two thousand years ago in a remote part of the roman empire someone was born who would change the history of the world jesus he was seen from the very beginning as this extremely radical revolutionary figure that was going to bring more change than they had seen since the time the prophets after a life of wandering through the hills and villages of galilee and judea preaching and healing jesus was betrayed arrested and brutally put to death jesus's death on the cross was hugely difficult for the early christians it was extremely embarrassing to say that they were
followers of a leader who had been crucified but in the years after his crucifixion jesus story was written down by his followers to explain his extraordinary life and death these four gospels would later form a major part of the christian bible and enable his message to be spread all over the world it's just extraordinary to come here now and see these crowds who come from all over the world still being drawn by the power of that moment that would change everything this is very exciting client we have people who are still so skeptical that they
claim there's no nazars in the first century but for hundreds of years scholars have been trying to look behind the jesus of the gospels the divine christ of faith to uncover the historical figure a mediterranean jew who lived and died as a man and according to his followers was resurrected from the dead this is absolutely mind-blowing i mean they knew what we call the laws of nature just as much as we do they knew that dead people stay dead in this series using the very latest archaeological historical and theological research nine of the world's leading
biblical experts will re-examine the gospel accounts of jesus's life to uncover the true meaning behind the 2 000 year old story of jesus this is a story too improbable not to be true because it's not what you'd make up if you're starting a new world religion right in the heart of one of britain's largest cities is a library that contains the oldest known piece of the christian new testament anywhere in the world when you study the new testament you've got dozens and in fact hundreds of manuscripts from the first three or four or five centuries
including some of these tiny fragments that go really back very close within 60 or so years of when the documents were originally written and no other texts from the ancient world have any documentation remotely like that so we're on much more solid ground with the new testament than any other book from antiquity this fragment of papyrus is believed to have been written within just a hundred years of jesus's death it contains a few lines describing jesus's encounter with the roman governor in jerusalem as he is condemned to death on a cross the manuscript itself happens
to be part of the 18th chapter of john's gospel and where we see jesus talking to pontius pilate this is the representative of the kingdom of god confronting the representative of the kingdom of the world and what are they going to talk about well what do you think kingdom power and truth and he says to jesus so are you some kind of a king and jesus says well you call me a king he says but this is why i was born this is what i came into the world for that i might bear witness to
the truth and then pilate says his famous answer what is truth ever since that question first appeared in the christian bible scholars have searched for an answer to help them understand the story of jesus contained in the gospels the christian bible as we know it today is made up of the 39 books of the old testament hebrew scriptures written between two and three thousand years ago and the 27 books of the new testament at its heart are the four gospels of matthew mark luke and john the narrative stories of the life of jesus first written
down in the century after jesus's death i think what we can say is not necessarily we've got these early manuscripts therefore it must all be true but we've got these early manuscripts which point back like a set of signposts from different roads all leading to the same city and because the manuscripts are slightly different here and there we can see that these traditions have diverged but they've diverged from a common source and we can go back very close to that common source and say again and again this is actually what john or paul or whoever
wrote it's wonderfully sharp hard evidence of that by comparison with all the other texts that we know from the ancient world most biblical scholars today agree that the best way to understand the gospels and particularly what they say about jesus is to try and understand the life and times in which they were composed the outlook of the people for whom they were first written and the world in which those stories took place in this series we want to uncover the original meaning of the story of jesus to investigate the gospel accounts of his life not
through the eyes of a 21st century reader but through those of the people for whom those stories were first written almost 2 000 years ago in the sixth month the angel gabriel was sent from god to a city of galilee named nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was joseph of the house of david and the virgin's name was mary the jewish first century world into which jesus was born and when the accounts of his life were first compiled was far more religious than today and full of expectation as to a coming
messiah someone who would liberate the people from all their troubles the stories about jesus birth were full of suggestions that he was that savior there's a lot of dispute over the historicity of the infancy stories how much one can say there's historical truth in them and how much not some people are more optimistic and some people are more skeptical and a lot of it comes down to people's presuppositions about whether miraculous things can happen dr simon gaviko is a senior lecturer at the university of cambridge and an expert in the study of the new testament
