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Jesus and Galilee

It is generally agreed that, whilst maintaining a definite interest in time, space and circumstance, the Synoptists did not aim to write history proper. Although they adopted the biographical literary form, their life of Jesus was intended principally as a vehicle for the preaching of the early Church. In consequence, however brilliantly analysed, the Gospels cannot be expected to provide more than a skeletal outline of Jesus of Nazareth as he really was.

Is it nevertheless possible to add a little flesh to these bare bones? The answer is that it may be done if, as has been remarked in the Introduction, the Jewish parallel material is used in the right manner and spirit. Instead of treating Jewish literature as an ancillary to the New Testament, the present approach will attempt the contrary, namely to fit Jesus and his movement into the greater context of first-century AD Palestine. If such an immersion in historical reality confers credibility on the Gospel picture, and the patchy portrait drawn by the evangelists begins suddenly to look, sound and feel true, this enquiry will have attained its primary objective.¹

Within such a plan of reintegration and the corresponding work of detection that it entails, which aspects of Palestinian history and religion are most relevant? First, to reanimate Jesus, his natural background, first-century Galilee, must be filled in. Second, to perceive the truth and purpose of his mission as an exorcist and healer, it must be reinstated in the place to which it belongs: that is, in the charismatic stream of post-biblical Judaism.

At first sight the reinsertion of Jesus into the Galilean Judaism of his day would appear to be not only reasonable and necessary, but also easy, since it is justifiable to suppose that the subject must be familiar to scholars versed in post-biblical Jewish literature. Galilee, after all, produced from the second century AD onwards all the essentials of rabbinic religion: the Mishnah, which is the fundamental code of Jewish laws and customs, its extensive commentary, the Palestinian Talmud, and the earliest interpretative works on the Pentateuch. Nevertheless, an indiscriminate use of these writings for the reconstruction of the atmosphere in which Jesus lived would be mistaken and create utter confusion. For although it was formulated in the province, the real inspiration of rabbinic Judaism was of Judean provenance. More precisely, its source was Jerusalem. Galilee’s regional identity was deeply affected by the influx of leading Judean rabbis who managed to survive the Bar Kosiba rebellion against the Roman empire of Hadrian (AD 132–5) and its aftermath, and were compelled by imperial legislation to settle in the North. When the academy of Jamnia (Yavneh) – established by Yohanan ben Zakkai after the Temple was destroyed – was moved around AD 140 to the small town of Usha, about ten miles from Haifa, the place became another Jerusalem; but the Torah propagated from this new Zion under the supervision of the Patriarch, the officially recognized head of all the Jews resident in the Roman empire, was Galilean only by accident.

The History of Galilee

A much more reliable picture of the Galilee of Jesus is reflected in the writings of Flavius Josephus who, as rebel commander-in-chief of the Northern region during the first Jewish War (AD 66–70), possessed a first-hand knowledge of it. Clearly, it was a territory sui generis. Not only did it have its own peculiar past, but its political, social and economic organization also contributed to distinguish it from the rest of Palestine. The conflict between Jesus and the religious and secular authority outside Galilee was at least in part due to the fact that he was, and was known to have been, a Galilean.

Geographically this northernmost district of Palestine was a little island in the midst of unfriendly seas. Westwards it was bordered by the country of Ptolemais (Acre) and the originally Galilean Mount Carmel, both largely populated by Gentiles. To the north were the Syro-Phoenician Tyre, Sidon and their dependencies. On its eastern boundary lay the equally heathen Gaulanitis, Hippos and Gadara. And even in the south it was separated from Judea by the Hellenistic territory of Scythopolis (Beth Shean), and the whole hostile province of Samaria. In consequence, although Transjordan, or Perea, shared the same government as Galilee during the New Testament period, the fact remains that to a large degree the province constituted an autonomous and self-contained politico-ethnic unit.

