Chapter Eleven - Quick Notes and Facts

• The message that Jesus sends to John includes elements of the hallmarks of the Messianic age. This is what they would expect to see if the Messiah was truly at work.


• Chorazin and Bethsaida are Jewish towns. Tyre and Sidon are Gentile towns - but not only Gentile towns, they are relatively close to Antioch, where this gospel was probably written.


• ‘Hades' was the Greek term for the place of the dead. Jews originally didn't have a well-developed sense of the afterlife and borrowed from other cultures over the centuries. At the time of Jesus, there was no consensus. Some thought there was no afterlife, others that there was a place where the dead lived, and others that there was a paradise where one met God. Jesus taught in line with the third idea. He seems to be using ‘Hades' here as a synonym for what we would term "hell" (although in the pagan world it was not necessarily a place of torment.)


• A yoke upon an ox enabled one to control the animal. It also enabled one to give the animal something to drag.