The traditions about the birth of St John the Baptist enshrined in St Luke's gospel would appear to have come from a Hebrew source, and they correspond to a literary type, we might almost say a theme, which recurs in the Old Testament. John, or ‘the Lord gives grace’ was a child of divine promise, born of aged parents against all expectation. The scriptures had already told how Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah, and told too of how an angel appeared to announce the birth of Samson. Whereupon Samuel was born in answer to prayer, to put an end to a would-be mother's anguish, and above all to be a prophet in the great designs of God. Jeremiah, we read, was sanctified from his mother's womb. All this, and more, in the scriptures prepared for, and pointed to, the precursor and herald of the saviour.