When his parents died he was still too young to be on his own. Zechariah and Elizabeth had been very old when John was born, so it was no surpirse that it happened, but apparently nothing had been done to prepare for it just the same. The rest of the family had gone north to Nazareth because of political problems, and John was alone. According to tradition, he was taken in by a group of old men who lived in a little village down by tahe Dead Sea. The place was called Qumran, and the men were known as the Essenes.

No one agrees just where the Essenes came from orignially, but most agree that they had come to Qumran to get away from the "corruption" they believed was taking place in the temple in Jerusalem. You could say they were religious fanatics, who spent the days and nights copying sc…