What Was Daily Life Like In Biblical Times? | Living In The Time Of Jesus | Parable

[Music] [Music] my name is art kislenko i'm a historian my specialty is the 20th century but i've come here to jerusalem because i want to find out what life was like in the first century look at this a job that's still here after 2 000 years money changer in this famous scene from the gospels jesus sees the money changers in the temple he overturns their tables and drives them out of the temple everybody's always been interested in the commotion jesus caused but i want to know what all these people were doing at the temple that day and what they all did for a living what were their jobs like and what drove the economy [Music] the hillsides around the city of nazareth contain ruins that date back to biblical times they've helped archaeologists and biblical scholars recreate what nazareth would have looked like in jesus's time james tabor a biblical scholar specializing in the life of jesus is here to show me just how real it is but listen james and was nazareth really like this i don't even think it could be reproduced no matter what you did think about the crowdedness the smells the cacophony of sounds the animals animals walking around the dung in the street i was thinking it must have stunk it would have to we're going to go into one of the houses here notice as we step inside through the door we're actually outside in this courtyard area this workshop area right 90 of the life is outdoors even though you're in the house with a bit of shelter from the sun think of all of these activities that go on in a village uh particularly the manufacturing like somebody's going to be making the pottery somebody's going to be baking the bread everybody does that to their house out of their house so it really gives you a sense of that workshop atmosphere and here's an example of the weaving after shearing the sheep and washing the wool the weaver does what's called carting the wool opening it up and separating the fibers so they can work them on the loom that's been cleaned and worked on how long does it take you to clean the wool like uh two months three or four months and can i try that yes so i'm holding it like this and you roll it and spinning it yes and move your fingers with it you don't need to control your fingers with the splinter yes that's it that's easy for you move your fingers that's it you're working for it like that yes okay i'll just let you do that so everything's done here you dye the wool here we dyeing the wall we're carving the wall we're spilling here and after that we take to the loom to make fabrics but it's taking a long long long process but there's another job they're doing in this house that i want to see because it's one of the most famous jobs in the bible carpentry we've all been told that when jesus wasn't over turning tables he was making them now some carpenter's tools haven't changed in 2000 years but some have what's uh what's this tool for a drill it's nothing like my drill how do you use it can i try it that is really tricky now i know where they invented power tools yeah this is hard is it common to have a a small child in the workplace absolutely judaism taught that uh if you don't train your son in a profession you've abandoned him basically we're in a carpentry shop most famous job in the world i mean is this how jesus would have grown up yeah i think that's the image people have it's certainly in the movies and the books we've been studying uh the terms that are used and jesus is called a carpenter in english but of course it wasn't written in english written in greek right but the word actually is tecton which means it means sort of artisan or a builder like a stone mason which really doesn't fit woodworking as much right so it could be any kind of builder you notice there's not a lot of wood in a home right but more stone lots of stuff and most of the examples when jesus taught he talks about stone so often so it's jesus the stone mason not jesus that really does seem to be the best interpretation of the original text i mean that's totally different than everything else we've ever been told before yeah i think the carpenter idea is romantic in a certain way a better image is getting up at three in the morning and heading off to cephas nearby for hard labor uh at four or five in the morning coming back near dark stone was the most important building material in biblical times and easy to get from the rocky terrain so jesus the stonemason may have worked right here two thousand years later builders in israel and around the world have hand-operated gantry cranes and water-cooled sawing machines the modern builders here still use the local limestone building techniques might have changed but the ancient skills are alive for some buildings the shaping and cutting of stone is still done by hand so hot on the trail of the job that jesus may have actually done i'm heading off to the nearby town of cepharus because it's here only three miles but a world away from the village where he grew up that jesus may have gotten his first taste of the occupying power of rome this is james strange a world-renowned authority on biblical archaeology he's been excavating cepherus for nearly 30 years so he'll know why stonemason's nearby nazareth could have worked here in jesus's time all the houses and buildings that you see over here to the left that's nazareth right there that's right this is the economic center so everybody from 18 miles around can come into this city and buy and sell all the villagers all the little hamlets independent farmsteads whatever they are but also this city is in a major trade route that extends all the way to italy and all the way to egypt so it's a trade hub yeah very much so would jesus have come here when herod the great dies this city revolts and the romans respond by destroying it then here the great's son herod antipas inherits this city so he gives orders that be rebuilt so thousands of workmen have to come in here someone has to cut the millions of stones that are in this mosaic floor jesus very well could have come and worked here jesus his father his brothers could all have been here that's incredible in jesus time the roman empire ruled over judea pagan roman life with its many gods and liberal ideas was very different from how the jewish people lived and how they prayed to one god so the young jesus lived right at the intersection of traditional jewish culture and the urban life of the occupying romans he wasn't raised to live as the romans did but he may have built their houses huge houses here's what remains of one of them i mean look at our feet i think it's the biggest threshold in the state of israel it's the most finely cut so i'm thinking a bureaucrat some kind of bureaucrat in fact i would guess we're looking at a magistrate right we come into the opulence that's right his office i presume there was a pool right over here that's a pool that's a pool there was another pool over here so we had two roman pools inside this building this is astonishingly big and roman even the administrators would be local people in the higher realm so they get co-opted into the into the occupying that's right right that's right so the romans didn't just occupy they influenced many of the jewish people many of them were hellenized or romanized absorbing greek and roman culture right here in the busy city of cepherus so what was it like here it's the main road it's absolutely teeming with life people going everywhere they're buying they're selling they're manufacturing there'll be a laundry you can go in there this will be selling spices and it'll be very aromatic it must have really smelled oh yeah you bet it did think about a fresh fish shop and you're walking right by it you know with all this fish and the sun's been on a little while and then also there are two drains underneath us on either side of the street actually and all kinds of sewage is running through there so we're smelling fish we're smelling sewage we're smelling cinnamon we're smelling perfume we're smelling people depending on the prevailing winds for example you could be coming in from tiberius and you could actually smell this city before you saw it the ancients speak of that now i wanted to ask you though you know i'm always fascinated by these little things so you know what are the people wearing and what are they how do they keep clean in a place like this well if they're wearing white like they're a high-ranking person then it has to be washed in urine that's the roman technology so it stinks it stinks it's noisy it's energetic there's a lot of things going on so it's the fifth avenue of the ancient it's something like that a fifth avenue in a major city right in the ancient world the gospels tell us that when commerce threatened to take over the life of the temple jesus cracked the whip and the seeds for that rage could have been sown here at cepherus where jesus was likely getting his hands dirty while trying to keep his soul clean jesus's job leads him to where the work is and his ideas and philosophy begin to develop with huge consequences [Music] this is how every day began in first century villages with women making bread before dawn in the time of the bible the men went out early to work in the fields but the women were up first making a meal for them to take along when it came to biblical jobs women literally kept the home fires burning if you didn't want to use sticks to create friction and heat and if you didn't have a flint to create a spark you kept the fire going at all times to heat your home and cook your meals [Music] food historian tova dickstein is an expert in the foods of ancient israel she's helping me to prepare your basic year one meal i can't wait to see how it tastes is it healthy i mean yeah this is very healthy why because it's a complete nutrition this is wall wheat right wall with lentil it's a complete protein it's like meat ah right yeah so the wheat and the lentils together make up your protein protein and here you have calcium they pick up the fig because they knew i don't know how they know it but you get the calcium from the figs so these are the basic basic food groups exactly so simple that's the beauty of it yeah if we were living in biblical times would this be all we'd ever eat no this is the very basic ingredients but people had more like vegetables garden vegetables food olive now this smells amazing it really does and i'm not saying that because i helped to make it so he used the bread as a as a scoop we would have had bread every meal in biblical times right yeah but it was the staple food every meal there there were people that this was the main dish bread was between 50 and 70 percent of the meal really yeah 70 of every meal almost every meal which is probably why the gospel of matthew contains a phrase that many of us know give us this day our daily bread this is far better than i thought it would be this is absolutely delicious this diet provided all the nutrition you would need for a hard day of work in the fields many of the jobs here were connected to the land on the day the gospels tell us jesus overturned the money changers table some of the people in the temple were likely farmers they would have come here to bring their first crops as an offering of thanks [Music] with your life dependent on your crops and animals you figure everyone would try and get along but the bible tells us that adam and eve had two sons cain was a farmer and abel was a shepherd and we know how that turned out ronit mayoz is an expert in ancient israeli studies and she can tell us what agricultural jobs around here were like a farmer of course would look at the shepherd is something very very low but i think the shepherd would look at the farmer as being a prisoner because he's tied to his land so do you mean that farmers and and shepherds would compete are not friends especially if you have those goats beyond their use as food in biblical times goats were also used for temple sacrifices these money changers that jesus will confront are converting foreign currency and one of the reasons pilgrims needed the local currency is so that they could buy animals to sacrifice in the temple but before they meet their fate as lunch or sacrifice goats have their own ideas if she wants uh to eat from a tree she will climb or as much as she can and she will take the leaves she will also take out the roots something that the sheep cannot do so for a farmer she's really she's a destroyer maybe that's why the farmer came and the shepherd abel didn't get along abel's livestock really got kane's goat and the sheep were useful not just for food but for making clothes but first you had to catch them would you like to leave this vlog would you like to do that sure let's give it a try okay let's go i think you forgot one [Music] oh yes did you see that [Music] champion shepherd is it terrible that i'm thinking lamb kebabs right about now for the biblical farmer the most important task was growing enough food for his family animals provided crucial help plowing the fields and growing staple foods no wonder the bible mentions animals so often they were life and lifeline your mule your car whatever animal you had is really your friend she knows you the most important thing in my world she is yeah yes because everything depends on her yes but in the bible isn't there a reference to plowing a straight line jesus says to his followers if you follow me do it like you were plowing in the field just go straight after me don't look right don't look to the left and that's not easily done all right yes now the left one yikes i think she's more interested in eating than in ploughing start going you know it's a lot easier to say that than to do that yeah wrong deal yeah very good yeah [Music] that's it yeah yeah look look look i'm doing it from morning to night i'd be out here tonight you'd be plowing now it's really a lot of work i'm sweating now but you know that god said to adam that with the sweat of your brow you will get bred out of the land yeah there we go that's a girl biblical farmers developed a terracing system still in use here they cut large shelves out of the hillside to prevent the soil from washing away here they grew barley and wheat and anxiously hoped they'd chosen the right amount of seeds to eat and to sow so that's the actual barley just the ceilings yeah it's very important that they get settled now on the ground and that they grow and they get roots so what's the worst thing that could happen as a farmer in biblical times no rain the worst nothing gross this is going to be bread so if there is no bread there is no life here from the time of the bible right up to today for the jewish people unless you've broken bread you haven't had a meal in the holy temple beyond the courtyard where the sacrifices were held was the sanctuary and the only food allowed him there was bread but to grow the grains needed for your bread you needed water being a biblical farmer meant looking to the skies and praying there would be enough rain one of the toughest jobs was hauling water and guess who did that actually you are now doing a typical woman's job you know this is a woman's work very hard work of course very important one of the hardest will be given either to the women or to slaves we're university professors by the way you know that it was very hard job but this is also the place of encounters women found their spouses