Following the Savior's Steps: The Beginning

It can be difficult to keep straight the details of the chronology and geography of the Savior’s ministry in the Gospels.  The Savior moved throughout various cities and regions in Israel as He taught, healed, served, and ministered to the people, and the Gospel writers were not overly concerned about giving us the details of place and time as they recorded the most important aspects of His life.  But I believe there is still great value in trying to understand everything we can about where He went, what He did, and how the events of His life unfolded as we seek to get as complete a picture as we can of His matchless life.  Over subsequent days I plan to try to outline some of what we know about the timeline and places of the works and teachings of Jesus as I try to sort through the information we have in the gospels.  There are of course countless great scholars and students of the life of Jesus who have done this kind of synopsis already far better than I’ll be able to do.  But hopefully attempting a brief summary myself will help me internalize more fully some of the details of the Savior’s ministry and in more literally follow His steps.  And perhaps it will be of use to someone else.  

There were four main regions in Israel that Jesus ministered in: Galilee in the north, Judea in the south where Jerusalem was, Samaria in between those two, and Perea to the east of the Jordan river.  This map shows those regions with some of the major places of New Testament times.  Mary and Joseph were from Nazareth, a small town in Galilee, and when they went down to Bethlehem in Judea (about ten miles from Jerusalem) where Jesus was born.  After His birth, Joseph and Mary stayed in Bethlehem until he was probably around the age of two, at which point they fled south into Egypt.  We don’t know when they came back to the land of Israel, but it was sometime while Jesus was still young, and when they did return they “came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth” where Joseph and Mary were from in Galilee (Matt. 2:23).  This is where Jesus grew up, but his parents (and likely Him with them on many occasions) “went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover.”  On one of those occasions at the age of 12 He stayed behind in Jerusalem teaching the people (Luke 12:41, 47).  We know very little about His remaining years in Nazareth until He started His three-year ministry. 

               The public ministry of Jesus began when He was “about thirty years of age” and He went to John to be baptized (Luke 3:23).  John was baptizing in “Bethabara beyond Jordan” east of Judea at the southern end of Perea, at least according to the LDS New Testament map (John 1:28).  After Christ’s baptism we read that “immediately the Spirit took him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days” (JST Mark 1:10).  The scriptures don’t specify where that was, but it is at least likely that it was in the nearby “wilderness of Judea” where John had been preaching (Matt. 3:1).  The account of John 1 appears to have taken place directly after the Savior’s temptations when Jesus came back to John in Bethabara (He had already been baptized before the temptations) and invited disciples to follow Him.  From there Jesus did “go forth into Galilee” and went north.  The first recorded event there is what happened at Cana (a city near Nazareth) where He turned the water into wine at the wedding feast.  He subsequently “went down to Capernaum” near the Sea of Galilee before leaving again for Jerusalem for the Passover (John 2:12-13).  This is where he overturned the tables of the money changers and declared that it was His “Father’s house” (John 2:16).  He did miracles there in Jerusalem and this is where Nicodemus subsequently came to Him at night as John 3 records (John 2:23).  He then left Jerusalem but stayed for a time in Judea: “After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judæa; and there he tarried with them, and baptized” (John 3:22).  He taught there for some time and thereafter “left Judea, and departed again into Galilee” (John 4:3).  It was at this time that they went through Samaria (which Jews usually avoided), and Jesus taught the woman at the well about the living water He had.  Many people believed in Samaria, and “after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee” where so much of His ministry would be performed (John 4:43).