Stadion and mile

The stadion was a Greek measure of about 185 meters, the length of a racecourse; the track at Olympia is about 192 meters, and the word gave us “stadium”. The Gospels use it for distances: Emmaus was sixty stadia from Jerusalem, about 11 kilometers (Luke 24:13), Bethany fifteen, under 3 kilometers (John 11:18), and the disciples had rowed twenty-five or thirty stadia, some 5 kilometers, when they saw Jesus on the lake (John 6:19).

The Roman mile was a thousand double paces, about 1.48 kilometers, and milestones marked it along Roman roads. Roman soldiers could make civilians carry their gear for a mile — the background of “if someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two” (Matthew 5:41). A “Sabbath day’s journey” (Acts 1:12), the distance Jewish practice allowed for walking on the Sabbath, was 2,000 cubits — about 900 meters to a kilometer.