1. As soon as Jesus arrived at the age of about thirty he left Nazareth, and probably passing down the valley of the Jordan, went on his way to Bethabara, John 1:28.
BETHABARA.
2. John, the forerunner of Jesus, was baptizing at this place, the site of which is not known, but from the meaning of the name, “the house of the ferry, or ford,” it must have been on the banks of the Jordan. Moreover as John was preaching in Judæa, Matt. 3:1, and apparently baptizing in the parts of Jordan near at hand, Bethabara must have been not far off from the locality now identified with it, namely, somewhere east of the present plain of Jericho, but from John 3:26 it is plain that the place was “beyond,” that is east of Jordan. The name Beth-barah of Judg. 7:24 may refer to another place farther up the Jordan, as the word “ford” may have been then, as it is now, applied to several places.
THE WILDERNESS.
3. After the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist at Bethabara he was immediately subjectedto several very severe spiritual trials called temptations of the devil, Matt. 4:1. These temptations were preceded by a period of fasting which continued forty days, after which the attacks of the evil spirit took place as recorded in Matt. 4, Mark 1, and Luke 4, but omitted by John.
4. “The wilderness” was probably the uninhabited country west of the northern end of the Dead Sea, a region which seems never to have been settled; and the immediate scene of the temptation is celebrated in tradition as that rough and hilly ridge west of the plain of Jericho called by the Latin Church Quarantania.
DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES.
5. Soon after his triumphant victory over the devil in the temptations our Saviour gained some of his disciples and departed from this region to Galilee.
It is plain from the first chapter of the Gospel according to John that the Baptist was near the region of our Saviour’s trial by the temptations, and was left behind when Jesus and Andrew, Simon Peter and Philip, the new disciples, left for Galilee. These were added to James and John afterward in Galilee, Luke 5:10; and to others, who though now believers, and called simply disciples, constituted afterward that band of twelve who are distinguished by the more important name of apostles, that is, envoys, or messengers.
6. Of these, Andrew was the first to followJesus. The others were Simon, called Peter, James and his brother John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, called also Levi, Simon the Zealot, Lebbæus, surnamed Thaddæus, called also Judas, or Jude, James, called “the less” to distinguish him from the other James, called “the greater,” and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him, and who, when he hung himself, was replaced by Matthias, Acts 1:15–26.