really yes the most important encounters happened by a whale or a sister so this is like all the important marriages this is the first century hangout this is the internet facebook of course that's a matchmaking place here at the well chance encounters led to many important biblical marriages moses and zappora jacob and rachel isaac and rebecca now this place is not as well suited to matchmaking but it's just as important for collecting water ancient engineers designed this wooden treadmill connected to a ring of clay pots called a sakia now how it works is that you walk or run on this part of the wheel and if you're doing it right the wheel spins and those jugs up on top scoop up water from this pond and then drop them into that sluice at the top and then the sluice runs into a trough behind me where people would pick up the water for farming and drinking and so on but you got to keep going on this because the momentum really drops off quickly so these are the jobs that would have surrounded jesus when he was growing up but many of his followers the disciples held a different profession one we haven't seen so far i want to find out why so many of them were in this profession and i want to try and do this job i'm in israel learning about jobs in the time of jesus and there's a pretty important job you can't miss if you read the new testament because at least four of the disciples of jesus were fishermen so i've come north to the sea of galilee to find out why this is heim weitzman a second generation fisherman who grew up right here on the shores of the galilee we're going to fish where the disciples fished and maybe find out the connection between this job and jesus's earliest followers time we got to get a cover for your boat a little roof one splash guard that's a hat i love that now i'm a fisherman yes looks good so how did the disciples know where to find the fish like heim they knew the waters around here and they used their instincts it didn't always work but they had jesus and the gospels tell us he miraculously knew where to find the fish we have sonar we're fishing for tilapia which has been swimming in these waters since before the time of the disciples now they call it st peter's fish named after guess who [Music] very good my first fish isn't it look at that this is bigger but mine's tougher how many fish do we norm do you catch every day it's one 100 kilo 100 kilo 100 kilo yeah in one one net one nit yeah well i caught slightly less than that and i'm gonna cook them up biblical style this is varied gross who manages dex restaurant here in the galilee she's gonna show me how it's done me and ata will be happy to teach you great oh yeah all right you take the fish you stick it through it i believe that's the technical term okay great job better than others you see the teacher became the pupil this is a special type of oregano it's called like that yeah this is hot hot thing and if you want to check if the fish is ready yeah you take the stick of the oregano okay and you try to you know this is my ancient fish thermometer yeah if it goes through it's ready hi jim hello there are you how are you all right look at that i'm impressed ah wait a second a little biblical uh garnish here for you a little biblical garnish [Music] well very nice indeed while jim enjoys my expertly caught and brilliantly cooked saint peter's fish i ask him about the biblical fishing business first of all you fish with nets that's that's what's economical if you're trying to do something commercial and then when you fish with nets in the ancient world you fish at night because the fish can't see the nets at night in order to keep your clothes from being ruined by them wash and bring your nets and so on you usually fish naked the tv viewers will be glad that i i i didn't try that experiment but uh that's a little too much these people i mean fishing in ancient times around here the are they are they poor not at all this is the most stable industry for this area according to the writings of the first century eyewitness josephus the galilee had a thriving economy with a salting factory to preserve fish for export and with some of the catch they made fish sauce which was called garum i'm meeting biblical food historian susan weingarten to learn how to do this fragrant job we're going to cut these fish up put them into the pot together with salt the guts of the fish have enzymes in them the enzymes will break down the flesh of the fish the salt will prevent it from producing all sorts of harmful bacteria and we leave it around for three months any kind of fish right any kind of fish everything goes in always a bit of salt in the middle now what was garum used for the top quality garum was used as a condiment as a flavoring because rather you use soy sauce nowadays the lower quality ones was the sort of thing that you dip your bread into perhaps and at the bottom there's a sludge which they used to eat the sludge would contain the bones which don't get digested by the enzymes and it's these bones that we find archaeologically and we can identify that this was the place where they made garum whose job would this have been other than mine now the video was right they will be made in factories we've found the remains of garum factories all around the mediterranean so this would have been a commodity a commodity that was traded widely over the mediterranean king herod ported garum from spain spanish garam was the best they've even found garum in masada would this have been considered to be a a good job as a garam maker or a person working in the garam factory i i guess not but the person that made all his money out of the out of owning the factory i can't imagine this was a glamorous job i can't imagine this either so how long has this garam been sitting this garam's been sitting here for a month and a half in this one for a bit over two months beautiful yeah let's have a go look you can see the fish the way they're all decaying this is absolutely revolting it wouldn't smell nearly so bad at the end of the process this has to rank as maybe one of the worst jobs i would ever have to do we didn't make you eat it did we no and and i'm really grateful that you didn't so there were lots of fish in the sea the sea of galilee which could be sold salted and made into fish sauce for export this was a good business and in the nearby fishing village of bethsaida where many of the disciples came from there's more evidence of how profitable the job fishing could be betsaida is right on a major international trade route the via mars you've heard of the road to damascus well it starts down in egypt and goes right through here this is the site of bethsaida it's a major city in jesus lifetime the image in my head of poor fishermen gets dispelled in betsy where archaeologists have discovered evidence of a middle-class lifestyle how do you know these were houses of the fishery well because um weights from for fishing nets have been found here um they have actually found the bones of fish here this is the courtyard of the house of the fisherman and this is the wine cellar it's a wine cellar and this is what we need to find out if they're wealthy or not because all the houses look the same on the outside it's what's on the inside it tells us their level of wealth they found tall jars of the type that are used for wine if they're collecting wine and going to a lot of trouble to corbel this over and to make a cool place then they're they're trying to preserve a collection of wine pretty wide yeah yeah you can store quite a lot didn't you yeah so you don't express your wealth by decorating the house on the outside you accumulate things on the inside that indicate your wealth what would this tell you about the life of fishermen around here well it tells us that they can accumulate a lot of capital that they're really rather well off the disciples they weren't poor they're fishermen they might be fishermen contractors you know they might have a lot of boats out there and they might be doing very well and they were better off than other trades people basically some of them lived here yeah some of them actually lived here came from bedside peter and andrew particularly right in this neck of the woods isn't it yeah we could be looking at their houses and not knowing it [Music] you know it makes sense that the disciples would have had well-paying jobs because the jesus movement is a rebellion a revolution and that takes cash as well as belief we're seeing a transition between the old testament and the new and jobs are one of the key differences in the south the farmers and shepherds of the bible are at the mercy of the rain and the seasons but in the north the new testament stories are all about fishing a year round and stable business all right we've seen the nice guys in the nature who isn't happy to meet a farmer or a fisherman they provide food but there were guys who did another kind of job in jesus time and everyone hated them no one was happy to see them show up and yet it's a job that one of jesus's own disciples did in the first century the roman empire ruled over judea but not only were the people colonized they had to pay taxes to rome and what did the romans do with all the money some of it went in to build places like this i'm here in the ancient city of betcheon and all i can say is wow this place is incredible it is beautiful it's massive and i'm thinking that at its height it must have been incredibly opulent everybody has that reaction their mouths just drop open they think you know am i in rome or greece and here we are in jewish roman palestine this area has been inhabited for over 9 000 years and no wonder two rivers converge here in the lush jordan valley making for a plentiful water supply as well as rich soil and its location also has strategic importance as the road north from jerusalem intersects here with the coast road from lebanon so i gotta ask i mean how on earth would you pay for something like this well the simple word is texas and the romans insists that conquered territories pay their own way as well as pay for this sort of massive building what kind of taxes are we talking about there are individual taxes per head and their property taxes their cuts into a certain percentage of produce we think it might be anywhere from 30 to 50 for the poor it had to be truly oppressive it wasn't graduated so if it was 30 of a smaller amount i mean you could barely get enough to eat [Music] so when it comes to first century jobs ruling over another country and collecting taxes from them is certainly one of the most profitable so if it's an oppressive tax regime i mean is this like 1776 where you have the taxation without representation actually i think three times we have record that herod antipas who rule galilee he reduced the taxes and the only reason he would do that is uh the people were finally saying isn't enough is enough right and the final revolt was even over taxes so what happens if if you can't pay is there any sort of tax break i think it's almost like tightening screws the client ruler herod is watching to see how much pressure you can put on in addition to all this splendor which may not have interested the local workers who were paying for it the romans also used tax money to build roads and aqueducts which did interest the locals so there were mixed feelings towards the roman conquerors and towards tax collectors not the most popular job then or now but one of the disciples of jesus was a tax collector levi who was also called matthew with jesus so opposed to roman oppression why did he have someone like this in his entourage the gospels tell us that jesus is looking everywhere for sinners to repent and i guess that includes tax collectors now we know how the irs reacts if you don't pay your taxes but what was it like in biblical times so what happens if there's a drought or a famine and you can't pay your taxes there's no mercy you could go to jail you could lose your land you know maybe you own a family plot of land and all of a sudden uh it's uh given over to some rich landowner were people killed for this was there execution for not paying your taxes we do have examples of 2 000 people being crucified up and down the road here in galilee for not paying their taxes because they joined an anti-tax revolution imagine seeing crosses up and down a roman road yeah i'd start paying my taxes at that point that's exactly right beyond your basic greed the romans also found that taxing everything and everybody dovetailed nicely with that other pillar of empire building trade trade routes allowed them to tax goods at every stage of the journey and it was merchants another important job in the time of the bible who had to deal with both taxes and trade getting your wares to the big cities sometimes involved a great deal of travel especially for certain goods that the city absolutely could not do without for instance in jerusalem they had to have frankincense without it there could be no temple worship why not what is frankincense anyway and where does it come from i've come to the negev desert to trace the frankincense trail and learn more about the men who couldn't do their jobs without it the priests the same men who clashed with jesus [Music] from this famous scene in the new testament where jesus overturns the money changers table i've been learning about the jobs all these people did in biblical times and how their professions could have brought them all to the holy temple in jerusalem on that day there was another very important job practiced by those who were already at the temple the priest priests were the link between the people and their god performing animal sacrifices and burning a special incense called frankincense as an offering frankincense begins as a tree resin from southern arabia but to get it to jerusalem it used to have to go through this i'm in the negev desert taking the same route the merchants and camel drivers took [Music] and i'm here to meet eunice aburbaia and has heard of camels this is my camel okay what's his uh what's his name uh shyla okay the java camel driver hasn't changed much in 2000 years the most important thing is to look after your animal because we're a long way from anything they're incredible animals smarter than the vehicles that replace them and unlike cars and trucks they can go over almost any terrain cover up my big head well thank you very much [Music] foreign veterans always feed their guests and if we were ancient merchants we would certainly need to be fortified for the journey taking frankincense through the desert to jerusalem that is delicious now i'm ready for my first camel ride okay okay oh i'm on a candle that's great and now what do i do how do i uh you know i should have read the manual before i uh i bought the camera okay there's no instructions for this all right whoa that's the big head whoa that is something else this is the only way to haul cargo in the desert these guys are the 18 wheelers of the middle east out here i can imagine that in the first century there would have been hundreds of camels and caravans stretched out across the horizon hauling goods from thousands of miles away towards jerusalem and there were jobs along the way too since camels shed their owners made money from their hair which was used to make clothing remember spinning the yarn back in nazareth imagine doing it while on the road to jerusalem out here you make use of everything you can and you paid a