Mark 8:27

27 9:1. Cæsarea Philippi. The Confession of St Peter

27. And Jesus went out The Redeemer and His Apostles now set out in a northerly direction, and travelled some 25 or 30 miles along the eastern banks of the Jordan and beyond the waters of Merom, seeking the deepest solitude among the mountains, for an important crisis in His Life was at hand. The solitude of the beautiful district, whither the Saviour now journeyed, is illustrated by the fact that it is the only district of Palestine where a recent traveller found the pelican of the wilderness(Psalms 102:6). See Thomson's Land and the Book, pp. 260, 261; Caspari's Introduction, p. 163, n.

into the towns The little company at length reached the "villages," as it is literally, or the "parts" or "regions" (Matthew 16:13) of the remote city of Cæsarea Philippi, near which it is possible He may have passed in His circuit from Sidon a very few weeks before. See above, Mark 7:24, n., Bishop Ellicott's Lectures, p. 225.

Cæsarea Philippi "Sezarie of Philip" (Wyclif) lay on the north-east of the reedy and marshy plain of El Huleh, close to Dan, the extreme north of the boundaries of ancient Israel, (i) Its earliest name according to some was Baal-Gad (Joshua 11:17; Joshua 12:7; Joshua 13:5) or Baal-Hermon (Judges 3:3; 1 Chronicles 5:23), when it was a Phœnician or Canaanite sanctuary of Baal under the aspect of "Gad," or the god of good fortune, (ii) In later times it was known as Panium or Paneas, a name which it derived from a cavern near the town, "abrupt, prodigiously deep, and full of still water," adopted by the Greeks of the Macedonian kingdom of Antioch, as the nearest likeness that Syria afforded of the beautiful limestone grottoes, which in their own country were inseparably associated with the worship of the sylvan Pan, and dedicated to that deity. Hence its modern appellation Baneas. (iii) The town retained this name under Herod the Great, who built here a splendid temple, of the whitest marble, which he dedicated to Augustus Cæsar, (iv) It afterwards became part of the territory of Herod Philip, tetrarch of Trachonitis, who enlarged and embellished it, and called it Cæsarea Philippi, partly after his own name, and partly after that of the Emperor Tiberius. Jos. Ant. xv. 10. 3; Bel. Jud. i 21. 3. It was called Cæsarea Philippito distinguish it from Cæsarea Palestinæ, or Cæsarea "on the sea." Dean Stanley calls it a Syrian Tivoli, and "certainly there is much in the rocks, caverns, cascades, and the natural beauty of the scenery to recall the Roman Tibur. Behind the village, in front of a great natural cavern, a river bursts forth from the earth, the -upper source" of the Jordan. Inscriptions and niches in the face of the cliffs tell of the old idol worship of Baal and of Pan." Tristram, Land of Israel, p. 581.

he asked his disciples It was in this desert region that the Apostles on one occasion found Him engaged in solitary prayer (Luke 9:18), a significant action which had preceded several important events in His life, as (a) the Baptism, (b) the election of the Twelve, and (c) the discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum. It was now the precursor of a solemn and momentous question. Hitherto He is not recorded to have asked the Twelve any question respecting Himself, and He would seem to have forborne to press His Apostles for an explicit avowal of faith in His full Divinity. But on this occasion He wished to ascertain from them, the special witnesses as they had been of His life and daily words, the results of those labours, which were now drawing in one sense to a close, before He went on to communicate to them other and more painful truths.