John 1:28

These things were done in Bethany beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing.

The place names mentioned in John are so numerous, yet always incidental to the main narrative, that their very profusion compels the conclusion that the author was writing truth which belonged to his immediate knowledge and recollection. The scenes of John's baptizing were Bethany, as here, and Aenon (John 3:23). Since there were two Bethanys, the other being only a couple of miles from Jerusalem, he distinguished this one as being "beyond Jordan." The exact location of this Bethany is not certain. Hendriksen placed it thirteen miles below Lake Galilee and twenty miles southeast of Nazareth and presented convincing arguments why the more southerly location near the Dead Sea, as shown on some of the old maps, is probably wrong. This verse concluded the apostle's record of the first one of those four great days which lived in his memory.