Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology

http://btb.sagepub.com/ The Construction of Galilee as a Place for the Historical JesusPart II

Halvor Moxnes Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology 2001 31: 64 DOI: 10.1177/014610790103100205 The online version of this article can be found at: http://btb.sagepub.com/content/31/2/64

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The Construction of Galilee as a Place for the Historical Jesus—Part II

Halvor Moxnes
Abstract
In the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, Galilee again came into the center of discussion, partly because of a general interest in local and regional studies, and partly because of the results of archaeological excavations. Many of the categories from the nineteenth century are still at work, e.g. nationalism (now identified with the state of Israel), but new perspectives from cultural studies and from economic and socio-political structures have gained importance. There are many areas of discussion, both in terms of traditional questions, like the degree of Hellenistic influence in Galilee, and new issues. Among the latter are methodological issues—e.g. concerning the interpretation of archaeological excavations and the use of social-science models in the reconstruction of ancient societies-and substantive issues of how to understand the relations between cities and peasant villages in Galilee. There are many challenges at the beginning of the twenty-first century, most pressing among them the need to see Galilee as part of the larger surrounding area and to study the role of Jesus in shaping the identity of Galilee in terms of resistance to existing power structures.

of Galilee in the nineteenth and early twentieth century were formed by the major cultural paradigms of European societies of the time. An unfortunate end product of this process was the picture of Galilee as an &dquo;Aryan&dquo; homeland for Jesus by some scholars in Nazi Germany. This discredited the search for an historical Galilee. Also, the New Quest for the historical Jesus that arose in Germany after the II World War was primarily concerned to see Jesus in relation to Judaism as a religious system. In consequence, there was little interest in regional or local studies. It was only towards the end of the century that there was a new wave of interest in Galilee.

he descri p tions

cal and religious studies a change from a mere history of ideas approach, to a concern with the political, social and economic contexts. This corresponds to a general shift in the study of history that now somewhat belatedly enters the study of religions in first-century Palestine. One typical aspect of this renewal was an emphasis on local and region-

Halvor Moxnes, Dr. Theol. (University of Oslo) is Professor of New Testament at the Faculty of Theology, the University of

Oslo, Norway (e-mail: halvor.moxnes@teologi.uio.no). halvor.moxnes~a teologi.uio.no). He is on a book on the historical Jesus in relation to presently working

The Third

Quest: Galilee

at

Center

Stage

place. His recent publications include Kingdom Takes Place. Transformations of Place and Power in the Kingdom of God in the Gospel of Luke (pp. 238-83 in SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC MODELS FOR
INTERPRETING BIBLE. ESSAYS BY HONOR OF BRUCE J. MALINA, edited
THE THE

Why did Galilee gain new significance and come into the center of discussion in the third quest? It was partly because of a general trend in historical
and religious studies towards social and local contexts, but there was also a more specific reason in the spectacular results of archaeological and historic studies of Galilee within the newly established state of Israel. First of all, from the 1960s onwards there was in bibli-

by Brill, 2000]), and Placing Jesus of Nazareth: Towards a theory of Place in the Study of the Historical Jesus (pp. 158-75 in TEXT AND ARTIFACT IN THE RELIGIONS OF MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY.
ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF PETER RICHARDSON, edited by S. G. Wilson and M. Desjardin [Canadian Corporation for Studies in

CONTEXT GROUP IN John J. Pilch. [Leiden:

Religion, 2000]).