Its overwhelming Jewishness was a relatively recent phenomenon. In the eighth century BC the prophet Isaiah wrote of the ‘District (Gelil) of the Gentiles’,² the phrase from which the name Galilee derives. The colonization of the conquered Northern kingdom of Israel by Mesopotamian peoples³ can hardly have altered this situation though, clearly, Israelite occupation never ceased altogether. The Jewish minority nevertheless came under such pagan pressure at the time of the outbreak of the Maccabean rebellion, that Simon Maccabaeus, having brought temporary relief by defeating the local Gentiles and their outside allies, decided on a drastic rescue bid and removed the whole of Galilean Jewry to Judea.⁴

The refugees no doubt returned to their homes after the final Maccabean triumph, but it was not until the very end of the second century BC (104–103 BC) that Northern Galilee and its adjacent districts were annexed to the Maccabean-Hasmonean realm as a result of the victory of Aristobulus I over Iturea.⁵ Josephus also reports an ultimatum issued by the victors to the vanquished that their presence would only be tolerated if they were prepared to ‘be circumcised and to live in accordance with the laws of the Jews’.⁶

In regard to the governmental systems in force in Roman Palestine during the first half of the first Christian century, the province of Galilee possessed an administrative machine distinct from that of Judea, a fact that cannot have failed to reinforce Galilean self-awareness. After the banishment of Archelaus to Vienna in Gaul in AD 6, the ephemeral rule of Judea by a Herodian ethnarch was replaced by a direct Roman take-over. Following the census ordered in the same year by Publius Sulpicius Quirinius of Gospel fame, the legate of Syria, a Roman knight, Coponius, was appointed prefect of Judea, and as such, made directly responsible to the emperor for the military, financial and judicial administration of the region.⁷ Thus, despite the real power still possessed by the Sanhedrin and the aristocratic chief priests and Temple officials, Judea could not help but be humiliated by the presence of imperial Rome.

Galilee was spared this outrage altogether. From 4 BC until AD 39 – throughout the whole life of Jesus – it was administered, together with Perea, by a Herodian tetrarch, Antipas, and after him by a king, Agrippa I (AD 39–44). Rome did not appear on the scene except between AD 44 and 66, and even then the region of Lake Tiberias came under the jurisdiction of Agrippa II between AD 54 and 66. The Herodians were the native aristocracy of the province, and in addition the administrators of the 204 cities and villages of Upper and Lower Galilee and of the Valley, i.e. the Tiberias region,⁸ such as the archon (chief official) Jairus, described as president of the synagogue (the two functions being the same),⁹ were Galileans, as were the tax-collectors whose duty it was to fill the tetrarch’s, not the emperor’s, treasury.

No direct evidence points to a Galilean senate and high court similar to the Jerusalem Sanhedrin, the principal legal, political and religious institution of Judea, but the council (synedrion) set up by the proconsul Gabinius in 57 BC in Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee,¹⁰ may be presumed to have continued until Herodian times, or to have been reinstituted then. It can, in fact, hardly be a coincidence that the Galilean magistrates drawn by Josephus into his military government during the first revolt were, like the members of the Judean Sanhedrin, precisely seventy in number.¹¹

The Galilee of Jesus was populous and relatively wealthy. ‘Never did the men lack courage nor the country men’, writes Josephus.¹² The reason for its economic well-being was the extraordinary fertility of the land and the full use made of it by its people. As Josephus describes it, it is ‘so rich in soil and pasturage and produces such variety of trees, that even the most indolent are tempted by these facilities to devote themselves to agriculture’. Although smaller than Perea, its resources were greater, ‘for it is entirely under cultivation and produces crops from one end to the other’.¹³ One of its products was olive oil, which was exported in large quantities to Jews in Syria, Babylonia, Media, Egypt and Cappadocia, Diaspora regions lacking in this important commodity.¹⁴ This rich farming industry, together with the fishing on the Lake, and employment in the usual crafts demanded by everyday life,¹⁵ gave Galilee a self-sufficiency which, with the legacy of its history and the unsophisticated simplicity of its life, is likely to have nourished the pride and independence of its inhabitants.

Galilean Rebels

From the middle of the last pre-Christian century it was the most troublesome of all Jewish districts. Simon Dubnov exaggerates only slightly when he writes:

From Galilee stemmed all the revolutionary movements which so disturbed the Romans.¹⁶

In fact, if the identification of Judas the son of Ezekias as Judas of Gamala, known as Judas the Galilean, is correct,¹⁷ the main inspiration of the whole Zealot agitation sprang from the same rebellious Galilean family.

