before the Lord (Luke 1:36). Ussher: 5 BC
- “When the time of Elizabeth was come that she should be delivered, she brought forth a son”
- Died AD 30
- Before the Passover of John 6:4, the year before the Crucifixion. Ussher: AD 32
- “John Baptist is beheaded”
Born six months before the Lord (Luke 1:26, 36), in the spring of 3 BC. Beheaded by Herod the tetrarch (Matthew 14:10) before the five thousand were fed, when “the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh” (John 6:4), the third Passover of the ministry, AD 30. Ussher, whose ministry runs two years later, has him beheaded in AD 32.
Where the year isn’t Ussher’s, the text sets it, and the note says how. Ussher’s years and sentences are from his Annals of the World (1658), quoted as printed.
