i

GOSPELS’ ENCYCLOPAEDIA

ii

GOSPELS’ ENCYCLOPAEDIA

iii

Christian Emphasis Series

GOSPELS’ ENCYCLOPAEDIA

Alan Rudge

ISPCK 2009

iv

GOSPELS’ ENCYCLOPAEDIA

Gospels’ Encyclopaedia—Published by the Rev. Dr. Ashish Amos of Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (ISPCK), Post Box 1585, 1654 Madarsa Road, Kashmere Gate, Delhi-110006 under the Christian Emphasis Series.

First Published 2002 Enlarged & Revised Edition 2009

© Author, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher. The views expressed in the book are those of the author and the publisher takes no responsibility for any of the statements.

ISBN: 978-81-8458-099-0 Laser typeset by ISPCK, Post Box 1585, 1654 Madarsa Road, Kashmere Gate, Delhi-110006 Tel: 23866322, 23866323 e-mail–[email protected] • [email protected] website-www.ispck.org. Printed at Repro Knowledgecast Limited

v

CONTENTS Preface

ix

Abomination of Desolation

1

According to ...

3

Action at Law

12

Apostles

17

Aramaic Words Quoted

31

Ascription of Sickness

34

Baptism

38

Bethabara

41

Bethany

44

Bethlehem

49

Bethsaida

53

Biblical Weights and Measures

55

Birds

59

Burial Clothes

62

Camel Through the Eye of a Needle

64

Capernaum

66

Carpenter

69

Centurion

72

Child

76

Church

79

City Gate

85

Coat

87

Communal Meal

89

Cornerstone

92

vi

Countryside of Galilee

GOSPELS’ ENCYCLOPAEDIA

94

Cripples

101

Cross

104

Darkness at the Cross

107

Date of Christ’s Passion

110

Disciples Sent Out

113

Dogs

117

Emmaus

119

Faith

121

Farming

125

Fasting

129

Fate of John the Baptist

132

Feast of Dedication

135

Feast of Passover

138

Fish and Fishing

140

Flowers of the Field

144

Forgiveness

147

Forty Days

150

Gadara, Gergesenes

154

Galileans

156

Gift of Sight

158

Goat

164

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

166

Grinding at a Mill

168

High Priest

170

Houses and Housetops

173

Issue of Blood

175

Jericho

176

Jerusalem

179

Judaea via Trans-Jordan

191

CONTENTS CONTENTS

vii

Judas Iscariot

193

Khan or Inn

196

Kingdom of Heaven

198

Kings in Gospel Times

201

Leprosy

205

Loaves and Fishes

207

Magi

210

Mary, Unique Virgin Mother

215

Material Things

219

Mental Diseases

222

Minor Ailments

225

Moneychanging in the Temple

227

Mustard Seed

230

Nazareth

232

Oil, Olive Oil

235

Ointment

237

Palm

238

Parable

240

Penny and Coins Generally

243

Pharisees

247

Pontius Pilate

252

Prayer by Jesus

255

Prophet

258

Quotations by the Lord Jesus Directly from the Old Testament

269

Rebirth

273

Resurrection

276

Sabbath Day

283

Sadducees

288

Samaria

291

viii

GOSPELS’ ENCYCLOPAEDIA

Sanhedrin Council

295

Scribes

297

Sheep Handling

301

Speech Impediment

305

Star of Bethlehem

308

Storms in the Sea of Galilee

313

Synagogue

315

Tares

318

Tax Collecting Publicans

320

Temple of Herod

324

Time Reckoning

329

Tomb or Sepulchre

332

The Towns of Caesarea Philippi

335

Tyre and Sidon

338

Upper Room

341

Usury

344

Villages Around Nazareth–Cana, Nain and Magdala

347

Vine, Vineyard

353

Weather Signs

356

Wine in Gospel Times

359

Yoke

362

Appendix

364

MAPS

378

ix

PREFACE It is possible that the light of the gospels might raise up the individual’s heart more powerfully in the localities where these narratives are set, than when it shines through the words of the evangelists to the reader or heard many miles distant. Perhaps so; but similarly it has sometimes been a personal experience that an immersion in those holy districts with the idea that the geographical exercise might facilitate further faith, results in disappointment. Vagueness about our knowledge of faith is not dissipated by mere association. Then by inference, the notion that a closeness to the places of the record may raise our knowledge pertinent to religious faith, and our evident need to have understanding behind the geography, may be joined together for the accomplishing. Armchair visits to the places and access to the artifacts of the gospel accounts are supposedly able to confirm faith and deepen the impressions of what the evangelists describe as having taken place in the former ages, an era many centuries since; and for this project we have satisfactory materials. When the secular details are examined and