he believes the writers of the gospels wanted to tell their readers who they believed jesus really was and that right from the start of his life he was destined to change the course of history and the message of the gospels of course is that this particular jesus christ is the son of god who went on to to die and rise again and bring salvation to the world so this isn't mere history it's not less than history but it is history with a message at the time the gospels were first compiled in the first century what
we would call modern israel and palestine was a part of the roman empire this meant that for jews their holy land was under pagan rule and in caesar's empire the emperors were thought of as gods who could do no wrong for the gospel writers the extraordinary story of jesus's birth life and death was a direct challenge to that world for them jesus was the true god not caesar the gospels of matthew and luke were probably both written in the sort of 70s 80s a.d perhaps and those times were significant because emperors at that time in
the roman empire had just started being called sons of god and so when we read in matthew's gospel and luke's gospel both the infancy narratives call jesus the son of god those with their sort of sensitive political antenna up would perhaps be struck by the fact that jesus is the true son of god and so perhaps a challenger to the emperor modern skeptics often point to the differences in the four gospel accounts of jesus's life as evidence of their falsehood many biblical scholars see these differences as simply alternative points of focus a way of telling
the same core story but from a different point of view our traditional infancy narrative is actually a conflation of the two separate accounts in matthew's gospel and luke's gospel and they contain some similar incidents and some some different incidents so in matthew's gospel joseph is perhaps the leading figure it's joseph who receives the message from the angel on the other hand when we come to luke's gospel joseph is scarcely mentioned at all the attention is all on mary and on mary's family the book of the genealogy of jesus christ the son of david the son
of abraham abraham was the father of isaac and isaac the father of jacob and jacob the father of judah and his brothers jesus's family history was very important to his followers both gospel writers provide us with a detailed genealogy dating back hundreds of years but rather than being a literal guide to jesus's ancestors they contain a message as to who they believed jesus really was the long-awaited jewish messiah first of all amongst several people's genealogies per se are important it's part of your past you should know where you come from as well as where you
are headed to the whole idea that the son of a simple carpenter from nazareth but if you say he's a descendant of david then it's different because there had been that tradition that the messiah would be a descendant of the royal house of david so the genealogy there is very very pertinent david is the crucial kingly figure in the old testament the model of an ideal king the first divinely approved king of israel and so he becomes the template that the new testament authors draw on when they want to describe jesus as an ideal king
jesus is the second david if you like the son of david matthew's gospel is arranged in three blocks of 14 ancestors and this number 14 is probably significant because numerically it can refer to the name david the hebrew letters dalit dalet four plus six plus four makes fourteen and so matthew's genealogy shouts to us that jesus is david david david the son of the son of david luke's gospel is rather different in having a genealogy which goes back not to david but actually to adam and so luke is perhaps using his genealogy to present the
fact that jesus is not a narrowly jewish messiah he is a jewish messiah but he's not one who is only for israel but he's someone who has come for all the descendants of adam so luke has a more universal outlook in his genealogy and the angel said to her do not be afraid mary for you have found favor with god and behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call him jesus the miraculous conception in matthew's gospel and in luke's gospel is vital to the drama first that it is
an action that comes about purely by divine intervention it doesn't come about through the natural human means and so salvation is said to be entirely of god on the other hand though it is a real conception and so he is a real human being and so we see the two sides of jesus identity that he is truly man but also divine as the line in matthew's gospel puts it that he's emmanuel which in hebrew means god with us he's truly god but he's also truly with us when the early christians read these infancy narratives in
matthew's gospel and luke's gospel they probably took them literally and probably assumed that these things did really happen to jesus but they certainly wouldn't stop there they wouldn't think of that as the primary point they would think of these accounts as uh telling them how jesus was god's son so we see the fulfillment of prophecy all the way through these infancy narratives genealogies as well and these things tell us told the early christians that jesus didn't just come out of a clear blue sky but he was planned by god to have come at this particular