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al studies-a turning away from the larger national history to the study of specific social and cultural communities. Another aspect was the influence of the social sciences, and thereby the explicit use of models and discussions of theo, ries and presuppositions. This increased contact between the social sciences and the humanities in terms of common perspectives, methods and areas of study, has also resulted in establishing cultural studies, which focus on the cultural world of a region or a group, with culture so to speak as an all encompassing theme, comprising material, aesthetic and ethical aspects. These general developments had an effect upon the study of the historical Jesus as well (Moxnes 1999: 135-37), and resulted in renewed interest in Galilee as the &dquo;home place&dquo; for Jesus. Consequently, the quest for Galilee is part of the turn in history in general towards social history, towards the history of groups and local communities, away from the large metaphysical histories. This is how Sean Freyne (1995a) outlines the challenges of describing Galilee in the Third Quest. The Third Quest, he explains, looked for the historical Jesus within a different context and looked for different &dquo;shaping factors&dquo; for Jesus life and career than the Second Quest. The context was not just religious, as in the Second Quest, but geographical, political, social, and economic. Moreover, it is not studied in general terms, but &dquo;within a specific social and cultural world,&dquo; drawing on archaeological as well as literary evidence, recognizing that one must use &dquo;social sciences in developing adequate models for understanding the social dynamics of that world.&dquo; Freyne concludes by saying that these factors have changed the perspectives from which the search for the historical Jesus is conducted. And one of the results is that Galilee has come onto center stage as the social and cultural world that shaped

Christian studies, and history of the Greco-Roman period. Among the results of this activity are international conferences on Galilee, large exhibitions of art and archaeology, and publications on Galilee (Levine; Meyers 1999; Edwards & McCollough). There are several reasons why this interest in archaeology has been especially valuable and intriguing for the study of Galilee. First of all, there is a change underway in archaeology itself. Focus has shifted from collections of artifacts of a religious or artistic nature and major architectural works towards everyday structures, village houses, farms, shops, etc., as well as means of production and industry. Examples of the latter are wine presses and farming innovations like the form of terracing and water systems. The result is studies of daily life and culture, which imply an intriguing possibility of co-ordinating literary and

archaeological texts.
in Galilee
context and presuppositions for an interest different from that of the discussion of in the nineteenth century, and that means that the perspectives are different. Therefore, I propose to gather the material

Thus, the
are

under

headings that reflect these perspectives: (1) Archaeology functions to support a nationalism that identifies the Holy land with the state of Israel. (2) The relationship between geography and character is described not in personal, psychological terms, but
rather in terms of communities and social structures. (3) The question of (national) identity, which was so predominant in the nineteenth century, is still present. It is seen, no longer in the discredited terms of race, but rather in the new category of &dquo;culture.&dquo; (4) Economic issues and socio-political structures have gained new importance in discussions of how to understand Galilee, and this has led to to contrasting views of what categories and models from the social sciences to use to describe and interpret Galilee. Galilee
as

Jesus.
on

specific reason for this focus Galilee, provided by recent archaeology. An extensive
a more

But there is also

opened up new visknowledge about Galilee in Antiquity. Excavations in Galilee during the last twenty years have brought to light material remains that cover
tas

program of excavations in Galilee has

Israel:

Archaeology and Nationalism

and contributed

to new

almost every aspect of life in Galilee from the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods: villages and towns, with houses of a large variety of types and sizes, palaces, synagogues, aqueducts, roads, and of course all sorts of pottery, housewares, mosaics, tools-even a fishing boat from the Sea of Galilee! Whole towns have been brought to life, with the most extraordinary findings probably in Herod Antipas city of Sepphoris (Nagy et al.). This large activity has sparked interest among many scholars in different fields: in archaeology, art history, Rabbinic studies, early

