Sepphoris

121:2.11Herod built the har­bor of Cae­sarea, which fur­ther aided in mak­ing Pales­tine the cross­roads of the civ­i­lized world. He died in 4 B.C., and his son Herod An­tipas gov­erned Gal­i­lee and Perea dur­ing Je­sus’ youth and min­istry to A.D. 39. An­tipas, like his fa­ther, was a great builder. He re­built many of the cities of Gal­i­lee, in­clud­ing the im­por­tant trade cen­ter of Sep­pho­ris.

124:1.12When work and car­a­van travel were slack, Je­sus made many trips with his fa­ther on plea­sure or busi­ness to near-by Cana, En­dor, and Nain. Even as a lad he fre­quently vis­ited Sep­pho­ris, only a lit­tle over three miles from Naz­a­reth to the north­west, and from 4 B.C. to about A.D. 25 the cap­i­tal of Gal­i­lee and one of the res­i­dences of Herod An­tipas.

128:2.6The moral stan­dards of this home city of Herod An­tipas were so far be­low those of even the car­a­van city of Naz­a­reth that af­ter six months’ so­journ at Sep­pho­ris Je­sus was not averse to find­ing an ex­cuse for re­turn­ing to Naz­a­reth. The group he worked for were to be­come en­gaged on pub­lic work in both Sep­pho­ris and the new city of Tiberias, and Je­sus was dis­in­clined to have any­thing to do with any sort of em­ploy­ment un­der the super­vi­sion of Herod An­tipas. And there were still other rea­sons which made it wise, in the opin­ion of Je­sus, for him to go back to Naz­a­reth. When he re­turned to the re­pair shop, he did not again as­sume the per­sonal di­rec­tion of fam­ily af­fairs. He worked in as­so­ci­a­tion with James at the shop and as far as pos­si­ble per­mit­ted him to con­tinue over­sight of the home. James’s man­age­ment of fam­ily ex­pen­di­tures and his ad­min­is­tra­tion of the home bud­get were undis­turbed.

135:12.1As John was work­ing in south­ern Perea when ar­rested, he was taken im­me­di­ately to the prison of the fortress of Machaerus, where he was in­car­cer­ated un­til his ex­e­cu­tion. Herod ruled over Perea as well as Gal­i­lee, and he main­tained res­i­dence at this time at both Ju­lias and Machaerus in Perea. In Gal­i­lee the of­fi­cial res­i­dence had been moved from Sep­pho­ris to the new cap­i­tal at Tiberias.

137:5.1Though many of the guests re­mained for the full week of wed­ding fes­tiv­i­ties, Je­sus, with his newly cho­sen dis­ci­ple-apos­tles—James, John, An­drew, Pe­ter, Philip, and Na­than­iel—de­parted very early the next morn­ing for Ca­per­naum, go­ing away with­out tak­ing leave of any­one. Je­sus’ fam­ily and all his friends in Cana were much dis­tressed be­cause he so sud­denly left them, and Jude, Je­sus’ young­est brother, set out in search of him. Je­sus and his apos­tles went di­rectly to the home of Zeb­e­dee at Beth­saida. On this jour­ney Je­sus talked over many things of im­por­tance to the com­ing king­dom with his newly cho­sen as­so­ciates and es­pe­cially warned them to make no men­tion of the turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine. He also ad­vised them to avoid the cities of Sep­pho­ris and Tiberias in their fu­ture work.

128:2.3Je­sus con­tin­ued this year at house fin­ish­ing and cab­i­net­work but spent most of his time at the car­a­van re­pair shop. James was be­gin­ning to al­ter­nate with him in at­ten­dance at the shop. The lat­ter part of this year, when car­pen­ter work was slack about Naz­a­reth, Je­sus left James in charge of the re­pair shop and Joseph at the home bench while he went over to Sep­pho­ris to work with a smith. He worked six months with met­als and ac­quired con­sid­er­able skill at the anvil.

128:2.4Be­fore tak­ing up his new em­ploy­ment at Sep­pho­ris, Je­sus held one of his pe­ri­odic fam­ily con­fer­ences and solemnly in­stalled James, then just past eigh­teen years old, as act­ing head of the fam­ily. He prom­ised his brother hearty sup­port and full co-op­er­a­tion and ex­acted for­mal promises of obe­di­ence to James from each mem­ber of the fam­ily. From this day James as­sumed full fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fam­ily, Je­sus mak­ing his weekly pay­ments to his brother. Never again did Je­sus take the reins out of James’s hands. While work­ing at Sep­pho­ris he could have walked home ev­ery night if nec­es­sary, but he pur­posely re­mained away, as­sign­ing weather and other rea­sons, but his true mo­tive was to train James and Joseph in the bear­ing of the fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity. He had be­gun the slow pro­cess of wean­ing his fam­ily. Each Sab­bath Je­sus re­turned to Naz­a­reth, and some­times dur­ing the week when oc­ca­sion re­quired, to ob­serve the work­ing of the new plan, to give ad­vice and of­fer help­ful sug­ges­tions.

128:2.5Liv­ing much of the time in Sep­pho­ris for six months af­forded Je­sus a new op­por­tu­nity to be­come bet­ter ac­quainted with the gen­tile view­point of life. He worked with gen­tiles, lived with gen­tiles, and in ev­ery pos­si­ble man­ner did he make a close and painstak­ing study of their habits of liv­ing and of the gen­tile mind.

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.

124:5.5Fri­day of the week be­fore, Joseph had come over from Sep­pho­ris, where he was in charge of the work on a new pub­lic build­ing, to be pres­ent on this glad oc­ca­sion. Je­sus’ teacher con­fi­dently be­lieved that his alert and dili­gent pupil was des­tined to some out­stand­ing ca­reer, some dis­tin­guished mis­sion. The el­ders, not­with­stand­ing all their trou­ble with Je­sus’ non­con­formist ten­den­cies, were very proud of the lad and had al­ready be­gun lay­ing plans which would en­able him to go to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­tinue his ed­u­ca­tion in the renowned He­brew academies.