toll or tribute to rome and territories he passed through no wonder frankincense was so expensive by the time it got here to jerusalem it had been taxed to the hill [Music] i'm in the sook for a marketplace here in old jerusalem a lot of things have changed over time but you can still get goods here that were sold during biblical times this is frankincense [Music] we know it best as one of the gifts that was brought to baby jesus by the three wise men how much is this this is 100 gram 12 12 shekels for one for one yeah for one yes can i smell that yeah sure sakura it's very beautiful frankincense that's beautiful it's good for smell good for memory good for all anything because that many people before 2050 years ago he has put all of this in his home so 2000 years ago yeah this was used so everyone everyone some people believe frankincense to be an effective anti-inflammatory and current medical studies are testing other benefits but the ancients knew that burning frankincense was an offering they had to make to god it's still burned in churches today and 2000 years ago pilgrims coming to jerusalem and entering the temple would have inhaled its sweet fragrance three times a year the jewish people came to the temple from all over the world for the major festivals i'm in old jerusalem and this is the western wall it's the only above-ground structure that's left of the temple that the romans destroyed the temple mount is the holiest place in judaism and the western wall is its only physical remnant just up here on temple mount the very first temple was built about a thousand years before jesus was born people come here 365 days a year 24 hours a day to pray in this square many of them write prayers on small scripts and place them in the wall others kiss the wall the pilgrims brought animal sacrifices to the temple but they didn't bring a goat or a dove with them halfway around the world so the first thing they had to do was convert their currency so that they could buy animals to sacrifice so what about this job money changer did jesus really object to it after all without it pilgrims couldn't buy and offer their sacrifices it wasn't the job it was where the job was located inside the temple this crowded city of pilgrims attracted merchants of every kind it was a good place for business but jesus didn't want the temple turned into a business and some say the priests were allowing it to happen [Music] i want to find out more about this job which was unlike any other an answer to a boss unlike any other in the pressure cooker of jerusalem how did these priests balance religion commerce rome and the first century rebel in the time of the bible jerusalem was as busy as it is today times a year pilgrims came from all around to offer sacrifices in the temple that used to be beyond this wall jerusalem's pilgrims were great for local jobs then and now [Applause] there were food vendors there were hostile owners and there were merchants of every kind but unlike today there were thousands of priests who served in the temple these priests were in the temple to represent the people before their god and nothing could interfere with them performing their holy functions the most important functions were performed by the high priest but under roman occupation there was plenty of interference with this job and rome made sure that the man it wanted was appointed his duty was to god but pleasing rome allowed him to fulfill that duty so he and the other priests had a delicate tightrope to walk shimon gibson is a world-renowned biblical archaeologist who directs excavations in israel he can bring us closer to the lives of these men for whom ritual purity was the key to being able to do their job so here you can see one of the gates uh which led into uh the temple area this is the place where all the pilgrims who had been purified in a salon pool and including the priests who would come from the upper city would enter into the temple so everybody comes right through here exactly and it must have been a pretty chaotic scene if you've got all these people coming in fairly chaotic but you had a very very strict administration and had uh the the temple administrators they would make sure that only those who had been purified in the pools were allowed into the temple everyone had to immerse in a special pool called a mikvah before entering the holy temple its purpose was not for physical cleanliness but for ritual purity there were large mikvahs for the pilgrims like this one the pool of siloam mentioned in the new testament and recently discovered near where the temple stood and the water was on different levels so um whenever the pool was at a lower level then you'd descend the steps if the water was at a higher level then you could so remain uh closer so this went continually down all the way down to the bottom and the steps were on all four sides which is quite nice so you gotta imagine almost like a theater with all these people sitting around uh and uh they've all come here in order to purify themselves before going up to the temple it was critical that priests become pure before entering the temple one became impure by coming into contact with death for instance being in the presence of a dead body and life's potential was sacred so both the presence of semen that had not conceived as well as menstrual fluid required a trip to the mikvah the priests believed that if they were impure when they entered the temple everything they were trying to accomplish in the prayers for their people would fail there were and still are strict rules about what kind of water could be used in a ritual bath it couldn't be brought in by unnatural means it had to be rain water or from a spring or river since nothing was more important than this ritual purity some of the priests had their own private mikvahs shimon gibson is digging in what is believed to have been a priestly quarter of ancient jerusalem and he has discovered what is believed to be a priestly house so we're gonna go down here we're actually gonna descend through time because we're at the level of the ottoman period greater bridges yes which is uh mid 16th century and we're gonna go all the way down to two thousand years to the levels from the first century from the time of jesus so we're gonna descend the elevator of time how do you know that there are priestly houses as opposed to somebody else's house well we have historical sources we also have um archaeological findings excavations revealed a house uh with an inscription indicating that this was a house which belonged to the priestly family i mean these were the neighbors of king herod the great and subsequently of the the roman governors of jerusalem because the roman governor was situated just up slope from where we are jerusalem was a very wealthy city being the focus of pilgrims three times a year those who lived in jerusalem were able to sell their goods to them were able to rent out their houses so you don't have a lower class in jerusalem you have the middle class those who are better off and those who are less better off and the aristocracy and the priesthood people also think of jesus coming to jerusalem and then uh moving in and around the in between the houses of the poor but there were no poor people the jews of the time that's fascinating i never thought that so there's a lot of animal bones here and uh you can see them sort of scattered around here you can see a red bone oh look look there's a coin you see that green it's corroded that's why it's got that green sort of skin to it that's really cool and what's nice is it's caught between these two stones so it'll give us some information about when this wall was constructed check it out you were actually trusting me well since you're here on the site you've got to dig it out the one thing you don't do is rub the surface because it's corroded and so it can actually peel away almost like an onion and and with it it can take the image which is on the the the koi itself on the metal this is the loose change just like you find loose change all over the place modern at least james you know same in in antiquity i have to give it up yes you have to it's so there we go and that is my uh my first ever archaeological fight your fingers have touched history that's beautiful it really is it's exciting there's always a first time isn't it touching history is quite a change from teaching it but there's more to see as we descend further into history shimon is using geophysical mapping technology to see what hasn't yet been excavated and he discovers something incredible at the lowest level of this house and lo and behold in this area we found this hidden chamber with its ceiling still intact well fantastic it's really amazing you're in the cellar of the priestly house and it's here that you have this mikva which is this ritual pool if you came in from the marketplace you might have brushed shoulders with a lapa which had made you impure so if you're entering into the house the first thing you did was you went to purify yourself finding a mikvah in the home of a priest tells us just how crucial ritual purity was it wasn't only in the temple they needed to be pure everywhere they went in the city of god when jesus overturned the tables of the money changers these priests would have felt that he was overturning their world the delicate balance they had achieved between their god and the romans and here in his house we can touch this man's life this vanished job temple priest this is extraordinary [Music] doing their jobs and finding out about their everyday lives i've learned a lot about all the people who would have converged on the temple on a fateful day in the first century [Music] [Music] my name is aaron koslanko my day job is teaching history but now i want to live it so i've come here to israel to find out what life was like at the time of the bible modern concoctions ancient ingredients makes me wonder what people at the time knew about sickness and medicine the gospels report that people with a variety of ailments and diseases came to ritual baths such as this one the pool of siloam in jerusalem the most famous was a blind man who had asked jesus for help jesus mixes his saliva with the earth and puts it on the blind man's eyes telling him to immerse in the pool of siloam the blind man does and then miraculously he can see it's an inspiring story but i'm also interested in the other stories we see in this scene look at all these sick people why have they all come here and which of them will get better when you got sick in the first century what did you do about it [Music] today when we get sick most of us go to doctors but what did they do in biblical times to find out i meet dr lior rosenberg he collects ancient medical instruments and can tell me about what they knew in the first century are these actually first century these are actually first century or even maybe older these are roman instruments many of them are found here dr rosenberg has ancient probes lancets scalpels this is going to get ugly isn't it yes yeah can i pick these up yeah sure but it's quite sharp well it's good thing i have a doctor with me isn't it uh okay so this would be so this is what we call the the scalpel or the blade the modern blade okay and this is a roman blade they look almost identical also the size are very similar and if you had a problem that couldn't be fixed with these cutting and sewing tools there were objects in the shape of whatever problem you had to remind god what you needed help with surgery was not really practice at that time we became doctors i mean physician only in the 18th 19th century before that we were barbers yeah plain old barbers yes and carpenters and other tradesmen whoever had sharp tools given this approach to surgery it's understandable why you might pin your hopes on a miracle worker like jesus rather than go under the knife now these are leeches obviously can i can i sure okay they would use this to bloodlet same principle the same principle exactly and in modern time they're also used for bloodletting in microsurgery so so ancient times ancient ways have made a comeback exactly unfortunately they're about to make a comeback on me oh come on other than hurt what is this gonna do for me it's supposed to extract the bad blood out of your body and bring it to the surface and allow the good blood to remain once that bad blood comes to the surface the leeches can suck it out of me great is that a special leech tube yes what do you want it no no this is where do i want it how about on you he's smelling me isn't it yeah now with this sleech tube i really can aim where i put it no you just feel it that's why do i feel like i'm in a science fiction movie all of a sudden because you are do you feel any pain he's stabbing me yeah he's having lunch yeah what kind of ailments would they have used this for er they use it for anything and in all parts of the body they were using glitches on the forehead really on the nose inside the nose the nostrils they even were using on the lips going down obviously on the chest on the back on the hands on the fingers to treat hemorrhoids witches yes let's skip that one right some patients found out the hard way that excessive bloodletting wasn't always a help but using cups and heat to bring what people call bad blood to the surface is still done today instead of glass in biblical times they would have used clay cups or animal horns and for some ailments they also used a variety of herbs because the climate hasn't changed that much around here in 2000 years many of those herbs are still growing today i'm heading north with sharon kotzer who's an expert in herbal medicine because i want to find out how they used herbs to keep healthy in the time of jesus beautiful yes this is amazing place it's exactly i guess how it used to be two thousand years ago nothing really changed here really so this is exactly like it would have been in the bible i think so with this beautiful nettle it's something this is amazing color but they used to take it and used to uh actually to whip the skin with it all right they used to do it because in cases of kind of inflammatory disease of the of the joints kind of arthritis arthritis okay right well i've got arthritis i think i'll give that a try the blood supply decrease and lots of toxins accumulate and when you do this you actually stimulate the nerve ending and the blood supply to the area so they had a variety of methods to stimulate the blood supply if your problem was in a joint where cups weren't an option you could use this herb and it's a kind of counter irritant it's bring a kind of new blood supply to the area it's cleaned the affected joint it was used this method for thousands of years by people i'm definitely taking some of this home i wonder if i can get it by customs this is a kind of of ramnes this is quite a strong a laxative rammels ramnes this is from the sage family it's called balota bolota belota they used for lung problems for lung disease it's also a kind of mental relaxant sharon shows me some of the herbs that they would chew in biblical times willow bark for headaches pistachio leaf or bad breath and a mallow plant for ulcers marshmallow yeah it's marshmallowy taste it see what you think let me eat everything yeah just eat it it's very slimy yeah yeah very slim it creates protecting kind of flair over inflamed mucous membranes okay for example a mouse ulcers outside of the stomach right any other