Anonymous · 90 · overland

The four Gospels. A birth in Bethlehem, a childhood in Galilee after a flight into Egypt, three years walking between the villages of a small province, and a final week in Jerusalem. Most of it happens inside an area about the size of Wales, and the longest journey in it is taken by a family running from a king.

1. 1
   Bethlehem

   A census brings Joseph and Mary from Galilee to his ancestral town, where there is no room - and the visitors are shepherds off the hillside and, later, astrologers from somewhere east asking awkward questions in Jerusalem.

2. 2
   Egypt

   Warned in a dream, they go south into Egypt while Herod kills the children of Bethlehem - the one long journey in the story, made by refugees, and told by Matthew in three verses.

3. 3
   Nazareth

   They come back to an obscure village in Galilee, and for thirty years there is almost nothing to report - and when he does begin, the people of the town try to throw him off a cliff for it.

4. 4
   The Jordan

   Down to the river where John is baptising, and then forty days alone in the wilderness above it - which is where the public part begins, at the age of about thirty and with no possessions at all.

5. 5
   Capernaum

   He makes a fishing town on the north shore of the lake his base: Peter's house, the synagogue, the boats - and most of the miracles and most of the arguments happen within a few miles of this water.

6. 6
   Caesarea Philippi

   The furthest north he goes, to a pagan town under Mount Hermon, and the question at the centre of the Gospels: who do you say that I am - and immediately afterwards, the first talk of Jerusalem and dying.

7. 7
   Jericho

   The last road up: blind Bartimaeus at the gate, Zacchaeus in the sycamore, and a climb of three thousand feet in fifteen miles from the lowest city on earth to the one he knows he is going to die in.

8. 8
   Bethany

   Two miles from the city over the Mount of Olives, the house of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, where he stays each night of the last week and walks in each morning - and where the ointment is poured out.

9. 9
   Jerusalem

   The colt, the temple tables, the upper room, the garden, the trial and the hill - six days that occupy about a third of all four Gospels, in a city he had entered as a pilgrim every year of his life.