The people who wrote the four Gospels in the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Bibles all used the Septuagint version of the Old Testament for their bible quotations. The Septuagint is so named because it was translated from Hebrew to Greek by seventy elder rabbis. It was written in lower case Greek (no capital letters) and with no punctuation. This led to misinterpretation of certain passages. The most important for the Gospels is Isaiah 40:3. As it is usually quoted, from the King James English version of the sixteenth century, but written like the Septuagint without capitals or puncuation, it reads:

"the voice of one crying in the wilderness establish the way of the lord"

The four Gospels all interpret this as:

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Establish the way of the Lord’."

They then say that Isaiah was prophesying John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus.

Jews have always said that it should read:

"The voice of one crying: ‘In the wilderness establish the way of the Lord’."

In which case it is the way, not the voice, which was in the wilderness, and John the Baptist could not be the "Voice in the wilderness" because there was no "Voice in the wilderness".

Christians countered that the Hebrew Bible used by Jews was not the original Hebrew, but largely back translation from the Greek after the original Hebrew was lost in the Diaspora, when the Romans defeated the Bar Cochba Jewish insurrection and dispersed the Jews from Palestine throughout the Empire. This argument was finally resolved in the 1950’s, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and many copies of Isaiah older than the Diaspora were found. All honest translations since that time show that it is the way that was in the wilderness, there was no "Voice in the wilderness".

Revised Standard Version

A voice cries:

"In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,

Make straight in the desert a highway for our God"

New International Version:

A voice of one calling:

"In the desert prepare the way for the LORD;

make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God."

Catholic Tagalog Version:
May tinig ne sumisigaw:

"Ipaghanda si Yahweh ng daan sa ilang;

Isang patag at matuwid na lansangan

para sa ating Diyos."

American Standard Version:

The voice of one that crieth,

"Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of Jehovah;

make level in the desert a highway for our God."

Today’s English Version ("Good News Bible)

A voice cries out,

"Prepare in the wilderness a road for the LORD!

Clear the way in the desert for our God!"

The quotations from the four gospels can be found at:

Mt 3.3, Mk 1:3, Lu 3:4-6, Jn 1:23

So all four Gospels make the same serious mistake, an error in interpreting the Old Testament. What does that mean? One thing it proves is the Bible is the word of men, not God, that it has mistakes and errors, and that one can not believe something is true just because it is in the Bible. Why did they do this? We know that John the Baptist was the other main claimant to the title of Messiah [Hebrew] or Christ [Greek] besides Jesus. There still are groups which say he was the real Messiah, not Jesus, such as the Mandaeans of Iraq, who sometimes call themselves "John the Baptist Christians". So presumably they were trying to persuade the followers of John the Baptist that they should accept Jesus as the greater one for whom John was preparing the way. Unfortunately, they were wrong and all they really accomplished was discrediting their own message.