Episode 1 David Suchet - In the Footsteps of St Peter

'I'm David Suchet,

'and I'm in search of one of the most puzzling characters in history,

'a simple first century fisherman

'who somehow became the founding father

'of the most powerful Christian church on Earth.'

Wow, look at these!

'We know him as St Peter,

'mentioned more times in the New Testament than anyone except Jesus.

'He was his right-hand man

'and a leader of the early Christian movement.

'In later traditions, he's martyred in Rome

'and revered as the first Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.'

Peter's a real person. He's human, he's fallible.

You sense with Peter something that we can all identify with,

and that's doubt.

But our portrait of Peter is a mosaic,

constructed by different authors, each with their own stories to tell.

He's always depicted as this meek and timid individual,

but Peter's the courageous one.

Wow.

'Peter's character, and what motivates him,

'has always intrigued me.

'Flawed, headstrong, never fully understanding,

'a faithful friend,

'yet a denier in the hour of need.'

-"Is that man a friend of yours?" He says, "No."

-Yes.

-"No, no."

'Yet somehow Peter pulled the Jesus movement back together

'when all seemed lost.

'In this series, I'll be uncovering fragments of tradition

'and half-whispered traces of Peter's life,

'revealing surprising new discoveries and theories

'about the man who shaped a faith

'that came to dominate Western civilisation.'

On a July night nearly 2,000 years ago,

a great fire flared up in the city of Rome.

Fanned by the summer winds,

the flames spread quickly through the dry, wooden buildings.

It lasted six days.

By the time it had run its course,

more than three quarters of Rome was a smouldering ruin.

No-one was quite sure how the fire started,

but the Roman historian Tacitus

tells us that the emperor Nero found his scapegoats.

He falsely charged with guilt

and punished with the most fearful tortures

the persons commonly called Christians.

In later tradition, Peter was present in Rome,

and perhaps caught up in Nero's purge and executed.

And there we see Peter crucified upside down.

I find this very moving.

Christianity is the world's largest religion.

And the largest denomination of that religion

is the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, the official view of the Vatican is that

by coming to Rome and being martyred here,

Peter becomes its first bishop,

the first of an unbroken line of popes that stretches

all the way to the present day.

Now, of course, there are branches of Christianity

that would dispute that claim.

So how is it that Peter became the leader

of one of the most powerful movements on Earth?

Important clues to Peter's early life are found

in the New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The stories they tell often differ,

but they all agree that Peter was a fisherman, plying his trade

on and around the Sea of Galilee in what is now northern Israel.

'Today, Galilee's lakeside fish restaurants draw hungry tourists and

'pilgrims from all over the world, eager to eat one particular meal.'

-And it's all St Peter's fish?

-It's St Peter's fish.

-Oh, wow!

-The oil.

-That's hot!

-I think about 200...

-200 degrees centigrade.

-Centigrade. Yeah.

'The Galilee tilapia,

'better known by its popular name of St Peter's fish.'

Let's look inside.

Here they come...

-Perfect.

-Perfect!

'The fish that bears Peter's name is associated with

'many of Jesus's greatest miracles, like the feeding of the 5,000.'

-That's it?

-Slice of lemon.

-Wow.

-Bon appetit!

Thank you... And here is one that I certainly did not prepare earlier.

Couldn't be fresher.

'But names can be deceptive.'

Who ordered fish?

Mm. That's delicious!

But maybe it shouldn't be called St Peter's fish at all.

The man we know today as Peter wouldn't have been given that name

at birth because it didn't exist as a Hebrew name.

We know him in the New Testament as Simon, or Simon Peter,

and the word Simon or Shim'on was a classic Hebrew name.

We also know that Jesus nicknamed him, in Aramaic, Cephas - rock.

And in Greek, rock is petra or petros - Peter.

The nickname I suppose as a modern idiom would be known as Rocky.

But perhaps there's another alternative.

Maybe Peter always had two names -

the Jewish name Simon or Shim'on,

and the Greek name Petros -

Peter.

So why would a young Jewish boy have both a Hebrew and a Greek name?

Well, one place where having two names might be useful

was in Bethsaida,

a village on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee

where, according to the Gospel of John, Peter grew up.

Bethsaida was Hellenistic,

influenced by Greek culture and a pagan way of life.

Part of the fishing village...

'Archaeologist Kate Raphael showed me around.'

And where are we here now?

This is a typical house for the Mediterranean region

almost throughout history.

Looking around this particular house,

this seems to be very, very large.

Well, possibly we're talking about three generations living here.

-Oh, right.

-So you would have the toddlers running round,

the grandchildren, uncles, aunts.

It's a much larger family than we live in today.

'In Hebrew, Bethsaida means "house of fishing",

'and Kate and her colleagues have discovered that in Peter's time,

'there was a vibrant fishing industry here.'

