Bethel

• Bethel

124:6.1Je­sus, hav­ing now reached the thresh­old of young man­hood and hav­ing been for­mally grad­u­ated from the syn­a­gogue schools, was qual­i­fied to pro­ceed to Je­ru­sa­lem with his par­ents to par­tic­i­pate with them in the cel­e­bra­tion of his first Pass­over. The Pass­over feast of this year fell on Sat­ur­day, April 9, A.D. 7. A con­sid­er­able com­pany (103) made ready to de­part from Naz­a­reth early Mon­day morn­ing, April 4, for Je­ru­sa­lem. They jour­neyed south to­ward Samaria, but on reach­ing Jezreel, they turned east, go­ing around Mount Gil­boa into the Jor­dan val­ley in or­der to avoid pass­ing through Samaria. Joseph and his fam­ily would have en­joyed go­ing down through Samaria by way of Ja­cob’s well and Bethel, but since the Jews dis­liked to deal with the Samar­i­tans, they de­cided to go with their neigh­bors by way of the Jor­dan val­ley.

• Bethel

127:3.3Je­sus did much think­ing as they jour­neyed through Samaria, par­tic­u­larly at Bethel and when drink­ing from Ja­cob’s well. He and his brother dis­cussed the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob. He did much to pre­pare James for what he was about to wit­ness at Je­ru­sa­lem, thus seek­ing to lessen the shock such as he him­self had ex­pe­ri­enced on his first visit to the tem­ple. But James was not so sen­si­tive to some of these sights. He com­mented on the per­func­tory and heart­less man­ner in which some of the priests per­formed their du­ties but on the whole greatly en­joyed his so­journ at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• Bethel

143:0.1At the end of June, A.D. 27, be­cause of the in­creas­ing op­po­si­tion of the Jew­ish re­li­gious rulers, Je­sus and the twelve de­parted from Je­ru­sa­lem, af­ter send­ing their tents and mea­ger per­sonal ef­fects to be stored at the home of Laz­a­rus at Beth­any. Go­ing north into Samaria, they tar­ried over the Sab­bath at Bethel. Here they preached for sev­eral days to the peo­ple who came from Gophna and Ephraim. A group of cit­i­zens from Ari­mathea and Thamna came over to in­vite Je­sus to visit their vil­lages. The Mas­ter and his apos­tles spent more than two weeks teach­ing the Jews and Samar­i­tans of this re­gion, many of whom came from as far as An­tipa­tris to hear the good news of the king­dom.