inflammatory condition also on the skin on burns it's a protect ensues probably one of the main edible plants of the bible type it's like you've got nature's medicine chest all over the place absolutely that's what we have and today healing ingredients from biblical times are combined in tasty concoctions i've come to jerusalem's mahani yehuda market to meet a third generation healer named uzieli because i want to see how he uses biblical fruits for help hi welcome nice to meet you welcome thank you very much nice to be here this is a pomegranate mentioned in the bible as one of the fruits the israelites missed when they were wandering in the wilderness i love pomegranate eat it it's cholesterol blood pressure this is the new medicine in the market now this is an edtrog it's an ancestor of today's lemons and limes biblical jews planted them and uzieli uses every part the juice for the stomach that's fantastic and the skin in a spray for everything else massage your face now go on as deep as i can like that yeah keep it younger no wrinkles i'm more beautiful more beautiful you want me to stick this up yes yes do it like this like this one drop one drop jeez [Music] you don't need medicine anymore i have arthritis in my hands yes so ancient times what would i get they use the ginger ginger big stuff the ginger will get inside and also if you have a problem at the back you squeeze it the ginger juice yeah so what else they they have olives back then two thousand years ago pomegranates you know figs yeah yeah figs dates almonds fantastic and you use the same stuff all the time yes and it's not only biblical food uzi ellie also makes use of biblical animals this is a hair of goats black goats in the desert we took the hair of the goats and we make it together and what does it do it doesn't there's no medicine so if you have migraine you're just circling around your head a little bit pain yeah hey so you will not forget me and the penguin go away now take your hand press a little bit gently around your head yeah that itches that's scratchy yeah and then duh okay i don't have any hair up there to protect me maybe we'll grow up okay that's what i need i need some hair tonic so in biblical times there were some conditions you could treat but blindness wasn't one of them so once word got out that jesus cured the blind man people with all kinds of incurable conditions likely came to the pool of siloam hoping he could help them too in addition to this body of water where people sought healing there was a much larger one and people still go there for its healing waters today it's the lowest point on earth the dead sea it's 10 times saltier than the oceans which is what makes you float you literally can't sink but people don't just come here for that how do you like the most it feels weird i don't really like it drying i like putting it on but now i'm kinda but it's supposed to be good for your skin so yeah i need them i was kind of hoping it grew hair too [Laughter] to find out why they come from all over the world i meet dr marco harari who treats patients here so dr hari exactly why do people come here to your clinic we are using the air but also the earth and the sun the air because we have more oxygen here about six percent more than any place in the world the earth because we are using the black mud and the salt from the dead sea and the sun because our sun is filtrated here and can allow a longer time to exposure to sun for many patients so it's very unique uh weather conditions it is exactly a very unique condition but it is not a new one it's not new we have some references from 2000 years ago so they did know in biblical times to come here for their for their skin helmet cue for the skin diseases rheumatologic diseases and lung diseases i have arthritis so if i came here uh and used the the mud in particular i would get better surely surely we have some data showing that people are improving for three six months after simple applications of black mud you know this is the way to meet girls it really is not married girls what exactly is the science behind this how do you prove that people are being treated so well here we understand that the combination of souls of the dead sea and ultra violet b uvb of this area is an unique combination for improving skin diseases but not only skin diseases black mud for example can be used for many rheumatic conditions for joint diseases from musculoskeletal diseases we know that people are in a good remission after treatment of the dead sea for at least eight to nine months something that is pretty good for any kind of other treatment so it is fantastic to see that without drugs without medicine we can reach at least the same result than with medications after being in the dead sea i feel very alive to treat my arthritis i'd have to do three weeks of floating appointments which would be fine with me so far i've found out what they did know about health in the time of the bible now i want to find out what they didn't know in this famous scene from the gospels jesus miraculously gives sight to the blind man at the pool of siloam in jerusalem [Music] today you hear people saying they're praying for a miracle after they've already tried everything else but in biblical times prayer was the first thing you did even today some people pray when they get sick and some studies have shown it may work the most famous scientific study showing that prayer has a positive influence on healing was a double blind study done in san francisco in 1982. those coronary patients who were prayed for were in less need of ventilators and antibiotics some dispute these studies but i want to find out more about the connection between prayer and health so i'm meeting with rabbi ken sparrow this book the torah contains some of the prayers the jews offer to god the torah also contains the commandments for how to live so ken are there commandments with some of the commandments dealing with things like like your physical health your public health absolutely and it's interesting that many of the laws of ritual purity have shown to have side benefits that have been very beneficial in terms of hygiene and personal health although they're not given for that reason yeah i wanted to ask you about the the ritual purity i don't what exactly does that mean well the ritual purity again even though mikva's a ritual bath and baptism comes from it it's a side benefit that you're clean but the purpose of ritual bath was not to clean yourself physically but to unclog yourself spiritually at the time belief in spiritual purity was a belief in health but on the physical side cleanliness being next to godliness didn't always pan out in these ritual baths these mikvahs because of what people at the time didn't know about infection and germs i'm on my way south to qumran to see how this played out near the dead sea in the judean desert is the first century home of the essenes the jewish sect who rode many of the dead sea scrolls among the oldest biblical texts ever discovered found in these caves in 1947 after being hidden for two thousand years the dead sea scrolls reveal to us a pre-christian group of jews who believed in the teacher of righteousness like jesus and who were readying themselves for the final apocalypse since the end of days could happen at any moment they kept themselves pure and purity touched on everything including going to the bathroom but there was no bathroom out here i'm with biblical scholar james tabor because it was his team who discovered exactly where the essenes put their latrines we're on our way there now to see how their rituals of purity affected their health and one of the things about the scrolls besides religion and mysticism is ritual purity bodily things blood sex death and the toilets are precisely located outside the living area at least 1500 cubits that's probably 700 yards or so okay and hidden away from the camp it's quite the climb especially in an emergency so here we are exactly where the essenes went when they had to go how did they do it so we've got you in a white essene tunic and a belt and then you always have a spade or a it's actually mentioned in the text it's issued to you when you join the group and it's not for gardening it is for the latrines so you need to dig a shallow hole how big is this hole you have to be able to cover it so that could vary from day to day right and is this actually in the squirrels this is in the scrolls how far down not how far down not that just that you dig a pit now squat over it the dignity lift your robe okay robes up and let me know when you're finished how did you know that it was right here or right there we actually took a trowel like that and we took samples all over dozens and dozens of samples all through here all through here and then we did soil tests on them and we found intestinal parasites really whip worms round worms tapeworms eggs and so we begin to think now wait a minute uh they're wearing sandals this is like a toxic waste dump they're actually getting it on their feet walking back and the worst thing in the world you could do is then go in a pool of water but that's exactly what they did after doing their thing 700 yards outside the camp the essenes would immerse in the waters of this mikvah before re-entering the community washing is good for hygiene but the essenes didn't know about sharing germs that's bad for hygiene you went outside the camp you're coming back in before you enter the camp you have to clean yourself from our point of view you're introducing these microorganisms we talked about that have infected the soil right these uh parasites intestinal parasites so i i bring them down from the bringing them down they're gonna get all in your eyes your mouth your nose any cuts they're on your feet and they would be unaware of this from a sanitation standpoint everything's unclear i'm a time bomb basically i walk right into the community and spread yeah the high cost of holiness a people not prepared to pay that high cost were the romans who were occupying the land of israel at the time they brought aqueducts sewers and improved sanitation to the holy land which helped control the spread of disease i've come to see the archaeological evidence in the jordan valley at betsyan now these are toilets isn't this incredible this is amazing this is the best example in the holy land of roman indoor toilets we should give it a try i gotta give it a sec i'm not gonna coax you at all i'm just gonna see if you do any better than my students i'm guessing if i sit on the one it could be a little messy so uh only so i'll raise the toga raise the toga okay and then like this all right this is good that's why i did a phd in history this is uh this is exactly yeah i gotta i gotta ask you this looks fairly sophisticated so let me join you all right you don't mind not at all would you want me right next to you maybe a little bit i think give me some privacy i think this works better like this but there was no privacy you were right next to your neighbors quite a few of them you've got the forum and the agura and all the marketplace civic events even the theater crowd getting out so okay does everybody come here that's the uh kind of surprise this is unisex so uh you're kidding it's open and everybody comes i guess the togas help a bit it's a different view of the body it's not victorian or puritan in any way how does a system like this actually work well there's water down below us flowing continually for the waste so in the first century jews were more concerned about privacy and less aware of infection the romans were less concerned about privacy and perhaps more aware of infection the jewish people focused on spiritual health as the underlying basis for physical health jesus's healings were also connected with his teachings but in a time when great miracles of healing were believed to have taken place it was also a time when a simple cut on the hand could kill you i'm in israel learning all about what people in the time of the bible did when they got sick in this scene from the gospels jesus cures the blind man at the pool of siloam other sikh people hoped he could cure them too at the time certain ailments could be treated but just like today the simplest things could kill you instead of a speeding car back then it could just be a sharp tool right in the modern city of nazareth is this recreation of what it would have looked like when jesus grew up here i'm with biblical scholar james tabor and we're going to see how everyday tools could kill you in the first century this is how they prepared wool before using it to make clothing the fibers had to be separated and for that they had a nice sharp tool i could see how you would uh easily cut yourself or impale yourself pretty quickly and get an infection yeah and then of course what do you do if she cut her finger and there's no tetanus shot and then it swells up and then you're gonna get an amputated hand or you're gonna you know so see there she just did it now she'll die so with no knowledge of conditions such as tetanus how did people at the time deal with these unexplained deaths this is mayor baralon who teaches jewish history i want to find out how common early death was in biblical times life expectancy was very low i mean for men about 31 years of age and women 28 years of it it's an average it's statistics but it tells you a lot it tells you for example if you calculate the population that people in antiquity all of them suffered from laws of their beloved ones it seems that in in biblical times they had a much more familiarity with that the greater awareness of death and acceptance is that true definitely because they saw death in rates much higher than as modern people for example all women gave bear to let's say about six children six kids about about but until the age of 18 20 less than three survived so infant mortality was 50 or more which tells you that each and every person lost his children or lost his brother sister before jesus could grow up to become the miracle worker we read about he had to survive the greatest miracle of all birth when it came to both hygiene and survival in the time of the bible your first challenge was your biggest i'm on my way to bethlehem to see the spot where the most famous birth in history took place it's believed that jesus was born here and to mark the spot the church of the nativity was built many think the low door was made to force people to bow their heads before god but it was really made to keep horses out this place is extraordinary now i'm headed for what many people think is the very spot where jesus was born it's a start with glass a bluish glass in the center it looks beautiful now but it might have been a little messier at the time so what would the birth of jesus have been like in the time of the bible and sometimes today the only experts at the scene were midwives they were mentioned both in the bible and in the talmud the book of rabbinic law how did they approach childbirth i've come to the negev desert to meet a 90 year old bedouin midwife named naifa it's an honor to meet you thank you for having me uh naifa can you show me how you would have delivered a baby how when the baby comes out what happens [Music] to [Music] they take the blood of the baby and put it on the baby on the baby it's against evil ayah so it's against the evil lie so while delivery hasn't changed some rituals around it have the evil eye was caused by the jealousy