Throughout the entire excavation, we have been finding

-lots of fishing weights.

-Oh, my goodness.

-And you can hold one.

-Oh!

-See how heavy it is? It's a lead fishing weight.

-Oh, wow!

-And you see here the twine goes through it.

-Yes.

And then you clamp it onto the twine and it will help the net sink down.

That is hard, tangible evidence

that people here really did fish for a livelihood.

And the other thing we find are those needles.

Oh!

So you can see the eye. And they're pretty big.

They're made out of metal, and they're used for mending nets.

I played a fisherman once in a film and we made these out of wood.

So this is metal! This is quite sophisticated, really. Wow, yeah.

I can see you! I can see you through the eye of the needle.

DAVID LAUGHS

We know that Peter was Jewish,

but is there any evidence of a Jewish religion here?

I think it would be safest to say that we assume there was

a mixed population here.

From the bones we're gathering, we learn what their diet was.

Oh, good. Interesting.

And when we look at the question

whether they were keeping or maintaining a kosher diet...

-Yes.

-..we can see that we have also non-kosher animals

within this diet. Like catfish - they're not kosher.

They're not? Why is that?

They don't have scales, and they're scavengers.

So catfish are not something that a Jewish family would eat,

not even today.

'Visiting Bethsaida today, one thing is immediately obvious.

'The village is a very long way from the water.

'But as Kate explained, in the first century,

'a large lagoon lapped against the shores of the village.'

Wow.

If we try and reconstruct the landscape here

at the time Peter was part of this village,

this entire area in front of us would have been covered in water.

Their fishing boats would have been docked around here,

-and we're not talking about huge fishing boats.

-No.

-They're very much suitable for shallow waters.

-Yes.

And seismic movement here caused the course of the river to change,

and it had moved west, and the area of the lagoon slowly dried up.

Ah.

So today the lake is over a mile away from us,

and you can see it just in front of us.

If Peter did spend his early years growing up here, his family would

have been one of the very few Jewish families living in the village.

Maybe he learned how to fish here.

But if he was a fisherman,

from the evidence of the fish bones that were

discovered by the archaeologists, he would have caught catfish

which, being an observant Jew, he would not have been allowed to eat.

But one thing is certain,

that if he grew up here amongst a Greek-speaking pagan community,

he would have ended up being both linguistically

and culturally very well-equipped to cope with the challenges to come.

But it appears that, for some reason,

Peter chose to leave Bethsaida.

By the time he met Jesus,

he was living in the village of Capernaum,

a few kilometres across the Sea of Galilee.

In St Peter's time, Capernaum wouldn't have been a huge town

or city or anything like that.

It was a small village with probably dirt tracks.

No paved roads, no major buildings as such.

Its houses were probably made of wooden structures

with - like I'm going up here - stone steps leading to the roof.

But what is really very interesting is that, by the second century,

Christian pilgrims came here

and started drawing graffiti on the walls of one house in particular.

And it's thought that that house was the house of St Peter.

'Today, a modern and rather spaceship-like Catholic church

'stands over the ancient building.

'As Franciscan archaeologist Eugenio Alliata explained,

'excavations here have revealed a history of shrines

'and churches being built over the house.

'It's long been revered as special.'

Well, what made the pilgrims believe that it was Peter's house

at that time, going all the way back?

What was special about it?

-Pilgrims usually follow traditions.

-Yes.

And the old tradition of the place

is that above the house of St Peter was built a house church,

but the walls were still standing, original walls of the Peter house.

After Peter's time, the house was turned into a meeting place

where Christian pilgrims could gather.

The walls were plastered,

and onto them were scrawled messages and prayers.

The walls were covered with paintings

and signed by pilgrims with graffitos.

-Really. So they put... They drew the graffiti on the walls?

-Yes.

And some of them are very special,

because they are prayers to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Oh, I see!

So it was very special to find,

in a Jewish village, prayers to Jesus as Lord.

-As the Messiah.

-As the Messiah.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

But Peter wasn't born here. He was born in Bethsaida.

Why would he have come to Capernaum, do you think?

-Capernaum was a place more open to commerce, to the...

-Oh, I see.

-To the movement of goods.

-Because the...

They were fishing, but also selling maybe the...

-So it's more of a business centre.

-It was a business centre.

It was a business. So it sounds as if Peter was like an entrepreneur.

-So he had a business here.

-Why not? He and his family...

-Yeah.

-It is possible to see...

'Capernaum was a Jewish village

'where we're told Jesus later healed Peter's mother-in-law.

'So it seems Peter was married.'

If this was established as a Jewish village

and Peter was in Bethsaida, which we're not sure whether it was Jewish

or not, is it possible that maybe he came here to get married?

We don't know exactly all of these things.

The Gospels are centred around the person of Jesus and his teaching.

Yes.

