Scythopolis

• Scythopolis

123:0.6By the first of Oc­to­ber Joseph had con­vinced Mary and all their friends that it was best for them to re­turn to Naz­a­reth. Ac­cord­ingly, early in Oc­to­ber, 4 B.C., they de­parted from Beth­le­hem for Naz­a­reth, go­ing by way of Ly­dda and Scythopo­lis. They started out early one Sun­day morn­ing, Mary and the child rid­ing on their newly ac­quired beast of bur­den, while Joseph and five ac­com­pa­ny­ing kins­men pro­ceeded on foot; Joseph’s rel­a­tives re­fused to per­mit them to make the trip to Naz­a­reth alone. They feared to go to Gal­i­lee by Je­ru­sa­lem and the Jor­dan val­ley, and the west­ern routes were not al­to­gether safe for two lone trav­el­ers with a child of ten­der years.

• Scythopolis

144:7.1Through­out the months of Novem­ber and De­cem­ber, Je­sus and the twenty-four worked qui­etly in the Greek cities of the De­capo­lis, chiefly in Scythopo­lis, Gerasa, Abila, and Gadara. This was re­ally the end of that pre­lim­i­nary pe­riod of tak­ing over John’s work and or­ga­ni­za­tion. Al­ways does the so­cial­ized re­li­gion of a new rev­e­la­tion pay the price of com­pro­mise with the es­tab­lished forms and us­ages of the pre­ced­ing re­li­gion which it seeks to sal­vage. Bap­tism was the price which the fol­low­ers of Je­sus paid in or­der to carry with them, as a so­cial­ized re­li­gious group, the fol­low­ers of John the Bap­tist. John’s fol­low­ers, in join­ing Je­sus’ fol­low­ers, gave up just about ev­ery­thing ex­cept wa­ter bap­tism.

• Scythopolis

149:0.1The sec­ond pub­lic preach­ing tour of Gal­i­lee be­gan on Sun­day, Oc­to­ber 3, A.D. 28, and con­tin­ued for al­most three months, end­ing on De­cem­ber 30. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in this ef­fort were Je­sus and his twelve apos­tles, as­sisted by the newly re­cruited corps of 117 evan­ge­lists and by nu­mer­ous other in­ter­ested per­sons. On this tour they vis­ited Gadara, Ptole­mais, Japhia, Dabaritta, Megiddo, Jezreel, Scythopo­lis, Ta­ri­chea, Hip­pos, Gamala, Beth­saida-Ju­lias, and many other cities and vil­lages.

• Scythopolis

159:0.2On this Thurs­day morn­ing, Au­gust 18, the Mas­ter called his fol­low­ers to­gether and di­rected that each of the apos­tles should as­so­ciate him­self with one of the twelve evan­ge­lists, and that with oth­ers of the evan­ge­lists they should go out in twelve groups to la­bor in the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis. The women’s corps and oth­ers of the dis­ci­ples he di­rected to re­main with him. Je­sus al­lot­ted four weeks to this tour, in­struct­ing his fol­low­ers to re­turn to Ma­g­a­dan not later than Fri­day, Septem­ber 16. He prom­ised to visit them of­ten dur­ing this time. In the course of this month these twelve groups la­bored in Gerasa, Gamala, Hip­pos, Za­phon, Gadara, Abila, Edrei, Phil­a­del­phia, Hes­h­bon, Dium, Scythopo­lis, and many other cities. Through­out this tour no mir­a­cles of heal­ing or other ex­traor­di­nary events oc­curred.

• Scythopolis

162:0.1When Je­sus started up to Je­ru­sa­lem with the ten apos­tles, he planned to go through Samaria, that be­ing the shorter route. Ac­cord­ingly, they passed down the east­ern shore of the lake and, by way of Scythopo­lis, en­tered the bor­ders of Samaria. Near night­fall Je­sus sent Philip and Mat­thew over to a vil­lage on the east­ern slopes of Mount Gil­boa to se­cure lodg­ing for the com­pany. It so hap­pened that these vil­lagers were greatly prej­u­diced against the Jews, even more so than the av­er­age Samar­i­tans, and these feel­ings were height­ened at this par­tic­u­lar time as so many were on their way to the feast of taber­na­cles. These peo­ple knew very lit­tle about Je­sus, and they re­fused him lodg­ing be­cause he and his as­so­ciates were Jews. When Mat­thew and Philip man­i­fested in­dig­na­tion and in­formed these Samar­i­tans that they were de­clin­ing to en­ter­tain the Holy One of Is­rael, the in­fu­ri­ated vil­lagers chased them out of the lit­tle town with sticks and stones.

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.

124:6.4As they rounded the base of Gil­boa, the pil­grims could see the Greek city of Scythopo­lis on the right. They gazed upon the mar­ble struc­tures from a dis­tance but went not near the gen­tile city lest they so de­file them­selves that they could not par­tic­i­pate in the forth­com­ing solemn and sa­cred cer­e­monies of the Pass­over at Je­ru­sa­lem. Mary could not un­der­stand why nei­ther Joseph nor Je­sus would speak of Scythopo­lis. She did not know about their con­tro­versy of the pre­vi­ous year as they had never re­vealed this episode to her.