of others and the baby had to be protected from it and if there were problems during the delivery they would blow the shofar this ram's horn in this case used as a biblical 9-1-1 to get the attention of the healing powers above can i try yeah of course [Music] in ancient days they also used incantation bowls which were believed to protect the house or tent many of them were to help childbirth they had images of and spells against lilith a demon said to prey upon babies i want to find out more about these rituals for protection so i'm on my way to an antiquity shop in the old city of jerusalem to meet archaeologist robert deutsch hi robert hi alan how are you very nice to meet you welcome welcome it's a beautiful store as well as i'm always coming over here to see some new stuff i mean old stuff old stuff this incantation bowl robert is holding is a 1500 year old spell to ward off evil written in the language spoken in the time of jesus aramaic you can hold it you sure yeah you trust me well enough it's uh an incarnation ball with spells against evil against illness i can't believe it's in such good shape man if the words incantation spells and evil make you think of magic you're dead right at the time people believed in it everybody would have had one of these pools in their house everybody needs a boat otherwise the house is in danger you deposit it in the corner of a house and protects the house against the evil you would bury one of these bowls upside down underneath your house to trap evil spirits like ancient feng shui this is the medicine in those days and if i get better then obviously it's the yes so people back then believed that a a demon or evil spirit was in you that's what made you sick that was the cause of illness so we try to surround ourselves with the good spirits yes we need those uh tools in order to fight them for example this item here this is a bird it's made of ceramic how old is this it's about 2000 bc that's amazing though it's 4 000 years old yes but it's not only a bird she knows to sing you know how no it is a rattle it's cool this is to scare the even spirits and you have to have it otherwise you will be that's great sick well i always carry my lucky coin and a lucky stone that i've had for like 20 years so it's the same for the same thing so robert tell me about the evil eye well the evil eye is a bad spirit and you must have an amulet against it we're walking through the old city and everywhere you see these hands called these are amulets people place on their houses for protection and against the evil eye this is the hand you're talking about right this is the hamster yes that's a hand it's a look like a hand with five fingers which another big hump arabic hamscites5 those are new 19th century 20th century considering how many of these hamzas are sold people still believe in the power of objects to protect their homes and keep bad spirits away for some the hand symbolizes the hand of god but what if putting one of these on your house doesn't work and your health is in jeopardy well there are still those who practice magical rituals from biblical times [Music] were there really miracle workers at the time of jesus and what did you do if even they couldn't help you some people turned to magic but since the population was jewish i need to find out how jews viewed magic so i'm asking rabbi ken spiro are there mitzvot about things like magic because people on the margins i mean people in desperate situations tend to turn to those things that's right there's actually a lot of discussion and even laws about about this stuff most of it is negative most of it is associated thousands of years ago with idolatry and paganism so 2000 years ago i want to engage in some magic that would depend who you go to see about it generally speaking the magic stuff is frowned upon um but if you had a big rabbi and he says you know i have access to a certain remedy or a cure that's a tradition that's been passed down to me that you know you know most people don't know about it um and you could you're welcome to do this fine but it has to come from recognition that everything comes from a higher power that's who you are in effect so you are yeah exactly exactly okay so in ancient times people would seek out rabbis with these magical secrets but it still goes on today i'm on my way to see rabbi heim fuchs because he studied the ancient texts and learned the magical rituals that were believed to bring people back to health as we've seen there was a widespread belief in the power of the evil eye to bring harm it was caused by the jealousy of others and if you hadn't protected yourself from it now you had to remove it through rituals such as the one rabbi fuchs is about to perform on me he's adding molten lead to water and he tells me the result is an eye shape uh-oh this is a shape of a of an eye usually when we pour lead inside of a water it should be like this okay where does this come from you tell me this says that you have someone that bugs you a little bit with an evil so somebody has has put an evil eye on me yeah just a little bit you don't have lots you mean a little bit so they only hate me slightly they jealous of you they're jealous of me now how do i how do i ward off this evil eye then this is what you do you're gonna do it for me i'm glad to see my evil eye melting away there that gives me some comfort okay you heard this one yikes i'm getting a little nervous with hot lead over my head but you can see you heard this explosion this this tells us that the evil eye just got out we won we won and you can see it nothing here wow well that was close was the evil eye really removed from me or is this just superstition in the time of the bible as today there's no shortage of beliefs around healing charismatic healers and people who seek them out but not all charismatic healers were rabbis then or now why are large numbers of people drawn to these mysterious healers to try and find out i'm on my way to see oren zarif a very busy healer around here if i'm not mistaken or you don't have any medical training physiology or biology or anything so i'd like to ask uh oran how does he diagnose [Music] and now i give you a lot of energy all the body apparently by the subconsciousness i want you two minutes close your eyes okay close [Music] it's very good now i give you a lot of energy all the bodies slowly tell you it's better a and they don't need explanations for their belief you can't explain what it is and i don't want to know what it is i don't know why the voice i want to feel better clearly oren is giving these people something but is it real or fiction in the story at the pool of siloam was it psychosomatic after all a blind man is said to have regained his sight and it turns out that the pool of salome is not just a place in a story archaeologists have now found the actual pool and it's right near where the holy temple stood in 2005 the public works department of the city of jerusalem was digging here to put in a new sewer line what was also uncovered was a line to the past the pool of siloam i'm with archaeologist shimon gibson and we're heading to the exact place mentioned in the gospels so this is the pool of salome where according to the gospel of john the blind man was cured by jesus so what you have is um jesus he comes to jerusalem when he arrives in the temple era he's only one of many voices uh many opinions but the only place where he really has audience is in those pools so this is where he performs his miracles and they're a captive audience as well right the lappers those with disfigurements disabled people of one sort or another people who have different kinds of scaly skin or ashes so we're actually standing here on the steps so jesus himself probably walked down you have a landing here and then you have another flight of steps another landing so the landings were used for the placing of beds so they're in firm those who are invalid uh will be able to get into the pool as well so now that we're in the actual place what exactly did jesus do here he's able to sort of conduct healing activities signs and wonders and miracles in those days something which was unusual and that is somebody who did not profess to be a doctor as such but was able to cure people that was miraculous nice you see so um i i think that jesus was very special and he had a very deep connection to an understanding of how to help people who had disabilities of all sorts and i think he he was a person who had an understanding of medical matters without the medical training so was jesus a first century doctor let's see if he fits the bill i'm going to ask archaeologist gabby barkai we've come to an ancient place that gabby discovered it's where you ended up if you couldn't find any kind of doctor or miracle worker or when life had run its course in the usual way it's what remains of an ancient burial site dated to seven centuries before jesus when you died back then they would put you on these very slabs with your head nice and comfy and these headrests you had nothing else to do but wait for your flesh to fall off a year or so later when you were nothing but bones they would put you in here with the bones of your ancestors and some of your worldly belongings gabby found human bones here as well as ivory gold and something much more precious we had two silver scrolls which include verses from the bible from the book of deuteronomy and the book of uh numbers and these are the earliest biblical verses ever discovered they predate the dead sea scrolls by four centuries this is one of the scrolls that gabby found it's an amulet meant to be worn on the body with the name of god written on it for protection against harm and the verse from the book of numbers written on this four-inch scroll is the priestly benediction which is still said in synagogues and churches today it's a blessing of god's protection a formula for health and you excavated all of this you're the man received yes that's astonishing so what does that tell you about the people who who built this and who were buried here they believed that the dead continued to live in another sphere unlike later on where they believed in resurrection they believed in this time that they do not need a resurrection because they are alive and that was something like sleep so gabby i've been reading and hearing an awful lot about healing powers and medicine at the time of the bible and especially about jesus and his healing powers would what do you think about all that in one of the texts of the dead sea scrolls we have a description of the messiah as a healer so it was a popular belief at that time that if somebody is a messiah he needs to be a healer as well they can cure you of everything he can cure you of all your uh physical and mental problems healing was either with the word of god or with a charismatic figure of the healer it was via touch if he was charismatic enough the psychosomatic influence of his blessing could heal you and we have some cases of different melodies identified in excavations and they were cured we have from the fourth millennium bc and on drilling a hole in the skull to and free the pressures within the skull was well known to these people so for instance in some cases the brain surgery even succeeded we have growth of the bone after the operation do you think there's any plausibility to the the pool of siloam the miracle at the pool of salomon listen i wasn't there but i can tell you that it is possible we have many cases of healing which were regarded as miracles in antiquity but actually behind them is some basic knowledge of medicine but if jesus was a kind of doctor he also seems to have done referrals in the gospel of luke 10 lepers called out to jesus for help and he tells them to show yourselves to the priests they do and they are healed what did the priests know about curing leprosy well it turns out it may not have been leprosy but a different disease called saras that's been mistranslated as leprosy so what is saras and why did the priests deal with it according to the bible some physical ailments were a result of spiritual problems and to identify saras you needed the right specialist two thousand years ago do i consider this what to be a medical problem or that's the priest's primary job was to tell you this is a medical problem this is a metaphysical problem how would you know the difference because the priest was trained that's one of the that's one of the specialties of the priesthood was to identify this soros as it's called they would have to come to your house and be able to diagnose it no wonder the bible talks so much about leprosy it's referring to more than one disease but it's now been proven that at the time they did have what we now know as leprosy we know this because shimon gibson discovered the oldest leper ever found in israel don't let the flowers fool you in biblical times when your life was going down the tubes this was one of the places you ended up so this is hell valley so it's a place with a lot of uh blood and gore and guts you know in fact uh this is the field of blood you know kodama where judas uh after you betrayed jesus then came and uh hung himself on the tree or garrett himself oh this is the spot yes so i'm in the place where the gospels tell us the man who betrayed jesus died it's also where the oldest leper ever found in the holy land was discovered i'm with archaeologist shimon gibson the man who found him he was wrapped in a shroud in here so this is the tomb it's amazing isn't it yeah i'm going to find out what shimon's amazing discovery here tells us about disease in the first century i was really amazed when i saw in one of the recesses a shroud from 2000 years ago it's the only shroud that we have in jerusalem uh from the time of jesus and this was found in this tomb so you see this is where we found the shrouds in this uh recess wow uh very big in this one yes it's the length of a human being and um when we came in all we could see where was this little black stuff which is on the floor of this uh recess but when i look i went into the barrel recess i could see that uh you had all sorts of fragments of textiles and right at the end i could see this pile of stuff which turned out to be human hair and fragments of her skull yes but the question is why was this person not wearing turret and put into an archery or his bones were collected with his other family members in biblical times after they left your corpse for a year or so so that your flesh could fall off you always receive secondary burial in jesus's time your family came back and put you into bone boxes ossuaries but the man shimon found did not get a secondary burial why didn't his family return for him not only that but you see that there's this plaster you see the edges of the plaster all the way around so the door uh was placed here at some point and uh he had been almost a little locked away and sealed into the is it so there's a bit of a mystery here did you suspect that when you first saw the the hair and the fragments at the back that this was i had an anthropologist with me and she looked at one of the bones and said hmm signs of pathology so we did some medical examinations uh on the the skeletal remains and we did dna research and you know winging all out the specialists in the field it turned out that this shrouded man died of leprosy until this man was found historians believe that in the bible leprosy referred to any number of skin