Posted on 03/28/2017 8:09:18 AM PDT by Salvation
N.B.: I am in the Holy Land at this time. As my travel schedule is heavy, I am republishing some articles about life in Jesus’ day. I hope you will enjoy reading (or re-reading) them as much as I did.
The Jews of Galilee, where Jesus grew up, were essentially a rural people. The great majority lived in the many small towns and villages scattered throughout the countryside. They worked the land, tended their flocks, and plied their trades, seldom venturing more than a day’s journey from home. However, many went to Jerusalem, some as often as every year, to celebrate the Passover. And that was no small journey, up to 70 miles on foot each way!
According to Josephus, a Jewish historian of the time, there were 240 villages scattered throughout Galilee. The average village might be no more than a few acres with a population of a few hundred souls. (Larger villages called towns might cover ten acres or more and were often walled in.)
The world was pretty much limited to their small village and the fields around it. The inhabitants lived in modest one-story houses of stone covered with a kind of stucco.
The houses tended to be clustered around a town square. In the square were some shops, an open air market, and usually a communal well or spring.
Each town had a handful of local craftsman, typically including a potter, a weaver, a carpenter, a blacksmith, and a shoemaker. Most of the men in the village, however, worked in the fields, whether tilling, sowing, pruning, or harvesting. Life was a long, difficult struggle against the elements.
Most families kept a small number of animals such as sheep and goats. These were useful for milk, wool, and eventually leather and food. Most villages also had a shepherd or two tending village flocks on the nearby hillsides.
On many evenings the men gathered in the village synagogue for evening services and Scripture study. During the day the synagogue served as a school for the young men of the village, who learned ancient Hebrew and studied the Scriptures. Most people no longer spoke Hebrew; it was a sacred language used only in the Temple and in the synagogue, similar to Latin for the Catholic Church. Most villagers spoke Aramaic, but they also knew some Greek because it was the native tongue of the pagans around them. The Jews of Galilee spoke with a distinctive accent.
Villages were often in well-protected locations. They were generally built on hilltops rather than in the long sloping valleys. Here they were more easily protected and the best land in the valleys was reserved for agriculture.
The streets were generally quite narrow, more like alleys. The homes that fronted the streets came right up to the edge of the street. The walls of homes tended to be at least ten feet high, with only a few windows at the top. This is because one generally entered a home by walking into an open courtyard off the street. Whereas we tend to have front yards today, homes at this time tended to have courtyards, around which were clustered rooms of varying size depending on the wealth and needs of the owner.
Villages tended to be small because of the needs of each village were associated with pastureland around it. Each village depended on both crops and the livestock that used the surrounding fields and the sloping valley beneath. Further, each village was either built around or near a well or spring.
Each village tended to be self-sustaining in terms of basic needs. Occasionally, people would come from larger towns to provide specialized services, but except for a yearly pilgrimage, most Galileans did not travel far from their village.
Galilean villages were rather distinct from the Greek cities of the Decapolis, which were built in classical Greek style and tended to be much larger and more cosmopolitan. In a certain sense, the villages of Galilee were a world apart from the cities of the Decapolis.
Nazareth was a fairly typical Galilean village. It was laid out on a steep hillside and at the time of Jesus probably had no more than 300 residents. It was so unremarkable that Nathaniel asked “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46) Today Nazareth has some 60,000 residents, mostly Arab Muslims, with a smaller number of Arab Christians. Its streets are steep, almost reminiscent of San Francisco.
Here’s a video I put together about the villages of Jesus’ day, with numerous pictures to illustrate:
walled...
Monsignor Pope Ping!
He covers that in the video.
does the pope know about this ???
Godless and enslaved to barbaric and unwholesome cults
What are you talking about?
They were not godless.
They were a group of tightly woven families.
“seldom venturing more than a day’s journey from home”
So Dan in ships, Jonah, St. Paul, Barbabas, Peter et alii were the only guys to ever leave town?
Not to mention all the Jews that got sent to the salt mines, or as slaves in Roman mines, as servants in their houses or in their palaces or on their ships... And they never visited their relatives and cousins in Damascus, Greece or Rome or Babylon or Egypt?? Even Jesus, Mary and Joseph got to see Egypt..and evidently THEY KNEW WHERE THEY WERE GOING!!
Gimme a break. Never heard of a non-traveling homebound broke Jew in my whole life. Sounds like more Fake News to me. Peter, Zebedee, et alii had many fishing boats- they weren`t broke. “James and John... their father Zebedee in the boat with the HIRED MEN, they followed Him.
Mark 1:20
How about Joanna was an upper-class woman married to a man who managed the palace of Herod Antipas.
A woman named Mary of Magdala takes a jar of costly perfumed oil and anoints the feet of the reclining Jesus while he was eating dinner in Bethany.
Mary likely came from the prosperous town of Magdala, on the Sea of Galilee. As living in a village, a thriving fishing industry, as well as dye and textile works, Mary could well have come from an affluent family — a successful woman herself in business?