Archaeology often means digging for ones roots. This has been the case for excavations in the Holy land since Jewish settlers established themselves there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This search for ones roots took on a new character after the State of Israel was established in 1948. Archaeology has become part of a large national project, of finding and establishing a Jewish presence and a Jewish identity from antiquity. That has been an explicit motive on the part of the Israeli authorities whenever they have made archaeological excavations available to the public. These relics from ancient times play an important part in the project of nation-building,
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much as archaeology and history did in many nations during their nineteenth-century nation building processes. Thus, there have implicitly or explicitly been expectations of finding proofs of &dquo;Jewishness&dquo; through these findsexpectations that have been generated not only by Israeli state authorities, but also by many Jewish and Christians groups and other sponsors of the archaeological digs. In this Galilee holds a special place. As an area under full Israeli control, it has been the scene for a large number of excavations. The interest in the historical Jesus and early Christianity is only a small part of the larger picture, but one which has generated much interest and also highly diverse interpretations. Since archaeological finds in Galilee relevant for Christianity are largely from the later Roman and Byzantine periods, it is much more difficult to make generalizations on the basis of the relatively few finds from the earlier period. Most of the finds date from after the Second Temple period and bring to life Galilee as a flourishing area , a center of Jewish life with a large number of synagogues dotted around the region. It was also an area with a large number of Christian monuments, and apparently a mixture of Jewish, Christian and pagan settlers, sometimes in separate villages, sometimes living within the same city. The importance of archaeology for the national project points to the larger geopolitical context for the discussion of Galilee as a place for the historical Jesus. In the nineteenth century the scholarly investigations in the Holy Land were part of a European colonizing activity. The interest in the Holy land was viewed from a specifically European, Christian perspective, which constructed a land that did not correspond to any political entity. This context has now totally changed. The outside colonizing influence in the region is still noticeable, the most important Western power being the United States. But the most importat political change occurred when the State of Israel was established in 1948 on parts of the Holy Land, as an explicitly Jewish state. Later it occupied other central parts of the land: old Jerusalem and the West Bank (the old Judea and Samaria), parts of which are now under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority. Thus, the focus now is upon a specifically Jewish Holy Land that is explicitly associated with the Jewish state of Israel. As a result of this political control over large parts of the Holy Land, many Westerners too have for all practical purposes identified Israel with the Holy Land. J. Murphy-OConnor, in his widely acclaimed guidebook, THE HOLY LAND (1986) apparently identifies the Holy Land with the State of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. There may be understandable practical reasons why the book excludes Jordan and Sinai, but one would have expected a

discussion of why only one part the region is included in the religious term of &dquo;the Holy land&dquo; (see the section on &dquo;The scope of this Guide&dquo; in the Introduction [1986: xi]). This identification of &dquo;the Holy Land&dquo; with Israel does not go unchallenged, however, as tourist brochures from the Jordanian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities describe Jordan as &dquo;the old Holy Land.&dquo; The descriptions of Palestine by nineteenth-century European authors were colored by the idea of the nation state, and that was a trend that continued in the twentieth century. In his discussion of the historiography of Israel, Keith Whitelam points out (1998:13-19) that the common presupposition at work in studies of how Israel was established, was that Israel represented a nation, the emergence of which was that of a nation state with Jerusalem as its center and King David as its hero. This view, which has determined the history of Israel until recently, is found in

all important historical

accounts

of Israel. The idea of

Jewish nation was based on the conquest of Canaan and the brief period of the undivided kingdom with its center in Jerusalem. Although there have been different models used to explain how this state was established (through conquest, infiltration, or peasant revolt), the underlying
assumption of a nation state has not been shattered. The result has been, in the words of Keith Whitelam, &dquo;denying
space and time to Palestinian history.&dquo; This is no mere historical problem; it is also a matter of the ethics of reading

and how historical reading may have wider repercussions the present. That is, an approach that focuses on the exclusiveness of Israel may foster similar attitudes in the present. The efforts by Whitelam, Thompson and others have so far been more in deconstruction of histories based some inchoate on these assumptions, but they involve alternative to sketch an history emphasizing attempts Israels connectedness and responsiveness to the wider world (Coote & Whitelam). Thus, nationalism still plays an important part in the mental construction of the Holy Land, but with a difference. In the nineteenth century, it was European nationalism, that formed a substructure of the presentation of Jesus in Galilee. Now it is Israeli nationalism that forms an often overt structure of the construction of the Holy land and of ancient Galilee. K. Whitelam pointed to how European nationalism provided the model for historical constructions of the establishment of ancient Israel. A consequence of that was the disappearance of the Palestinian presence in the land. The situation today is similar: the emphasis on the Jewish character of ancient Palestine, and the almost direct continuity that is constructed between it and the modern state of Israel, relegates the Palestinians almost to the status of foreigners in their own land. Moreover, the
in