So they don't give us

-all the information that we would like to know.

-No. No.

I think Capernaum would have been a good choice for Peter,

coming from Bethsaida.

He may have come here to find a Jewish wife, start a family.

We know that he lived here with his mother-in-law

so he probably would have had children, had mouths to feed.

And where we are now is right on the lake.

It's sheltered, lots of fish,

it's an ideal choice to set up a fishing business.

I wonder how successful he really was.

Hmm.

-So this is...

-That's amazing!

It is now here on permanent exhibition.

And we keep it safe in a good condition.

'In 1986, archaeologists made an amazing discovery.

'From out of the mud on a beach just a few kilometres away from Capernaum

'emerged the remains of a first century fishing boat,

'almost certainly the same type of boat

'that Peter himself may have used.

'What could it tell me about his life as a fisherman?'

I can come up?

Wow! That is extraor... That's wonderful.

-What a view!

-Yes, it is amazing.

It is amazing.

Do we know if there were any oars? Or was it sail? Or was...

The experts believe that it had a mast with sail

and two pairs of oar, and a steering oar at the back.

How many people would have been in this boat?

-At least five people...

-Five!

-..to operate such a boat.

-You need one to steer it, one in each one of those oars.

-Yes.

So you need at least five peoples.

-We've got 12 different types of wood all over.

-12?

-Yes.

Some of them are just beams of trees that still got the bark on them.

-They didn't take the bark off.

-Yeah.

And why so many different types of wood?

Well, it's probably the economical situation.

We can say that whoever built this boat was an expert.

He knew how to use the wood.

But he couldn't get the best quality of wood

so he used whatever he could find.

We believe it's been in use for quite a long period

and eventually it starts to fall apart.

In some places, I can even show you.

Like over here, you can see staples just that they put later,

-iron staples to hold pieces together.

-Really?

That seems... At the end it was quite a dangerous piece to work on.

'Owning a boat like this clearly involved a major

'investment of time and money.

'It was also something that required an experienced crew to operate.

'Archaeologist Kurt Raveh was one of those who helped excavate the boat.

'He took me out on the lake in a reconstruction,

'to experience what it would have been like for Peter.'

Kurt, is this what a first century fishing boat

would have looked like, then?

Not an exact copy, cos not every nail is in the same place,

but it's about, yeah, this is about the size.

So would this boat have been owned by one person?

Or a family or a business?

You needed a group of people that worked together.

Because of the heavy nets and things like that, you needed a team.

Also because every year they had to take out a new licence,

-a fishing licence for a certain area.

-Yes, of course.

-Like today.

-Yes.

-There's nothing new under the sun.

That cost also money,

so usually they didn't have enough to do it by themselves,

so again, they cooperated, they made a cooperation of fishermen.

So what we're saying is

that Peter would have come from a lower middle-class family,

probably from a family business,

a bit of an entrepreneur, but a hard life,

a tough life, and totally dependent on...

-on this lake.

-On the lake and the fish, yeah.

What has always intrigued me

is how a man who started life as a relatively poor and uneducated

fisherman grew to be such a figure of authority in early Christianity.

Of course, fishermen often describe themselves as simple,

but the truth is rarely that.

Menachem Lev has been fishing the Sea of Galilee for over 30 years.

What's the main quality,

as a character, do you need to have to be a fisherman?

-First of all, you have to feel like a hunter.

-A hunter.

-A hunter.

The other thing that you must have

is to know, to read what around you -

the stars, the moon,

how the cloud's moving,

to appreciate what the lake going to do.

Today, Menachem's is the last of the big fishing boats

left on the Sea of Galilee.

Fishing is a kind of life.

-OK?

-OK!

Apart from the modern winches and all that sort of thing,

I'm doing what St Peter would have done,

and his brother Andrew and James and John.

It's as though I'm touching a little bit of history.

You see I'm circling all the time.

You're circling and the net's in a circle.

That's right. To catch the fish inside.

-Inside the net there.

-This is the hunting.

They're all working as such a team.

Everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing.

-It's a lovely rhythm, isn't it?

-Oh, yeah.

Whoa!

Wow! Look at these!

My goodness. What's that?

-Little mullets.

-That's a mullet.

It's a big catch.

Wow.

-Do you ever get tired of fishing?

-No. I never get tired.

For sure, when you see these fishes shining, look how fresh they are.

Look how nice they look.

This is the bleak - these sardines say from the time of Jesus.

So welcome to Sea of Galilee!

-Oh, I feel sorry for them.

-Why?

-Well, because they're...oh...

-Well, you want to let him go?

-Yes.

-Then throw it far.

Bye-bye!

I'm too soft-hearted to be a fisherman!

Obviously I'm not as tough as I should be because this is a living.

This is what they did. And it puts me in touch with Peter.

He was living with nature, the outdoors.

