The Final Days of John the Baptist

Herod's opinion sets the stage for the telling of the story of the Baptist's death. The setting suggests that the story was triggered by Herod's reaction to the positive effect of the Twelve's mission. Jesus' forerunner foreshadowed and paralleled Jesus' own suffering and death. As John's disciples take the beheaded corpse and place it in a tomb. In a similar manner, Joseph of Arimathea will get Jesus' corpse from Pilate and place it in a tomb.