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identification of Jesus as a Jew can have unforeseen reper, cussions in the present context, in which &dquo;Jewish&dquo; is automatically identified with &dquo;Israeli.&dquo;

Galilee and identifies

a central hill country surrounded by markedly different physical features-a coastal plain linked with harbours, a large inland plain, unusual for Palestine, and a rift comprised of river and lake, the only navigable waterway in inland Palestine. We have suggested that this distinctive physiography suggests rather different possibilities for human occupa-

Galilee as Place:

Geography and Community

There are two sets of general presuppositions about how to do geography that seem to have remained the same from the nineteenth century until quite recently. Naturally, they have also governed the descriptions of Galilee, its geography and landscape. First, it has been taken for grantone should strive to produce as accurate representation of the world as possible, and indeed that such a mimetic representation was possible. The dominant form of such mimetic representation was &dquo;descriptive fieldwork&dquo;

tion and

lifestyle [1980: 9].

ed that

based on observation. It was believed that a trained observer could without unnecessary theorizing produce an accurate description of the world (Ley & Duncan: 2-3). The second presupposition concerned the relationship between geography and human beings. Traditional Western theories held that &dquo;it is place that creates man and his culture as well as his character, rather than the other way round. Topos and physis is what shapes, what gives form and content to nomos and ethos&dquo; (J. Z. Smith 1987: 30-31). These presuppositions have only recently been challenged within cultural geography, and it has taken longer for this challenge to reach other areas, such as studies of the history and archaeology of Galilee. The first major contribution to the study of Galilee in recent years, S. Freynes GALILEE FROM ALEXANDER THE GREAT TO HADRIAN: 327 BCE TO 135 CE (1980), therefore represents the traditional consensus, with a straightforward description of the geography of Galilee and conclusions about the consequences for the inhabitants. Freynes study, written before the major excavations in Galilee had made an impact, was primarily built on literary evidence. The opening chapter, on the geography of Galilee and the settlement patterns and social structures (1980: 3-21), although brief, lays the foundation for his fundamental views on how to construct Galilee as a geographical, social and cultural unity-views that inform many of his later works on Galilee (e.g. 1988, 1995a, 1995b).

On the basis of this topographical overview Freyne (1980: 15-16) draws conclusions concerning the culture, internal differences and types of social relations and dominance. The first factor he considers is the fertility of Galilee. It was the most productive region in Palestine, and hinterland to two major ports, so that produce could be transported and marketed. Second, he considers the dif ferent regions of Galilee: the central hills versus the plain and the rift around the Sea of Galilee, in terms of possible conflicts between center and periphery. In this conflict, tradition and the older way of life do not have to lose out. An important suggestion that Freyne makes here, and frequently repeats later, is that &dquo;commercial links can coexist within such cultural diversity provided no attempt is made by the stronger partner to take over or totally dominate the weaker&dquo; ( 1980:16) . Third, the physical pattern determined a settlement pattern that was old and suited to the kinship-oriented, small type of settlements with little urbanization, which never took hold in Galilee. Freynes

There are distinct differences between the ancient and the nineteenth-century perspectives on relations between geography and the human situation.
First, Freyne
traces

conclusion at this point is that &dquo;geophysically the interior of Galilee was particularly suited to a peasant style of life with people living together in close ties of kinship in relatively small and isolated settlements&dquo; (1980:16). These observations about topography shape Freynes further enquiries. There are a number of presuppositions in his inferences from topography to social forms that are not explicitly discussed, most importantly the strength of the periphery and the permanence of the local communities in their isolation from urban centers. He does not here discuss the &dquo;topography of power&dquo; in the region, i.e., the social and political powers that were at work within ancient societies and their hold on the peasant population. In this study Freyne represents an older tradition in the interpretation of place: place is given, and it determines the ethos and character of people inhabiting it (J. Z. Smith

