Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Patrick Miller. Several years ago I had the opportunity to do a

archaeological tour of Israel. One of my favorite places we visited was a town

called Magdala. The name might sound a little bit familiar to you if you've ever heard of Jesus'

disciple Mary Magdalene or we could have just called her Mary of Magdala because that's what that means.

This small town it's on the coast of the Sea of Galilee, and it was almost certainly

among the towns that Jesus visited during his ministry as an itinerant preacher.

Luke writes that after Jesus's temptation, this is Luke 4 verse 14, Jesus returned to

Galilee and the power of the spirit and news about him spread through the whole

countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues and everybody praised him.

I couldn't help but think of this passage and others like it when I was in Magdala,

especially when we visited the site of a first century synagogue.

It was a surreal experience standing in a synagogue

that Jesus probably preached in.

In many ways, it was different than what I expected.

Most synagogues in Galilee were built with basalt. It's kind of this black volcanic stone and they vary in size but the one in Magdala was about the size of two high school classrooms so it wasn't very big. There were columns and benches for people to

sit on with mosaics in the center part of the floor where people read and preached and

led singing. The scripture scrolls would have been stored in large chest and they would have been handled with great care

So sitting in Magdala I imagined Mary Magdalene hearing the stories of the spirit and power teacher healing the sick and proclaiming the good news that his

healings were signs that God's kingdom had finally arrived on earth as in heaven.

She'd be thinking, could he be the one? The Messiah? The king come to rescue Israel from

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