“Perhaps there is another reason we are told so little about these people we meet ever so briefly. It raises our curiosity and, in order to satisfy our curiosity, we must go beyond what we are told and ask questions. Take, for example, John the Forerunner. We are told more about John than most you will meet, yet we are told very little. We know Mary and Elizabeth were relatives. We know that Mary visited Elizabeth when they were both pregnant. Does this mean that Jesus and John grew up together? They lived eighty miles apart, a significant distance in that time. How often did they see one another? Jesus grew up in the village of Nazareth in a northern area called Galilee. John lived south in the hills of Judea, practically growing up in the wilderness. Were one or both influenced by the Essenes who had withdrawn into the desert to live in simplicity and purity and to usher in the coming of the Messiah? The wilderness was their home and they lived near Qumran. Here the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a shepherd boy in 1947.”