1987: 30-31).
distinct differences from the nineteenthon relations between geography and the human situation. First, the focus is no longer upon psychological factors like the relation between landscape and personal character, but rather on the relations between
But there
are

century perspective

the natural boundaries of political

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and social structures, economy, communicaexchange. This corresponds to a trend in historical studies away from a focus on individual, human factors to a focus on social structures. Second, Freyne also illustrates a growing awareness that a representation of topography and social relations is a construction, and thus the mimetic character of the picture is questioned. In Freynes later works he reflects upon the question of his own presuppositions and develops a more model-oriented approach. In one instance he reflects on the underlying model for his 1980 contention that Galilean villagers could enter into economic interaction with urban centers and still maintain their cultural (religious) independence (1997: 50). He finds that implicitly he drew on his own experiences while he was growing up in the rural West of Ireland, where local villages kept their differences and local independence. Later he developed this implicit presupposition into an explicit use of the model of a conflict between the Great tradition and the Little tradition, a model that is much used to study relations between urban centers and their rural hinterlands. Third, the traditional presupposition that place creates human culture starts to be questioned. An example is the way in which in his most recent works Freyne emphasizes how Herod Antipas changed the socio-economic situation of Galilee by (re)founding Tiberias and Sepphoris. These new cities changed communications and social relations, and they signalled a new mentality and ideology-in short, man made culture significantly influenced Galilee. Human power was at work in shaping landscape. We may sum up the developments in geographical descriptions of Galilee by saying that the constructed character of the picture as well as the human influence in shaping landscape are beginning to be recognized.

topography

tions and cultural

thus become an all-inclusive category naming the totality of social facts and deeds&dquo; that stands partly in contrast to &dquo;culture as a distinctive, autochtonos entity belonging to a

particular local group&dquo; (Masuzawa: 79). Thus, contemporary scholars no longer simply oppose &dquo;Hellenism and Judaism&dquo;; they speak instead of various types of culture
within Galilee.

Galilee

as

&dquo;Cultural Mixture&dquo;

In ideological terms there is a long leap from the &dquo;Graeco-German&dquo; Jesus of W Grundmann to the Cynic Jesus of B. Mack, J. D. Crossan, and others (Freyne 1995b: 599). There is no discussion among these scholars of Jesus ethnic identity or of his &dquo;blood.&dquo; Burton Mack states quite simply that &dquo;Jesus was born and raised in Galilee, no doubt from a Jewish family&dquo; (1988: 62). But in his construction of Galilee as well as in his picture of Jesus there are many similarities to the earlier German studies, maybe because

Mack bases his

description

on

standard textbooks,

some

quite old. At any rate, he describes Galilee as &dquo;complex in cultural mixture,&dquo; a character reflected in the composition
of the population: there were some long-standing Jewish communities, but also more recent colonies of Jews. The region was prosperous, and trade led to travels by sea and by land, not just to Jerusalem, but northwards to cities in Syria. Mack sees constant contact between these villages and the Hellenistic cities. This is a construction of Galilee in which economic contact goes together with cultural exchange between the villages and the cities, unhampered by reservations towards cultural assimilation based on observation of the Jewish Torah or traditional customs. Thus, the basic character of Galilee is presented as &dquo;open.&dquo; It is seen as little influenced by Jewish traditions, not just those associated with the Jerusalem temple, but also those of the prophets, with whom Jesus often has been compared. In Macks construction of Galilee, the greatest emphasis is placed upon the understanding of Jesus gleaned from the perspective of an early stage of Q, in which the aphoristic wisdom tradition is the dominant factor. Basing himself on a reading of Jesus in which parables and aphorisms were the most important elements, rather than prophetic speech, Mack suggests that another role is closer at hand: that of the popular philosophers. Mack does not say that Jesus was a Cynic, but he does point out that Jesus form of speech and many of his themes were similar to those of the Cynics. Mack rejects the suggestion that there was something in the situation in Galilee that could explain the Jesus movement as a result of reformation, revolution or a utopian program. Instead Mack points to aspects in Q that represent a call to individual freedom, to a natural and