time and you o bethlehem in the land of judah are by no means least among the rulers of judah for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people israel geography is important here because bethlehem is a crucial town in the old testament it's a small town and politically and economically insignificant but it's famous by association with david david's father jesse was called jesse of bethlehem and so david may have been born there he certainly came from there lived his early life there and crucially as well he was also anointed as king there
then we have developing out of that a prophecy that a ruler will come out of bethlehem who will shepherd israel and this is the prophecy that matthew picks up on the prophecy of micah which jesus is then said to fulfill over the centuries historians and scientists have debated the star of bethlehem and have tried to come up with a rational explanation a comet or a planet or even a previously unknown supernova but none has proved totally convincing many scholars now believe the star is more of a symbolic device a biblical metaphor that would have had
particular meaning to first century jews the star which leads the uh magay the three wise men so called to jesus is significant as an indicator another indicator of jesus supernatural identity jesus heavenly nature and it alludes i think most particularly to a prophecy in the old testament in the book of numbers where we're told that a star will come out of jacob the prophecy of bilaam in the book of numbers estar has arisen from heaven but as the messiah the anointed king of course the anointed king is the kind of a star of the son
of a star all these metaphors are very pertinent metaphors and it's very natural that they were being used this star also uh connects up with something in luke's gospel uh where we're told in quite similar terms that jesus is like a light he's the dayspring the day star that comes from on a high and this again is a fulfillment of old testament prophecy this time from the book of isaiah in which the light from on high will come and shine on those in darkness and behold the star that they had seen when it rose went
before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was the incident with the so-called three wise men is a fascinating one and it's one which has been particularly embroidered and romanticized in later christian history so we don't even know from matthew gospel whether there were three of them they certainly weren't three kings they're not described particularly as wise men they're described as magoy and magoy uh in greek are really astronomers or astrologers uh people who use the stars for perhaps magical purposes the shepherds also appear on the scene in luke's gospel
and in some ways the point of the shepherds is that the message of jesus is not just for the elites and the priests and the nobles but also for just very ordinary shepherds according to one of the gospels as soon as he was born jesus was in danger not only was he portrayed as a potential challenger to the roman emperor but closer to home he was also depicted as a rival to the king of the jews herod now when they had departed behold an angel of the lord appeared to joseph in a dream and said
rise take the child and his mother and flee to egypt and remain there until i tell you for herod is about to search for the child to destroy him of all the characters in the birth stories king herod is one of the few for whom we have alternative contemporary historical sources we know that he existed at the time of jesus birth that he was the king of judea a client kingdom within the roman empire today the ruins of his winter palace herodian still overlook the town of bethlehem in the last decade of his life herod
was an old man so there are a lot of people around waiting for him to die so that last decade of his life is filled according to josephus with lots of suspicion on both sides and lots of conspiracies real or imagined and according to lots of people getting killed by the old king who's afraid of conspiracies around him in that context you have to understand the gospel story which talks about herod being afraid of yet another competitor coming along for the crown of the jewish kingdom according to the gospel stories herod was so incensed by
jesus as a possible rival to his throne that he ordered his troops to massacre all the male babies in bethlehem i think the story as you have it is probably something with no claim to historical truth as having happened but rather reflecting a antipathy to herod which in this case takes the form of well let's compare him to pharaoh just as uh pharaoh presided over the persecution of jewish boys at the time when a redeemer of the jews was born according to the book of exodus namely moses soto if he knew moses is going to
come along he better have this pharaoh who tries to kill him as well so it became very convenient to focus on herod as jesus's opposite number and if one is very very good then the other one has to be very very bad that's the way these things work egypt is of course uh in new testament times the old enemy of the nation of israel israel had been captive in egypt for hundreds of years they'd been slaves there they'd been oppressed there so for joseph to take mary and jesus there means that things had got really
desperate in the land of israel under the murderous rule of king herod but it's also a response to prophecy because in the book of hosea there's a prophecy which is picked up by matthew's gospel about god's son coming out of egypt so again jesus is depicted as in this case unwittingly fulfilling prophecy i think the purpose of the gospels is to tell the readers and the believers about the life and death and resurrection of a redeeming figure and one of the things that you're entitled to expect in ancient stories about such heroes is something miraculous
