Why Capernaum?

Let's hope our connections work properly this time. For those of you who haven't been attending with us for a long time, I thought I'd give you a little background as to what we're doing and the format for the sermon today.

Generally, on the 1st and 3rd Sabbaths of the month, I try to give what we're calling the Harmony of the Gospels series after this. Harmony of the Gospels, if you're not familiar with that term, is simply a book that shows all of the Gospel accounts side by side.

Here's an event that is covered in both Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This is showing the same event from their perspectives. Here's more information from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As you can see, some of the writers include different details that the other Gospel writers leave out. Or they give a slightly different perspective on it. There are other places in the Gospels.

John has large portions of his Gospel where he talks about things that aren't covered anywhere in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. So what we're doing is going through a very detailed study of all four of the Gospels, line by line, paragraph through paragraph, in a great deal of detail and trying to bring in the cultural, historical background, archaeological background that helps us understand and get a deeper picture, a deeper understanding of what is going on.

Because if we are to be disciples of Jesus Christ, if we are to be His followers, we need to be sure we are familiar with and know what He taught, why He said the things He did, why He did the things that He did. And this is the purpose of these studies to help us become more like Jesus Christ, which of course is what we are supposed to do as His disciples.

As I've covered in a sermon on discipleship before, the goal of a disciple is not to just learn what the teacher knows, but to be what the teacher is, to become like the teacher in every way. So that is the point and the purpose in going through this material.

We've been doing this study for about two years with about a six-month break earlier in this year to cover other subjects, but now we're picking it up again as of two Sabbaths ago. And hopefully we'll continue on a more regular schedule for this. Today we will be studying from page 17 of the Harmony of the Gospels, and we'll be talking about Jesus coming to live and center His ministry in the city of Capernaum. Last time we went through a great deal of the background of Galilee, of the region of Galilee, and covered the different peoples who live there, their culture, their religious practices, and so on.

And I think we saw from that examination why it is important to understand the background of the Gospels here, things that aren't spelled out for us in the Gospels, but we know from history and archaeology and other sources there, because it clears up a lot of questions that we might have, clears up a lot of misconceptions we might have, and in some cases clears up some outright wrong ideas that we may have about what we read there in the Gospels. And today we will be talking about Jesus moving to Capernaum and choosing Peter, Andrew, James, and John as His disciples.

By way of quick review, I do want to set the stage here for what we'll be talking about again. Last time we talked about this map, which is several pages in from the back of your harmony there. It's the same map. We'll be referring to this several times today. And again, we have Jesus settling into Capernaum. Capernaum is on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee right up here. And we talked about the different peoples who lived around there.

And let's review that very quickly because, again, it will factor into a lot of what we read about in the Gospels. So, for instance, who are the people who live down here in the area called the Decapolis? Greek for ten cities. If you remember that, who are the people who live there? Those are the pagans. The pagans, those who have adapted the Greco-Roman culture, Greco-Roman religious practice there.

So, they were essentially an outgrowth of Greece and Rome there. These Greek cities there in the Middle East, just on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, no more than seven or eight miles from where Jesus is conducting his ministry. Who are the people then? To the immediate north of them. We talked about that quite a bit last time. We'll discuss it in more detail today. Those are the zealots. And one of Jesus' disciples came from this background, a zealot. Who were the zealots? They were Jewish nationalists. Jewish patriots, you might say. These were the people whose goal in life was to kick out the Romans, to get rid of the Romans who ruled over Judea there, and to establish a Jewish kingdom there under Jewish rulership.

These were the people, as I mentioned, they were known for carrying daggers under their cloaks and given a chance.

They would pull out that dagger if they were in a crowd or something and spotted a Roman official or soldier. They would stab them and slip away in the crowds. They would also stab Roman collaborators, such as tax collectors. As I mentioned last time, some of the dynamics had to be pretty interesting because you had one of Christ's disciples who was a zealot, and one who was a former tax collector for the Romans, Matthew. So, there had to be some pretty interesting dynamics going on among the disciples there. We're not giving details about it, but I have to wonder about some of the conversations that took place around the campfires at night there as they are traveling around. Moving further on around the Sea of Galilee, who are the people who live at Tiberius, just about eight miles or so south from Capurium. Those are the Herodians. As we talked about last time, Tiberius is the biggest city by far on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and yet there's no record of Jesus ever visiting there. Why is that? Well, as we talked about last time, Tiberius was the capital of Herod Antipas. Who is Herod Antipas? Herod Antipas is the ruler who threw John the Baptizer in prison and ultimately had him beheaded. So it's no wonder that Jesus avoids Tiberius, because he knows if he goes there, the same thing may happen to him as happened to John the Baptizer. So he avoids the biggest city there on the Sea of Galilee.

Who are the people below? Again, this is an illustration of the Roman culture that the Herod family adopted. They were in power courtesy of the Romans who ruled that area. So they were very much immersed in the Roman culture, and Tiberius, for all intents and purposes, was kind of a small Roman city.

To the south of there, people that we talked about in an earlier sermon in this series, almost an entire sermon, on the Samaritans. The woman at the well, for instance, that Jesus meets when he's going up through Samaria. The Samaritans and the Jews hated each other. It was very dangerous for a Samaritan to be caught in Jewish territory or vice versa, because they would kill each other if given the chance.

So the Samaritans lived down there. Their religion was an interesting blend of both paganism, because the ancestors of the Samaritans actually came out of Babylon, the area of Babylon. They'd been moved there, but when they exiled the Israelites out of there. However, there were a number of Samaritans who were in many ways similar to the Jews, in that their religion was based on the five books of Moses, the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Now, they did not accept the other portions of the Hebrew Scriptures, the books like Psalms, Proverbs, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, all of the other books. They accepted only the five books of the Torah. As a result of that, there are a number of things that are brought out in other parts of the Old Testament that they did not believe.

