By Steven Depolo / Flickr Creative Commons
1) He had a very specific taste in natural food. Long before hipsters discovered kale and quinoa from a food truck, John the Baptist was eating locusts and wild honey.
The proto-hipster?
By Nick Thompson / Flickr CC
2) J the B followed Christ before it was cool. He was even promoting Jesus back when they were both in the womb. Try to beat that. He then left (or, well, died) before it got big.
3) Vintage items and ironic t-shirts? Pretty cool. But clothing yourself in camel skin? Now that takes it to another level.
4) Beards? John was doing it long before it became a thing.
5) Before you went through various stages of activism, perhaps focused on composting eggshells, he was a voice crying out in the wilderness—and not just the cheaper parts of Brooklyn or Portland.
6) Think you’re “authentic”? Enjoy sticking it to the man? How do you get more authentic than John the Baptist? This dude was beheaded for causing a ruckus.
7) Just as thrift store clothing might hide that fact that some hipsters have spent more than a hundred grand on liberal arts degrees, J the B might have dressed rather wildly, but this was a religious Jew who knew his stuff.
8) He repeatedly dropped lines from the prophets you probably wouldn’t have heard of.
Cover image by Christopher Michel / Flickr CC