126:2.1All did go well un­til that fate­ful day of Tues­day, Septem­ber 25, when a run­ner from Sep­pho­ris brought to this Naz­a­reth home the tragic news that Joseph had been severely in­jured by the falling of a der­rick while at work on the gov­er­nor’s res­i­dence. The mes­sen­ger from Sep­pho­ris had stopped at the shop on the way to Joseph’s home, in­form­ing Je­sus of his fa­ther’s ac­ci­dent, and they went to­gether to the house to break the sad news to Mary. Je­sus de­sired to go im­me­di­ately to his fa­ther, but Mary would hear to noth­ing but that she must has­ten to her hus­band’s side. She di­rected that James, then ten years of age, should ac­com­pany her to Sep­pho­ris while Je­sus re­mained home with the younger chil­dren un­til she should re­turn, as she did not know how se­ri­ously Joseph had been in­jured. But Joseph died of his in­juries be­fore Mary ar­rived. They brought him to Naz­a­reth, and on the fol­low­ing day he was laid to rest with his fa­thers.

126:5.11At one time Je­sus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up suf­fi­cient means, pro­vided they could col­lect the con­sid­er­able sum of money due his fa­ther for work on Herod’s palace, to war­rant un­der­tak­ing the pur­chase of a small farm. He had re­ally given se­ri­ous thought to this plan of mov­ing his fam­ily out into the coun­try. But when Herod re­fused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the am­bi­tion of own­ing a home in the coun­try. As it was, they con­trived to en­joy much of the ex­pe­ri­ence of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chick­ens, a don­key, and a dog, in ad­di­tion to the doves. Even the lit­tle tots had their reg­u­lar du­ties to per­form in the well-reg­u­lated scheme of man­age­ment which char­ac­ter­ized the home life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily.

185:4.1When Herod An­tipas stopped in Je­ru­sa­lem, he dwelt in the old Mac­cabean palace of Herod the Great, and it was to this home of the for­mer king that Je­sus was now taken by the tem­ple guards, and he was fol­lowed by his ac­cusers and an in­creas­ing mul­ti­tude. Herod had long heard of Je­sus, and he was very cu­ri­ous about him. When the Son of Man stood be­fore him, on this Fri­day morn­ing, the wicked Idumean never for one mo­ment re­called the lad of for­mer years who had ap­peared be­fore him in Sep­pho­ris plead­ing for a just de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the money due his fa­ther, who had been ac­ci­den­tally killed while at work on one of the pub­lic build­ings. As far as Herod knew, he had never seen Je­sus, al­though he had wor­ried a great deal about him when his work had been cen­tered in Gal­i­lee. Now that he was in cus­tody of Pi­late and the Judeans, Herod was de­sirous of see­ing him, feel­ing se­cure against any trou­ble from him in the fu­ture. Herod had heard much about the mir­a­cles wrought by Je­sus, and he re­ally hoped to see him do some won­der.

125:1.2But most of all was his sense of pro­pri­ety out­raged by the sight of the frivolous cour­te­sans parad­ing about within this precinct of the tem­ple, just such painted women as he had so re­cently seen when on a visit to Sep­pho­ris. This pro­fa­na­tion of the tem­ple fully aroused all his youth­ful in­dig­na­tion, and he did not hes­i­tate to ex­press him­self freely to Joseph.

150:7.2The peo­ple of Naz­a­reth were never re­puted for piety and righ­teous liv­ing. As the years passed, this vil­lage be­came in­creas­ingly con­tam­i­nated by the low moral stan­dards of near-by Sep­pho­ris. Through­out Je­sus’ youth and young man­hood there had been a di­vi­sion of opin­ion in Naz­a­reth re­gard­ing him; there was much re­sent­ment when he moved to Ca­per­naum. While the in­hab­i­tants of Naz­a­reth had heard much about the do­ings of their for­mer car­pen­ter, they were of­fended that he had never in­cluded his na­tive vil­lage in any of his ear­lier preach­ing tours. They had in­deed heard of Je­sus’ fame, but the ma­jor­ity of the cit­i­zens were an­gry be­cause he had done none of his great works in the city of his youth. For months the peo­ple of Naz­a­reth had dis­cussed Je­sus much, but their opin­ions were, on the whole, un­fa­vor­able to him.

127:5.6Re­becca was heart­bro­ken. She re­fused to be com­forted and im­por­tuned her fa­ther to leave Naz­a­reth un­til he fi­nally con­sented to move to Sep­pho­ris. In af­ter years, to the many men who sought her hand in mar­riage, Re­becca had but one an­swer. She lived for only one pur­pose—to await the hour when this, to her, the great­est man who ever lived would be­gin his ca­reer as a teacher of liv­ing truth. And she fol­lowed him de­vot­edly through his event­ful years of pub­lic la­bor, be­ing pres­ent (un­ob­served by Je­sus) that day when he rode tri­umphantly into Je­ru­sa­lem; and she stood “among the other women” by the side of Mary on that fate­ful and tragic af­ter­noon when the Son of Man hung upon the cross, to her, as well as to count­less worlds on high, “the one al­to­gether lovely and the great­est among ten thou­sand.”

129:1.1In Jan­uary of this year, A.D. 21, on a rainy Sun­day morn­ing, Je­sus took un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous leave of his fam­ily, only ex­plain­ing that he was go­ing over to Tiberias and then on a visit to other cities about the Sea of Gal­i­lee. And thus he left them, never again to be a reg­u­lar mem­ber of that house­hold.

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.