Ezekias, described as a ‘chief brigand’, was the patriarch of the revolutionaries who in the middle of the first century BC ravaged Upper Galilee. Captured and summarily executed in about 47 BC by the young Herod, the then governor of Galilee,¹⁸ his activities were carried on by his son Judas, a man with royal aspirations, who when Herod died broke into the king’s arsenal in Sepphoris in 4 BC and ‘became an object of terror to all men’.¹⁹ Ten years later this same Judas surnamed ‘the Galilean’ incited his compatriots to revolt at the time of the census, enjoining them to pay no taxes to Rome and, in general, to recognize no foreign masters. With a Pharisee named Zadok, he thus became the co-founder not only of a band of agitators, but also of a politico-religious party, that of the Zealots.²⁰ Some forty years later still, during his procuratorship of Judea from AD 46 to 48, the wholly Romanized Tiberius Julius Alexander, nephew of the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, tried and sentenced to crucifixion two of Judas the Galilean’s sons, Jacob and Simon.²¹ His last surviving offspring, Menahem, captured from the Romans the stronghold of Masada and attempted, in AD 66, at the beginning of the first Jewish War, to assert his supreme authority among the rebels by entering the Temple in royal apparel. However, he and most of his followers died in the feud which raged at that time between the various revolutionary factions in Jerusalem.²² One of those who escaped the massacre was another descendant of Judas the Galilean. This was a nephew of Menahem, Eleazar, the son of Jairus, the legendary captain of Masada, who at the head of a few hundred Zealots continued resistance against Rome for four years after the fall of Jerusalem.²³

The struggle against the Empire was nevertheless not just a family business, but a full-scale Galilean activity in the first century AD. Those pilgrims whose blood Pontius Pilate mingled with their sacrifices must have been Galilean revolutionaries,²⁴ and it was again a group of Galileans who, in AD 49, urged the Jewish masses in Jerusalem to resort to arms, assert their liberty, and reject the intolerable slavery imposed on them by Rome.²⁵ Furthermore, one of the bloodiest leaders of the AD 66–70 war was John the son of Levi from Gischala (Gush Halab) in Upper Galilee.²⁶ He and his supporters, ‘the Galilean contingent’, acquired particular notoriety in besieged Jerusalem for their ‘mischievous ingenuity and audacity’.²⁷ Thus, all in all, it is not surprising that to the first-century AD Palestinian establishment the word ‘Galilean’ ceased merely to refer to a particular geographical area and took on the dark political connotation of a possible association with Judas the Galilean.²⁸ Even the Mishnah’s ‘Galilean heretic’ is an extreme nationalist who reproaches the Pharisees for including the name of the emperor in the dating of a Jewish legal document, a bill of divorce.²⁹

Staunch nationalists and lovers of freedom who, in Josephus’s words, had ‘always resisted any hostile invasion’ and were ‘from infancy inured to war’,³⁰ the Galileans according to rabbinic evidence were also quarrelsome and aggressive among themselves;³¹ though even their critics admitted that, in contrast to the Judeans who ‘cared for their wealth more than for their glory’, they preferred honour to financial gain.³²

Galilee and the Gospels

Furnished with this largely contemporary information concerning Galilee and its inhabitants, it is now possible to see the extent to which the Jesus of the Gospels conforms to the specifically Galilean type. He is to begin with an appreciative child of the Galilean countryside. The metaphors placed in his mouth are mostly agricultural ones, as would be expected from a man who spent the major part of his life among farmers and peasants. For him the ultimate beauty is that of the lilies of the field, and the paradigm of wickedness the sowing of weeds in a cornfield, even in one belonging to an enemy.³³ The city and its life occupy scarcely any place at all in his teaching. It is in fact remarkable that there is no mention whatever in the Gospels of any of the larger Galilean towns. Jesus for example is never seen in Sepphoris, the chief city and only four miles distant from Nazareth, or in other regional centres such as Gabara (Araba) or Tarichaeae.³⁴ The Synoptic Gospels do not even refer to Tiberias, the new town built on the lake-side by Herod Antipas and quite close to the heart of Jesus’ ministry.³⁵ By contrast, Jesus’ ‘own town’ Capernaum,³⁶ the place which saw most of his activity, is definitely mentioned only once in the entire writings of Josephus; in an idyllic description of the rich district of Lake Gennesaret, he alludes to a ‘highly fertilizing spring, called by the inhabitants Capharnaum’!³⁷ Nevertheless this place Capernaum, and the slightly better known, but not much more important, townlet of Bethsaida (Julias), and Corazin – unmentioned by Josephus – were the ‘cities’ of Jesus. At heart, he was a real campagnard. At home among the simple people of rural Galilee, he must have felt quite alien in Jerusalem.