conditions and there was no proof that any of them were leprosy but shimon gibson's finding here confirmed that in jesus's time leprosy did exist when it came to death however the family members would have been uh afraid so they just would have uh put him in and close the door sealed him up and sat and this probably put something on outside say do not open you know and that was that so not only does this tomb tell us that leprosy existed in the time of jesus it tells us about people's fears his family didn't even want to touch his bones after he died for fear of catching the disease they seemed to have known that diseases can be contagious an idea that didn't catch on until 12 centuries later depending on the luck of the draw some would say the will of god some diseases led you to a dead end and no doctor miracle worker or magical healer could help it's easy to believe that people in the past only had untrained healers and were missing out on the benefits of modern medicine but is it possible that in our embrace of modern procedures some of us overlook the value of more traditional healing methods i'm on my way to meet a man who may have some answers for that he doesn't depend on magic miracles or medicine and he must be doing something right because he's 106 years old it's very nice to meet you sir thank you for meeting with me thank you now i i was told that you're 106 years old is that right yes and [Music] now i was told that in your whole life that you have never ever been to a doctor is that right no no no no no but have you yourself ever been sick in your whole life so how do you maintain your health [Music] i wanted to ask you about the the evil eye do you know a lot about this about these kind of symbols and you've been rubbish and you're right and i never know my valley what do you think about the use of amulets and and magic i construed you don't practice any sort of uh you know uh special rituals or something to keep yourself well honey no made [Music] was great just like those who flocked to the pool of siloam for many people the physical and the spiritual are connected we're searching for more than health when the blind man received his sight maybe what he received was insight today we have more scientific answers but we still have medical questions and fears i think it was the same in the first century then as now people believed they had places to turn to get better [Music] my name is aaron kuslanko i teach 20th century history but i've come here to jerusalem to find out what life was like in the first century there's plenty of security today all over this city but that's nothing new two thousand years ago temple guards and soldiers converged in jerusalem's garden of gethsemane to arrest jesus setting in motion the most famous trial of all time but i want to know who all these people are what laws govern their lives and what brought them all together on this fateful night because here we're not only seeing the arrest of jesus we're seeing what happens when two societies collide at the time the roman empire was occupying judea so in the first century how did the romans keep the peace among people who had totally different beliefs about law and order [Music] i'm in what many believe is the garden of gethsemane the exact place where jesus was arrested it's hard to know exactly what happened that night but we know that a crowd of soldiers arrived to arrest jesus and they wanted it done quickly and quietly i'm going to explore with a modern arrest specialist how he would have conducted the operation near calron is a former commando with israeli special forces you know imagine that this is the scene of jesus's arrest and you're running the operation for the romans how many guys what kind of techniques you would have to have some some regiments outside maybe not very visible standing by for crowd control and then the small force the snatch and grab force that's probably built of the informant so someone that he knows someone that he respects and has no pro and trust exactly so a guy like judas guy like judas is is a perfect informant in a way that he describes the routine he rescribes the area of the operation right and you do it at night right for maximum opportunity tonight of course right yeah wait till they're you know tired and the night of the op which is coming in getting everyone ready getting you know getting into positions they might need a sign and i think that's why maybe he kissed him comes in and kisses him that's a sign this is our man and then they grab him and if something does go wrong i mean if somebody fights back or they're on to them then it's it becomes immediately a noisy op that means the the whole contingency has to come in secure the area and and and ready to fend off maybe crowds maybe the disciples inside that are getting crazy if you see that there's going to be trouble maybe take him out bring him out here and then secure him okay and then all the others surround us we're waiting for the contingency to come in and then we'll take him out and leave as fast as we can according to the gospel jesus goes quietly across that valley he spent a long night awaiting his fate the simmering tension of roman occupation of the jewish people had boiled over but the imposition of roman law affected everyone's life here in the first century the romans divided their soldiers into legions which were groups of six thousand men they had 30 legions but they were scattered throughout the empire there were only about 500 roman soldiers regularly stationed in jerusalem and the local population was estimated at 60 000 jews so how did they rule i'm on my way to jordan to find out because there in a well-preserved ancient city the roman army has been reconstructed this is the ancient city of jairosh and it is magnificent here at the main gates you get a real sense of empire the power and the might of the romans i'm meeting stellan lind who runs a historical reenactment of roman gladiators and charioteers they would have had their informers to find the guys who made the most trouble and they would arrest them and they would torture them and put them in jail and in the worst case of course have them execute we have this image of the romans as being so effective so powerful i mean what makes them so effective what made them this you know ideal fighting force when they attacked they attacked line after line of the line they were nine lines deep and so one line came forward and fought for about eight minutes they went back and had their wounds tended to and then the next line came and then the next line came so it was really killing machine you know pretty formidable enemy to fight i think it's time i tried my hand at being a formidable enemy but first i need to learn about my weapons here you have the gladius the sword ladies having given the name to the word gladiator by the way a short stabbing sword you stab with it you don't fight like that you stab it's very short it is very short because they calculated that for the stabbing technique that they had in fighting that was the best length of the sword they calculated the romans were very very smart in engineering and into the minutest detail and it's very light as well this is the peelum the throwing javelin and let's look at the tip here you know it's a little bit like a bullet point here and the width of the steel here is just so that it bends when it has penetrated the enemy right there yeah the idea with bending of course is that it makes it impossible for the enemy to use it and throw it back at you that's a one-time it's a one-time spear it looks exactly it really is light again exactly they are well equipped and they knew that they were much better equipped and the enemy also knew that which was of course a very very important psychological fact scare the enemy scare the enemy absolutely well i'm ready to get suited up to scare the enemy [Music] how long does it take you to dress here [Music] the roman army developed many ingenious uses for its shields they weren't only used for protection they'd hit you with them and they'd use them in formations such as this for group protection and look at this deadly formation i wouldn't want to find myself facing that so the romans ruled by intimidation but what are they doing here what do they want i'm on my way to jerusalem to ask professor of history joshua schwartz the romans are interested basically in peace and quiet and that people should pay their taxes when they're supposed to if jews had problems with one another or if they had problems with their neighbor then there was a jewish court system there was a jewish legal system and the last thing in the world that they would do would be to turn to a roman official at the suggestions from that roman official so it sounds like as long as things weren't let's say political in orientation that the romans sort of live and let live and let let jewish courts deal with jewish issues the romans when they interfered normally they asked you whether you were guilty or innocent and if you said innocent they tortured you until you said guilty and at that point they usually put you to death did the romans really have a sophisticated understanding of jewish legal systems the romans had almost no understanding of what jewish life was and what jewish legal life was one of the mistakes that the romans made was that they considered this neck of the woods to be the same as everybody else but the fact is that the jews are not in that sense like everybody else religious issues as far as the jews were concerned made them very very different this difference was the torah the first five books of the bible which govern every aspect of jewish life it's because of a law in the torah that jesus and his disciples are in jerusalem on that fateful night it was a religious holiday passover a time when the torah commands jews to come to jerusalem in judaism religion everyday life and politics all overlap because the torah doesn't differentiate between them i'm meeting with rabbi ken spiro who's showing me the torah its contents have not changed in over 3 000 years i want to find out how jewish law works so the torah scroll is the law yes it's it's called the written law so these are the commandments the commandments are in here all the 613 commandments are expressed in the text itself and the 613 are the the mitzvah those are called the mitzvot yes that is the tarot people assume you know ten commandments but they're actually six hundred and thirty that's a lot more and there's a lot of a lot of details let's say that uh i i steal a goat because there are specifics there's a whole discussion here about if a person steals property if i steal a goat there's a law which states that not only do i have to return or replace it i have to give an additional goat as a fine in an agricultural society where your animals were extremely important the point of this law would be to discourage stealing the torah's laws cover everything they cover what jews can eat and cannot eat there's a commandment to rest on the sabbath and it even tells them how to take eggs from a bird's nest first you must shoe the mother away so she won't have to see her children taken from her there's even a law about writing the law all taurus must be written by hand the torah is revered by jews who have lived by its laws even when as in the case of jesus it brought them into conflict with the occupying power of rome jesus often quoted the law he was fulfilling torah obligations on this night before he was arrested he and the disciples ate what is called the last supper which was the passover meal commemorating the exodus out of egypt torah commands every jew to have a passover meal and part of that meal had to be some meat from a lamb sacrificed in the temple the romans must have found all this very strange but as long as the taxes were paid they allowed the life of the temple and its laws to continue behind me you can see the western wall the temple that used to be on the other side of that wall was the most important place in the jewish world before the romans destroyed it in the year 70. but the temple wasn't only the spiritual center of jewish life it was the place where the highest jewish court the sanhedrin would convene i'm with archaeologist and historian shimon gibson and we're heading underground to see the place where the san hadrin may have met so this is a labyrinth of uh tunnels and arches and passages ground level in the first century has been buried by two millennia of building but excavations have revealed buildings that were near the temple and not destroyed i want to find out what effect roman occupation had on the powers of the sanhedrin and look at this amazing room it's great isn't it science this is beautiful it's very well preserved it dates of a century uh based on the sources it might even be where uh the sanhedrin sometimes uh convenes so the high court this one i wanted to ask you about the the connection between the san hundren and the and the high priests did the romans appoint the high priest the high priest was actually appointed by their priesthood but of course uh on occasion the romans would intervene they would manipulate things behind the scenes to make sure that they got the candidate that they were acquired how far could they intervene clearly they had a lot of clout in the first century and at times were able to really to push things the romans were putting pressure on the high priest and we can see that pressure playing out around the arrest of jesus the men arresting jesus are the temple guards who report to the high priest and these roman soldiers are watching to make sure the situation doesn't get out of hand in the first century conflicting laws put the pressure on everyone whether you were a merchant or a messiah i'm in jerusalem in the garden of gethsemane i'm walking in the actual place where many people believe 2 000 years ago jesus was arrested i'm finding out how the roman occupation of ancient israel helped create the tensions which led to this arrest it also led to conflicts for everyone else jesus was arrested at passover which celebrates freedom from slavery in egypt but under roman occupation jews were slaves to taxation before the romans came jews had taxation mandated by the torah the law of gleaning for example was a safety net for the poor to try to make sure no one went hungry i'm meeting joseph gitler who founded lekket israel an organization of volunteers who keep alive the law of gleaning you know gleaning is a biblical imperative which farmers were required to apportion a certain part of their fields for the needy so what we're doing today is a i would call it a modern take on a biblical law and we're working with farmers throughout israel who allow us to come into their fields and uh glean fruits and vegetables to distribute it to unfortunately needy people throughout the state joseph how exactly did did the law apply to 2000 years ago farmers were required to allow poor people to uh come in and actually pick the fields say a portion meaning set aside a chunk of your land yeah generally did you know how much it was there generally it was about ten percent of your field had to be left for the poor the gleaming law helped keep the poor from going hungry but because of roman taxation it also put more pressure on farmers who had less product to sell the most famous gleaner in history was an ancestor of jesus her name was ruth not far from here near bethlehem she gleaned