Episode 31: “Say What?” Was John the Baptist’s father Zechariah really slaughtered in the Temple? Evaluating sketchy source material.

When someone says something like, “John the Baptist’s father was the Zechariah who was slaughtered between the altar and the porch in the Temple” it is important to ask where they got that information because folks who use sketchy (or nonexistent) sources aren’t quick to pony up without prompting and when people hear something new and seemingly cool from someone who sounds convincing, they generally just get lost in the moment. So, about a month ago I pre-recorded a teaching where I read the Protoevangelium of James, a second-century pseudepigraphic (false name) fake Gospel that sometimes gets used as a legitimate source but absolutely is not. I’m going to read through it and point out all the glaring errors and reasons why we know it wasn’t written by someone in the first century and certainly not by James, and why whoever wrote it had obviously never set foot in the Temple complex in his life.

link to a pdf of this fake Gospel account http://www.sthermanoca.org/documents/The%20Orthodox%20Faith/Protoevangelium%20of%20James.pdf