studied, a great deal of additional light is shed to illuminate those fabulous days for us: it is possible for the reader to become virtually included in the reality of the environment and events of that distant time, almost as if it had been “zoomed up” into the modern present day, which he can never achieve by only wandering over the sacred ground as perhaps a pilgrim, from which most of the first-century authenticity has been lost. Our Lord used a great deal of outdoor imagery in the course of His teaching, and we really need to know something of the things referenced by Him in the then ordinary way, if we would more fully understand what He was saying or particularly how it may apply to ourselves. He moved among people who had particular manners and customs, who more often were materially poor, and who

x

GOSPELS’ ENCYCLOPAEDIA

were accustomed to being much in the open air; there were many women and children in the crowds that gathered about Him. Crowds indeed, for the region of Galilee was in those days relatively densely populated. It was a central district in the then modern world with its own money changers, tax wallahs, dye works and pottery kilns, villages and theatres, farmers, carpenters and boat builders, people of many nations and unhappy rich people. Further, the phenomenon of the Pharisees and Sadducee sects is a subject in itself. Jesus stood on the shores of the Sea of Galilee about two millennia since as a Jew but not as One Who, in all times, regards Himself as one of a favoured-of-God race apart, frittering away the whole life and power of religion in a rigid observance of irrelevant ceremonies, something which Isaiah’s first chapter warned the nation against. There is nothing of this perennial typical Jew in the Lord Jesus. No man taught Him the maxims of the Sermon on the Mount, or gave Him example of faith, hope and love to copy. The society in which He lived among people was full of the mercenary yen for money just as modern societies are: cheats everywhere and bribery. There is not the faintest trace of this mercenary spirit in the character revealed of the Christ of God. With power to possess all, He owned nothing. Giving His service free of cost, He did not borrow or owe. Throughout His ministry He was surrounded by people who had no comprehension of heaven’s truths - not even the Apostles, until the Day of Pentecost fifty days after His Resurrection. In essence, the crowds which followed Him did so for the benefit of the healings and the feedings, only rice Christians spiritually unconvinced even by the miracles at the time. It is necessary to climb above any idea that religion is something valued not for its truth, but for its potential market gain effect. It is only gradually that the fact of Christ’s patience against this early and grovelling spirit dawns on us as we read behind the gospel headlines, so to speak, and the trauma. He must have suffered in the everyday environment of human weaknesses is only slowly appreciated as we study the gospel narratives more fully;

PREFACE

xi

no doubt human wisdom made a pig’s ear of everything then, as it still does. For the individual accustomed to the divine Christ of Western churches or of Eastern iconography, or for the person who has never encountered the Lord Christ Jesus at all, we have here not a pilgrim-venerated relic of antique superstition, but Jesus the Man who ate, slept, travelled and became weary, who taught, healed and chastised us as fellow being. Religion throws her shelter around the separate existence and temporal rights of the whole community in this world, and Jesus laid the axe to the root of the old and corrupt tree of the materialistic world as He revealed the pure spiritual religion establishing a kingdom outside it. With details the historian can perhaps offer a facility to help the modern student to appreciate this infinite gift more readily when he comes to digest the contents of the gospels at his own later and convenient time; you cannot run without first learning to walk. The gospel details are valid today, because if Jesus came now to do the same service for humankind, He would see an ocean of fraud and bribery, the greed and deception and alas! the false religion meaning well in the worship of God but failing in it, and hopeless superstition, that He saw then.