This contributes in some ways to the hostility there between the Jews and the Samaritans as well.

And then last but not least, who are the people who live up in the area where Jesus conducts most of his ministry? As we talked about last time, those are the religious Jews, the people who are eagerly anticipating the appearance of a Messiah.

They have moved and settled into that area because they know from Isaiah's prophecy that we talked about last time that the Messiah would appear in Galilee, specifically in the tribal territories of Zebulun and Naftali.

So they have moved into this area because they want to be there when the Messiah arrives to conduct his work there.

Again, these are very religious people. They are devout believers. They go to the synagogue every Sabbath. And these are the people where Jesus feels quite at home with.

There, of course, he has grown up in Nazareth, which is a town founded by these very religious Jews, as was Capernaum, Corazin, Bethsaida, Magdala, all of these other cities that we read about there in the Gospels located around the Sea of Galilee.

You would do well to memorize this information here. You'd do very well to memorize it because it will keep encountering it again and again as we come through the Gospels. So it's very helpful when you read through to always look at an atlas and see where these events are taking place because this tells you the kind of people that Jesus is interacting with and what their religious and cultural background is. And that helps explain a lot of the story as we go through it. So it'd be very good, again, to memorize this information. You may even want to write it in on your map there in the back of your harmony. But why settle in Capernaum? Last time we focused on why Jesus settled in Galilee.

I was foretold by prophecy, but why Capernaum? Why Capernaum in particular? Well, for one reason, as we see here, we know that Jesus is prophesied to settle in Galilee. But would it have really worked if had he settled or tried to conduct a ministry in some of these other areas? What would have happened, for instance, had he tried to conduct his ministry over here in the area of the Decapolis?

Which is, again, Greco-Roman paganism. What would his reception have been there if he came in and tried to tell these people that they're wrong, to be engaged in their worship of all their false gods and all of their idolatry and that sort of thing? We see later on some of the trials the Apostle Paul ran into when he tried to turn people away from idol worship. Quite likely he would have been killed or run out of town there. What about had he tried to conduct his ministry in the area of the Samaritans?

That wouldn't have worked because of the hostility there between the Jews and the Samaritans. What about had he tried to conduct his ministry around Tiberias, ruled by the Herodians? Well, talked about that earlier. The same thing might have happened to him. It's happened to John the Baptizer. What about had he tried to conduct his ministry centered up here in the area of the zealots? Well, what was the zealots' goal? They wanted a leader who would lead them in rebellion against the Romans to drive them out. So it would have been caught up in that.

We see some incidents where it's kind of leading in that direction in the Gospels as it is, because his ministry is kind of just almost on the borderline between zealot territory and that of the religious Jews. So really, the only place where he could have carried out his ministry without a great deal of opposition and problems is in this area of the religious Jews. And again, he finds initially, at least, a very receptive audience from very early on in his ministry.

We'll see that next time when we talk about that. We do find phrases like, and his fame went abroad throughout the land, and great multitudes are coming out to hear him. That's because these people are very religious. They know their Bible. They know the prophecies of the Messiah. And they are very receptive to Jesus Christ's teachings there. So he does attract crowds of thousands of people who are coming for various reasons. Some, some not so good. We see, for instance, he attracts many people who want because they know he can heal people.

So many come just for that. They want to be healed personally, or they want their family members, their loved ones to be healed. Some people will see later in the Gospels come for a free meal. Because here's a man who can multiply loaves and fishes to feed thousands of people at once. Some people want to debate and argue, and we'll see that in the Gospels as we go along. But many, just genuinely, wanted to hear and learn what this brilliant rabbi has to say in their coming, because they do believe he is a teacher from God.

I might mention also that there is not a great deal of difference between the zealots and the religious Jews, because after all, who are the zealots? The zealots are religious Jews, in many ways, just like those over here. They're very zealous religiously because they know the prophecies of a Messiah. They know that there's going to be a kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, as they would have called it, kingdom of God, as we would call it today. They called it kingdom of heaven because they wouldn't use God's name out of concern for breaking the Third Commandment. They fervently believed in a Messiah, but their view of a Messiah was a physical leader who would come and lead them into rising up the Romans and casting them out and setting up a Jewish kingdom there.

So what was the difference then between the zealots and the religious Jews here? Basically, it was a matter of approach to their theology. They had actually, more or less, had a theological split several generations earlier over how the kingdom of God would come about. The zealots, again, envisioned the Messiah as a military leader who would lead them to overthrow the Romans and establish a Jewish kingdom with Jewish leaders rather than Roman rulers.

And the other religious Jews took, you might say, a more passive approach to it in that they thought it was all in God's hands. That God will send the Messiah when He's good and ready, and the Messiah will then establish the kingdom of God there. And therefore, it's not their role, it's not their place, their part to rise up militarily and rebel against the Romans.

So again, theologically, practice-wise, they would have been very much the same. They all would have been keeping the Sabbath. They all would have been going to the Holy Days. They would have all been going to the synagogue on the Sabbath. They would have worshipped God in the same way. Their difference was primarily just how the kingdom of God would come about. Whether it was to come about by force, as the zealots thought, or whether God would take care of it in His own time, as the other religious Jews thought there.

And we know from history—I want to diverge a bit because there's some background information I think will be helpful here— we know from history how the story eventually played out. And this does have a great impact on the early church, and that's why I'm bringing it in and introducing it here.

Eventually, the zealot view gained the upper hand. And a large part of the Jewish war, which lasted from 66 to 70 AD. I've mentioned the story of Masada before, if you've ever seen that movie or read books about it. That is the last battle, you might say, of that war, the last end stage of that conflict. But this rebellion breaks out largely up here in the area of Galilee.

