Judea

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.

142:8.2The peo­ple liv­ing in this re­gion did not know that Je­sus had been born in Beth­le­hem. They al­ways sup­posed the Mas­ter had been born at Naz­a­reth, as did the vast ma­jor­ity of his dis­ci­ples, but the twelve knew the facts.

142:8.3This so­journ in the south of Judea was a rest­ful and fruit­ful sea­son of la­bor; many souls were added to the king­dom. By the first days of June the ag­i­ta­tion against Je­sus had so qui­eted down in Je­ru­sa­lem that the Mas­ter and the apos­tles re­turned to in­struct and com­fort be­liev­ers.

142:8.4Al­though Je­sus and the apos­tles spent the en­tire month of June in or near Je­ru­sa­lem, they did no pub­lic teach­ing dur­ing this pe­riod. They lived for the most part in tents, which they pitched in a shaded park, or gar­den, known in that day as Geth­sem­ane. This park was sit­u­ated on the west­ern slope of the Mount of Olives not far from the brook Kidron. The Sab­bath week­ends they usu­ally spent with Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters at Beth­any. Je­sus en­tered within the walls of Je­ru­sa­lem only a few times, but a large num­ber of in­ter­ested in­quir­ers came out to Geth­sem­ane to visit with him. One Fri­day evening Nicode­mus and one Joseph of Ari­mathea ven­tured out to see Je­sus but turned back through fear even af­ter they were stand­ing be­fore the en­trance to the Mas­ter’s tent. And, of course, they did not per­ceive that Je­sus knew all about their do­ings.

142:8.5When the rulers of the Jews learned that Je­sus had re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, they pre­pared to ar­rest him; but when they ob­served that he did no pub­lic preach­ing, they con­cluded that he had be­come fright­ened by their pre­vi­ous ag­i­ta­tion and de­cided to al­low him to carry on his teach­ing in this pri­vate man­ner with­out fur­ther mo­lesta­tion. And thus af­fairs moved along qui­etly un­til the last days of June, when one Si­mon, a mem­ber of the San­hedrin, pub­licly es­poused the teach­ings of Je­sus, af­ter so declar­ing him­self be­fore the rulers of the Jews. Im­me­di­ately a new ag­i­ta­tion for Je­sus’ ap­pre­hen­sion sprang up and grew so strong that the Mas­ter de­cided to re­tire into the cities of Samaria and the De­capo­lis.

184:3.17An­nas de­sired that the trial pro­ceed fur­ther, and that charges of a def­i­nite na­ture re­gard­ing Je­sus’ re­la­tion to the Ro­man law and Ro­man in­sti­tu­tions be for­mu­lated for sub­se­quent pre­sen­ta­tion to Pi­late. The coun­cilors were anx­ious to carry these mat­ters to a speedy ter­mi­na­tion, not only be­cause it was the prepa­ra­tion day for the Pass­over and no sec­u­lar work should be done af­ter noon, but also be­cause they feared Pi­late might any time re­turn to the Ro­man cap­i­tal of Judea, Cae­sarea, since he was in Je­ru­sa­lem only for the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion.

97:9.23The real un­do­ing of Ju­dah was ef­fected by a cor­rupt and rich ring of politi­cians op­er­at­ing un­der the rule of a boy king, Man­asseh. The chang­ing econ­omy fa­vored the re­turn of the wor­ship of Baal, whose pri­vate land deal­ings were against the ide­ol­ogy of Yah­weh. The fall of As­syria and the as­cen­dancy of Egypt brought de­liv­er­ance to Ju­dah for a time, and the coun­try folk took over. Un­der Josiah they de­stroyed the Je­ru­sa­lem ring of cor­rupt politi­cians.

97:9.2The Is­raeli­tish con­scious­ness took ori­gin in the hill coun­try of Ephraim; the later Jew­ish con­scious­ness orig­i­nated in the south­ern clan of Ju­dah. The Jews (Ju­dahites) al­ways sought to de­fame and blacken the rec­ord of the north­ern Is­raelites (Ephraimites).

97:9.17By this time Yah­weh’s tem­ple at Shiloh was dis­cred­ited, and all the wor­ship of the na­tion was cen­tered at Je­bus in the gor­geous royal chapel. The north­ern king­dom re­turned more to the wor­ship of Elo­him. They en­joyed the fa­vor of the Pharaohs, who later en­slaved Ju­dah, putting the south­ern king­dom un­der trib­ute.

97:9.24But this era came to a tragic end when Josiah pre­sumed to go out to in­ter­cept Ne­cho’s mighty army as it moved up the coast from Egypt for the aid of As­syria against Baby­lon. He was wiped out, and Ju­dah went un­der trib­ute to Egypt. The Baal po­lit­i­cal party re­turned to power in Je­ru­sa­lem, and thus be­gan the real Egyp­tian bond­age. Then en­sued a pe­riod in which the Baalim politi­cians con­trolled both the courts and the priest­hood. Baal wor­ship was an eco­nomic and so­cial sys­tem deal­ing with prop­erty rights as well as hav­ing to do with soil fer­til­ity.