about their birth so whether it's a miraculous um salvation from a very great threat as you have in matthew or whether it's being born as the result of an extraordinary prophecy as you have in luke one way or the other the point of the infancy stories is to ensure that from the very first moment this redeeming figure has been underwritten by god after jesus birth the gospels are almost completely silent about what happened next we're told that his family returned to nazareth but there is only one story about his childhood in galilee it has led
to a lot of wild speculation as to what jesus was doing during those years how he might have traveled all over the middle east and egypt and even as far as india and tibet to study with eastern mystics there is one area of biblical research that can take our knowledge of the past beyond the written sources and help to explain jesus's lost years and the world in which he grew up i think there's a gap in terms of the narration about jesus life really because it didn't serve the interests of the gospel writers they're trying
to write something else so they don't mind putting in miraculous birth at least two of them and luke doesn't mind putting in this story about jesus being around 12 to show he's precocious um john starts off with creation so then then they're trying to get us to the ministry apparently so they they just simply jump ahead to the ministry so uh we are left to surmise that he grew up more or less like everyone else in galilee now what archaeology does for us you show us what that might look like professor james strange is one
of the world's leading biblical archaeologists for the last 30 years he has been excavating one of galilee's most important first century cities sepharis professor strange believes that because jesus his home village of nazareth was just two hours walk away he could very possibly have visited and worked here well here we are on the main road of cephalus and people be streaming in from behind me towards tiberius they would be coming from nazareth from ancient garris from other places they're coming here to buy to sell to look for a physician whatever it is they need they
come in uh sometimes because they're curious but sometimes they're looking for work so this this is going to be an ideal place to do exactly that is not this the carpenter's son he's not his mother called mary hidden away in the gospels in a description of jesus as he begins his ministry in galilee is a single verse that provides a few clues as to jesus's early life traditionally jesus has been described as a carpenter but a more accurate translation of the original greek word techton would be a general builder jesus and his father and presumably
his brothers then as a tech known techton means a family that is understood to be working with their hands and they have all the skills and knowledge they have to have to work with wood and to work with stone so this uh this is fundamental to the uh to the to living here that makes jesus and his family ideal for such a place as this when it's undergoing construction for the first time during jesus's childhood sephiros was undergoing a major building boom under the local king herod antipas for jesus and his brothers this would have
been an ideal place to have looked for work well five six kilometers away is ancient nazareth itself where jesus lives with his father and his brothers and his sisters his mother so it's not at all out of reason that he would be here with his father as the eldest looking for work so uh i think if this is an ideal place to contextualize jesus as a as a jobbing builder who builds projects for anything from houses or as small as an oxyoc all the way up to working on frameworks and doing stone cutting for large
buildings we can see the first century cut stones reflected everywhere we look is not this the carpenter the son of mary and brother of james and joseph and judas and simon and are not his sisters here with us the gospel accounts appear to suggest that jesus had an extended blood family in fact in the first century jewish world in which he lived not having any brothers or sisters would have been very unusual but over the centuries the idea of jesus having a close family has posed a problem for some christian denominations we understand from scripture
that jesus came from an extended family it was not simply joseph mary and jesus living in the household but there were siblings at least four more brothers whose names we know and at least two more sisters and maybe more unfortunately we don't know their names according to roman catholics and orthodox christians jesus mother mary was a perpetual virgin and that after giving birth to him she had no further children so they believe his brothers and sisters are not blood relations of jesus the traditional explanation for the brothers of jesus for example in the greek orthodox
church in the roman catholic church has been that joseph was a widower and he had children from his first marriage who became the step-brothers of jesus and uh that would put jesus as the only child of mary in the protestant tradition they see these children as being the biological children of joseph and mary born after jesus so in whatever way you would want to explain it though we understand that jesus doesn't grow up as an only child when jesus was growing up nazareth was just a small village of less than 500 people but today it
is a huge city in modern israel no remains of the ancient village had ever been found until two years ago when an extraordinary find was uncovered near the center of the city well around 2009 some builders were trying to build something here and when they drove the foundation down they discovered something they thought would be of interest to archaeologists so that's exactly what they did they called in the archaeologists so that they could check this when they went down far enough they found they were in a first century house this is very exciting plan we