And again, this area over here just to the east of Capernaum and Corazin and Bethsaida is a hot spot for that. The city of Gamla that's on the map here was an enormous battle there between the Romans and the Jews. In which about 3,000 Jews were slaughtered by the Romans. One interesting aspect of history is there was a major sea battle on the Sea of Galilee between the Jewish zealots and the Romans. The Jewish zealots were in fishing boats that would hold maybe 10 or 15 men.

I'm not sure what type of vessels the Romans were in, but Josephus records that the Sea of Galilee ran red with the blood of all the Jewish zealots who were slaughtered in that naval battle on the Sea of Galilee. Another center of the zealots was Magdala right here on the other side of Capernaum.

Eventually, these forces that we see hints of in the Gospels about 30 years later, 35 years later, this breaks out into all-out rebellion and war against the Romans with devastating results there. Again, we know from history how this plays out. It ends with the battle of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is totally destroyed. The temple is destroyed. There was actually a major battle fought right on the Temple Mount.

That is what this picture depicts with the giant altar there. The Romans and the Jewish saw themselves as freedom fighters battling to the death. They were right on the grounds of the temple. That led to the destruction of the temple. The Romans actually wanted to preserve the temple. They didn't want to destroy it. They liked taking prizes to show how great their army was. They wanted to leave major temples, towers, defensive fortresses, that kind of thing, to show how great their soldiers were for having conquered these people.

But the Jews had fought so bitterly against the Romans that they so angered the Roman generals that they just ordered them to destroy everything. The temple was burned and destroyed. There is hardly a shred left of it to this day. You can go to Jerusalem and see below the Temple Mount, I've shown pictures of this in earlier sermons, where you can see the blocks of the area around the temple, the porches, the other buildings, the fortress that was there, all of that that was destroyed.

It was like the Romans bulldozed the whole top of the Temple Mount and pushed all the rubble off into the valleys on the other sides of the Temple Mount. So again, this is devastating for the Jews. This first war ends in 70 AD, and then there was another revolt that follows, not very well known, but in 132 to 135. There was a second Jewish war in here, and Jerusalem is again destroyed. This time the Romans are so angry about it, they pass a law that no Jew is to set foot in Jerusalem on pain of death.

That was a death penalty for a Jew to set foot in Jerusalem after this second war. That shows how angry the Romans were at the Jews after these two wars. So they destroyed Jerusalem a second time, raised the city, and then built a Roman city on top of its ruins. The reason I bring this up is that these two wars actually led to major changes in early Christianity. As well, you're probably familiar with some of the story, but not how it ties in to these two Jewish rebellions.

Because up until this time, as we see from the book of Acts, for instance, and the Apostle Paul's writings, what are members of the church doing? The early church. What's their relationship with the Jews in the communities in which they live? Well, they're virtually indistinguishable. You find Paul going to the synagogues and teaching people there on the Sabbath. You find the church members attending the synagogues there on the Sabbath right alongside the Jews.

The Jews go to the synagogue. The Christians go to the synagogue. The Jews keep the Sabbath, the Christians keep the Sabbath. The Jews keep the Holy Days. The Christians keep the Holy Days. The Jews don't eat unclean foods. The Christians don't eat unclean foods. The Jews don't worship idols, or worship the emperor, and the Christians don't worship idols, or the Roman emperor, and so on. To the Romans, they really can't distinguish between the Jews and the Christians because they're doing the same things in the same places on the same days.

The Romans initially accept Christianity as just a slight offshoot of Judaism, and therefore they don't persecute it. However, when these two wars come along, 66 to 70 AD, and 132 to 135 AD, things start to change. Because in the Roman Empire, then, there is so much hostility against the Jews for instigating these two wars.

These Jews have rebelled against and fought against the Romans and cost a tremendous amount of money to the Roman Empire to fight these wars and so on. So the Romans then began officially persecuting the Jews. They start stamping out Jewish practices. They persecute people who are going to the synagogue, who are keeping the Sabbath, who are keeping the Holy Days, and so on. And then, what we see from history is in the latter part of the first century and early part of the second century, we see a dramatic change begin to take place there in Christianity.

By now, a lot of Gentiles have started coming into the church, which we see again in the book of Acts and is reflected in Paul's writings. And then, when the persecution starts up, again, toward the end of the first century and early part of the second one, many of these Gentiles in the early church find it easier to just simply give up these, quote-unquote, Jewish practices that they've adopted, like keeping the Sabbath, like keeping the Holy Days.

And they start adopting Roman religious practices. They start keeping the day of the sun, Sunday, instead of the Sabbath. They start keeping holidays, which we know is Christmas and Easter, and abandoning the Passover, the Days of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, the Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles, and so on.

And this battle would actually play out over several centuries to come there, as the Romans would pass more and more laws restricting religious practices among the Jews and among the Christians. There is well, they would pass laws that would, for instance, you could, where, for instance, you would have to work on the seventh day of the week.

You would have to take off work the first day of the week. And it becomes harder and harder to be a Christian. So many Christians start abandoning the faith and turning back into their paganism or to mixtures of the truth and paganism there. So this battle again would play out over several centuries through the two hundreds, three hundreds, four hundreds, and so on.

But that is how that split began. It actually traces back to these two Jewish rebellions, the first of which began up there in Galilee, among the zealots here that we're talking about. It's just amazing the far-reaching impact that has had all the way down to our day-to-day, and the split between true Christianity early on and this Romanized, recycled paganism version of Christianity that's lasted for 2,000 years, as well as the split between Christianity and Judaism that goes back.

It's all rooted back in these two wars here.

It's also interesting that a particular individual that you've probably heard his name a number of times, Flavius Josephus. Who is he? How does he tie into this story?

