“After eight days it was time to circumcise the child and they customarily would have called the child by his father Zacharias, but Elizabeth when asked to name the child, she said No, the child will not be called Zacharias but John, the name revealed by the angel.”

Zacharias was unable to speak for the entire time Elizabeth was with child because he did not believe what was told to him that Mary would have a son, so when Mary explicitly said the child would be named John, they said to her, ‘But there is no one among your relatives who is called John’. So they made signs to Zacharias wanting confirmation, but he asked for a writing tablet and wrote saying ‘His name is John’, and they were astonished.”