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Jesus (pbuh) really make such a declaration? Was John
the Baptist greater than Abraham, Moses, David, and
Jesus himself? And in what did his superiority and
greatness consist? If this testimony of Jesus about
the son of Zachariah be authentic and true, then the
greatness of the “Eater of the Locusts in the wilderness”
can only consist in his absolute abnegation, self-denial,
and refraining from the world with all its luxuries
and pleasures; his ardent wish to invite the people to
penance; and his good tidings about “that Prophet.”

Did his greatness consist -as the Churches will
have it- in being a cousin, contemporary and witness of
Jesus (pbuh) ? The value and greatness of a man, as well
as of a Prophet, can be determined and appreciated by
his work. We are absolutely ignorant of the number of
persons converted through the sermons and purified by
the baptism of John. Nor are we informed with regard
to the effect of that conversion upon the attitude of the
penitent Jews towards the “Lamb of God!”

Christ is said to have declared that John the Baptist
(pbuh) was the reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah (Matt. xi.
14, xvii. 12; Luke i. 17), whereas John expressly told the
Jewish deputation that he was not Elijah, nor Christ, not
that Prophet (John i).

Now, can one, from these Gospels full of statements
opposing and denying each other, form a correct conclusion
or try to find out the truth? The charge is exceedingly grave
and serious, because the persons concerned are not ordinary
mortals like ourselves, but two John Prophets who were both
created in the womb by the Spirit and born miraculously -
one had no father, while the parents of the other were sterile
and an impotent nonagenarian couple. The gravity of the
charge is even more serious when we come to consider
the nature of the documents in which these contradictory
statements are written. The narrators are the Evangelists,