It may have been Galilean chauvinism that was responsible for Jesus’ apparent antipathy towards Gentiles. For not only did he feel himself sent to the Jews alone;³⁸ he qualified non-Jews, though no doubt with oratorical exaggeration, as ‘dogs’ and ‘swine’.³⁹ When the man from Gerasa (one of the ten Trans-jordanian pagan cities) whom he had freed from demonic possession begged to be allowed into his fellowship, Jesus replied with a categorical refusal:

‘Go home to your own folk . . .’⁴⁰

Moreover, the twelve apostles charged with proclaiming the Gospel were expressly forbidden to do so either to Gentiles or to Samaritans.⁴¹ The authenticity of these sayings must be well-nigh impregnable, taking into account their shocking inappropriateness in an internationally open Church. The attitude that inspired them was in any case clearly inherited by those disciples who, to start with, instinctively rejected the idea of accepting the Roman Cornelius among their ranks,⁴² and displayed continuing suspicion towards the supra-nationalist Paul. To quote a modern writer: ‘Had Jesus championed or evidenced a point of view where Jew and Gentile stood alike, it is extraordinarily difficult to understand how his followers could have proved so obtuse.’⁴³ Be this as it may, a slant of such a kind in a man otherwise influenced by universal ideas, a teacher who encouraged his followers to love not only their friends but also their opponents in imitation of the God who causes the sun to rise on good and bad alike, and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust,⁴⁴ requires some explanation.

Having confronted the facts and accepted a certain degree of xenophobia in Jesus, is it going too far to suggest that he might have been a Galilean revolutionary, a Zealot? This theory has recently been advanced systematically and with force;⁴⁵ yet it still fails to convince. All that is known for sure is that his whole interest was centred on Jewish affairs and that he had no great opinion of the Gentiles, but can this have been equivalent to a serious political involvement?

Zealot or not, Jesus was certainly charged, prosecuted and sentenced as one, and that this was due to his country of origin, and that of his disciples, is more than likely. It appears that in the eyes of the authorities, whether Herodian or Roman, any person with a popular following in the Galilean tetrarchy was at least a potential rebel. Josephus’s account of the fate of John the Baptist is most apposite and illuminating. He is depicted as a ‘good man’ who ‘exhorted the Jews to lead righteous lives . . . and so doing join in baptism’. But when large crowds began to be moved by his sermons,

Herod became alarmed. Eloquence that had so great an effect on mankind might lead to some form of sedition, for it looked as though they would be guided by John in everything that they did. Herod decided therefore that it would be much better to strike first and be rid of him before his work led to an uprising.⁴⁶

Far from losing his head because of his criticism of the tetrarch’s unorthodox marriage, as the Gospels assert, John owed his downfall to his powers of eloquence, which, it was suspected, might have been used by himself or others for political aims.⁴⁷

It is hardly a coincidence that the Fourth Gospel ascribes an almost identical motive to the priestly plot against Jesus.

‘What action are we taking?’ they said. ‘This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone like this the whole populace will believe in him. Then the Romans will come and sweep away our temple and our nation.’