in the fields of a man named boaz they fell in love they had a child and about 40 generations later was jesus gleaning is a positive commandment one of the thou shalt i also want to find out about the thou shalt not so i've come to jerusalem's mahani yehuda market to meet rabbi yamatov glaser young tough we're in a we're in a market and i'm thinking are there must be lots of commandments that that apply around here right i mean for for example our uh the prices of things is that uh you know is is that ruled by commandments as well yeah for sure um the idea in general is as you know monotheists is that it's not just that there's one god it's that god is one he's indivisible and this is all going on ultimately this entire world is like a figment of god's imagination a giant video game to see if you and i will treat each other with oneness i.e win win so if i'm doing business with you and the shook i'm buying i'm buying some produce or something so that yeah there's price issues for example he can't overcharge me but is that is that that's actually in the commandment that's actually a commandment the commandment is basically don't steal and in this case it's also the commandment because you're really stealing in a way if you're taking his money above the market but there's a separate commandment besides stealing and that is not to afflict financially that's over don't take advantage of people financially so he can't rip me off but if i steal one of these crates did i just did i just break the commandment uh well you know there is that old thou shall not steal one but isn't this just really a list of uh you know don't do this don't do that don't it sounds kind of like that there's nothing arbitrary you'll notice the don'ts are always kind of centered around where people are most selfish which is two parts of the body okay survival and reproduction which we share with the animal kingdom wherever it's animal instinct stuff so you'll notice a lot of negative commandments don't do this don't do that don't do that so that your animal hasn't taken over the soul i get it so it's about that balance you're achieving that balance so like the sabbath there's a lot of don't do's the commandment to keep the sabbath may explain why jesus was arrested on what scholars believe was a thursday he couldn't be arrested the next day because jewish courts could not meet on the sabbath which begins at sundown on friday but what is the reason behind this day of rest the sabbath is a biggie because it's one of the most fundamental principles in judaism that uh god created the world and observing the sabbath as a way that the jewish people individually and collectively throughout history have basically one day a week bore witness to what is the most fun this most fundamental of concepts two thousand years ago how was the the shabbat observed you could stoke your stove up prior to the sabbath but once it went cold it was out you could light your lamps but once they burned out that was it you know but more or less it was the same thing certainly negrarian society this is a huge innovation we stop working and the world works without us because god runs the world ultimately and we should be using one day a week to focus on that and to grow spiritually and just get out of the rat race it's friday today and much as they did in the first century religious jews are preparing for the sabbath honoring the fourth commandment remember the sabbath and keep it holy jews followed their laws and the romans imposed theirs keeping a close eye on these people who took time off from work for their sabbath to the roman way of thinking this could be trouble giving the jews too much time to think about who is now running their land i want to learn more about how the laws of the sabbath were followed then and now so i'm headed to the home of shashana and rabbi yitzhak goldstein the sabbath is always welcomed with a meal and i'm here to help out we're going to make our challahs now we're going to make a dough this is like bread right special prayer official six cups of lukewarm water olive oil sugar hey you're good one one of the laws governing shabbat is that all meals eaten on this holy day from sunset friday to sunset saturday must be made before the sun goes down on friday night and there are 39 specified activities that one cannot do once the sun goes down every friday i always thought this was only because one didn't work on the sabbath but there's more to it than that it's the work of creation the whole day is you want a symbol like god god says i rest on a saturday i didn't create on saturday okay be like me don't do work of creation so to do work to pick up a chair i'm allowed okay so i can't draw a picture exactly okay and we know we're going to run the problems and prevent like if you go into a kitchen you open the refrigerator you go and we unscrew the light light bulb that when you open the refrigerator you don't create that light have you ever missed a sabbath dinner no never god forbid let's say for some reason the normal schedule can't unfollow you still have to have a must you must have a chat with me those look fantastic okay put them right there i like that look at that all the romans cared about was that the jews stayed orderly and paid their taxes but they knew the jews would not compromise on their sacred laws which had to be followed but if they weren't followed what were the punishments i'm in israel learning all about law and order and crime and punishment in the time of the bible in this famous scene from the gospels jesus gets caught between two systems of law and order the jewish authorities and the roman occupiers who eventually pass sentence under jewish law there was also capital punishment but the romans took away the right of the jewish court to carry it out many of the jewish laws called for the penalty of flogging if they were broken why this form of punishment we know that after his arrest and before his crucifixion jesus was flogged on the orders of the roman governor pontius pilate so flogging was both a roman and a jewish punishment but what were the differences i know i'm gonna regret this but i'm on my way to experience of first century jewish flogging today prisons serve as both deterrent and punishment but they weren't so common around here two thousand years ago punishments such as flogging were meant to keep people in line i'm meeting rabbi batsri because he knows flogging he's even had this flogging device made based on the texts okay rabbi this looks uh mean i want to see it in action can you give me a good demonstration [Music] okay well i wanted to know what life was like in the first century so here goes it's hard not to be serious when you're getting whipped on television i do not get paid enough for this and never in my wildest dreams imagined that i would be in jerusalem being flogged in a synagogue by rabbis never never occurred so first century jewish flogging had remorse and repentance as its goal it had certain humane elements but try telling that to my back the doctor made sure you could take it and only 39 lashes with this donkey or ox whip were allowed roman flogging was a little different it's believed that the whip used on jesus had metal ends to tear the flesh and rome had no law limiting the amount of lashes not to mention the distinct absence of a doctor rome utilized flogging to prolong suffering before crucifixion but why was this form of capital punishment utilized i'm meeting new testament expert helen bond to find out how usual or commonplace was the idea of crucifixion under roman law was fairly common and the romans were pretty good at crucifying people i mean certainly after major wars and insurrections there were crosses lining the road for for a long way what would have a very sobering effect on the populace right to see that kind of uh that kind of obvious act of roman power that's right it is designed to be visual it's designed to be as humiliating and shameful as possible with crucifixions you know they always keep their loincloth on but of course that the person was actually naked it was deeply humiliating it took a long time for the person to die and they would have put a copy of the charge up above the cross so that everybody could see you know this is what this guy's done and if you do the same you'll get the same kind of penalty the threat of crucifixion seems like the ultimate law and order deterrent but it was carried out quite a bit rome squeezed the populace with heavy taxes backing up the threat with the ultimate punishment just like today people in biblical times had mixed feelings about paying lots of taxes it depended where the money was going and if you could tell where the money was going when king herod ruled here and did his massive building projects like expanding the temple in jerusalem jews could see where their tax money was going king herod was jewish but he was appointed by rome over two thousand years ago he built that wall herod taxed the population heavily but he balanced the interests of both cultures he died around the time jesus was born and the period of direct roman rule by governors such as pontius pilate began the delicate balance was over i'm heading south from jerusalem to herodium one of the fortresses built by king herod and where he is buried herod built these fortresses because he knew the delicate balance between jewish and roman law wouldn't last and that revolution would come an incredible fortress herodium is built into a hill it's invisible from the road and has its own water system in case it came under siege from here the roman appointed king of the jews punish people in the name of rome rome was not only imposing its law and order on the local jewish population it also had problems with its own governors who operated far away from the center of power to learn more i'm meeting with alex jacobson he's written about the political system of the roman empire one of the main problems was that beyond what you had to pay caesar you had to pay the local officials being a governor in a faraway province was a way to get rich for many people they would just extort and uh take money sell judicial decisions and simply you know use riots as pretext for widespread uh confiscation robbery and such themselves it's corruption it's corruption out of sight out of mind if you're in a remote province that's their retirement plan that was certainly yeah that was very often the case so the central government was interested in preventing excessive oppression and excessive extortion and understanding that these were the things that would drive people to rebellion so even if they cooperated with rome the jewish people were still being fleeced by local roman corruption and i've heard that when it came to punishment the romans were very creative what other kind of punishments did the romans imposed well crucifixion was the worst of course they would being decapitated was much easier sometimes for people who were thrown to lions and you know all kinds of gruesome things so this is what law order is like in the holy land in the first century but how did jews react to the imposition of roman law there was a range of reactions from acceptance to deadly rebellion under roman occupation of first century israel the way it was supposed to work was that internal jewish law would deal with jewish issues and rome would only intervene when there was a threat to peace quiet the collection of taxes but it wasn't so simple because of the holy temple that used to be behind that wall the western wall the high priest was responsible for maintaining order in the temple but rome exerted plenty of influence on him the high priest's cooperation with rome led to gray areas of jurisdiction which affected both the daily life of the temple and the fate of jesus but whose law did jesus break some say he committed heresy which as religious law was a jewish matter some say it was insurrection or sedition which rome considered its turf but if jesus called himself the messiah that was a gray area was it religious or did it affect the peace and quiet by gathering followers and saying the kingdom of god was at hand jesus was someone who got everyone's attention the romans didn't want anyone talking about any other kingdom than theirs and anything that threatened the fragile peace worried the priests who needed the romans to leave the temple alone so they could keep fulfilling their holy functions so the high priest had a good reason to cooperate with his roman occupiers the priestly class he belonged to was called the sadducees they were only one among many jewish sects and i'm going to find out about the others and their reactions to roman law and order there's all kinds of different groups within 1st century judaism and all with very different ideas of what it means to be jewish so you have um the sadducees who are mainly linked with the temple they're the aristocratic priests then you have the pharisees and these are ones who who are very keen to keep the law very strictly though debated some scholars believe jesus himself was a pharisee then there were the essenes this jewish sect believed in the coming of the kingdom of god and they wrote about it here in qumran by the dead sea and what are some of the oldest documents ever found the dead sea scrolls i'm with author and biblical expert james tabor to find out more about this jewish sect and to see the actual place where they hid their scrolls from the romans you've heard of pharisees and sadducees right in the bible the essenes aren't mentioned but they're a radical apocalyptic group they're waiting for god to destroy the romans and this is where the squirrels were actually found take a look it's amazing wow that's a pretty tight fit james do people go in here well believe it or not very few people go in here it's not a tourist spot but you're allowed to go and you should go in take a look get an idea okay the question is can i actually fit yeah can you fit are you as thin as an essence they must have been pretty nimble and pretty uh pretty tough i'm thinking yeah the gazelle goat comes to mind because it is really rocky and it is dirty among the contents of the dead sea scrolls were passages from the bible the essenes who lived here in seclusion believed their interpretation of jewish law was the correct one to live simply and spiritually away from others who they believed did not live according to the law they also wrote about war describing a battle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness among jesus's disciples there may have been essenes as well as radicals belonging to other jewish sects who would end up fighting this war in greek the disciple simon zelotti's last name means zealot the zealots believe that god alone is the ruler of israel and that the romans must be expelled some say simon was a member of this nationalist group and among the zealots were a sect which utilized extreme tactics they were called the sacari named after the short roman dagger the sika that they hid in the folds of their robes they attacked their enemies without warning then blended back into the crowd the gospels tell us that when jesus is arrested his disciple peter pulls out a knife and cuts off the ear of one of the temple guards we don't know that peter was a sakhari but he was handy with a knife some scholars say judas iscariot was also a member of this group and his name means judas the sikari maybe judas thought jesus wasn't revolutionary enough the