Zechariah, father of John the Baptist

In reply, the angel identified himself as Gabriel, sent especially by God to make this announcement, and added that because of Zechariah's doubt he would be struck dumb and "not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed".

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

Elizabeth gave birth, and on the eighth day, when their son was to be circumcised according to the commandment, her neighbours and relatives assumed that he was to be named after his father.

The child grew up and "waxed strong in spirit", but remained in the deserts of Judæa until he assumed the ministry that was to earn him the name "John the Baptist" (Luke 1:80; 3:2–3; Matthew 3:1).

Origen suggested that the Zechariah mentioned in Matthew 23:35 as having been killed between the temple and the altar may be the father of John the Baptist.

[8] The Gospel of James, a 2nd-century apocryphal work, recounts that, at the time of the massacre of the Innocents, when King Herod ordered the slaughter of all males under the age of two in an attempt to prevent the prophesied Messiah from coming to Israel, Zechariah refused to divulge the whereabouts of his son (who was in hiding), and he was therefore murdered by Herod's soldiers.

The Catholic Church commemorates him as a saint, along with Elizabeth, on September 23[2] as it is believed that his temple duty before John the Baptist's conception took place on the Day of Atonement.

[12][13] Zias and Puech suggest the inscription may refer to another 'Zekariah' mentioned by Josephus and the Talmud who was martyred in the time of Vespasian.

[14] Zechariah (Arabic: زكريا Zakariyya) is also a prophet in Islam, and is mentioned in the Qur'an as the father of Yaḥyā (John the Baptist).

An old tradition narrates that Zechariah was sawn in half,[15] in a death which resembles that attributed to Isaiah in Lives of the Prophets.

Zechariah and St. John the Baptist. A medieval Georgian fresco from the Monastery of the Cross , Jerusalem .
Domenico Ghirlandaio 's fresco Zechariah Writes Down the Name of His Son (1490, fresco in the Tornabuoni Chapel , Florence )
The martyrdom of Zachariah in the Temple during the Massacre of the Innocents ; and the Flight of Elizabeth , as depicted in a miniature from the Paris Gregory , a 9th-century manuscript codex
The Tomb of Absalom , built in the 1st century CE in the Kidron Valley ; an inscription added three centuries later claims that it is Zechariah's tomb.
The tomb of Zechariah in the Great Mosque of Aleppo , Syria