I think he would have been very weathered.

I see him as a big man with big fisherman's hands, very rough.

But a big heart.

Having visited some of the places

where Peter may have been born and grown up,

and spending some time with modern-day fishermen

on the Sea of Galilee,

I'm getting a little understanding of what Peter may have been like.

I mean, there's no doubt that the life of a fisherman

would have been very tough, very hard.

But I like to think of him as basically a happy man with a wife,

children, moderately successful.

And then one day a man came into his life

that would change his world forever.

Down the centuries, water levels rise and fall.

But walking along this shore,

I feel I'm following in Peter's footsteps.

And the Gospels tell us that, somewhere here, Jesus recruited

Peter, his brother Andrew, and some of the other fishermen to his cause.

"Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people."

A beguiling call.

But where would it take Peter?

Palestine was under Roman rule,

and Jesus was preaching a potentially revolutionary message

of justice and equality for all.

Sooner or later, he would come to the attention of the authorities.

Peter must have realised that joining him was a dangerous game.

Over there are the cliffs of Mount Arbel,

and fairly close to the north

are the towns of Bethsaida and Capernaum.

I suppose you could call this Peter's back yard.

But it's also the site of one of the bloodiest massacres

in the whole of the Galilee.

In 37 BC, there was a battle

between the Roman puppet king of Judea, Herod the Great,

and the Jewish rebels, who barricaded themselves

into those caves in the cliffs just above me.

The Romans overcame the rebels

by lowering their soldiers down in baskets.

They then burned the rebels out,

putting every man, woman and child to the sword.

The historian Josephus records the most horrendous incident

of an old man who killed his wife and seven children

before throwing them into the gorge

and then jumping to his own death.

All this happened 40 years or so before the birth of St Peter,

and I have no doubt that he would have heard about this terrible

massacre as he was growing up, from his parents, and even grandparents.

Despite the obvious dangers,

Peter decided to throw in his lot with Jesus.

'On top of Mount Arbel, I met biblical scholar Claire Pfann.'

Why do you think Peter follows Jesus?

What convinces him that this is the guy?

Most Jews of Peter's generation

were hoping for a messiah who would overthrow the Romans

and who would re-establish the Jewish people

as an independent nation.

His hopes are pinned on Jesus that he might do that very thing.

So he was really expecting his messiah, Peter's messiah,

-to overthrow the Romans?

-Yes.

The standard checklist - go to Jerusalem, overthrow the Romans

and re-establish a Davidic monarchy, a king from the line of David.

That's what the Jews were hoping for.

That's what they thought Jesus might do - be a political deliverer.

But then again, he doesn't deliver that.

And is that why he left his family?

I think that he left his family... I mean, we can only guess.

-I know!

-What would make a successful businessman

-pack it all in and take off with an itinerating preacher?

-Yes.

It just sounds crazy to us.

And yet there must have been some personal dynamic

between Peter and Jesus.

And if he leaves the business and his wife up in Capernaum

to travel with Jesus, you know,

maybe he thinks this is just going to be a couple of months or

a year or something like that, so the risk is a calculated risk.

I think what he doesn't expect

is that, three years later, Jesus will go to a cross.

So what sort of disciple was Peter?

There are clues in the Gospel stories.

One stormy night, Peter sees Jesus walking across the water.

He leaps from his boat to join him,

but becomes afraid and starts to sink.

Jesus saves him, but chides him.

"You of little faith, why did you doubt?"

A little harsh, perhaps,

but this won't be the last time Peter's faith is questioned.

I detect a certain impetuous streak in his character.

Jesus didn't only operate in the Jewish areas of Galilee.

We're told he also led the disciples north

to the pagan sanctuary of Caesarea Philippi,

modern-day Banias,

a centre for the worship of the Greek god Pan.

What happened here in this pagan sanctuary

was ultimately to become a most significant,

if not THE most significant moment in church history,

and a major turning point for Peter.

In Matthew's Gospel, we read that Jesus brought his disciple to

this place, a place where human beings worshipped many gods.

And Jesus said, "Who do you say that I am?"

And Peter, the wonderful impetuous Peter, turned round and said,

"Well, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God."

And Jesus replied,

"And I tell you that you are Peter,

"and on this rock I will build my church,

"and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

"I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven."

BLEATING

But I mean, look at this rock. It's almost vertical, isn't it?

It is. It is.

And you can sort of see...

Niches, where people used to worship.

-So here we have this rock dedicated to paganism.

-Yes.

Why would they have come here?

Well, there are many possible reasons, of course,

and the first answer might be the landscape itself.

It's remarkable, it's dramatic.

And it was understood to be so in antiquity,

that's how we have this shrine here.

How important is paganism to this moment?

These are the people that become

the Christians of the Mediterranean in later generations.