He's a very famous Jewish historian, lived from A.D. 37, so he's born just a few years after Christ is crucified and resurrected, and he dies as near as we can tell in the year 100 there. But who was Flavius Josephus? He was a Roman historian, but he was also a Pharisee. He was also of a priestly family, descended from a priestly family, so he's very familiar with the temple rituals there conducted in Jerusalem. And from him we get a lot of information about the temple and its services and about Jewish history and all of this, a priceless resource. I found it rather interesting when I was researching this that about a hundred years ago, the most common book in the home of Christians other than the Bible was the books of Flavius Josephus, because they verify so much of what we see in the Bible. Josephus is rather interesting. He was also a general in this rebellion. He was a zealot. He was a general. He was a leader of the Jewish rebellion, Deron Galilee. And in the first part of this first Jewish rebellion in AD 67, he and his men, I think he had about 40 men with him in a cave, and they were surrounded, trapped by the Romans.

And Josephus surrendered to the Romans, became an interpreter, a translator, and tried to convince his countrymen to lay down their arms and surrender to the Romans, because rebellion was only going to end with their destruction and their death and being sold into slavery. Whereas if they lay down their arms, at least they would live. So for this, for surrendering and becoming more or less an encourager for the Romans, the Jews, his countrymen viewed him as a traitor.

But the Romans viewed him as an honorable man who was doing the right thing and trying to preserve his countrymen there. So for this, he has given Roman citizenship. He's given a nice pension by the Roman emperors. And in the latter part of his life, after the rebellion, he spends years writing his books about Jewish history. Some of them you've probably heard of, in particular, Antiquities of the Jews, which is basically about ancient Jewish history, and the Wars of the Jews, which is about the rebellion there, the battle for Jerusalem, and so on. That's where a lot of this information comes from. So from this man, we have a priceless resource about Jewish history, which incidentally confirms a lot about what we read about in the Bible. It even mentions several individuals in the Bible. John the Baptizer is mentioned in there, Jesus Christ is mentioned in there, James the half-brother of Jesus Christ is mentioned in Josephus' writings, as well as various Roman officials that turn up, Pontius Pilate, Felix, Festus, others that we read about in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. So all of this, again, it's just fascinating how all of these threads that begin back here in the zealot movement in Jerusalem have affected Western civilization and the church and Christianity all the way down to this day. So that's why I bring this in to us here. So with that additional background, now let's get back to where we were. I read this last time. We'll review it again, Matthew 4, verses 13 through 16, which is quoting from Isaiah 9, verses 1 and 2.

It says here, "...in leaving Nazareth, he," Jesus, "...came and dwelt in Capernaum," Kvar Nahum in Hebrew, Kvar meaning city or town of Nahum, Nahum, as we would pronounce it in English. It's not the prophet Nahum, but the same name. So that's the meaning of the town. So sometimes I'll pronounce it in English, sometimes in Hebrew. But in Hebrew it would have been Kvar Nahum, or something very similar to that. "...which is by the sea and the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who set in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who set in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned." So it was foretold by Isaiah about eight centuries earlier when the Messiah would appear in Galilee, that specifically he would appear in the tribal allotment of Zebulun right up in here, which is where the city of Nazareth is located, where Jesus grew up, and Naphtali, which is the area where Capernaum, Betsiadah, Corazin, Magdala, Kana, all these towns that we read about in the Gospels are located. So not only did this prophecy identify the region Jesus, the Messiah, would appear in, but also the specific two tribal allotments, where Jesus would grow up in Nazareth and where his ministry would be centered there in Capernaum.

So why Capernaum, though? That was one of the study questions I sent out in my questions last night. Why Capernaum? Let's talk about Capernaum a bit. Capernaum is a town of approximately 1,500 people. Here's an artist's conception of it based on the excavations they've done there.

It was a fishing village on the shore right here. You see some of the fishing boats, and they found the breakwaters, the jetties there, where the fishing boats would have come up and unloaded their catches, and so on. The city is laid out in a grid pattern. You can see the big synagogue, which will play prominently in the Gospels, probably next class, maybe the one after that, the biggest building in town. You can see the small houses and businesses and so on of the town here. About 1,500 people, maybe 1,000, maybe 2,000, but somewhere in that range. Not a large city, but fairly well off town right there on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Here's another view of it based on archaeology. This is from the town looking out over the Sea of Galilee. You can see the fishing boats. You can see the area of the Decapolis over here, and the city of Tiberius would have been right about here, and the other towns are along the coast on either side. You can see the houses here are basically built of basalt. If you study geology, basalt is a very heavy, very dense volcanic rock because this area is heavily volcanic in that area. That's what most of the building material is. This has plaster over the walls there. You can see the flat roofs where here there are mats laid out with fish drying on them. They didn't have a way to refrigerate fish, so to preserve the fish you either laid them out to dry, essentially not quite freeze-dried, but dried fish, or you would pack them in salt for transporting there. You couldn't eat them all at once, but that was the way fish would have been transported without any refrigeration. Again, this would have been about the typical size for the houses. Many of them had stairs that went up to the flat roofs up here, which are made of wooden beams with kind of a thatched mat laid over it with mud plastered over that.

That'll also play out in the Gospels because we remember the story of the individual whose friends can't get into the house where Jesus is teaching, so they dig a hole in the roof and lower him down. This is the kind of roof that's talking about there. We'll talk about that more when we get to that part of the story, which takes place in Capernaum as well. Here's again kind of what the town of Capernaum would have looked like in that town. This will kind of help us visualize this as we discuss this. Here's an interesting historical photo I came across. This is taken in the late 1800s. These are the ruins of Capernaum. As they look thin, you can actually see this Bedouin tent out here in several Bedouins. The Bedouin are people who generally live in the desert. They're shepherds. They travel around with their flocks and herds of sheep and goats. These ruins we see in the foreground, which are not basalt but are white limestone, this is actually the ruins of the synagogue there in Capernaum. The photo doesn't identify it, but I actually recognize this base here. That's the base of one of the columns for the synagogue there in Capernaum, which some of you have visited and know about. It's very distinctive because it's a heart shape. You can see that on the column there. This is what it looked like before they began excavating there.