138:2.96. Ju­das Is­car­iot was an only son of wealthy Jew­ish par­ents liv­ing in Jeri­cho. He had be­come at­tached to John the Bap­tist, and his Sad­ducee par­ents had dis­owned him. He was look­ing for em­ploy­ment in these re­gions when Je­sus’ apos­tles found him, and chiefly be­cause of his ex­pe­ri­ence with fi­nances, Na­than­iel in­vited him to join their ranks. Ju­das Is­car­iot was the only Judean among the twelve apos­tles.

139:12.1Ju­das Is­car­iot, the twelfth apos­tle, was cho­sen by Na­than­iel. He was born in Ke­rioth, a small town in south­ern Judea. When he was a lad, his par­ents moved to Jeri­cho, where he lived and had been em­ployed in his fa­ther’s var­i­ous busi­ness en­ter­prises un­til he be­came in­ter­ested in the preach­ing and work of John the Bap­tist. Ju­das’s par­ents were Sad­ducees, and when their son joined John’s dis­ci­ples, they dis­owned him.

139:12.2When Na­than­iel met Ju­das at Ta­ri­chea, he was seek­ing em­ploy­ment with a fish-dry­ing en­ter­prise at the lower end of the Sea of Gal­i­lee. He was thirty years of age and un­mar­ried when he joined the apos­tles. He was prob­a­bly the best-ed­u­cated man among the twelve and the only Judean in the Mas­ter’s apos­tolic fam­ily. Ju­das had no out­stand­ing trait of per­sonal strength, though he had many out­wardly ap­pear­ing traits of cul­ture and habits of train­ing. He was a good thinker but not al­ways a truly hon­est thinker. Ju­das did not re­ally un­der­stand him­self; he was not re­ally sin­cere in deal­ing with him­self.

166:2.2Je­sus had just been ex­plain­ing to the twelve why the gen­tiles of Perea, to­gether with the less or­tho­dox Jews, were more will­ing to be­lieve the gospel preached by the sev­enty than were the more or­tho­dox and tra­di­tion-bound Jews of Judea. He had called their at­ten­tion to the fact that their mes­sage had like­wise been more read­ily re­ceived by the Galileans, and even by the Samar­i­tans. But the twelve apos­tles were hardly yet will­ing to en­ter­tain kind feel­ings for the long-de­spised Samar­i­tans.

185:1.2Pi­late did not love the Jews, and this deep-seated ha­tred early be­gan to man­i­fest it­self. Of all the Ro­man prov­inces, none was more dif­fi­cult to gov­ern than Judea. Pi­late never re­ally un­der­stood the prob­lems in­volved in the man­age­ment of the Jews and, there­fore, very early in his ex­pe­ri­ence as gov­er­nor, made a se­ries of al­most fa­tal and well-nigh sui­ci­dal blun­ders. And it was these blun­ders that gave the Jews such power over him. When they wanted to in­flu­ence his de­ci­sions, all they had to do was to threaten an up­ris­ing, and Pi­late would speed­ily ca­pit­u­late. And this ap­par­ent vac­il­la­tion, or lack of moral cour­age, of the procu­ra­tor was chiefly due to the mem­ory of a num­ber of con­tro­ver­sies he had had with the Jews and be­cause in each in­stance they had worsted him. The Jews knew that Pi­late was afraid of them, that he feared for his po­si­tion be­fore Tiberius, and they em­ployed this knowl­edge to the great dis­ad­van­tage of the gov­er­nor on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions.

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.

97:9.11And it was by such meth­ods and out of such peo­ple that David built up the fic­tion of a di­vine king­dom of Ju­dah as the suc­ces­sor of the her­itage and tra­di­tions of the van­ish­ing north­ern king­dom of Ephraimite Is­rael. David’s cos­mopoli­tan tribe of Ju­dah was more gen­tile than Jew­ish; nev­er­the­less the op­pressed el­ders of Ephraim came down and “anointed him king of Is­rael.” Af­ter a mil­i­tary threat, David then made a com­pact with the Je­busites and es­tab­lished his cap­i­tal of the united king­dom at Je­bus (Je­ru­sa­lem), which was a strong-walled city mid­way be­tween Ju­dah and Is­rael. The Phil­is­tines were aroused and soon at­tacked David. Af­ter a fierce bat­tle they were de­feated, and once more Yah­weh was es­tab­lished as “The Lord God of Hosts.”

97:9.18There were ups and downs—wars be­tween Is­rael and Ju­dah. Af­ter four years of civil war and three dy­nas­ties, Is­rael fell un­der the rule of city despots who be­gan to trade in land. Even King Omri at­tempted to buy She­mer’s es­tate. But the end drew on apace when Shal­maneser III de­cided to con­trol the Med­i­ter­ra­nean coast. King Ahab of Ephraim gath­ered ten other groups and re­sisted at Karkar; the bat­tle was a draw. The As­syr­ian was stopped but the al­lies were dec­i­mated. This great fight is not even men­tioned in the Old Tes­ta­ment.