Tiberias

• Tiberias

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.

• Tiberias

135:12.4Since much build­ing was still go­ing on at Tiberias, Herod spent con­sid­er­able time at his Perean res­i­dences, and he was par­tial to the fortress of Machaerus. It was a mat­ter of sev­eral years be­fore all the pub­lic build­ings and the of­fi­cial res­i­dence at Tiberias were fully com­pleted.

• Tiberias

147:0.1Je­sus and the apos­tles ar­rived in Ca­per­naum on Wednes­day, March 17, and spent two weeks at the Beth­saida head­quar­ters be­fore they de­parted for Je­ru­sa­lem. These two weeks the apos­tles taught the peo­ple by the sea­side while Je­sus spent much time alone in the hills about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness. Dur­ing this pe­riod Je­sus, ac­com­pa­nied by James and John Zeb­e­dee, made two se­cret trips to Tiberias, where they met with the be­liev­ers and in­structed them in the gospel of the king­dom.

147:0.2Many of the house­hold of Herod be­lieved in Je­sus and at­tended these meet­ings. It was the in­flu­ence of these be­liev­ers among Herod’s of­fi­cial fam­ily that had helped to lessen that ruler’s en­mity to­ward Je­sus. These be­liev­ers at Tiberias had fully ex­plained to Herod that the “king­dom” which Je­sus pro­claimed was spir­i­tual in na­ture and not a po­lit­i­cal ven­ture. Herod rather be­lieved these mem­bers of his own house­hold and there­fore did not per­mit him­self to be­come un­duly alarmed by the spread­ing abroad of the re­ports con­cern­ing Je­sus’ teach­ing and heal­ing. He had no ob­jec­tions to Je­sus’ work as a healer or re­li­gious teacher. Not­with­stand­ing the fa­vor­able at­ti­tude of many of Herod’s ad­vis­ers, and even of Herod him­self, there ex­isted a group of his sub­or­di­nates who were so in­flu­enced by the re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem that they re­mained bit­ter and threat­en­ing en­e­mies of Je­sus and the apos­tles and, later on, did much to ham­per their pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties. The great­est dan­ger to Je­sus lay in the Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious lead­ers and not in Herod. And it was for this very rea­son that Je­sus and the apos­tles spent so much time and did most of their pub­lic preach­ing in Gal­i­lee rather than at Je­ru­sa­lem and in Judea.

• Tiberias

148:7.3And as this man stretched forth his with­ered hand, it was made whole. The peo­ple were minded to turn upon the Phar­isees, but Je­sus bade them be calm, say­ing: “I have just told you that it is law­ful to do good on the Sab­bath, to save life, but I did not in­struct you to do harm and give way to the de­sire to kill.” The an­gered Phar­isees went away, and not­with­stand­ing it was the Sab­bath day, they has­tened forth­with to Tiberias and took coun­sel with Herod, do­ing ev­ery­thing in their power to arouse his prej­u­dice in or­der to se­cure the Hero­di­ans as al­lies against Je­sus. But Herod re­fused to take ac­tion against Je­sus, ad­vis­ing that they carry their com­plaints to Je­ru­sa­lem.

150:3.1The Sab­bath ser­vices of the apos­tolic party had been put in the hands of the women by An­drew, upon in­struc­tions from Je­sus. This meant, of course, that they could not be held in the new syn­a­gogue. The women se­lected Joanna to have charge of this oc­ca­sion, and the meet­ing was held in the ban­quet room of Herod’s new palace, Herod be­ing away in res­i­dence at Ju­lias in Perea. Joanna read from the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing woman’s work in the re­li­gious life of Is­rael, mak­ing ref­er­ence to Miriam, Deb­o­rah, Es­ther, and oth­ers.

150:3.2Late that evening Je­sus gave the united group a mem­o­rable talk on “Magic and Su­per­sti­tion.” In those days the ap­pear­ance of a bright and sup­pos­edly new star was re­garded as a to­ken in­di­cat­ing that a great man had been born on earth. Such a star hav­ing then re­cently been ob­served, An­drew asked Je­sus if these be­liefs were well founded. In the long an­swer to An­drew’s ques­tion the Mas­ter en­tered upon a thor­ough­go­ing dis­cus­sion of the whole sub­ject of hu­man su­per­sti­tion. The state­ment which Je­sus made at this time may be sum­ma­rized in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy as fol­lows:

150:3.31. The courses of the stars in the heav­ens have noth­ing what­ever to do with the events of hu­man life on earth. As­tron­omy is a proper pur­suit of sci­ence, but as­trol­ogy is a mass of su­per­sti­tious er­ror which has no place in the gospel of the king­dom.

150:3.42. The ex­am­i­na­tion of the in­ter­nal or­gans of an an­i­mal re­cently killed can re­veal noth­ing about weather, fu­ture events, or the out­come of hu­man af­fairs.

150:3.53. The spir­its of the dead do not come back to com­mu­ni­cate with their fam­i­lies or their one­time friends among the liv­ing.

150:3.64. Charms and relics are im­po­tent to heal dis­ease, ward off dis­as­ter, or in­flu­ence evil spir­its; the be­lief in all such ma­te­rial means of in­flu­enc­ing the spir­i­tual world is noth­ing but gross su­per­sti­tion.

150:3.75. Cast­ing lots, while it may be a con­ve­nient way of set­tling many mi­nor dif­fi­cul­ties, is not a method de­signed to dis­close the di­vine will. Such out­comes are purely mat­ters of ma­te­rial chance. The only means of com­mu­nion with the spir­i­tual world is em­braced in the spirit en­dow­ment of man­kind, the in­dwelling spirit of the Fa­ther, to­gether with the out­poured spirit of the Son and the om­ni­pres­ent in­flu­ence of the In­fi­nite Spirit.