Here's what it looks like today. This is a tourist boat. The ruins of Capernaum are right up here. This red roof building is a Greek Orthodox Church that's over part of the ruins of Capernaum. But this is what the Sea of Galilee looks like. Generally quite hazy in there because, again, this is about 800 feet below sea level. So there's a lot of humidity in the air. Visibility typically is not that great around there. But this gives you a good idea of what it would have looked like in Christ's day. Here's another ground level photo of what it looks like. You can see the basalt ruins of buildings down in here and then this white limestone synagogue. Biggest building in town. Here's what it looks like from ground level. It's been partially restored. But over the years, a lot of the white limestone was taken away by the Arabs living in the area for building their own houses and barns and buildings and so on. So they physically do not have a lot of the stones there left to rebuild the rest of the synagogue to restore it. But that's very prominent, very elegant. We'll talk about that again more because we come to Christ teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. I'll discuss this synagogue more then. I will point out here this is an aerial view of it. I've mentioned that Galilee was also a center of very devout religious Jews. And I talked quite a bit about the educational system there and earlier sermons how Jewish boys and girls would go to the synagogue, which doubled as the local school. And this is actually the synagogue portion we were just looking at. And next to it is this large structure about the same size. That is the school there. It's huge, very large, about not quite as big as this whole room, but probably about three quarters the size of that. Very large. The biggest school found in Jewish territory up until about the 15 or 1600s is right there in Capernaum. So yes, Paul. Paul grows up in Antioch, if I remember correctly, which is a couple hundred miles north of there. He does spend part of his teaching, part of his education in Jerusalem too under Gamaliel, Gamaliel as we would call it. Yeah, Paul is not in this area. He's elsewhere. However, others who lived in this area, Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip are all from Bethsaida, which is about four to five miles away.

They would have been very familiar with this, very familiar with this. Peter lives here, his mother-in-law's house is literally just not many steps at all, half a block from this synagogue there. Peter would have been very familiar with this synagogue. I should mention that I was going to get into this next time, but actually this synagogue is from the third or fourth centuries.

However, it is built on the foundations of an earlier synagogue that dates back to the first century. The earlier one that's underneath this one would have been the one that Christ would have taught in. It's made out of basalt. You can see it very clearly. It's made out of this real dark... you can actually see the foundation in this photo of this earlier synagogue right here. And this later one is erected on top of it. The earlier one was either destroyed, possibly during the Roman rebellion, the rebellion we talked about in 70 AD, maybe an earthquake. I don't know. But this is a later one, a much more elaborate one. But it's interesting. It's built right on the foundation of the earlier one. So the early one was this same size. It just wasn't quite as nice and ornate. And again, you can see the various houses around here, the walls where they've been excavated. I'll bring up... Here's a little further away aerial view. And again, here's the big white synagogue with a school next to it. Here's the Greek Orthodox Church that I mentioned earlier with a red roof. This part has been excavated. You can see this wall around it. It's rather interesting. This part is owned by the Catholic Church.

This part is owned by the Greek Orthodox Church. They kind of divided the town back in the 1800s somehow. The Catholics got the good part because they got the synagogue and that's where all the tourists go. So they get all the money. Hardly anybody visits the Greek Orthodox part, but everybody comes and visits this part. There's big bus parking lots out here, and here's the entrance where you go through and walk around. I mentioned... I'll talk about this a little bit more next time, but I mentioned Peter's mother-in-law's house that is apparently right here, because later there was a large church built over it back in the 300s, 400s AD approximately. A large church built over that spot. We'll talk about next time why I think this is probably the exact spot of Peter's house, Peter's mother-in-law's house right there. Of course, this would have been the shore where all the boats would have been pulled up and so on. The reason I mentioned this, as you can see, this area has been very well excavated. It's been a little bit of excavating out here. You can see some walls sticking through, but one really interesting thing is over here on this Greek Orthodox property, they found, of all things, the remains of a Roman military base.

Because Roman military bases had very distinct architectural styles. Romans loved their hot baths, so there was a hot bath there. That's why they know it is Roman. No self-respecting religious Jew would go to a Roman bath because of other connotations we won't get into. But yeah, there was a Roman military base right here in Capernaum. But is that all that surprising? Because Jesus performs three healings in Capernaum through four specific individuals. One we've already talked about that was the nobleman's son, the guy who was an official of Herod Antipas.

Another one was the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue. And who was the third healing? Anybody remember? Centurion's servant. What's a centurion? It's a Roman military officer. Where does this healing take place? In Capernaum. So it's not surprising there would be a Roman military officer because there's a Roman military base right there in Capernaum. There. Why is there a Roman military base there? Well, one is, as we've talked about, this is kind of the border between the zealot country. You might think of the Wild West here and the forts in what you'd call Indian country. Ruled by the savages. That's the way the Romans would have viewed the zealots here. So you've got a fort essentially there, kind of on the border from Indian country where these crazy zealots live. So you've got this base kind of on the frontier there. It's also there to protect a very valuable strategic asset, which we'll talk about, come to next. So this is one of the interesting correlations, correspondences between archaeology and what we read in the Gospels, that there is a Roman military base right there in Capernaum because Christ heals a centurion's son right there in Capernaum as well. Just one of those details where archaeology confirms what we read about there in the Gospels. Can't confirm that the healing took place, but it does show there's a logical reason for a Roman military officer to be right there at Capernaum. So again, this is just one more verification of the accuracy of the Gospel account. So that's an overview then of Capernaum. Any questions? I'm going to shift gears and get into something a bit different. So any questions before I move on? Yes, Tina.

Right.

Right, right.

