Beth-shean

• ancient Hebrew city; later Scythopolis

124:3.6About the mid­dle of May the lad ac­com­pa­nied his fa­ther on a busi­ness trip to Scythopo­lis, the chief Greek city of the De­capo­lis, the an­cient He­brew city of Beth-shean. On the way Joseph re­counted much of the olden his­tory of King Saul, the Phil­is­tines, and the sub­se­quent events of Is­rael’s tur­bu­lent his­tory. Je­sus was tremen­dously im­pressed with the clean ap­pear­ance and well-or­dered ar­range­ment of this so-called hea­then city. He mar­veled at the open-air the­ater and ad­mired the beau­ti­ful mar­ble tem­ple ded­i­cated to the wor­ship of the “hea­then” gods. Joseph was much per­turbed by the lad’s en­thu­si­asm and sought to coun­ter­act these fa­vor­able im­pres­sions by ex­tolling the beauty and grandeur of the Jew­ish tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem. Je­sus had of­ten gazed cu­ri­ously upon this mag­nif­i­cent Greek city from the hill of Naz­a­reth and had many times in­quired about its ex­ten­sive pub­lic works and or­nate build­ings, but his fa­ther had al­ways sought to avoid an­swer­ing these ques­tions. Now they were face to face with the beau­ties of this gen­tile city, and Joseph could not grace­fully ig­nore Je­sus’ in­quiries.

124:3.7It so hap­pened that just at this time the an­nual com­pet­i­tive games and pub­lic demon­stra­tions of phys­i­cal prowess be­tween the Greek cities of the De­capo­lis were in prog­ress at the Scythopo­lis am­phithe­ater, and Je­sus was in­sis­tent that his fa­ther take him to see the games, and he was so in­sis­tent that Joseph hes­i­tated to deny him. The boy was thrilled with the games and en­tered most heart­ily into the spirit of the demon­stra­tions of phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and ath­letic skill. Joseph was in­ex­press­ibly shocked to ob­serve his son’s en­thu­si­asm as he be­held these ex­hi­bi­tions of “hea­then” vain­glo­ri­ous­ness. Af­ter the games were fin­ished, Joseph re­ceived the sur­prise of his life when he heard Je­sus ex­press his ap­proval of them and sug­gest that it would be good for the young men of Naz­a­reth if they could be thus ben­e­fited by whole­some out­door phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. Joseph talked earnestly and long with Je­sus con­cern­ing the evil na­ture of such prac­tices, but he well knew that the lad was un­con­vinced.

124:3.8The only time Je­sus ever saw his fa­ther an­gry with him was that night in their room at the inn when, in the course of their dis­cus­sions, the boy so far for­got the trends of Jew­ish thought as to sug­gest that they go back home and work for the build­ing of an am­phithe­ater at Naz­a­reth. When Joseph heard his first-born son ex­press such un-Jew­ish sen­ti­ments, he for­got his usual calm de­meanor and, seiz­ing Je­sus by the shoul­der, an­grily ex­claimed, “My son, never again let me hear you give ut­ter­ance to such an evil thought as long as you live.” Je­sus was star­tled by his fa­ther’s dis­play of emo­tion; he had never be­fore been made to feel the per­sonal sting of his fa­ther’s in­dig­na­tion and was as­ton­ished and shocked be­yond ex­pres­sion. He only replied, “Very well, my fa­ther, it shall be so.” And never again did the boy even in the slight­est man­ner al­lude to the games and other ath­letic ac­tiv­i­ties of the Greeks as long as his fa­ther lived.

124:3.9Later on, Je­sus saw the Greek am­phithe­ater at Je­ru­sa­lem and learned how hate­ful such things were from the Jew­ish point of view. Nev­er­the­less, through­out his life he en­deav­ored to in­tro­duce the idea of whole­some recre­ation into his per­sonal plans and, as far as Jew­ish prac­tice would per­mit, into the later pro­gram of reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties for his twelve apos­tles.