Magdala

• Joseph father of Jesus worked at

123:3.8The next few years Joseph did con­sid­er­able work at Cana, Beth­le­hem (of Gal­i­lee), Mag­dala, Nain, Sep­pho­ris, Ca­per­naum, and En­dor, as well as much build­ing in and near Naz­a­reth. As James grew up to be old enough to help his mother with the house­work and care of the younger chil­dren, Je­sus made fre­quent trips away from home with his fa­ther to these sur­round­ing towns and vil­lages. Je­sus was a keen ob­server and gained much prac­ti­cal knowl­edge from these trips away from home; he was as­sid­u­ously stor­ing up knowl­edge re­gard­ing man and the way he lived on earth.

• Jesus’ uncle was fisherman near

123:6.1This was an in­ter­est­ing year at school. Al­though Je­sus was not an un­usual stu­dent, he was a dili­gent pupil and be­longed to the more pro­gres­sive third of the class, do­ing his work so well that he was ex­cused from at­ten­dance one week out of each month. This week he usu­ally spent ei­ther with his fish­er­man un­cle on the shores of the Sea of Gal­i­lee near Mag­dala or on the farm of an­other un­cle (his mother’s brother) five miles south of Naz­a­reth.

• Jesus’ uncle was fisherman near

124:3.1Through­out this year the lad con­tin­ued to make trips away from home with his fa­ther, but he also fre­quently vis­ited his un­cle’s farm and oc­ca­sion­ally went over to Mag­dala to en­gage in fish­ing with the un­cle who made his head­quar­ters near that city.

• Jude lived with relative at

128:7.8Je­sus spent a great deal of time this year with the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of his fam­ily. He would take them for long and fre­quent strolls up the hill and through the coun­try­side. Be­fore har­vest he took Jude to the farmer un­cle south of Naz­a­reth, but Jude did not re­main long af­ter the har­vest. He ran away, and Si­mon later found him with the fish­er­men at the lake. When Si­mon brought him back home, Je­sus talked things over with the run­away lad and, since he wanted to be a fish­er­man, went over to Mag­dala with him and put him in the care of a rel­a­tive, a fish­er­man; and Jude worked fairly well and reg­u­larly from that time on un­til his mar­riage, and he con­tin­ued as a fish­er­man af­ter his mar­riage.

• Magdala

129:1.2He spent one week at Tiberias, the new city which was soon to suc­ceed Sep­pho­ris as the cap­i­tal of Gal­i­lee; and find­ing lit­tle to in­ter­est him, he passed on suc­ces­sively through Mag­dala and Beth­saida to Ca­per­naum, where he stopped to pay a visit to his fa­ther’s friend Zeb­e­dee. Zeb­e­dee’s sons were fish­er­men; he him­self was a boat­builder. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was an ex­pert in both de­sign­ing and build­ing; he was a mas­ter at work­ing with wood; and Zeb­e­dee had long known of the skill of the Naz­a­reth crafts­man. For a long time Zeb­e­dee had con­tem­plated mak­ing im­proved boats; he now laid his plans be­fore Je­sus and in­vited the vis­it­ing car­pen­ter to join him in the en­ter­prise, and Je­sus read­ily con­sented.

• Magdala

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.

• Jude lived with relative at

137:3.1The next day Je­sus sent his apos­tles on to Cana, since all of them were in­vited to the wed­ding of a promi­nent young woman of that town, while he pre­pared to pay a hur­ried visit to his mother at Ca­per­naum, stop­ping at Mag­dala to see his brother Jude.

• Magdala

138:9.3The apos­tles car­ried on their per­sonal work in Ca­per­naum, Beth­saida-Ju­lias, Cho­ra­zin, Gerasa, Hip­pos, Mag­dala, Cana, Beth­le­hem of Gal­i­lee, Jo­ta­p­ata, Ramah, Safed, Gis­chala, Gadara, and Abila. Be­sides these towns they la­bored in many vil­lages as well as in the coun­try­side. By the end of this pe­riod the twelve had worked out fairly sat­is­fac­tory plans for the care of their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies. Most of the apos­tles were mar­ried, some had sev­eral chil­dren, but they had made such ar­range­ments for the sup­port of their home folks that, with some lit­tle as­sis­tance from the apos­tolic funds, they could de­vote their en­tire en­er­gies to the Mas­ter’s work with­out hav­ing to worry about the fi­nan­cial wel­fare of their fam­i­lies.

150:2.1As the apos­tolic party jour­neyed from Beth­saida, the women trav­eled in the rear. Dur­ing the con­fer­ence time they al­ways sat in a group in front and to the right of the speaker. In­creas­ingly, women had be­come be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom, and it had been a source of much dif­fi­culty and no end of em­bar­rass­ment when they had de­sired to hold per­sonal con­verse with Je­sus or one of the apos­tles. Now all this was changed. When any of the women be­liev­ers de­sired to see the Mas­ter or con­fer with the apos­tles, they went to Su­sanna, and in com­pany with one of the twelve women evan­ge­lists, they would go at once into the pres­ence of the Mas­ter or one of his apos­tles.

150:2.2It was at Mag­dala that the women first demon­strated their use­ful­ness and vin­di­cated the wis­dom of their choos­ing. An­drew had im­posed rather strict rules upon his as­so­ciates about do­ing per­sonal work with women, es­pe­cially with those of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter. When the party en­tered Mag­dala, these ten women evan­ge­lists were free to en­ter the evil re­sorts and preach the glad tid­ings di­rectly to all their in­mates. And when vis­it­ing the sick, these women were able to draw very close in their min­istry to their af­flicted sis­ters. As the re­sult of the min­istry of these ten women (af­ter­ward known as the twelve women) at this place, Mary Mag­da­lene was won for the king­dom. Through a suc­ces­sion of mis­for­tunes and in con­se­quence of the at­ti­tude of rep­u­ta­ble so­ci­ety to­ward women who com­mit such er­rors of judg­ment, this woman had found her­self in one of the ne­far­i­ous re­sorts of Mag­dala. It was Martha and Rachel who made plain to Mary that the doors of the king­dom were open to even such as she. Mary be­lieved the good news and was bap­tized by Pe­ter the next day.

150:2.3Mary Mag­da­lene be­came the most ef­fec­tive teacher of the gospel among this group of twelve women evan­ge­lists. She was set apart for such ser­vice, to­gether with Re­becca, at Jo­ta­p­ata about four weeks sub­se­quent to her con­ver­sion. Mary and Re­becca, with the oth­ers of this group, went on through the re­main­der of Je­sus’ life on earth, la­bor­ing faith­fully and ef­fec­tively for the en­light­en­ment and up­lift­ing of their down­trod­den sis­ters; and when the last and tragic episode in the drama of Je­sus’ life was be­ing en­acted, not­with­stand­ing the apos­tles all fled but one, these women were all pres­ent, and not one ei­ther de­nied or be­trayed him.

• Magdala

155:4.1On Thurs­day morn­ing, June 9, af­ter re­ceiv­ing word re­gard­ing the prog­ress of the king­dom brought by the mes­sen­gers of David from Beth­saida, this group of twenty-five teach­ers of truth left Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi to be­gin their jour­ney to the Phoeni­cian coast. They passed around the marsh coun­try, by way of Luz, to the point of junc­tion with the Mag­dala-Mount Lebanon trail road, thence to the cross­ing with the road lead­ing to Sidon, ar­riv­ing there Fri­day af­ter­noon.