Hebron

• Hebron

134:7.5Je­sus then started on his fi­nal tour, as a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual, through the heart of Pales­tine, go­ing from Beer­sheba in the south to Dan in the north. On this jour­ney north­ward he stopped at He­bron, Beth­le­hem (where he saw his birth­place), Je­ru­sa­lem (he did not visit Beth­any), Beeroth, Lebonah, Sy­char, Shechem, Samaria, Geba, En-Gan­nim, En­dor, Madon; pass­ing through Mag­dala and Ca­per­naum, he jour­neyed on north; and pass­ing east of the Wa­ters of Merom, he went by Karahta to Dan, or Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi.

• Hebron

142:8.1By the end of April the op­po­si­tion to Je­sus among the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had be­come so pro­nounced that the Mas­ter and his apos­tles de­cided to leave Je­ru­sa­lem for a while, go­ing south to work in Beth­le­hem and He­bron. The en­tire month of May was spent in do­ing per­sonal work in these cities and among the peo­ple of the sur­round­ing vil­lages. No pub­lic preach­ing was done on this trip, only house-to-house vis­i­ta­tion. A part of this time, while the apos­tles taught the gospel and min­is­tered to the sick, Je­sus and Ab­ner spent at En­gedi, vis­it­ing the Nazarite colony. John the Bap­tist had gone forth from this place, and Ab­ner had been head of this group. Many of the Nazarite broth­er­hood be­came be­liev­ers in Je­sus, but the ma­jor­ity of these as­cetic and ec­cen­tric men re­fused to ac­cept him as a teacher sent from heaven be­cause he did not teach fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial.

• Hebron

159:6.4About this time Ab­ner moved his base of op­er­a­tions from He­bron to Beth­le­hem, and this lat­ter place was also the head­quar­ters in Judea for David’s mes­sen­gers. David main­tained an overnight re­lay mes­sen­ger ser­vice be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Beth­saida. These run­ners left Je­ru­sa­lem each evening, re­lay­ing at Sy­char and Scythopo­lis, ar­riv­ing in Beth­saida by break­fast time the next morn­ing.

• Hebron

186:3.2As soon as Je­sus was turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers by Pi­late for cru­ci­fix­ion, a mes­sen­ger has­tened away to Geth­sem­ane to in­form David, and within five min­utes run­ners were on their way to Beth­saida, Pella, Phil­a­del­phia, Sidon, Shechem, He­bron, Da­mas­cus, and Alexan­dria. And these mes­sen­gers car­ried the news that Je­sus was about to be cru­ci­fied by the Ro­mans at the in­sis­tent be­hest of the rulers of the Jews.

186:3.3Through­out this tragic day, un­til the mes­sage fi­nally went forth that the Mas­ter had been laid in the tomb, David sent mes­sen­gers about ev­ery half hour with re­ports to the apos­tles, the Greeks, and Je­sus’ earthly fam­ily, as­sem­bled at the home of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any. When the mes­sen­gers de­parted with the word that Je­sus had been buried, David dis­missed his corps of lo­cal run­ners for the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion and for the com­ing Sab­bath of rest, in­struct­ing them to re­port to him qui­etly on Sun­day morn­ing at the home of Nicode­mus, where he pro­posed to go in hid­ing for a few days with An­drew and Si­mon Pe­ter.

93:5.11Mel­chiz­e­dek main­tained peace­ful re­la­tions with all the sur­round­ing tribes; he was not mil­i­taris­tic and was never at­tacked by any of the armies as they moved back and forth. He was en­tirely will­ing that Abra­ham should for­mu­late a de­fen­sive pol­icy for Salem such as was sub­se­quently put into ef­fect, but he would not ap­prove of his pupil’s am­bi­tious schemes for con­quest; so there oc­curred a friendly sev­er­ance of re­la­tion­ship, Abra­ham go­ing over to He­bron to es­tab­lish his mil­i­tary cap­i­tal.

93:9.2The loss of Mel­chiz­e­dek pro­duced a sad­ness in the heart of Abra­ham that he never fully over­came. He­bron he had aban­doned when he gave up the am­bi­tion of build­ing a ma­te­rial king­dom; and now, upon the loss of his as­so­ciate in the build­ing of the spir­i­tual king­dom, he de­parted from Salem, go­ing south to live near his in­ter­ests at Gerar.

