How did Luke learn what was said on the cross? The Apostle Paul was imprisoned at Caesarea Maritima, which was the provincial capital of Judea or Palestine under the Roman Empire. He was there for at least two years. Luke, his companion and a physician, stayed in the area. That gave him the opportunity to learn a great deal from the other Apostles, those who followed Jesus and saw him raised from the dead, including the women and others who stayed with Jesus all the way to the foot of the cross.

Luke was thus able to record what these criminals said and some of the most important words we have from Jesus.

Jesus said, “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

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The Temple at Jerusalem was a magnificent structure. The original temple that Solomon had built around 950 BC had been destroyed by the Babylonians when they conquered Israel and deported them to Babylon. But when Cyrus of Persia defeated Babylon, he returned the people of Israel to the Promised Land and helped them rebuild the Temple around 550 years before Jesus was born.

It was the sort of place that people wanted to maintain and improve over those centuries, and 30 years before Jesus was born Herod the Great embarked on a massive building project to restore and refresh the Temple that had been in place by that time almost 500 years. He enhanced it by building massive plazas, colonnades, porticos and gardens all around it.

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Salisbury Cathedral stands on a plain in Wiltshire, England, a couple of hours west of London. That area has been inhabited by people for thousands of years. It’s just 9 miles south of Stonehenge, which is 5,000 years old (1,000 or more years older than Abraham) and built by the people who lived in that area. Christians evangelized the area during Roman times. The old city was called by its Latin name of Sarum, and it remained a vital religious and economic center perched on a high hill for defensive purposes.

In the early 1200’s, they got the bright idea of moving the city down from its hill onto the plain near the river. In 1220 they began to construct this amazing and stunningly beautiful cathedral. The first wall went up that year and remains at the very east end, which is Trinity Chapel. They completed it in just 38 years.

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