Covered in the Dust: Part II
" As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up and followed him. " -Matthew 9:9 As a young child, Matthew had gone through the educational system. He would have attended both Bet Sefer (House of the Book) and Bet Talmud (House of Learning) at the synagogue from age 6 to age 13. He learned the scriptures inside and out, and at age 13 was declared a "son of the commandments" at his "Bar Mitzvah." Around the same time as his Bar Mitzvah he would present himself to a rabbi to be given an oral test. The rabbi’s would test not only his knowledge of scripture, but also his understanding of scripture and its theological concepts. The knowledge of scripture a requirement for the Bar Mitzvah, but the understanding would have allowed him to be the student of a rabbi. This elite form of higher education was known as the Bet Midrash. Only if you had a grasp of those theolog