Jesus the Jew. Geza Vermes
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