Whereat the high priest, Caiaphas, remarks:

‘It is more to your interest that one man should die for the people, than that the whole nation should be destroyed.’⁴⁸

The last saying anticipates, as it were, the controversial legal maxim that any Jew whose extradition on a political charge was demanded by Rome under the threat of an ultimatum was to be surrendered ‘lest the entire community should suffer on his account’.⁴⁹

If it is permissible to read between the lines of Josephus’s account of Jesus, the famous Testimonium Flavianum,⁵⁰ a text apparently enlarged in places and shortened in others by Christian copyists, it would seem in effect that during a period of riots in Jerusalem the unspecified charge levelled against Jesus by the civic leaders was that as a teacher he had won over many Jews. From the epithet ‘wise man’, applied by Josephus to Jesus, and from his use of the word ‘outrage’ in connection with the crucifixion, it would appear that the historian himself did not find Jesus guilty.⁵¹

Potential leadership of a revolutionary movement would have afforded sufficient grounds for adopting radical ‘preventive measures’, but some members of Jesus’ movement were bound to have compromised him even further. Among the apostles at least one, Simon the Zealot, bore an ominous political surname;⁵² but many of his other Galilean followers appear to have been imbued with a spirit of rebellion and to have expected him to convert his religious leadership into the political role reserved for the royal Messiah. When he entered Jerusalem they greeted him:

‘Hosanna! . . . Blessings on the coming kingdom of our father David!’⁵³

As he approached the descent from the Mount of Olives, the whole company of his disciples . . . began to sing . . .: ‘Blessings on him who comes as king in the name of the Lord!’⁵⁴

Moreover, the very last question put by Luke in the apostles’ mouths testifies to the survival of their political aspirations even in the ‘post-Easter’ period:

‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?’⁵⁵

It would also follow, as will be argued in a later chapter, that the first Jewish-Galilean version of Jesus’ life and teaching was conceived in a politico-religious spirit likely to account, at least in part, for its powerful Messianic emphasis.⁵⁶

Galilee and Rabbinic Literature

If certain features of the Gospel portrait acquire new life when set within the Galilee described by Josephus, others are provided with fresh meaning when complemented by rabbinic literary sources. The warning must nevertheless be repeated that, although Galilean in geographical origin, the Mishnah may not be employed indiscriminately to describe Galilean life as such prior to the end of the Bar Kosiba rebellion (AD 135). As one of the recently discovered letters dictated by the leader of the second Jewish War indicates, regional differences remained clear-cut until then,⁵⁷ but from the middle of the second century AD Galilee was the only lively Jewish centre in Palestine and the distinction between Judean and Galilean became largely anachronistic. Comparative material must therefore be restricted to those sections of rabbinic literature in which Judean and Galilean customs, language and way of life are deliberately contrasted. The texts themselves often show that the situation envisaged in them is that which prevailed before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.

Josephus’s image of the Galilean as the indomitable fighter has little in common with the rabbinic portrait of the Northerner as a figure of fun, an ignoramus, if not both. One of the commonest jibes directed against the Galileans is that they did not speak correct Aramaic: U-Aramaic in other words. According to a well-known anecdote preserved in the Talmud, a Galilean went to the marketplace in Jerusalem to purchase something which he called amar. The merchants ridiculed him:

You stupid Galilean, do you want something to ride on (a donkey = ḥamār)? Or something to drink (wine = ḥamar)? Or something for clothing (wool = ‘amar)? Or something for a sacrifice (lamb = immar)?⁵⁸

The distinction between the various gutturals almost completely disappeared in Galilean Aramaic; the weaker guttural sounds, in fact, ceased even to be audible. Put differently, in careless everyday conversation the Galileans dropped their aitches. Third-century AD Babylonian rabbis maintain that it was because of the slipshod speech of Galilee that Galilean doctrine disappeared, whilst Judean teachings, in the precise enunciation of the southern dialect, survived.⁵⁹ Apparently people from certain northern towns – Tib‘on, Haifa and Beth Shean are singled out – were so notorious for their mispronunciation of Hebrew that they were not called on to read the Bible in public when they were away from home.⁶⁰

Even the Greek New Testament refers to the distinctive dialect of Galilee. In the courtyard of the high priest’s house Peter is recognized as a follower of Jesus as soon as he opens his mouth.