Galilee, Identity and Culture

The language of ethnicity and race that was so predominant in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, was not so dominant in third-quest studies in the last part of the twentieth century. The discussion of &dquo;race&dquo; was utterly discredited after World War II, and the question of ethnicity and identity appears to have been rephrased in terms of &dquo;culture.&dquo; Instead of speaking of an ethnically mixed population in Galilee as did the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German interpretation, those engaged in the Third Quest use the terminology of &dquo;cultural mixture.&dquo; This may reflect the rise of cultural studies with a more complex sense of culture that has replaced the older meaning of culture associated with &dquo;edification&dquo; (Bildung-Masuzawa: 75-77). In one sense, &dquo;culture has

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simple life, combined with the loyalty to a group. Mack finds that this reflects the cultural situation of the Hellenistic age that also influenced Galilee. This period was characterized by a fragmentation of traditional societies, a rise of the role of the sage who addressed the individuals quest for wholeness, and by the formation of small social units (collegia, koinoniai) (1993: 62-68). In a certain sense Galilee has become a modern space: open, complex in cultural mixture, with an emphasis on the wisdom of popular philosophy and questioning traditions. Galilee in Macks construction is a space of ideas and easy social contacts; there is little interest in the topography of power, or in less modern aspects of Hellenism like superstition and magic. Galilee has become a spatial
metaphor
for Hellenism understood
as

cultural character of Upper Galilee, Meyers draws on three different sources of material. The first is art: house decorations contain no animal or human figures-that is, deco, rations are aniconic. The second is epigraphy:, there are very few Greek inscriptions in Upper Galilee during this period. Finally, there is the evidence from architecture, which is largely negative in that there are no aqueducts, baths, theaters or statues found in Upper Galilee. Meyers finds that these sources, taken together, strongly indicate a Jewish character in Upper Galilee. For Lower Galilee Meyers uses similar sources in combination with others. One is population estimates, based on land measurements of cities and villages. Only a small part of the population in Galilee lived in Sepphoris and

culture in socio-

Tiberias, the majority lived

e.g., Crossan and

intellectual terms. The hermeneutical interest that becomes visible here is one that that sees Hellenism and Galilee as parallels to the modern world. Thus, the way to relate Jesus to the modern world is through Jesus from Galilee, who may be historically traced above all through the early Q traditions (Mack 1993: 245-58). Galilee as

villages and smaller towns. Meyers finds that this information disproves the claim by,
in

Negotiated Jewishness

The picture that Burton Mack draws of Galilee is rather general in character, based on characteristics of the Hellenistic Age and a perception of Galilee as sharing many of these characteristics. It is drawn mainly from literary sources like Josephus and Q. A very different approach is taken by Eric M. Meyers, based on his 30 years of extensive archaeological works in Galilee. He builds his arguments literally &dquo;from the ground,&dquo; starting with the results of the archaeological excavations and building a larger picture from there. Summing up his views on the cultural setting of Galilee in Jesus and His Galilean Context (1997), Meyers holds that the use of archaeology in constructing the social setting of Jesus is ideally part of a dialogue among Second Testament studies, Jewish Studies and Classical Studies. In his first major discussions of Galilean regionalism (1976, 1979), Meyers emphasized the difference between the rural and isolated Upper Galilee and the centrally located Lower Galilee, which had more interaction with urban centers. In his later contributions (1985, 1997), Meyers finds that this contrast is not so explicit. Although it had no cities, Upper Galilee had considerable contact with urban centers, especially with Tyre and Sidon in the north. What are the major sources from archaeology for a construction of Galilee? Meyers material comes from excavations and finds from a large variety of areas, and from houses, villages and cities. For a construction of the