have people who are still so skeptical that they claim there's no nazareth in the first century so it's it's wonderful confirmation that we were not mistaken there really is a first century according to the archaeologists it was a very simple building single story made of mud and stone with two rooms and a courtyard they also found clay and chalk vessels that were known to be used by galilean jews at that time an indication that the house was lived in by a devout jewish family by looking at the gospel of luke for example we can see
that jesus was born into a jewish family that was religiously observant they were pious people they prayed they went on pilgrimage to jerusalem and it was their custom they circumcised him on the eighth day they announced his name they paid the redemption price of a newborn son and so the picture we get of jesus's family is a family that is deeply embedded in its jewish identity and its jewish tradition well religion in the first century is not a separate category it suffuses your life you know the the modern idea of religion as being some aspect
of your life is very very modern or postmodern for some so in the first century it's just a sort of a given you know there's god in the universe and god has made all that there is and jesus brought a message that he learned in his own childhood his classroom was the streets of a jewish town and he watched shepherds with their sheeps and goats he watched farmers in the field as they spread grain he watched fathers with their children and he thought about these things that he observed they became the images that he would
later use in his parables so that when he launched his public ministry and he spoke to everyday people on the street tax collectors sinners women he could speak to them about god in language that they understood well the lost years of jesus from 12 to 30 i think he's a full-fledged member of his family and of his village we would expect him to then as a firstborn son to be married but he's not we would also expect him to if if something has happened to joseph for example uh since joseph disappears from the narrative if
he was killed or in an accident or just died of an infection then it falls upon jesus stay home take care of his mother he didn't do that we would not expect him to have detailed knowledge of jewish traditions temple traditions and scriptures themselves but he apparently does and so we're confounded each time we make this uh prediction about jesus we're very good about predicting what we would find if we dig in an environment like cephas were much less less successful in predicting what jesus would turn out to be most biblical scholars consider mark to
be the earliest gospel probably written about 40 years after jesus death and it begins not with the story of jesus birth or his early life but with the account of one of the most enigmatic and misunderstood people in the new testament a person who had a profound influence on both jesus and christianity john the baptist dr joan taylor is an expert on john the baptist and believes the later church downplayed his real significance in jesus's life story the whole story of jesus the whole story of the kingdom of god the beginning of christianity begins at
this point here at the jordan river it's just extraordinary to come here now and see these crowds these tourists who come from all over the world still being drawn by the power of that moment that moment when jesus came to john the baptist and something happened that would change everything in those days jesus came from nazareth of galilee and was baptized by john in the jordan and when he came up out of the water immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove and a voice came from
heaven you are my beloved son with you i am well pleased now all the other gospel writers wanted to rewrite that story it just sounded so much it just sounds so much like um john is the the top guy and jesus is this um man who is in need of repentance and comes to john looking for a new life that's kind of what john was calling people to um to experience so they made him safe matthew makes him safe in that john the baptist says to jesus you know i should be baptizing you why do
you come to me um luke has the baptism in that jesus is baptized with everybody else but then um he has jesus experiencing his vision after he's baptized so he detaches it from um john and then the fourth gospel the gospel of john john is all the time pointing to jesus and saying you know behold the lamb of god go after him according to other contemporary first century sources john the baptist was a major religious leader but today in mainstream christianity he is seen as the forerunner his importance is only that he was the prophet
who prepared the way for jesus john the baptist as we know is the last one among the prophets of the old testament and he's the first personage in the new testament practically the gospel of luke starts off with the birth of john the baptist because john the baptist is a type of watershed between the old testament and the new testament he is known as the forerunner of jesus christ but john is really inferior to jesus in that account isn't he he's related but he's down there jesus is the man well john in john's gospel in
saint john's gospel now we have these words of john the baptist he should become greater and i have to become lesser a lot of what was known about john the baptist in the first century has been lost because it was not convenient for christianity to remember too much there are little clues here and there about what john was really up to but in a way we have to bracket out what scholars call the apologetic texts which make john safe which give him a meaning that is very secondary to jesus meaning archaeologist dr shimon gibson has