‘You are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.’⁶¹

Again, the name Lazarus in one of Jesus’ famous parables⁶² is the ‘incorrect’ dialectal form of Eleazar as attested both in the Palestinian Talmud and in Greek transliteration of the name surviving in inscriptions in the celebrated Galilean necropolis of Beth Shearim.⁶³

Although the subject of precise dialectal differences is complex and still under debate, there can be little doubt that Jesus himself spoke Galilean Aramaic, the language, that is to say, surviving in the popular and somewhat more recent paraphrase of the Pentateuch, the Palestinian Targum, and in the Talmud of Palestine. Practically all the terms which the Synoptic Gospels preserve in Aramaic before rendering them in Greek point in that direction. In the command addressed to the daughter of Jairus, Talitha kum, ‘Get up, my child’, the noun (literally, ‘little lamb’) is attested only in the Palestinian Targum.⁶⁴ Another Aramaic word, mamona, ‘money’, used in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6: 24, mostly occurs in the Targums. The rabbis, even in Aramaic phrases, usually employ the Hebrew word, mamon. Targumic parallel is similarly decisive in determining that when Jesus said Ephphetha, ‘Be opened’, he spoke Aramaic and not Hebrew.⁶⁵ Yet although Jesus expressed himself in dialect, it would be wrong to argue from the misunderstanding of his words on the cross, Eloi Eloi lama sabachtani, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ as ‘Hark, he is calling Elijah’, that he was unintelligible to the people of Jerusalem.⁶⁶ Clarity cannot be expected of the cry of a crucified man at the point of death.

Far graver, however, than the criticisms provoked by their regional accent were the accusations levelled at the Galileans by the Pharisees and their rabbinical successors concerning matters related to sacrifices and offerings in the Temple of Jerusalem, to levitical cleanness and uncleanness, and to the rabbinic code of proper behaviour in general. The Mishnah, for example, ordains that imprecisely formulated vows regarding the Temple and its priests are binding in Judea. In Galilee, by contrast, because of the presumed local ignorance of ritual, only those vows were acknowledged valid which included every detail of the undertaking.⁶⁷ Furthermore, Palestinian rabbinic sources refer to pious men (Ḥasidim) ignorant in the field of ritual purity.⁶⁸ Even eminent Galilean rabbis such as Hanina ben Dosa and Yose the Galilean are reported to have disregarded the laws of seemly conduct. Hanina is tacitly criticized for walking alone in the street by night;⁶⁹ and Yose has to endure the indignity of a reprimand by a woman for being too talkative when enquiring the way to Lydda.

You stupid Galilean, have the Sages not commanded: ‘Do not engage in a lengthy conversation with a woman!’⁷⁰

In brief, for the Pharisees and the rabbis of the first and early second century AD the Galileans were on the whole boors. Moreover, the epithet ‘am ha-areẓ, ‘peasant’, which as Adolph Büchler has shown was generally applied to them,⁷¹ carried, in addition to the expected implication, the stigma of a religiously uneducated person. Though obviously overstatements, the following Talmudic quotations reflect the sentiments prevailing between the ‘orthodox’ and the ‘am ha-areẓ.

No man may marry the daughter of the ‘am ha-areẓ, for they are like unclean animals, and their wives like reptiles, and it is concerning their daughters that Scripture says:

‘Cursed be he who lies with any kind of beast’ (Deut. 27: 21 (RSV)).

Greater is the hatred of the ‘am ha-areẓ for the learned than the hatred of the Gentiles for Israel; but the hatred of their wives is even greater.⁷²

Strangely enough, the clearest echo of the antagonism between Galileans and Judeans reported in rabbinic writings is to be found in the Fourth Gospel in the New Testament. For motives which are not historical but doctrinal, this late work offers seemingly reliable evidence that attitudes definitely attested in the late first and the second century AD are traceable to the age of Jesus.⁷³

According to the same evangelist also, when the Jerusalem crowds proclaim Jesus as the expected prophet, or the Messiah, doubts are voiced:

‘Surely the Messiah is not to come from Galilee?’⁷⁴

The subsequent episode of the return of the Temple police to the chief priests is even more characteristic. Asked why they have not brought Jesus, they reply: ‘No man ever spoke as this man speaks.’ The Pharisees then counter:

‘Have you too been misled? Is there a single one of our rulers who has believed in him, or of the Pharisees? As for this rabble, which cares nothing for the Law, a curse is on them.’

