They Will Not Follow a Stranger is a study of the textual evidence on John the Baptist to explore issues of assessing sacred literature from a historical viewpoint. In the genre of biblical criticism, though meant to be accessible to the general reader.
It begins with a look at later followers of the Baptist, as noted in the Acts of the Apostles and Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, then proceeds to accounts by the historian Josephus and in the Gospel of John. Part Two focuses on the Synoptic Gospels, requiring discussion of the Q Gospel and disparities among the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The final section includes excerpts from a text of the Dead Sea Scrolls and revisits issues encountered in Acts and First Corinthians at the start of the study.