Right.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, Tina's point for the benefit of the recording and those of you who couldn't hear over here. Two aspects. One is another aspect of the division between Christians and Jews is based on Christ's teachings about, my kingdom is not of this world. The true Christians would not fight in the Roman military there, so that led to some hostility between them and the Roman government because the Roman government is trying to draft people into its army or higher as mercenaries. So that was taking place again in that period, the latter part of the first century, early part of the second century. And another factor in there, which is quite interesting, because of the hostility between the Jews and the Romans, the Jews actually adopted a curse into part of their synagogue practice. Because the Christians, again, are coming to the synagogue alongside the Jews, and as part of their... I don't recall the exact year, somewhere around 80, 90 AD, they adopted into their synagogue worship a curse against followers of Jesus.

And that was designed to weed out the Christians who were coming into the synagogue there. So Christians are actually being persecuted by the Romans, and with this institution, this curse, they're actually being persecuted, you might say, by the Jews at that time, too. Because the Jews don't like the Christians, they see them as being allied with the Romans against them, and the Romans don't like the Christians because they see them being allied with the Jews. So Christians are kind of getting it from both sides there. So, yeah, this is part of the mix of the story there going on. So, again, back to the question, though. Why Capernaum? Why did Jesus choose this particular town out of all the towns of Galilee? And to answer that, let's ask another question, and that is, why did God place the Israelites where He placed them in the Promised Land?

Why did He do that? Why that particular location? What did He want the Israelites to do there?

What did He want them to be there? And why that particular location out of all the places on the planet? There's actually a scripture that tells us this in Deuteronomy 4, verses 5 and 6.

And the background for this passage, Deuteronomy, is where Moses is summing up. This is the last book he writes before the Israelites cross over the Jordan into the Promised Land. And he's summing up the gods working with them over the previous 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and all of that, and giving them his final instructions to them as they are about to inherit the Promised Land. And notice this part of Moses' final instructions to the Israelites. He says, Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Eternal my God commanded me that you should act according to them and the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. So what do we see here? What is Moses telling the Israelites? He's telling them that they are being placed at the crossroads of the world to be an example to the nations around them.

He's putting them at the crossroads of the world to be an example to the nations around them.

So that the other nations will see, as it says here, they will see how they've been blessed from keeping God's laws and will say, Surely this great nation of Israel is a wise and understanding people. That was the point. That is why God put them in the Promised Land, to be an example to others. But why this particular strip? If you've been to Israel, you know it's a very tiny country. It's only modern Israel today is about 150 miles north to south, roughly the distance from south side of Colorado Springs to Fort Collins, and about 30 to 50 miles wide. It's tiny. You can fit about five or six Israel's in the state of Colorado with room left over here. Why that particular spot?

To understand that, we need to look at a map or, as I prefer, a satellite photo so you can see it in in living color here. Here's a map of the Middle East. Israel to orient us is right here along the Mediterranean coast. Right here, this little strip, Israel's so small, it doesn't even have room to put the name of the country over it. You wouldn't be able to see it there. But what's the first thing you see about this satellite photo of the Middle East? What jumps out at you from there?

Well, notice all of these tan areas here. That's desert. It's desert. Sand dunes.

Some mountainous areas in there in Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well, but mostly desert. Okay, I'm getting there. You're ahead of me. But yeah, the old Silk Route. Silk Road. How many of you have heard about that? Heard of that. Some people are awake during your history class. Yeah, the Silk Route. You might think about that as we're discussing this here. But also notice you see parts of three different continents here. See parts of Europe up here, Asia over here, and Africa right here. Where's the Promised Land? It's right here. It's right here at the intersection of Europe, Asia, and Africa. If you're going back and forth in those ancient days before they had ships for sailing and you couldn't get there from here, if you're going from one continent to the other, you have to pass through this area. This tiny, tiny little strip of land that's again maybe 30 miles wide, 30 to 50 miles wide, about 150 miles north to south. What were the... well, let's see, you know, one more point. These desert areas there have been inhabited basically by Bedouin that we talked about earlier. Shepherds with their few goats and sheep, and that's about it. It's because it's impassable, except for a few caravan routes that know where the oleaces are, where the springs of water are. It's basically impassable. It's been there for that way for thousands of years, still that way to this day. So there's very few areas where you can cross through from one area to the other. If you are... let's see, where was it? I think I jumped ahead in my notes here for a little bit.

Yeah, so if you are walking, because that's the way you traveled in those days, you didn't have cars, you had... you either rode on horseback or muleback or camelback or donkeyback, or you walked. And if you're walking, what do you have to have as you're traveling? You have to have water, you have to have food along the way, you have to have safe places to stay there as well. So you could not travel through these deserts because it would kill you. If you weren't familiar with the land, didn't know where the oleaces were and so on, it would kill you. So where then were the big empires of the ancient world? One of them we're familiar with is Egypt down here. Egypt's been described as a kingdom that was 600 miles long and a mile wide. Think about that. 600 miles long and a mile wide. Why is it called that? It's called that because... look, you can actually see it on this map here. You see this big green area that's a Nile Delta and you see the strip of green along the Nile River where there are fields that can be watered and that are fertilized by the floods coming down out of the heart of Africa and washing in fresh topsoil. So Egypt was about a mile wide. That's a little bit of an exaggeration. It's maybe a mile on either side, but it was tremendously rich agriculturally. See the kingdom of Egypt down here. What were the other empires of the ancient world? Well, one of the earlier ones was the Hittite Empire, which is up here in Turkey.

What are the ones we read about in the Bible? First Assyria. Assyria is over here in modern-day Iraq. Mesopotamia and Babylon also here in Mesopotamia. After that there's the Medo-Persian Empire, which is centered over here in Iran. So if you're traveling back and forth between these empires, where you gotta go? You gotta go right through the promised land. And they had vast trade networks because each of these different empires had things that the others needed, whether it's food, clothing, spices, minerals, trade goods, things like that. And when they weren't trading with each other, they were fighting each other. And if your armies are going to go battle the other one, where are you going to go? You're going to go right through the promised land. That's why we find battles after battle after battle taking place in the battle in the Bible between these different empires going to attack each other, but they have to cross through the land of Israel to get there.