spent a lifetime investigating the many biblical locations connected with john the baptist he is convinced he has now identified a new site never before filmed john was also baptizing at anon near celine because water was plentiful there and people were coming and being baptized we're on top of uh tel shalom which is identified as salem and you can look all the way around you that's towards the north towards beijing we have uh the transjordanian mountains over there and then at the foot of this tell we have a very large uh spring complex it's one of
13 or so sort of swings in the vicinity and this one is identified as aenon look i think even even got a map here let me just show you uh here you can see we're standing here right and look at all these blue spots they all represent sources of water spots they're absolutely everywhere all around us the site is part of an old israeli army fort that dates back to the late 1960s when israel was still at war with its neighbor jordan no excavations have taken place here it's a site that hardly anybody comes to
and indeed probably this is the first time that it's being filmed and what was surprising for me on the slope over there i came across pottery which dates and appeared according to the gospels john the baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins which for first century jews was a revolutionary concept jews did immerse in water but for reasons of ritual purity for john baptism meant something very different it's interesting to notice that it's not only about the ritual value of purity but also at least in the case of john the baptist
about atonement if you want to be atoned if you want to be answered by by god acceptance i would say you have first to clean your heart to bring you into a new um a new status in front of god so that's why in the gospels of luke and matthew he challenges people who come to him and he says you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come it's a very kind of provocative statement and the jordan river is a great river for that the river jordan had a huge symbolic
importance for first century jews according to the old testament it was here where their ancestors led by joshua had first crossed into the promised land and and you know all those parallels work very well you imagine oneself enter into the land you imagine oneself enters into new identity he imagines oneself enter into new self-perception and so on joan taylor is convinced that if you examine the gospel accounts carefully they reveal how close john and jesus really were and that in fact jesus may well have been part of john's movement one of his disciples the other
thing that i think is very important about john the baptist that tends to be downplayed in most of the traditions about him is that he was a teacher and that particular element of john is only really preserved in the gospel of luke all the other gospels all the other early christian writers want to forget about that because it's jesus who's the real teacher for joan taylor the original greek of the new testament reveals more clues as to the nature of the relationship between john and jesus and how john may even have been the originator of
the lord's prayer now jesus was praying in a certain place and when he finished one of his disciples said to him lord teach us to pray just as john taught his disciples there are some interesting possibilities in terms of overlap between the teaching of jesus and the teaching of john and one of the most interesting places is in connection with the lucan version of the lord's prayer and that word just as catholics is is kind of striking because it's ambiguous whether or not then jesus replies and gives them a new prayer you know as as
john taught his disciples to pray i now give you a new prayer or in fact identically the prayer john the baptist taught his disciples and um it's just so peculiar that there is that ambiguity given the tendency to minimize john it's clear from all the other contemporary historical sources that john was an important religious figure in galilee and judea in the first century so much so that he became a threat to the local king herod antipas remember that there are thousands of followers i mean he was really a force to contend with he was the
guy that herod antipas uh um uh hated and feared and it's the expansion of his strength roughly about 28 uh ce that really puts the the the fear into herod antipas and that's it he's got to get rid of him the gospels also contain the story of john's death how he was thrown into prison by herod antipas after he had spoken out about herod's marriage to his brother's former wife and how in order to placate his wife herod had john beheaded for joan taylor john is an absolutely crucial figure in the story of jesus the
man who started him on his mission to change the world jesus experienced something absolutely profound here at the jordan river and he also felt that this was a momentous beginning himself it's a visionary experience and it's inner it's something that he himself experiences and then the only way anyone would have known about it is if he had told them this is what happened to me and it validated him he was now son of god and he was also given the power of prophecy the holy spirit is the prophetic spirit so he has the authority now
to preach his own mission in the gospel accounts it was only after john the baptist's execution by herod antipas the jesus began his own ministry he started wandering the villages and towns of galilee preaching his message to the people he also gathered around him a group of followers his disciples he recruited them from among the ordinary people fishermen farmers workers even tax collectors some were also women jesus also performed a series of acts that form one of the most contentious aspects of his life a set of miraculous deeds that are still hotly debated today were
