Lesson
The Road Jesus Walked
Where the Gospels put him, from Bethlehem to the last approach to Jerusalem. A teaching map, the stops, and the places the four books do not tell the same clock.
September 25, 2026
This is the road, not the sermons. The Gospels are not a diary, and they do not always tell the stops in the same order. John brings him to Jerusalem for feasts more than once. Matthew, Mark, and Luke spend the public years mostly in Galilee and then turn south. Both shapes can be true. A harmony that pretends there is no question is not more faithful than the books.
The last week has its own sitting, because the days get dense: The Week of the Cross.
The numbers below match the map. They are a spine, not every night he slept.
1. Bethlehem, then away
He is born in Bethlehem (, ). He is presented in the temple in Jerusalem (). Matthew then sends the child to Egypt, and after Herod's death to Nazareth (). Luke moves the family to Nazareth and does not tell the Egypt story (). Silence is not a denial. The usual reading is Egypt, then Nazareth. Luke also says the census was the first while Quirinius was governor of Syria (). That line is a real historical argument. This lesson does not settle it. It only refuses to drop Bethlehem because the argument exists.
At twelve he is in Jerusalem for the , and then back to Nazareth (). The years after that are hidden. Nazareth is home.
2, 4, 5. Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum
John the Baptist is at the Jordan. John names Bethany beyond the Jordan (). The Gospels do not survey the ford. The map leaves that dot open. Jesus is baptized, then in the wilderness (, ). The wilderness is the dry country, not a town.
Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Nathanael are in John's early chapter (). The wedding is at Cana in Galilee (). After it he goes down to Capernaum, not to stay yet ().
Capernaum becomes the base once the Galilean work is public (). The fishermen are called from the boats (). Readers differ on whether that is the same day as John 1 or a later call. He is in the synagogue at Nazareth and not received (). Nain is in this country: he meets a funeral at the gate (). A second sign at Cana is the official's son, and the father meets the news on the way down ().
6. Samaria, and 7. Jerusalem early
John has a Passover in Jerusalem near the start, and a clearing of the temple courts (). The other Gospels tell a clearing in the last week. That is one of the real splits on the road. Open it rather than sanding it.
He stays in the Judean countryside and baptizes, or his disciples do (, ). Then he has to go through Samaria. Sychar, Jacob's well, the woman, and the town (). Then Galilee again ().
John 5 is another feast in Jerusalem, and the pool. The feast is not named. If it is a Passover, the public work is longer. If it is not, the Passovers John does name still give more than two years. That unnamed feast is why people still argue over three years or four.
The Galilean circuits
The sea is the workshop. Storms, the other side, crowds. The place of the herd is a known tangle of names: Gerasenes, Gadarenes, Gergesenes, depending on and the copies (, ). It is the eastern shore country. The lesson will not pretend the manuscripts picked one village for us.
The five thousand are fed in a lonely place. Luke says they withdrew toward Bethsaida (). John says the mountain, and that the people came because of the signs (). They cross back. The next day the crowd is at Capernaum (). He speaks there. Many leave (). That is an event on the map, not the sermon.
8 and 9. North, to the coast and to Caesarea Philippi
He goes to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Gentile woman asks for her daughter (, ). Then the Decapolis, east of the sea, and the four thousand (). The district he crosses to after that is Dalmanutha in Mark and Magadan in Matthew. We do not have a modern pin that everyone accepts. The map does not invent one.
At Caesarea Philippi, far north, Peter says who he is (). A high mountain after that is the transfiguration (). Hermon is the traditional guess because it is the high country there. The Gospels say a high mountain. They do not name it.
10 and 11. The turn south
Luke marks a turn: he sets his face to go to Jerusalem (). A Samaritan village will not receive him (). Luke's long travel section is not one straight march. John still has him in Jerusalem for the Feast of Booths () and later at the Feast of Dedication, winter, in Solomon's colonnade (). So the "one trip south" in the synoptics and the feast trips in John are the same years, told at different grain.
Martha and Mary live in a village in Luke (). John puts them at Bethany, near Jerusalem ().
Jericho is on the way up from the Jordan. A blind man, or two, and Zacchaeus (, , ). The number of blind men is one of the small differences. The town is not in doubt.
Before the last approach, Lazarus dies at Bethany. Jesus is not there. He comes, and Lazarus comes out (). After that he withdraws to a town called Ephraim, in the country near the wilderness (). The map leaves Ephraim open. The name is in the text. The modern mound is a guess.
The last stage is back through Jericho and up to Bethphage and Bethany, on the Mount of Olives. That is where the other lesson begins.
What this map will not decide
It will not decide the year of , or which weekday, or whether every feast in John is a separate visit you could have filmed. It will tell you where the books put him. Where they differ, the difference stays visible.
This lesson's home is The Life of Jesus.