1

ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION In Mark 13:14, “But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation”, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not” (let the reader understand),* “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains”, this was an injunction given by Jesus on an occasion near the end of His ministry when some disciples asked Him for a view concerning the end times. The first few verses of Mark 13 might construe as a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem which was six or seven years in the future when St. Mark’s Gospel was written; but doubtless the application of this chapter was not so limited, but is general for all the given centuries. Yet here Jerusalem is singled out in the phrase “where it ought not,” this city and the country around it being representative of the earliest monotheistic following and therefore a holy ground on which nothing pertaining to idolatry was allowed to approach: in fine, a type for the reign of heaven here below, at least in intention, but of which further centuries have brought numerous other candidates for such type across the world. Significantly, more and better consecrated cities are yet to come. In this point is the exhortation to understand, applying the mind to the universal prospect which comes with universal faith in the one true God where faiths especially of Christianity and Islam are joined on the road to holiness. It may be that ancient Jerusalem is no longer a consecrated ground, but holier cities now replace it as the geographical locations of this text in the literal. The Old Testament prophet reference is in Daniel 9:25-27 with 8:1314 and 12:8-13 in which the whole earth of future modern time may be read for “”time may be read for “Jerusalem,” *

Possibly applied as a hint in circumstances when Mark was writing (c 64 C.E.), against inadvisable identification of the Roman power.

2

GOSPELS’ ENCYCLOPAEDIA

the time periods given by Daniel being symbolic. Literally, Daniel refers to an action in Jewish history when Antiochus Epiphanes had set up a statue of Zeus the Greek pagan god in the Jerusalem temple (as 1 Maccabees 1:54ff) in about circa 320 B.C.E. In St. Mark’s time Caligula who reigned in the Roman Raj circa 37-41 C.E. threatened a similar desecration. St. Luke, writing in about 80, appears to construe it in the Fall of Jerusalem (Luke 21:20) which had occurred then recently in circa 70 C.E., with his phrase “compassed by armies” - in fact the Roman Fifth, Tenth, Twelfth and Fifteenth Legions, at least sixty thousand men here. It thus occurred only thirty-seven years after the end of Christ’s ministry, and there easily may have been men in Jerusalem who personally remembered incidents around Jesus and the disciples; and old men perhaps recalling by memory the remarks of the Lord contained in Mark 13. It would scarcely be realised that the references in this field were general and not limited to Jerusalem itself. With the advantage of long hindsight, we can see that when the Lord commands, prosperity of the builded cities will be secured even in troubles times, and when idolatry seeks to desolate it, every evil adversary will be ruined. But we are not empowered ourselves to ruin the projects of evil, and must depend upon God in the type of this world’s sanctuary. Blessed is he who waits for the Lord and touches not the unclean thing.

Emperor Titus

3

“ACCORDING TO ...” In the regular ascription on each of the gospel accounts the English gives “The Gospel According To ...” with the titled name of the accepted authorship; but in the Greek kata followed by simply the name without title is a term which can mean “after”, “against”, “through”, “towards”, or “down (from)”, and each of these meanings may apply variously in the course of the four holy accounts: sometimes one, sometimes another in the Reader’s effort to draw most richly the honey from this well for the strength of his understanding. This prospect comes under the main environment in which the four accounts were written in essentially three different circumstances. Firstly, Mark’s project in about 64 is thought to have been initiated from concern about preserving the units of facts about the work and events of Jesus well known but as yet transmitted only orally, and Mark is believed to have had the Apostle Simon Peter as his main source, together with which he applied in combination other units of knowledge in an acceptably chronological flow of narrative, confined to Galilee until the description of Christ’s Passion begins. Secondly, the representing of the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ by Luke in about 80 and again by Matthew in about 85 suggests, from their slight differencing from Mark whom they used as a source and from each other in coverage, that the phenomenon of communities development as arms of Church organisation had by this time produced a demand for new presentation; and in this, while clearly depending on Mark they each possessed further units of knowledge or tradition they each served a particular Regional need, and their projects mainly only added Sayings material of Jesus to the St. Mark original, particularly parables. Luke was a Gentile, and the St. Matthew author is quite unknown; this shadowy figure was blessed toward Simon Peter, probably at Antioch. Thirdly,