these miracles actual historical events or just symbolic figurative acts any modern person in a scientific world is is going to ask you know are these miracles legit or are they rather really a case of early christian myth making that early christians admired and revered jesus so much that eventually the stories about jesus became magnified and he became this worker of great deeds well your opinion on the question of whether miracles did happen or not is really a religious question either either you believe that such things are possible or you say no we know better these
aren't the kinds of things that happen and you discredit them dr greg carey is an expert in the early followers of jesus he believes that jesus's miracles have a sound basis in historical fact because he is convinced they were widely believed by the people at that time for the bible a miracle is something dramatically unusual that happens so unusual and maybe beneficial or revelatory that people would interpret it as an act of the gods some sort of divine intervention new testament uses a couple of different words for miracle he uses dunamis which simply means a
powerful deed a mighty accomplishment of some sort and samea which indicates a sign something that reveals something about jesus nature on on the one hand there's their benefit for people especially the healing miracles but even occasionally a nature miracle such as turning water into wine but the other dimension of the miracles is that they reveal something about jesus on the third day there was a wedding at cana in galilee and the mother of jesus was there jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples we are on a hill with the ruins with ruins
of an ancient site it's called by the arabs and that's that's a very similar name to kana kana from the new testament the place of the miracle of transferring the water to wine and that's why it was identified by some scholars as as the place of the miracle according to the gospel account of this famous miracle a large wedding party was suddenly disrupted by the wine running out and jesus was asked by his mother to intervene people gathered from the nearby villages nazareth is just three miles away four miles away from here as crow flies
and people gathered from villages this is why you have to do it for a few days because people are coming from far away and what reflects from the story uh in the bible is simple life so suddenly the wine is finished the key part of the story occurred when jesus told the servants to fill six stone jars with water and then to draw some out and take it to the master of the feast when the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine and did not know where it came from though the servants
who had drawn the water knew the gospel of john though concludes the story not just by saying oh everyone says wow this is an amazing miracle but by saying this was the first of jesus signs and that the gospel of john is trying to say is that jesus has the power to bring vitality and abundance that living water will flow within them because of because of jesus that alludes to biblical prophecies that wine would flow down the hills of israel like water there's a suggestion that jesus is the one who brings life that's that's a
part of this miracle at the sight of kirbatkana archaeologists have found a cave that they believe was used by early christian pilgrims who wanted to reenact the famous miracle of turning water into wine and somehow share in its life-giving benefits this was probably the beginning was a natural cave but then when christians identified this place they took this cave and changed it transferred it into a sacred place what they did here is only some kind of a demonstration of the of the miracle itself or to bring people in to see the exact place where the
where the miracle really happened so they would have reenacted in some sort of ritual way in the miracle i assume so i assume so this is a great example of what pilgrims are doing when they're coming to a holy site the miracle stories are an essential part of how the gospels present jesus and how early christians understood jesus it's the case in the modern world that many people like to think of jesus as a great moral teacher but for the early christians it was just as important that jesus could bring wholeness and wellness to people
the healings for example don't simply restore people to health but they also restore people to their full place in society they're no longer marginalized by their their disability or by their uncleanness the second reason these stories are essential though is that they're all revelatory he's the bringer of life and the bringer of vitality but the miracles often are interpreted in terms of stories from israel's past or interpreted in terms of the great deeds that god has performed with israel this theme of abundance occurred throughout jesus's miracles the gospels record two instances where he intervened to
create miraculous catches a fish the first occurred early in his ministry when jesus was calling his first disciples he told some fishermen that if they went out into the deep water and cast their nets they would land a huge catch of fish so much so that it would fill their boats now the catch of fish is interesting because of course this is people's livelihood it's a story that suggests not only that peter and then james and john will be followers of jesus but also that their work will be effective and abundant in its success greg
carey believes that because of a modern cynicism about miracles many historians have downplayed their importance in jesus's life story it used to be that scholars would rationalize the miracle stories of jesus for example one scholar famously suggested that the story of jesus walking on water involved an illusion that jesus was actually walking in a very shallow place and the disciples just thought he was walking on water and i think the reason that scholars interpreted miracles that way of course being modern people rationalistic being of a scientific age is that they tended to regard ancient people
