the journey from the galilei to jerusalem on passover would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 miles and taken on foot about 7 days, so this was a really big undertaking. evidence of first-century jerusalem can be found deep under the modern city. archaeologists tunneled down for years until they finally came to this point here. this is the street level from the time of jesus. you can see the columns here that, that held up the roofs of shops where shopkeepers would have been selling their goods. you can imagine children running through the streets and people yelling at one another, and of course these are the streets where jesus would have walked towards the temple to go up to worship. i mean this this is a very sacred place.
limestone containers indicate that these were people following jewish purity laws. a jewish family would ideally use limestone vessels because limestone vessels did not contract or convey ritual purity as did other vessels like ceramics, so limestone was preferred for storing water, for cooking, for drinking and so on. could the family who owned these limestone vessels have been the family of jesus? mary and joseph s piety is revealed in the gospel of luke in the only story in the new testament of jesus childhood. now his parents went to jerusalem every year for the feast of the passover, and when he became 12, they went up there according to the custom of the feast. the fact that the family of jesus are regularly going to jerusalem for passover suggests that what we ve got here is a pious family who have a real adherence to the traditions of israel and to the hebrew bible.
in first-century roman-occupied judea, jerusalem at passover must have been an incredibly busy, chaotic, almost glorious place. there was so much to see, so much going on, so many pilgrims crowding there. the experience of being in jerusalem for a 12-year-old child like jesus would have been overwhelming. the sights, the sounds, the smells, but most of all the sheer number of people. during passover, jerusalem s population would have ballooned from 40,000 to around half a million people. we know that there were thousands of pilgrims in jerusalem at this time, and it would have been absolutely thrilling to a young jew like jesus. just imagine what it was like for a 12-year-old boy to be coming from the provinces, from the countries, from the boondocks, to arrive in the big city at a time like this. one cannot overestimate the importance of the temple in
palestinian dispute that we know about today is really instituted unwittingly today by british gambling. the palestinian arabs decided to be granted their own nation, but the jewish population now expects the same thing, and the seeds for jerusalem s next great conflict have been planted . nazareth 2015, one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the century is revealed to the world. could this be the remains of the childhood home of jesus? on archaeological grounds,
first-century judaism. it was the religious center of judaism, the place where god s presence was understood to reside on earth. it was also the political center of judaism. it was also one of the major commercial and economic centers of judaism. around the vicinity of the temple, there would be people coming in on special trips. there would ve been priestly authorities. it would have been filled with animals that had been brought there for passover sacrifices. at some point, mary and joseph lose sight of jesus. it s not difficult to imagine such a thing happening. it s very crowded during the passover in jerusalem. in the temple in particular, there would have been a bustling crowd, so it s very easy to imagine that jesus would get separated from his parents in that kind of scene and become lost. jesus!