So let me show you a little bit of a... yeah, show it to you a little more closely. This is a bit of a close-up view. And again, here's the Nile River, the Nile Delta, this little tiny green strip, which is the promised land. You can actually see the Dead Sea and even the Sea of Galilee right there. And then over here is Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which the Assyrian Empire is basically up in here. And later the Babylonian Empire centered here and the Hittite Empire up here. So all of this other area in between is just impenetrable desert. It's sand dunes and in the case of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, quite a few very rocky mountains.

You just can't get through those areas there. So you have to travel along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, come up, cross down through Damascus, down along the coast to get to Egypt, and vice versa.

All the traffic of the ancient world ran through the promised land, ran through right there.

And so why did God... where then did God choose to put Israel? He chose to put them as, I term it, the crossroads of the world. Because it was a crossroads for all of these ancient superpowers of that day. You can even look at it on a map here, which shows it again. Israel, the promised land, is right here. Here's Africa, here's Asia, here's Europe. And going back and forth between those, you're King's land. Yes, Tony. You know, as I look at the mastermind and all the battles they've had, and surrounded by all the enemies, especially today, I would think another reason is that, look, I am your protector. True. True. You know, and all they had to do was rely on him. And they've been protected. Right. Even today. Right. But I think that's another reason he's here. That's a choice. Oh yeah, most, most, yeah, Tony was saying, yeah, God also put him there to prove that he's a protector. Because if you don't have his protective, you know, you're like a bug getting squashed between these ancient superpowers there. So, and it's true to this day, yeah, Israel is strategically hugely important for the same reasons today as it was then. Maybe not so much as important, but it's amazing this tiny little country, there is the focus of so many news headlines to this day. And again, it's for the same reasons. This vitally crucial strategic location there. So God put them at the crossroads of the world. Why? So they would be an example to the other nations around them. Not just the superpowers, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Ninevites, the Babylonians, but also the smaller nations around them like the Syria, the Lebanese, the Ammonites, the Moabites of modern-day Jordan, the Edomites, and so on. He put them there to be an example of his way of life. He didn't send the Israelites out through all of the nations at that time. Later they are scattered for other reasons. But he knew the nations would essentially come to them. And by their example would learn God's way of life if they did what they told him to. Does this remind you of a particular scripture? I'm going to have to pick up the pace here a little bit. But Matthew 6, 14 and 16. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. God hasn't changed. He wanted His ancient people of Israel to be lights and examples to the world. What does He want of His spiritual Israel today? He wants us to be lights and examples of His way of life. What is true then is true today. Now back to the question. What does this have to do with Capernaum?

Well, we've talked about how since ancient times the armies, the traitors, marched back and forth here right through this area. But did they just wander across the landscape? Try to imagine going through Colorado, for instance. Where do you have to go? You have to take things into account. Things like mountains, like rivers, swamps. Not here in Colorado, but in that part of the world, there's some major swamps, swampy marshy areas along the Mediterranean coast. So, they travel a road.

They travel a road. This is going back to Terry's comment. It's about the silk route and so on, which we've heard of. There was an ancient superhighway that ran from Babylon over here in Mesopotamia, along between the rivers down the coast and down to what is today modern-day Cairo in Egypt. It was the interstate highway of their day. It was more important than our interstate highways today because it was the major route. It ran for hundreds of miles there. It was a major route for trade, commerce, and military invasion. It had places like motels or campgrounds you could stay at and get a meal and feed your animals, grain and water them and so on. This is the route of this ancient road that was in use for thousands of years. It's gone out of use in more recent centuries for a number of reasons due to the chaos in that part of the world, primarily.

But this ancient route is so important it's actually mentioned in Scripture in two different places. One of them is 1 Kings 9 and verse 15, and this is describing the first steps that King Solomon took when he became king over Israel after the death of his father David. And it talks about how he drafted a large labor force to do some major infrastructure projects in the country. And what does it say? What did they do? This is the reason for the labor force which King Solomon raised to build the house of the Lord, the temple, in other words, to build his own house or his palace in Jerusalem, to build the millow, which is a big infrastructure there in Jerusalem to stabilize part of the hill on which Jerusalem was built, the wall, the defensive walls of Jerusalem, and Ha'Zor, Megiddo, and Gazer. Ha'Zor, Megiddo, and Gazer. These three cities. We've heard of Megiddo, but what about Ha'Zor? What about Gazer? What's that all about? Why did he fortify these three cities in particular here? Well, let's see where they are on a map.

This is the International Highway. Here's Gazer. Here's Megiddo. Here's Ha'Zor.

These three cities were choke points along that ancient superhighway.

Megiddo was right outside a valley that is said to be so narrow that when one Egyptian ruler, don't remember which fair it was, went through there, he said the valley was so narrow that the wheels of his chariots touched the walls of the valley on either side. It's a bit of an exaggeration, but you kind of get the point there. That's why Megiddo is located at that particular choke point. Gazer and Ha'Zor are on hills that overlook the highway where you can control it. You can control the trade. You can tax the trade coming through there, which Solomon did. You can control military movements. You can protect the northern end of your territory and the southern end, as well as the approach to Jerusalem right over here from Gazer. So these were very strategically important cities that controlled this ancient international highway. That's why Solomon got those. Paul, I need to rush through, but you can ask me about it afterwards here. So it would be the rough equivalent today of putting up a military base at the intersection of I-25 and I-70 and one at Eisenhower Tunnel and one at Vail Pass. You would control all of the traffic going through there. So that's why Solomon does this. Where's the other place this international highway is mentioned in Scripture? It's mentioned in the prophecy we read earlier from Isaiah. Leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the regions of Zebulun and Naftali, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naftali, by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan Galilee of the Gentiles. Now, way here means not the way you live, but a route, a road. There, in other words. Later, when the Romans came to rule this part of the world, this would become known as the Via Mars. Via meaning Latin for way. Mars meaning Latin for sea, for which we get words like mara team or mariner, a sailor there. The Via Mars, as it was anciently known there. And they've actually found mileposts along this. It's a Via Mars here. Way of the sea is Hebrew. Translate that into Latin and it comes out in Via Mars here. So, this prophecy is talking about this same exact road there that went through the territories of Zebulun and Naftali. Again, this ancient international route here.

