Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/533

Rh 4. If, as we see, Vespasian began his operations by securing Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, and thereby secured the province, so that the Jewish force fled to Tiberias, was it strange or unnatural that he should as his next operation secure the capital of Peraea to dominate the territory beyond Jordan?

5. The text, as it stands, agrees with Book iv, 7, 3, in testifying to the military importance of Gadara: but the emendation makes Vespasian prefer to Jotopata a place which apparently counted for nothing in military movements.

—Bidding farewell now to the text of Josephus, I do not know that we have much more assistance to expect from secular literature as to Gadara and its district. But a very important light is cast upon it by the Synoptical Gospels, and by the facts of the Old Testament history in their relation to the geographical precinct, which was also in general the ethnical limit, of our Lord's ministry upon earth.

It was, apparently, a part of the providential calling of the race of Abraham that they were to have in the first instance for themselves a distinct and separate offer of the new "glad tidings." Christ was not sent, accordingly, "but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel." It is most interesting to observe how and in what localities this offer took effect.

We naturally look in the first instance to Jerusalem and the country belonging to it. Our Lord was born, as we know, in Judæa; and the scene of the Gospel of St. John, which is in the main confined to Jerusalem and its neighborhood, and also in the main to a few continuous narratives, is principally laid there. The territory of Samaria was immediately contiguous to that of Judæa, but "the Jews had no dealings" with the mixed race inhabiting that country, and our Saviour seems never to have exercised there more than what may be termed an accidental ministry. But the Baptism and temptation were in Galilee. It was there that He commenced His course of miracles. When the wakeful jealousy of the Pharisees made it needful for Him to quit Judæa and repair to Galilee, "He must needs go through Samaria." Then came the (so to speak) casual meeting and discourse with the woman of Samaria, to whom He declared that salvation was of the Jews. Out of the report which she carried away from Him, there grew an invitation of the Samaritans to the Saviour, praying Him to come among them: but He abode with them only two days, and passed on into Galilee. It is wonderful to observe how large a proportion of His ministry was