war of the zealots against the romans culminated right here at the holy temple in jerusalem with the jews barricaded inside and as these people are loxing encased in in jerusalem with with the romans outside the romans come into jerusalem they burn down um the the outer parts of jerusalem and the temple itself is burnt to the ground and that was a terrible terrible moment for for jews in the first century and and still for for jews it's a terrible thing that happened because there are all kinds of different ways of being jewish in the first century but the thing that holds everybody together is the jewish law and the temple and when the temple goes nobody can understand it you know how do you explain that how did god let the temple be destroyed these stones were part of the temple wall destroyed by the romans so today you can still see the evidence of that biblical clash between two systems of law and order according to the gospels jesus foresaw the destruction of the temple ironically the sequence of events that followed his arrest may have been partially responsible for the actions that culminated right here so how did the trial and sentencing of jesus take place on that fateful passover and if you were an average citizen in those times what message were you being given by the whole process well this is where it all happened on passover jewish pilgrims from all over the middle east and beyond would have come right here they would have walked up these actual steps to the temple so what was it really like in the first century here i'm gonna meet with helen bond and she'll set the scene jews from all over the place are converging in into what's really quite a small city it's a huge pilgrimage people have journeyed long ways they've they've come here with their families they've given up work for a week two weeks possibly even more and there would have been a huge festival atmosphere celebrating celebrating coming out of egypt liberation during festivals such as passover pilgrims to jerusalem swelled the local population to hundreds of thousands from a law and order perspective if i if i were a roman am i nervous about these kind of gatherings very i think passover was probably roman's worst nightmare pontius pilate and the 3 000 roman soldiers stationed with him at caesarea also made the trip just in case there was trouble it's national liberation from bondage but the difficulty is that here they are in jerusalem and they just need to look up on top of the temple and they'd see roman soldiers stationed there must have struck them as being a huge irony one of the reasons why the governor comes to jerusalem specifically at the passover is because it's such a security nightmare um the jewish author josephus says that nearly all the the riots that we know about happened at passover really so this is sort of a known time for riots rebellions but the soldiers are vastly outnumbered by the pilgrims so what's the roman strategy they're fine for a fairly small scale uprising but there's always going to be a need to sort of nip things in the buds you know to make sure that that any kind of riot doesn't escalate because once it escalates then it's it's too big for the roman governor to cope with and he's got to contact his superiors and that all looks bad on him because his his main duty in the province is to maintain law and order where do you cross the line if you're a jew to bring the romans in i think as soon as somebody starts attracting large numbers of people it's just that uncertainty as to what's going to happen romans never liked congregations of people they were always slightly disturbed by that if people are stopping doing their work and they're gathering and there's any potential for a riot then that's when the the romans start to take a notice of what's happening so kicking over the the money changers table is that a violation of roman law it was a sign that this was a troublemaker um and particularly when he did that with a following this is a man who you need to watch and he's doing something provocative and he might go somewhere else and do something broader scale than that you know so nip this in the budget exactly sort of approach to it and that's where where pilate comes in well according to the gospels it's the chief priests who who make the decision that they want to have him arrested and they're going to pass him over to the roman governor because the chief priests also had to make sure that law and order was maintained so the temple guards arrest jesus and take him to the home of the high priest caiaphas shimon gibson and i are now overlooking the valley jesus crossed when he was taken from the garden of gethsemane this church of saint peter was built next to a house dated to the first century and we're heading there now so here we're going to step back uh 2 000 years to the first century and we're going to enter into a house that exists at the time of jesus and uh is in the general vicinity of the traditional house of caiaphas step inside i'll take off my hat there as a response so this is the real deal i mean this is this is a house from the time of jesus christ exactly i mean here you're inside the internal courtyard you have this depression in which they would uh place the the charcoal and be able to have a little uh fire going it fits in very well with the story of peter who is uh following jesus and so who's been taken away by the soldiers and is brought to the house of caiaphas and he comes in to the courtyard and he sees the the soldiers who are warming their hands uh at the fire so this really sort of serves a good purpose of illustrating uh the point of that story so when they bring jesus here where where do they put them he's here overnight so he was probably placed into one of the world cup chambers which existed beneath the structure this was a common practice at that time this is a subterranean chamber beneath this house from the first century so it's likely that it would have been in a place such as this but more likely in a sort of dark uh cavity such as this one over here ah right you see it's really quite dark in here and uh so that it would have just tossed him back exactly they would have got rid of him kept him in there until he was led away for his trial jesus is brought before the high priests for questioning but they soon hand him over to pontius pilate who serves as judge and jury so what was the church a couple of the gospels suggest that blasphemy was the charge and certainly acting or doing anything against the temple could have been seen as blasphemous because it's such a holy place another couple of the gospels suggest that it was simply the charge of leading people astray or being a false prophet and those are very broad charges that could be interpreted in a number of different ways but probably they didn't really need a specific charge anyway because they're intending passing him over to pilots clearly they would have to give pilot a list of the things that jesus had done so were there any other sort of considerations the pilot would have pilot would probably have have spent very little time on the case i think he would have simply heard from the chief priests what jesus had been doing maybe interviewed him himself very briefly just got some sort of measure of the man and also get an idea of whether he had to get rid of the followers as well or whether just getting rid of jesus was going to be enough and i think he would have sent him for crucifixion with barely a second thought it was nothing like trials today and the sentence was carried out the next morning unlike the stealthy arrest once the suspect was in custody and the sentence carried out the punishment was meant to be seen by everyone whatever crime jesus was charged with when he was arrested the eventual charge nailed to his cross was king of the jews suggesting he referred to himself this way which rome would see as treason since it appointed kings around here before jesus was born rome had given the title king of the jews to herod shimon and i have now arrived at where herod's palace was located it was right behind these walls the palace was later used by pontius pilate when he was in jerusalem so are we in the place where pilate tried and sentenced jesus well he's a led away in the early hours of uh the friday morning and brought to the seat of pontius pilate it was situated archaeologically speaking behind these walls and in front of this wall uh these remains were uncovered and uh there was a gate here and it must have been a grand spectacle these walls are massive and you can imagine the assembly of people here based on the archaeological finds here shimon has made this drawing of what it would have looked like in the time of jesus so here you can see uh the rocky protuberance in that area and that's situated over there which is actually referred to in the gospel of john as gabata which is an uh hebrew word meaning rocky outcrop and then on the the right you had an area of pavement and this is referred to also in the gospel of john as the lithostratus which means in greek stone pavement these two topographical features are referred to in the gospel of john so it's it's probable that this is where jesus was brought out right here before the public yes i think this is the place of the trial so jesus is imprisoned in the barracks he is led out into this area here into this area of the of a courtyard the crowds are able to observe uh proceedings and for pilate the message is i'm in charge and here's what happens if you defy roman law he wants to make a point he wants to say to those crowds look i'm going to be crucifying this guy i don't want any more problems during the passover uh period and you'll see the cross uh next to the road leading out of jerusalem and you'll know you'll remember you'll remember that i do not want any more uh uh disturbances within the city and this is roman law and order plain and simple and that's how the romans uh conducted their business if you lived here at the time and heard what happened to jesus you would have received a pretty strong message about law order and the consequences of opposing rome jesus is the one we've heard about but in the land of israel under roman occupation thousands of jews were crucified by the empire which wanted to subdue the citizens into paying a punishing amount of tax so what was daily life like for the jews after the crucifixion of jesus and the destruction of the temple hundreds of thousands had been either killed or enslaved but there were still some members of the zealots and sakhari alive they were living here at masada herod had fortified this place to fight potential rebels but the jewish rebels defeated the small roman garrison stationed here the jews took over masada but in the year 73 the romans returned with 6 000 soldiers and set up camp to fight the 960 jewish rebels the last ones left to defend the jewish law i'm with guy stiebel who is excavated here at masada and we're walking through what used to be the roman camp this is the best preserved roman siege system in the entire roman empire and if you want an example for the long hand of the law of the roman law they went all the way to the middle of the desert and just imagine that on both sides you'll have tents you have eight games all around masada and this was a statement see us we're here and it's a sort of a propaganda we're coming to get you exactly but masada is not only the place where a battle occurred it's a place where people lived because all communities rich people poor people fled to masada so we have clusters of rooms it's like you can seize different communities i can identify the areas where women for example sat and weave we found a bakery we can see lists of various provisions where the food was stored who brought the water so we can speak about life at masada yes this will come at the end of the day but i think the strongest thing that you can see here is people fought to live so how did the 960 jewish rebels fight back they had the high ground and could drop huge stones on the romans what you see is actually genuine rolling stones i mean they're my favorite uh type of weapon if you wish this was a jewish answer for the roman superiority using the artillery they just roughly shaped huge stone you can try and move one are these the original ones yeah you can try to move one and see you need a hand here's a trick here no no no no trick look how heavy they are oh man that's heavy but the romans were building a ramp and a siege tower and constructing a battering ram to break down the wall that separated them from the jewish zealots it was four decades after the death of jesus and the exact same time of year the festival of passover the idea was to bring the siege tower on top of which they have a battering rum and these are the most important 15 meters that's all the entire operation was for for this place so guys this must have been a a frightening thing to see this giant tower coming up this ramp two thousand years ago on the eve of passover it was nightmare the noise the smoke the shouts the crowd they knew that once they managed to bring these things up they're doomed once the tower was up and they managed to breach the wall then they discovered the jews built another world secondary wall made of soil and beams against which the battering drum is not effective but you can use torches with fire when the night came it went up in flames what are their options they're surrounded right are we going to die as free people or by the sword of the romans they summon all the men and what happened is that they decide to commit suicide there are women and children here according to josephus a lottery was made means they draw lots ten men were chosen to go through the people and to do the act and then commit suicide [Music] just imagine the romans are breaking into this side dead silence that silence and uh what we hear is that they shout and suddenly two women and five kids come out of one of the water systems that scattered around the site and they told the story about the occurrences of that night before the rebels died here at masada they lived according to jewish laws as long as they could the last vestiges of uprising were over it wasn't peace but it was quiet when it came to law and order in first century judea on one side there was roman power and on the other there were the jews with their traditions their laws one side never had a chance that side turned out to be the romans their empire their power did not last but the jewish group whose leader was arrested in gethsemane ended up becoming the biggest religion in the world with one of its spiritual centers in rome as for the rest of the jewish people their culture is still here the temple had been destroyed but it wasn't the only center of jewish life the torah the law was and still is

Channel: Parable - Religious History Documentaries

Views: 15,348

Keywords: parable, parable channel, parable documentary, religious history, religious history documentary, bible documentary, bible documentary bbc, jesus documentary, living in the times of jesus, living in israel, what was life life in the first century, daily life jesus times, daily life in ancient times, normal people history, ancient healthcare, ancient doctors, biblical reenaction, biblical archaeology, bible real life, bible stories, bible history documentary, what if

Id: 5MHIjO2aaWU

Length: 149min 59sec (8999 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2021