When Nicodemus, himself a Pharisee, takes up Jesus’ cause, he is silenced by the humiliating question:

‘Are you a Galilean too?’⁷⁵

As in the rabbinic quotations, the qualification ‘Galilean’ is synonymous with a cursed, lawless rabble.

Returning to the evangelists, or simply to the outline of the Gospels given in the preceding chapter, it is obvious that Jesus could have been found guilty of the charge of religious impropriety levelled at the Galileans in general. He surrounded himself with publicans and whores. He accepted the hospitality of people unlikely to have observed all the regulations concerning levitical cleanness and tithing. He took no steps to avoid defilement through contact with a corpse. He was more concerned to keep business dealings out of the precincts of the sanctuary than with the quality of sacrificial victims or the type of currency used for Temple donations. A clash with the Pharisees was, in the circumstances, only to be expected therefore, not because they were obsessed with trivialities, but because for them the trivial was an essential part of a life of holiness, every small detail of which was meant to be invested with religious significance.

The crucial question is: who were these Pharisees with whom Jesus came into conflict? Were they themselves Galileans? They are described at least twice in the Gospels as visitors from Jerusalem.⁷⁶ Can it be assumed that they were locals when the contrary is not stated? The answer depends on whether it is accepted that the Pharisees were in fact Galilee’s moral rulers in the time of Jesus.

Josephus, in any case, gives no grounds for supposing this to have been so. The only Pharisees in Galilee whom he mentions are members of a deputation from Jerusalem sent by Simeon ben Gamaliel, the chief Pharisee in the capital, with a view to engineering his downfall.⁷⁷

The testimony of rabbinic literature is equivocal. Presidents of the Pharisaic party, Gamaliel the Elder and his son Simeon, are purported to have sent epistolary instructions to the two Galilees,⁷⁸ but it is not said how they were received. A recent author claims that the Pharisaic school of the disciples of Shammai, Hillel’s opponent at the turn of the eras, was influential in Galilee, and even that Shammai himself was a Galilean; but this brave assertion is backed by no serious evidence.⁷⁹

Fragments from rabbinic literature, on the other hand, point towards a sporadic Pharisee presence in Galilee and an absence of impact during the first century AD. Yohanan ben Zakkai, the leader of Jewish restoration after the destruction of Jerusalem, spent some time in the town of Arab, possibly before AD 50;⁸⁰ two of his legal rulings concerning the observance of the Sabbath were enacted there. Yet according to a third-century AD tradition, on realizing that despite eighteen years of effort he had failed to make any mark, he exclaimed:

Galilee, Galilee, you hate the Torah!⁸¹

Whether these words are genuine or not, they show that the Galileans had the reputation of being unprepared to concern themselves overmuch with Pharisaic scruples. If Hanina ben Dosa, a figure to be discussed in the next chapter, is to be recognized as a rabbi and a Pharisee at all, he represented a Galilean blend. Apart from him, the only other first-century AD teacher to be known as a Northerner is Rabbi Yose ‘the Galilean’. Bearing in mind that Yose was one of the commonest of names, surely the very fact that he was distinguished by his country of origin, instead of being given the ordinary patronymic designation of ‘son of so-and-so’, is evidence of his unusual standing in a Southern academy of Pharisaic scholarship.

The long and short of this argument is that Pharisaic opposition to Jesus in Galilee was mostly foreign and not local. Even assuming that the Pharisees had acquired some foothold in one or two Galilean cities – their influence was especially felt among town-dwellers according to Josephus⁸² – their authority was little noticed in rural Galilee, the main field of Jesus’ ministry and success.

Jesus became a political suspect in the eyes of the rulers of Jerusalem because he was a Galilean. Moreover, if present-day estimates of Jewish historians concerning Galilean lack of education and unorthodoxy are accepted,⁸³ his same Galilean descent made him a religious suspect also. Should, however, this view of the Galilean character be found tendentious, rabbinic antipathy towards the Galileans and the Pharisees’ hostility towards Jesus might justifiably be ascribed, not so much to an aversion to unorthodoxy and lack of education, but simply, as the Israeli scholar, Gedalyahu Alon, insinuates, to a sentiment of superiority on the part of the intellectual élite of the metropolis towards unsophisticated provincials.⁸⁴