It's probably the most crucial moment in understanding

the outreach of the early Jesus movement

as that sort of switch where, all of a sudden, people see pagans

or Gentiles as the next followers of this movement.

Certainly, the move to approaching non-Jewish populations

is the critical piece that transforms the early Jesus movement

into the Christianity it becomes.

The more I stand in front of this rock,

the more I realise what a... monumental this moment was.

-Yeah.

-That you could just skim through these little verses...

-But here we are.

-Right.

-And it's...extraordinary moment in the history.

-Right.

It is a place where the human and the natural meet,

but some people could say, right,

it's where the human and the divine meet also.

-What would I give for a time machine now!

-Yes!

Though Jewish, Peter had been brought up

among the Greek-speaking Gentiles of Bethsaida,

so it seems to me he may not have been too shocked by this pagan site.

What probably would have puzzled him, though,

is why Jesus was now referring to him as "Rocky".

So, why is it that that phrase,

"You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church,"

caused so many disputes?

I think it's because it's open to so many different interpretations.

I mean, if I received that piece of text through the post,

I would look at it and want to ring up my playwright

and say, "What do you mean?"

Unfortunately, we can't do this in this case.

But, in context, let's say here is Jesus, there is Peter,

and there is a rock.

I wonder what he was doing with his hands.

Was he saying, "Upon THIS rock I build my church"?

Was he saying, "On THIS rock I will build my church"?

Was he looking at Peter and actually saying,

"On THIS rock, you, Peter, I will build my church"?

Which, actually, I think is very highly unlikely,

knowing the wonderfully flawed character of Peter.

Or maybe he's saying to Peter,

"What you have just said about me,

"your faith is the rock on which I will build my church.

"On THIS rock I will build my church."

And the debates will go on and on and on.

After Banias, we're told the party travelled to a high mountain,

and one possible location would be Mount Hermon,

just a few days' walk away.

You would have thought that Peter,

having said that Jesus was the Messiah,

that everything was going to go well from that moment on,

but no, not at all.

Jesus began to teach his disciples

that the Messiah had to go to Jerusalem, suffer,

and ultimately be killed.

And Peter just could not get this into his head.

He took Jesus off to one side and said, "No.

"The Messiah cannot go through all this. It can't happen."

And Jesus was ruthless with Peter.

He said, "Get behind me, Satan.

"You are a stumbling block to me.

"You do not have in mind the concerns of God,

"but merely human concerns."

Well...

that's always struck me as very harsh.

"Get behind me, Satan,"

just after Peter has said, "You're the Messiah"?

No wonder Peter was confused.

I feel very sorry for him, I do.

Anyway, I'm going to take the easy way up the mountain.

When the snow falls,

Mount Hermon is transformed into a lively ski resort.

But today's weather reminds me that 2,000 years ago

this must have been a very forbidding place indeed.

What happened next was one of the most extraordinary events

that was ever recorded in the New Testament.

Jesus brought with him to the top of the mountain

three of his disciples that were later known as the inner circle -

James, John and, of course, Peter.

And what they witnessed and believed that they saw

was Jesus literally transforming himself into a blazing white light

and talking to two Old Testament prophets

and hearing the voice of God.

And, actually, it was only Peter that spoke,

because when he saw this vision,

he wanted to take care of the people in front of him,

and said, "Can I build you a booth,

"can I build you a shelter?"

And, of course, that wasn't necessary.

It was as though Jesus wanted to show his disciples,

and Peter in particular,

that he was actually the person who Peter said he was -

the true Messiah.

The New Testament tells us that, after descending from the mountain,

Jesus continued to travel and preach around Galilee

until he decided it was time to go to Jerusalem.

I think Peter must have been very confused.

If Jesus was the Messiah,

why was he insisting he needed to suffer and die?

I don't think Peter had any idea what would happen next.

Why Jesus chose to go up to Jerusalem at this point

is really not clear.

It was a few days before the Jewish Passover, the harvest festival,

and the city would have been packed full of pilgrims.

Up to now, Jesus had avoided any clash with the powers that be.

Perhaps he was going there to gain more followers.

Or perhaps he was deliberately intending to have a clash

with the Jewish and Roman authorities.

As I said, it's not clear.

But what is clear is that it was a very dangerous game.

The prime reason for a Jew to come to Jerusalem

was to visit the Jewish Temple.

But it was destroyed by the Romans some years after Peter's death,

during the Jewish revolt of AD 70.

What I'm looking at now is an extraordinary scale model

of what first-century Jerusalem would have been like.

And what it does show us is the huge size of the Second Temple.

It was vast.

And at the very bottom you can see two pairs of gates.

They're like little arches.

Of course, today there's very little left of these walls at all,

but there is the outline of those two pairs of gates still there.

Ronny, when I was at the model of Jerusalem, we saw gates in the wall.

And if you look there, right there you see three arches.

