June
25
/ 2021
First century AD Jerusalem was a bustling metropolis with a population estimated between 80,000 to 200,000 people. During Pesach or Passover, one of the ‘Three Pilgrimages to Jerusalem’ – the other two being Shavuot marking the wheat harvest and Sukkoth, the ‘Feast of Tabernacles’ – the numbers could easily have swelled with 300,000 to 400,000 pilgrims. Approaching the city from a distance, a rural carpenter and his 12-year-old son visiting for the first time would have stopped and gazed in awe at the city’s fortification walls and the looming towers, with the Temple shimmering gold on the highest hill of Moriah. Jerusalem was built on the hills of Judea, the three most prominent being Ophel, Moriah and Zion. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"87358","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"284","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"610"}}]] The
