{"id":484,"date":"2014-11-28T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-11-28T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/?p=484"},"modified":"2014-11-16T00:05:27","modified_gmt":"2014-11-16T00:05:27","slug":"matthew-713-14-the-narrow-and-wide-gates-historical-backgrounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/11\/matthew-713-14-the-narrow-and-wide-gates-historical-backgrounds.html","title":{"rendered":"Matthew 7:13-14; The Narrow and Wide Gates (Historical Backgrounds)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When we read about Jesus contrasting \u201cwide\u201d and \u201cnarrow\u201d gates in Matthew 7:13-14, the modern assumption is to picture two separate gates at the end of separate roads. Historically speaking, that image is probably incorrect.<\/p>\n<p>In Jesus\u2019 time, city gates were large and multi-layered. The broad, tall, wide gate opened during the day to allow entry of large caravans, livestock, groups of people, and so on. It was a bustling, busy, place where anyone (such as thieves or other criminals) could hide undetected within a crowd. Just inside that gate, or sometimes inset into the broad gate, was a smaller opening that allowed only one or two people, or a single donkey to pass through. This was typically guarded. No one could pass through here anonymously.<\/p>\n<p>This type of city-gate setup was similarly true in wealthy homes and estates, and that seems to be Jesus\u2019 reference point in the parallel passage of Luke 13:24. These large homes typically featured a walled-in courtyard with a large entryway that was opened to allow carts and animals to pass through during the day. Inset into that large door would have been a smaller door which individual family members used to enter and exit in either day or night.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, to \u201center through the narrow gate,\u201d could have been understood to mean entering God\u2019s kingdom without anonymity, without any possibility of hiding anything about who you are\u2014and to enter as a recognized member of God\u2019s family.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/workscited.html\">Works Cited<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>[ZP2, 645-646; SLU 359]<\/p>\n<p>\u2126\u2126\u2126<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"About: Bible Study Nerds\" href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/about-for-bible-study-nerds.html\">About: For Bible Study Nerds\u2122<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"About: Mike Nappa\" href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/about-mike-nappa.html\">About: Mike Nappa<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2014 to present by\u00a0<a title=\"Nappaland Communications Inc. official website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nappaland.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nappaland Communications Inc<\/a>. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we read about Jesus contrasting \u201cwide\u201d and \u201cnarrow\u201d gates in Matthew 7:13-14, the modern assumption is to picture two separate gates at the end of separate roads. Historically speaking, that image is probably incorrect. In Jesus\u2019 time, city gates were large and multi-layered. The broad, tall, wide gate opened during the day to allow&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":571,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2],"tags":[201,84,111],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historicalbackgrounds","category-matthew","tag-gates","tag-kingdom-of-god","tag-sermon-on-the-mount"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Matthew 7:13-14; The Narrow and Wide Gates (Historical Backgrounds) - For Bible Study Nerds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/11\/matthew-713-14-the-narrow-and-wide-gates-historical-backgrounds.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Matthew 7:13-14; The Narrow and Wide Gates (Historical Backgrounds) - For Bible Study Nerds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When we read about Jesus contrasting \u201cwide\u201d and \u201cnarrow\u201d gates in Matthew 7:13-14, the modern assumption is to picture two separate gates at the end of separate roads. Historically speaking, that image is probably incorrect. In Jesus\u2019 time, city gates were large and multi-layered. 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Historically speaking, that image is probably incorrect. In Jesus\u2019 time, city gates were large and multi-layered. The broad, tall, wide gate opened during the day to allow&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/11\/matthew-713-14-the-narrow-and-wide-gates-historical-backgrounds.html","og_site_name":"For Bible Study Nerds","article_published_time":"2014-11-28T12:00:39+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-11-16T00:05:27+00:00","author":"Mike Nappa","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/11\/matthew-713-14-the-narrow-and-wide-gates-historical-backgrounds.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/11\/matthew-713-14-the-narrow-and-wide-gates-historical-backgrounds.html","name":"Matthew 7:13-14; The Narrow and Wide Gates (Historical Backgrounds) - For Bible Study Nerds","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-11-28T12:00:39+00:00","dateModified":"2014-11-16T00:05:27+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/#\/schema\/person\/a0ce37903172885871b0c504c6694575"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/11\/matthew-713-14-the-narrow-and-wide-gates-historical-backgrounds.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/11\/matthew-713-14-the-narrow-and-wide-gates-historical-backgrounds.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/2014\/11\/matthew-713-14-the-narrow-and-wide-gates-historical-backgrounds.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Matthew 7:13-14; The Narrow and Wide Gates (Historical Backgrounds)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/","name":"For Bible Study Nerds","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Mike Nappa","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/#\/schema\/person\/a0ce37903172885871b0c504c6694575","name":"Mike Nappa","description":"Mike Nappa is an entertainment journalist at FamilyFans.com, a bestselling author\u2014and a notorious Bible Study Nerd. He's a former youth pastor who shepherded kids on staff at Chuck Swindoll's church in Southern California\u2014and he's a bestselling and award-winning author with more than a million copies of his books sold worldwide. Plus, he holds a degree in Christian Education with an emphasis in Bible Theology. So, you know, he\u2019s got that going for him. Mike is also a pop culture dork who watches too much TV, reads too many comic books, utters too many bad words, laughs at all the wrong jokes, and often gets in trouble because he says whatever he happens to be thinking at the moment\u2014like quoting an R-rated movie in the middle of a sermon. Yeah, he\u2019s a mess (just like you!), but he kind of likes it that way. Most of all, Mike Nappa loves Jesus, and he figures that covers over a multitude of sins. Learn more at nappaland.com\/mikenappa.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.biblestudynerds.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/author\/mnappa"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/571"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/forbiblestudynerds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}