-Can we have a look?

-One there. Let's go there.

Archaeologist Ronny Reich

has been excavating the southern steps of Temple Mount.

Have a look at the three arches, and behind the blocking

is the tunnel leading into the Temple Mount.

How many people would be coming here, let's say, at Passover?

At Passover, er, several tens of thousands leading...

-Wow.

-..their sacrifices, their sheep.

Let's say one sheep for about ten people, so also about

several thousands of sheep go in

and have to be slaughtered in one afternoon.

We read in the Gospels that Jesus, Peter and the disciples

came here and they caused some trouble in the temple,

threw the tables of the money changers over and that...

Would that have been a big moment in there?

I think yes,

because the money changers were essential to the cult

because, according to the religious code,

-each Jew had to bring half a shekel - money temple tax.

-Oh!

And it had to be given in a specific coin.

But people come from various places

with different coins in their pocket, as we today have.

They first had to change their coins into the specific coin.

Occasionally, here and there, people who deal with money,

who are merchants of money, let's say,

can confuse innocent people who are not so used to deal with money.

This can happen.

Because they were being corrupt.

I can imagine that Jesus saw...

-saw some misdeed of, um, of a money changer.

-Yes.

And then, spontaneously, he just, pfft,

lifts the table and says what he says.

What would Peter have felt about this?

Would he be shocked, surprised or...?

He would be surprised.

This is a place, the Temple Mount is a place where you behave properly,

in those days as today.

With tension growing,

Jesus, Peter and the others gathered for the Last Supper.

As dinner parties go, it's one of the most famous in history.

Yet one event that took place there has always intrigued me.

According to John's Gospel, Jesus began to wash Peter's feet -

something Peter was not at all comfortable with.

I have to admit, I feel very awkward sitting up in this chair

having my shoes cleaned, although it reminds me of a very true story.

I was filming in Portland, Oregon, in the United States of America,

and I was walking down the street one day

and there was a shoe-shine man and a lady.

And she stopped me and said, "Would you like your shoes shined, sir?"

And I said, "Oh, no, thank you very much, no."

She said, "Why not? Your shoes are filthy!"

And I said, "Yes, I know but I really couldn't sit in that chair.

"It would make me feel too awkward."

And she said, "Do you know the story of Peter and Jesus?"

I said, "No."

She said, "Well, Jesus wanted to wash Peter's feet,

"and he said, 'No, you can't do that,' -

"implying, 'You're the Messiah!'

"But, sir, Jesus was teaching Peter something else.

"He had to learn to receive.

"He had too much pride.

"And that's your problem, sir - you've got to learn to receive.

"You've got too much pride.

"Now get up in that chair because that man's my husband

"and he needs the money."

It doesn't make it any easier for me to be here.

Although my shoes look very shiny and clean.

-Thank you.

-Thank YOU.

So, after the Last Supper, we're told that Jesus and his disciples

elected to go to a place called Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives.

And we're also told that Jesus was very troubled.

He asked Peter and two other disciples to keep watch

throughout the night but, sadly, they immediately fell asleep.

And they kept on falling asleep.

Jesus had to keep on waking them up.

The last time they woke up, however, it was too late.

Judas had arrived with an arresting party.

And then we read of a very bizarre incident -

Peter draws out his sword

and cuts the ear off the high priest's servant.

I've always found that very puzzling -

the peace-loving disciple of Jesus wielding a sword.

What is that all about?

At the traditional site of the Garden of Gethsemane

I met archaeologist and weapons expert Guy Stiebel.

Would the disciples have been walking around

with these swords all the time, or...?

-We're not speaking about the Wild West.

-No.

I mean, it's not like cowboys walking around with weapons.

You would be wise taking a weapon with you

once you're outside of Jerusalem.

For example, going to the Dead Sea or to Jericho,

you need to cross the Judaean Desert,

-which is five minutes from here.

-Yes.

And once you leave the city, you're out in the open,

be wise, carry a weapon with you.

So, what sort of sword would they have? What sort of weapon?

If you look down here, you can see a sword from that period of time.

-Gosh, it's big, isn't it?

-It is big.

I mean, we're speaking about 91cm, just the blade.

I mean, it's really mind-blasting.

This is what we call a gladius, that was adopted by the Roman Army

from Spain and became the standard weapon.

So this was sort of military issue?

This is something a Roman soldier would walk equipped with.

I don't think you would expect someone local

carrying something like that.

It's like walking today in the middle of London

carrying a Kalashnikov.

-It's a bit obvious.

-Too obvious. Too obvious.

So what would you think they would carry?

I think a short pugio or a dagger, what we call the sica.

It is 20cm long, made of iron, with a scabbard or the sheath,

and you can very, very easily conceal it under your clothes.

A very, very interesting example

was found not long ago in the Judaean Desert.