150:3.86. Div­ina­tion, sor­cery, and witch­craft are su­per­sti­tions of ig­no­rant minds, as also are the delu­sions of magic. The be­lief in magic num­bers, omens of good luck, and harbingers of bad luck, is pure and un­founded su­per­sti­tion.

150:3.97. The in­ter­pre­ta­tion of dreams is largely a su­per­sti­tious and ground­less sys­tem of ig­no­rant and fan­tas­tic spec­u­la­tion. The gospel of the king­dom must have noth­ing in com­mon with the sooth­sayer priests of prim­i­tive re­li­gion.

150:3.108. The spir­its of good or evil can­not dwell within ma­te­rial sym­bols of clay, wood, or metal; idols are noth­ing more than the ma­te­rial of which they are made.

150:3.119. The prac­tices of the en­chanters, the wiz­ards, the ma­gi­cians, and the sor­cer­ers, were de­rived from the su­per­sti­tions of the Egyp­tians, the As­syr­i­ans, the Baby­lo­ni­ans, and the an­cient Ca­naan­ites. Amulets and all sorts of in­can­ta­tions are fu­tile ei­ther to win the pro­tec­tion of good spir­its or to ward off sup­posed evil spir­its.

150:3.1210. He ex­posed and de­nounced their be­lief in spells, or­deals, be­witch­ing, curs­ing, signs, man­drakes, knot­ted cords, and all other forms of ig­no­rant and en­slav­ing su­per­sti­tion.

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.

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.

154:0.1On the event­ful Sat­ur­day night of April 30, as Je­sus was speak­ing words of com­fort and cour­age to his down­cast and be­wil­dered dis­ci­ples, at Tiberias a coun­cil was be­ing held be­tween Herod An­tipas and a group of spe­cial com­mis­sion­ers rep­re­sent­ing the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin. These scribes and Phar­isees urged Herod to ar­rest Je­sus; they did their best to con­vince him that Je­sus was stir­ring up the pop­u­lace to dis­sen­sion and even to re­bel­lion. But Herod re­fused to take ac­tion against him as a po­lit­i­cal of­fender. Herod’s ad­vis­ers had cor­rectly re­ported the episode across the lake when the peo­ple sought to pro­claim Je­sus king and how he re­jected the pro­posal.

154:3.1On May 16 the sec­ond con­fer­ence at Tiberias be­tween the au­thor­i­ties at Je­ru­sa­lem and Herod An­tipas was con­vened. Both the re­li­gious and the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem were in at­ten­dance. The Jew­ish lead­ers were able to re­port to Herod that prac­ti­cally all the syn­a­gogues in both Gal­i­lee and Judea were closed to Je­sus’ teach­ings. A new ef­fort was made to have Herod place Je­sus un­der ar­rest, but he re­fused to do their bid­ding. On May 18, how­ever, Herod did agree to the plan of per­mit­ting the San­hedrin au­thor­i­ties to seize Je­sus and carry him to Je­ru­sa­lem to be tried on re­li­gious charges, pro­vided the Ro­man ruler of Judea con­curred in such an ar­range­ment. Mean­while, Je­sus’ en­e­mies were in­dus­tri­ously spread­ing the ru­mor through­out Gal­i­lee that Herod had be­come hos­tile to Je­sus, and that he meant to ex­ter­mi­nate all who be­lieved in his teach­ings.

154:3.2On Sat­ur­day night, May 21, word reached Tiberias that the civil au­thor­i­ties at Je­ru­sa­lem had no ob­jec­tion to the agree­ment be­tween Herod and the Phar­isees that Je­sus be seized and car­ried to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial be­fore the San­hedrin on charges of flout­ing the sa­cred laws of the Jew­ish na­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, just be­fore mid­night of this day, Herod signed the de­cree which au­tho­rized the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin to seize Je­sus within Herod’s do­mains and forcibly to carry him to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial. Strong pres­sure from many sides was brought to bear upon Herod be­fore he con­sented to grant this per­mis­sion, and he well knew that Je­sus could not ex­pect a fair trial be­fore his bit­ter en­e­mies at Je­ru­sa­lem.

158:4.2Al­though the crowd en­gaged in nu­mer­ous ar­gu­ments, the chief con­tro­versy was about a cer­tain cit­i­zen of Tiberias who had ar­rived the pre­ced­ing day in quest of Je­sus. This man, James of Safed, had a son about four­teen years old, an only child, who was severely af­flicted with epilepsy. In ad­di­tion to this ner­vous mal­ady this lad had be­come pos­sessed by one of those wan­der­ing, mis­chievous, and re­bel­lious mid­way­ers who were then pres­ent on earth and un­con­trolled, so that the youth was both epilep­tic and de­mon-pos­sessed.

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.

139:8.2When Thomas joined the apos­tles, he was twenty-nine years old, was mar­ried, and had four chil­dren. For­merly he had been a car­pen­ter and stone ma­son, but lat­terly he had be­come a fish­er­man and resided at Ta­ri­chea, sit­u­ated on the west bank of the Jor­dan where it flows out of the Sea of Gal­i­lee, and he was re­garded as the lead­ing cit­i­zen of this lit­tle vil­lage. He had lit­tle ed­u­ca­tion, but he pos­sessed a keen, rea­son­ing mind and was the son of ex­cel­lent par­ents, who lived at Tiberias. Thomas had the one truly an­a­lyt­i­cal mind of the twelve; he was the real sci­en­tist of the apos­tolic group.