“The poor you will always have with you” Mark 14:5
So everyone in Bethany was poor? Gimme a break.
More fake news, it appears...
Cities visited by Paul
Amphipolis (Acts 17:1) Damascus (Acts 9:19)
Philippi (Acts 16:12, 20:6)Antioch (Pisidia) (Acts 13:14)
Derbe Acts 14:6, 16:1)Ptolemais (Acts 21:7)
Antioch (Syria) (Acts 11:26, 13:1, 15:22, 18:22 - 23)
Ephesus (Acts 18:19)Puteoli (Acts 28:13)
Antipatris (Acts 23:31)Fair Havens (Crete) (Acts 27:8)
Rhegium (Acts 28:13) Apollonia (Acts 17:1)
Iconium (Acts 13:51)Rome (Acts 28:16, 2Timothy 1:17)
Appian Way (see Acts 28:13 - 15)Jerusalem (Acts 9:26, 18:21, 21:11 - 17, 23:11)
Salamis (Cyprus) (Acts 13:5)Appii Forum (Acts 28:15)
Lystra (Acts 14:6, 16:1) Seleucia (Acts 13:4)
Arabia (Galatians 1:17)Malta (Acts 28:1)
Sidon (Acts 27:3)Assos (Acts 20:13)
Miletus (Acts 20:15)Spain (Romans 15:22 - 25, 28)
Athens (Acts 17:16)Mitylene (Acts 20:14)
Syracuse (Sicily) (Acts 28:12)
Attalia (Acts 14:25)Myra (Acts 27:5)
Tarsus (Acts 9:30)Berea (Acts 17:10)
Neapolis (Acts 16:11) Thessalonica (Acts 17:1)
Caesarea (Acts 9:30, 18:22, 21:8, 23:23)
Nicopolis (Titus 3:12, 15)Three Taverns (Acts 28:15)
Cenchrea (Acts 18:18)Paphos (Cyprus) (Acts 13:6)
Troas (Acts 16:8, 20:6)Corinth (Acts 18:1)
Patara (Acts 21:1)Trogyllium (Acts 20:15)
Cyprus (Acts 13:4)Perga (Acts 13:13)
Tyre (Acts 21:3)
Like in Jesus day? Lets see, no sanitation, no medicine, not much in the way of convenience at all. Life was nasty, brutish and short at the best of times.
Wrong thread... ooops
The folks you mentioned are more of the exception than the norm for the period. Paul, Barnabas, Peter, and the other disciples were given the mission by Jesus to spread the Gospel. And remember the Mary and Joseph were fleeing Herod when they went to Egypt, they were NOT going there for a holiday to see the pyramids.
Throughout history and until the last three centuries the majority of people have lived within a few days walk of their home.
This observer and others as well below would tend to disagree with your hypothesis. viz, “travel was a major part of first-century Palestinian life, as the Gospels record: Mary left Nazareth to visit Elizabeth in the hills of Judea; foreign dignitaries came to pay homage to the new king of the Jews; Jesus attended the wedding feast at Cana and visited with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in Bethany.
In fact, the travel narratives form a large proportion of the Gospels. Jesus, like many of his contemporaries, crisscrossed the country numerous times. Assuming he went from Nazareth to Jerusalem annually for each of the three required annual feasts using the shortest route through Samaria, a distance of 75 miles each way, he would have walked a minimum of 13,500 miles before beginning his ministry. On at least one of his later pilgrimages, he went from Capernaum to Jerusalem by way of Jericho, 106 miles each way. Estimating conservatively, Jesus probably walked at least 15,000 miles in his lifetime.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-59/on-road.html
“The ancient Jews learned the art of commerce very quickly. They became renown throughout the world as successful traders within and without the borders of their country”
http://www.bible-history.com/maps/ancient-roads-in-israel.html
“Economically Galilee offered better agricultural and fishing resources than the more mountainous territory of Judea, making the wealth of some Galileans the envy of their southern neighbors.”
https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/justintaylor/2011/08/17/7-differences-between-galilee-and-judea-in-the-time-of-jesus/
“By the time of Jesus’ ministry, Jewish people from everywhere made their way to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover and the Week of unleavened Bread.3 Consequently, bulging crowds squeezed into Jerusalem every year for the celebration. Many historians have speculated that up to 200,000 Israelites made the pilgrimage to the holy city each year for Passover. However, one ancient historian estimated that as many as 2.7 million Jewish people streamed into Jerusalem for the festival.”
http://www.lifeway.com/Article/biblical-illustrator-preparing-for-passover
Jesus went from Capharnaum to Tyre & Sidon- that`s 50 miles- either he walked or he hitched a ride,-or caravanned it with camels -it`s 100 miles rt.
I guess HORSES were non- existent in Israel- only Romans & the wealthy had`em!
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