Geography is the organizing structure for St. Luke’s two volume work: the gospel with his name and the Acts of the Apostles. The turning point in the gospel (Luke 9:51) happens when Jesus “turns his face toward Jerusalem.” His ministry in his home territory of Galilee was completed and now Jesus moves toward his salvific death and resurrection in Jerusalem. When Luke picks the story up in Acts he shows the Church radiating out from Jerusalem — to Judea, Samaria and, eventually, into the entire world. However, the introduction of Jesus’ ministry in Capernaum concludes with this thought: he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea. No, he was preaching in Galilee at this phase of his mission. This illustrates that the Bible we have today was hand-copied over the centuries. The oldest manuscript with the four gospels was copied more than 300 years after the original was written! At some point a monk must have dozed off while he was copying. We are dependent of Biblical scholars to construct the original text from the manuscripts which have come down to us.