93:9.4But Abra­ham was not long to be de­terred in his mis­sion as the suc­ces­sor of Mel­chiz­e­dek. Soon he made con­verts among the Phil­is­tines and of Abim­elech’s peo­ple, made a treaty with them, and, in turn, be­came con­tam­i­nated with many of their su­per­sti­tions, par­tic­u­larly with their prac­tice of sac­ri­fic­ing first-born sons. Thus did Abra­ham again be­come a great leader in Pales­tine. He was held in rev­er­ence by all groups and hon­ored by all kings. He was the spir­i­tual leader of all the sur­round­ing tribes, and his in­flu­ence con­tin­ued for some time af­ter his death. Dur­ing the clos­ing years of his life he once more re­turned to He­bron, the scene of his ear­lier ac­tiv­i­ties and the place where he had worked in as­so­ci­a­tion with Mel­chiz­e­dek. Abra­ham’s last act was to send trusty ser­vants to the city of his brother, Na­hor, on the bor­der of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, to se­cure a woman of his own peo­ple as a wife for his son Isaac. It had long been the cus­tom of Abra­ham’s peo­ple to marry their cousins. And Abra­ham died con­fi­dent in that faith in God which he had learned from Mel­chiz­e­dek in the van­ished schools of Salem.

150:0.1On Sun­day evening, Jan­uary 16, A.D. 29, Ab­ner, with the apos­tles of John, reached Beth­saida and went into joint con­fer­ence with An­drew and the apos­tles of Je­sus the next day. Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates made their head­quar­ters at He­bron and were in the habit of com­ing up to Beth­saida pe­ri­od­i­cally for these con­fer­ences.

135:2.3John and Eliz­a­beth re­turned to their home and be­gan to lay plans for the fu­ture. Since John re­fused to ac­cept the priest’s al­lowance due him from the tem­ple funds, by the end of two years they had all but lost their home; so they de­cided to go south with the sheep herd. Ac­cord­ingly, the sum­mer that John was twenty years of age wit­nessed their re­moval to He­bron. In the so-called “wilder­ness of Judea” John tended his sheep along a brook that was trib­u­tary to a larger stream which en­tered the Dead Sea at En­gedi. The En­gedi colony in­cluded not only Nazarites of life­long and time-pe­riod con­se­cra­tion but nu­mer­ous other as­cetic herds­men who con­gre­gated in this re­gion with their herds and frat­er­nized with the Nazarite broth­er­hood. They sup­ported them­selves by sheep rais­ing and from gifts which wealthy Jews made to the or­der.

97:9.7David with his small army made his head­quar­ters at the non-He­brew city of He­bron. Pres­ently his com­pa­tri­ots pro­claimed him king of the new king­dom of Ju­dah. Ju­dah was made up mostly of non-He­brew el­e­ments—Ken­ites, Calebites, Je­busites, and other Ca­naan­ites. They were no­mads—herders—and so were de­voted to the He­brew idea of land own­er­ship. They held the ide­olo­gies of the desert clans.

154:2.1Sun­day, May 8, A.D. 29, at Je­ru­sa­lem, the San­hedrin passed a de­cree clos­ing all the syn­a­gogues of Pales­tine to Je­sus and his fol­low­ers. This was a new and un­prece­dented usurpa­tion of au­thor­ity by the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin. Thereto­fore each syn­a­gogue had ex­isted and func­tioned as an in­de­pen­dent con­gre­ga­tion of wor­shipers and was un­der the rule and di­rec­tion of its own board of gov­er­nors. Only the syn­a­gogues of Je­ru­sa­lem had been sub­ject to the au­thor­ity of the San­hedrin. This sum­mary ac­tion of the San­hedrin was fol­lowed by the res­ig­na­tion of five of its mem­bers. One hun­dred mes­sen­gers were im­me­di­ately dis­patched to con­vey and en­force this de­cree. Within the short space of two weeks ev­ery syn­a­gogue in Pales­tine had bowed to this man­i­festo of the San­hedrin ex­cept the syn­a­gogue at He­bron. The rulers of the He­bron syn­a­gogue re­fused to ac­knowl­edge the right of the San­hedrin to ex­er­cise such ju­ris­dic­tion over their as­sem­bly. This re­fusal to ac­cede to the Je­ru­sa­lem de­cree was based on their con­tention of con­gre­ga­tional au­ton­omy rather than on sym­pa­thy with Je­sus’ cause. Shortly there­after the He­bron syn­a­gogue was de­stroyed by fire.