as superstitious or naive but the reality is the ancient people were suspicious of miracle stories themselves and they knew when something truly unusual was happening so chances are that what we really have with the stories of jesus is that in his own time and place he did have a reputation as a miracle worker miracles and miracle makers were a regular part of life for first century jews the old testament the hebrew bible is full of miraculous deeds the people would have been very familiar with during jesus's lifetime every revolution in religion has to look like
a natural continuity that's the way to do it so that's why it was very important to present jesus as one of the prophets and if you look at the stories of moses for instance moses crows crosses the sea of reeds of course jesus doesn't have to split the waters he can walk upon the water that's one example you you have also stories about of course bringing people back to life elijah does it elisha does it so of course jesus will do the same thing there are contemporary accounts from jewish sources of rabbis who wanted the
land performing miraculous deeds one of the most famous was called honey the circle drawer his grave is still a shrine for orthodox jews today you know in this area we have we we never have enough rain and a year after year you have drought in this area and honey was the guy who could force god you know to give us some rain he drew a circle stood within it and told god that he would never leave this circle until god let some rain fall and indeed god listened to him because the relationship between honey and
god was like a relationship of father god the father and and honest a sun in a way quite similar to the relationship of jesus and god like honey some of jesus's most famous miracles involved his power over nature something that would have been very familiar to first century jews steeped in the traditions of the old testament and jesus awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea peace be still and the wind ceased and there was a great calm this is interesting because psalm 107 says that when the storms come up and they make
people out on the sea afraid god simply commands the waves to be peaceful and still and they do so it when jesus does this in the gospel of mark the disciples say what sort of man is this even the wind and the sea obey him but readers of the hebrew bible know the answer this is the man who's doing the things that only the god of israel can do jesus's reputation as a miracle-maker clearly grows through the gospels more than 35 of his miracles are detailed and they frequently drew huge crowds but one of the
most dramatic was performed to just three of his closest disciples when he was transfigured revealed as the son of god and he was transfigured before them and his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light and behold there appeared to them moses and elijah talking with him kerry believes that for first century jews the transfiguration would have had another symbolic significance in aligning jesus with some of the most famous old testament prophets moses who re represents the torah the law of israel and elijah one of the foremost of the prophets moses
and elijah have in common in in the traditions of first century judaism that both of them escaped death that both were taken up into heaven rather than died so that in the transfiguration of jesus you have a story that not only is dramatic but beyond that it connects jesus with the traditions of moses and elijah and it also in some ways foreshadows that this jesus though he will die and he's just told his disciples that he would suffer death uh that resurrection awaits for first century jews jesus miracles were not only believable they were a
crucial part of being a successful rabbi and religious leader the way jesus performs the miracles and the gospel stories is interpreted as a sign that he is god's agent he speaks on his own initiative and people respond and say you know what sort of man is this who's able to make the sea calm what the gospels are trying to communicate is that jesus acts on his own initiative that he is the agent of god's coming reign there's a story that matthew and luke share that john the baptist sends disciples to jesus and say are you
the one who's to come or should we be waiting for another and jesus responds by telling them well you know the lame or walking the blind are having their sight restored that's the answer to the question that in the coming of jesus the the reign of god is breaking into the world and it does so by bringing wholeness to people in communities according to the gospels jesus was now established as a rabbi who could perform miracles and exorcisms after john the baptist's death he had formed his own small movement and been revealed to his closest
disciples as the son of god so now he could begin to spread his new teachings among the peoples of galilee in judea a dangerous message that would soon bring him into direct conflict with the ruling powers in the next part we will see how the gospel story of jesus reached its climax resulting in the founding event of christianity his death and resurrection i'd call jesus a revolutionary he did what revolutionaries do he challenged the structures of power the roman soldiers were professional killers and especially they were good at killing people who were rebel leaders which
is how they saw jesus this was torture and we refused to take it serious he is what dorothy sears calls the man born to die you