Let's take a look at the map I showed you just a minute ago.

Showing gazir, magiddo and hotzor. Where's Capernaum on this map?

Right there.

Capernaum is right by this international highway. It ran within, I don't know, maybe a few hundred yards of the city of Capernaum.

This is why Jesus chooses to center his ministry there in Capernaum.

What did it mean for Jesus' ministry? As we talked about last time, the bulk of Jesus Christ's ministry was in this triangle between these three small towns, Capernaum, Betziah, and Corazin here. An area about three miles by five miles, four and a half, five miles, something like that. Where did the way of the sea go? The Via Mars ran right by these three towns there. What did this mean for Christ's ministry? Well, it means basically that he did not need to travel to get his message out. By conducting his ministry right there by the International Superhighway, that's like having everything you do on a big billboard right there. Because there are people coming back and forth, they're stopping, they're spending the night at Capernaum, Corazin, Betziah, out of there. The word of Jesus Christ's teachings and the word of his miracles is going to spread throughout that whole area because of all of the traffic along this International Highway right there. So Jesus doesn't need to get out and travel everywhere all the time. Yes, he does travel throughout Galilee and preaches in the synagogues, but most of his work is centered right there, right by, you might even say, right astride this International Highway. What's he doing? He doesn't have radio to get his message out, doesn't have TV, doesn't have his internet, so he uses the ancient version of the internet, which is word of mouth.

And it relies on all of this travel to get word of him and his message and his miracles out throughout that whole part of the world. And that's why we see that the phrases in the Gospels, his fame, went out throughout all the area and this type of thing. This is why, because he's right there by the main highway. And word of mouth is going to spread that message there.

So why did he make Capernaum the center of his ministry? For the same reason that God placed the Israelites in the Promised Land where he did, so that word of his way of life, of his example, would spread there. The very location itself would magnify and amplify the message and be sure that others would hear about it. He wouldn't have to reach out to all these people himself. He would let others spread the word by word of mouth. And the same is true when he goes to Jerusalem for the Holy Days. He knows that people will be there from all over the world, like we see in Acts 2. And people are there from 12, 13, 14 different areas of the Roman Empire who come there. He performs miracles in Jerusalem, knowing that word will get out and will spread throughout the known world there. So what are some of the, just very quickly, a couple of lessons or takeaways you might take from this. I jotted down three. You could probably think of others. But one is that God brings to pass what he is foretold. He prophesied that the Messiah would come not only to Galilee, but specifically to the land of Zebulun and Naftali. And that's exactly what happened with Jesus and Nazareth and Capernaum. A second takeaway from this is that God is in perfect control and knows what he is doing. He's in perfect control and knows what he's doing. He didn't allow Jesus to be captured and executed, as happened with John the Baptizer. He didn't allow him to be stoned to death in Nazareth. He didn't allow him to face danger from the pagan idol worshipers of the Decapolis there. He didn't allow him to be caught up in a rebellion or political movement by the zealots. He didn't allow him to be taken captive by the Herodians. No, he allowed him to avoid or escape those dangers and settle into safety there in Capernaum, where he could carry out his work. His ministry, an area where word of his teachings and of his miracles would spread far and wide there. He could establish and train people who would carry on his work. His disciples, his talmadin, his apostles, after he would pass from the scene in a few years.

And a third takeaway from this is God wants us to be examples to others of his way of life.

He wanted that of ancient Israel. And he wants that from us today. Israel failed miserably.

And we know what happened to them because of their sins, their lack of...well, they set an example. It just wasn't the right one. It was a horrible example that they set.

But what about us? What's our example going to be? Are we going to fail at that? Like God's physical Israel, ancient Israel? Are we going to be different as his spiritual Israel? Will we be the kind of lights and examples that he wants to see?

I actually had another whole section I was going to get into, but I'll just save that for next time.

And we'll wrap it up for there. So any questions? Yeah, Paul, if you want to be to answer. One of the sources of Solomon's wealth is writing back Solomon's question. Definitely. Yeah, Paul's question was one of the sources of Solomon's wealth, the taxes he imposed on people using that highway. And yes, definitely.

I think that's a two-fold purpose in controlling that. And that provided a lot of the wealth for his kingdom. Because David, to my knowledge, did not have control of those three key cities.

Well, I know he didn't. Because Solomon receives Gezer, if you remember the story, as a dowry for marrying one of the daughters of Pharaoh to establish an alliance with Egypt.

So Gezer, that's how Solomon came to control Gezer. So David obviously did not have control of that city. So yeah, he establishes those for military control to protect his kingdom, but also for taxation. There's a tremendous amount of wealth and trade going back and forth between the Hittite Empire, between the Phoenician Empire, which is on the Lebanese and Syrian coast, Tyre and Sidon, and places like that. And then all the traffic going down to Egypt and along there. So yeah, that is very much a source that helped give Solomon a lot of his wealth there. He did increase taxes on his own people, too, which ended up backfiring in the reign of his son Rehoboam there when the kingdom split. But yeah, definitely use that for taxation. Any other questions?

Okay, if not, we'll have another hymn in. Or if you think of any other questions, feel free to come up and check with me later. So we'll have another hymn, and that'll wrap up our services for today.