You can see the blade and you can see the scabbard or the sheath.

And this is something that is very, very easy, like a pistol,

to carry under your clothes nowadays.

If you want me to put my money, this is it.

So what does it mean, "cut off the ear", then?

Cutting off ears is something very common in this part of land.

What one would do, I guess, is either cut you

and just slice your lobe or part of the ear -

a very Van Goghic way of doing this.

-That's like a mutilation.

-Indeed.

-You don't want to kill this person.

-Oh.

You want to send a message every now and then.

Would there be any other weapons

that the disciples may have been carrying?

Yes. And I happen to have here a sling.

This shows you how conservative this part of land can be.

Those types of weapons were used ever since the Neolithic period,

all the way through to that very day.

And if you place this, you can see the sling shot,

you place it here in the pouch, and you just pull it like that,

and if you start to swing it - I'll be careful...

Oh, yes. Whoa!

It goes like that, it will travel the distance of 200 metres...

-200 metres?!

-..and it can be very, very lethal.

-And accurate?

-Very accurate.

According to the Old Testament,

the slingers from the Benjamite could actually hit...

..something like that, a hair,

from a distance of a few hundred metres.

Gosh, I would be safe.

-THEY LAUGH

-Um, good point!

Beware. Yeah.

Anyway, so this is something an ordinary man would carry around. It's very easy.

It looks like actually a belt, and just think, you can put it...

Oh, I see. You just wrap it round.

..wrap it around, maybe around your head.

-Yes.

-And you're safe.

And I think this is something, uh, till this very day...

-Yeah.

-..it is carried, a way against animals, against beasts,

against humans, against soldiers.

So basically, I shouldn't be surprised that the disciples were armed.

It's just carrying stuff that they would ordinarily carry

-to protect themselves in the wilderness.

-Absolutely.

-It doesn't send a message that we are dangerous people.

-No.

We just want to protect ourself.

That puts that whole story into place for me, Guy.

-Thank you so much.

-It's a pleasure.

-Really.

I suppose what I've learnt is that

my own perception of this incident was slightly wrong.

It wouldn't have been surprising

for the disciples of Jesus to carry weapons.

They would have done so naturally, to protect themselves.

No, what we see is Peter cutting off the earlobe of the slave

of the high priest - possibly for mutilation, I don't know -

but definitely not to kill him, and that's important.

No, what I see is Peter, the impulsive, active fisherman,

coming to the defence of his very dearest friend.

Jesus was arrested and taken to the house of the High Priest Caiaphas

for further questioning.

Peter followed into the courtyard to see what would happen next.

Close to where it's thought Caiaphas lived, archaeologist

Shimon Gibson has uncovered a large first-century house.

Now what we're going to do

-is we're going to go down to the lower level here...

-Yes?

..which dates back 2,000 years to the houses from the time of Peter.

You're a seasoned archaeologist, I can see.

These are mansions.

These are very large houses,

but the dining hall was probably at an upper level.

We're downstairs here, you know, you have upstairs and downstairs.

-Yes. And we're downstairs.

-We're downstairs.

-We're with the cooks.

We're with the cooks and the servants and...

Yeah, that's the place to be.

I'd rather be with them than with the nobs upstairs, I think.

-Yes, yes.

-I'd be more comfortable.

-Yes. But it's quite interesting

when you think about that story of Peter,

-when he comes into the courtyard...

-Yes.

and it's... There's a reference to Jesus being taken to

the upper room, you see.

-So he's been taken to the level where...

-Yes, he is.

..the high priests are sitting, and of course Peter,

he's at the level at the bottom there

where you have all the servants moving around.

There are some soldiers, and different sort of individuals.

But none of them belonging to the higher ranks of society.

-Yeah.

-They were all upstairs.

There were the serving girls in the courtyard, wasn't there?

-Exactly.

-That would have been in a place like this?

-Like this.

Oh, how interesting.

Haven't found any money!

I know. We should find some coins here.

Maybe they held it all upstairs.

Probably. This is downstairs after all.

This is downstairs, yeah.

'Shimon's work here is still ongoing.

'So to get a better idea of what Caiaphas's courtyard may have

'looked like, he took me to the basement of a modern building

'where excavations in the 1970s

'uncovered a similar first-century priestly home.'

So where are we now?

This is a house which dates back 2,000 years...

-My goodness!

-..to the time of Peter.

-Wow!

-We're standing within the internal courtyards.

Oh, my goodness. But it's tiny!

I know. But this is the way they used to be.

The sort of courtyard that Peter could have come into?

I think so. I think so.

But looking at this, er, there's nowhere to hide, is there?

I mean, there's no pillars, there's no...

He would have had to be very courageous.

I mean, just assume for the moment that you're Peter.

-Right.

-I'm a Roman soldier.

You're going to walk in.

I'm going to see you straight away and I'm going to say, "Who are you?"

