How Far Could You Walk on a Sabbath Day?

How far can you walk in a day?   How far could you have walked on a Sabbath day during the time of Jesus and his apostles?


The answer to the first question would be, "about 20 to 30 miles" walking at a rate of about 2 miles per hour for eight hours, but if you  were a Jew living in or around  Jerusalem during and shortly after the time of Jesus you wouldn't be able to cover anywhere near that much ground.


Under Mosaic Law on the seventh day of the week Israelites -- and even foreigners -- were not stop all strenuous work and other activity in order to rest and have time to focus on religious matters -- such as the reading and meditating on the Scriptures.  God instructed them: "Let nobody go out from his [or her]locality."


The rabbis, as they did with many other aspects of the Law, carried this to an extreme putting a 2,000 cubic limit on how far anybody could walk. They called this a "Sabbath Day's Journey".  The actual distance was somewhere between 0.8 and 1 kilometer.


After witnessing Jesus' ascension to the heavens after his resurrection, his apostles made such a trip from the Mount of Olives back to nearby  Jerusalem.