-You know. "What are you doing here?"

-Yeah.

So he put himself into jeopardy.

Yes. Yes.

So you could use some excuse. You could say, "I'm a tradesman".

You could say, "I'm a family friend".

You know, you could invent some of these sort of excuses.

-That's...

-But he doesn't.

-No.

But what's interesting what you said was,

the ideal thing for Peter to be able to say is,

I mean, obviously the... "What are you doing here?"

He'd say, "Oh, it's just a friend of mine gone up there,

"I'm just waiting to see." But that's what he doesn't say!

He said... When asked him, "Is he a frie...

"is that man a friend of yours?" He says, "No".

-Yes.

-"No, no, no."

And Peter, by the time he came into this courtyard,

was already going through so many disillusions, as Jesus keeps

doing things that Peter feels is not right for the Messiah to do.

This was a person who was going to usher in the end of days.

-Absolutely.

-And that's the end of it.

So what does he... Why is he having these arguments with...

-Yes.

-..Caiaphas. This, I think, mystified him.

I think Peter was confused.

He was confused about this, and that's why

he hung around in this kind of, sort of, small courtyard, you know...

-Yes.

-..trying to puzzle things out.

What happens next is the drama of Jesus's crucifixion.

But Peter and the other disciples are nowhere to be seen,

presumably hiding in fear of their lives.

Then, just 36 hours later, Peter is told the tomb is empty.

For over a thousand years,

millions of Christians have made their pilgrimage here,

where tradition says that Jesus was buried.

The Holy Sepulchre.

There once was a rock-cut tomb on this spot.

Whether it ever contained the body of Jesus is hard to say.

Nothing of the original has survived.

But this early 19th-century monument

remains the most holy site in Christendom.

So to get a better understanding of what Peter might have experienced

when he returned to the tomb, I must look elsewhere.

Archaeologists have found about a thousand rock-cut tombs

in and around Jerusalem.

And these at Akeldama, just below the old city, are fairly typical.

I'm going to go inside one.

My goodness me!

This is much bigger than I expected.

It's quite light in here.

And this...this ledge here is obviously where the body

would have been laid out, and it would have been embalmed

and wrapped around with cloths and they would have laid him out there.

Er...

Oh...I don't believe it!

Oh, dear. Ooph! Look there.

Two pieces of human bone.

Anyway, the body would have been laid there and I'm told that

they would have left the body there for about a year,

and then the family would have come down,

to put the bones in an ossuary,

a box, and then placed it in this area, and probably down there.

This is probably... probably a family tomb.

It must have taken a very long time to cut this.

And when you think how many there are.

And that's quite ornate really,

because there's an arch above the main ledge.

The leader of the family or the clan would be there -

sort of the place of prominence.

I think I'm speculating - I wouldn't know.

It's my first time in!

And probably my last, if I can get out.

The discovery of the empty tomb of Jesus is really very intriguing.

New Testament tells us that Mary Magdalene and the other women

who went there early in the morning found the tomb completely empty,

and they ran back to tell Peter and the other disciples.

And they thought it was nonsense.

But then we come to John's Gospel, and we learned that

when Mary Magdalene told Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved,

we're not quite sure who this other disciple was,

a very sort of mysterious person, they ran to the tomb.

And the other disciple got there first. It was like a running race.

Peter got there, joined him,

went inside and they both witnessed these strips of cloth

that would be wrapped around the body, just folded in on itself.

Just poooff! Just as though it collapsed.

The other disciple looked and we're told that he believed.

Peter, however, left the tomb marvelling

and wondering about it all.

It would seem that he still didn't quite get it.

At this point I wonder what Peter must have been thinking.

He'd left his livelihood as a fisherman,

and his family, to follow Jesus.

And perhaps he was going to bring in the end of Roman rule.

Perhaps he WAS the Messiah,

and was going to free the Jews from their oppressors.

And over time, perhaps he even thought that Jesus was something else.

But he always seemed totally confused as to what the something else was.

And no matter how hard he tried to get things right

for his dear friend, he always managed to get them wrong.

And now he must be looking back with enormous sadness, regret, and guilt

over what happened that early morning when Jesus was put on trial.

He actually denied knowing his dear friend...three times.

He must be thinking, "What if I'd stayed?

"I might have been able to help. I might have been a witness.

"I might even have saved his life, who knows?"

So now in all probability, Peter's going back to Galilee

to start his life all over again as a fisherman

and put these three years of following Jesus down to

one of life's great experiences and that's all.

So, how does Peter get from this,

the possible lowest point in his life,

to becoming what some people will call the first Pope of Rome?

Next time, with the Jesus movement leaderless

and lacking direction, Peter and the other disciples

seek a way to move forward,

carrying the message out beyond Jerusalem to the pagan world,

and into a dangerous and uncertain future.