Mack, that Galilee was urbanized and thus by implication Hellenized. Likewise, the evidence from the time of Herod Antipas in terms of buildings, decorations, and production of coins shows that by and large he chose aniconic decorations and coins with symbols, not images. Moreover, the cities he founded did not display statues of emperors, nor of gods in the Greco-Roman pantheon. Meyers takes this to indicate that Antipas respected the Jewish sensibilities of the inhabitants of Galilee. Meyers use of archaeological material points towards an inclusive understanding of culture, combining material, social and aesthetic elements. But the main thrust of his interpretation appears to be towards the ideological aspects of culture. Meyers notion of Hellenism, transcending the older contrast between Jewish and Hellenistic, emphasizes its dual composition of Greek and

indigenous backgrounds:
The oriental cities of the Decapolis and other gentile cities should not be viewed solely as purveyors of Greco-Roman culture but rather as eastern cities with an Hellenistic overlay that often facilitated the expression of aspects of Semitic religion and practice, including Judaism [Meyers 1997: 62].

Thus Meyers seems to say that we should not think in of clear boundaries around territories that can conveniently be classified as &dquo;Jewish&dquo; (i.e. non-Hellenistic) and &dquo;Hellenistic&dquo; (i.e. non-Jewish). Rather, it is more plausible that the question of identity had to be negotiated within a border area with many different influences, within which even Jewishness itself could find different expressions. Moreover, Meyers suggests that &dquo;we not consider Hellenization so much as an invasive force thrust upon indigenous culture from the outside to snuff it out, but rather as a cultural force that enabled indigenous cultures,
terms

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Jewish and gentile, to express themselves better and authentically&dquo; (1997: 64). As a result Meyers downplays the conflict between Hellenistic and Jewish: &dquo;the appearance of some forms of Greco-Roman culture need not signify compromise, accommodation or traumatic change but simply a way of expressing local culture in new and often exciting ways&dquo; (1997: 64). But Meyers also considers the Hellenistic influence on Galilee in the time of Jesus to be on a much smalljust
as

both

way, relegating other perspectives like the social, economic and political to a level of less importance. The new

interest in the social and economic affairs of Galilee has

scale than Mack or Crossan envisages. Therefore he cannot in the Galilee at the time of Jesus find traces of the Mediterranean and Hellenistic traditions of the Cynic .philosophers that Mack and Crossan suggest. As Meyers sees it, Hellenism influenced the forms of expression but not the content of this Judaism. Thus, he concludes that &dquo;Jesus Galilean context was first and foremost a Jewish one both in context and in its political, administrative form&dquo; (1997: 64).
er

addressed this imbalance and thus raised the question of adequate models for understanding the social dynamics of Galilean society. In THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY (1989) David Harvey points to alterations in the way in which we experience space and time. Since modernity has been so much concerned with time, he outlines ways to analyze society and societal changes in terms of space. His concern is to investigate the relations between space and social relations. His main point is that &dquo;Command over space is a fundamental and all pervasive source of social power in and over everyday life&dquo; (Harvey: 226). Three of the aspects he uses to investigate this command over space are of special interest for a discussion of social relations in Galilee.
The first is

&dquo;appropriation and

use

of

space&dquo;-under this

Jesus,

the leader of a popular movement, would actively work to renew traditional culture, and in the process encounter
as

political opposition.
But is it possible to make such a distinction between form and context? Meyers has a much more sophisticated view of the relations between Hellenism and Judaism than many others in the discussion of Galilee, but in the end Hellenism does not make much difference to Galilean Judaism. When it comes to the form of this Judaism, Meyers argues, against G. Vermes, that Galilean Jewishness was not &dquo;simple&dquo; and peasant like. On the basis of archaeological evidence about aniconic decorations, the use of Aramaic and Hebrew in inscriptions as well as many ritual baths, Meyers concludes that &dquo;Galilee was an area congenial to and supportive of Jewish halakhic norms in the time of Jesus&dquo; (1997: 60). This is the picture of Galilee as &dquo;Judaism&dquo; that Meyers draws as the context of Jesus. There was not a specific form of Galilean Jewishness that could influence Jesus; rather, even with the influence of Hellenism there seems to be a basic unity to Judaism in Palestine. Galilee
as

heading one examines &dquo;the way in which space is occupied by objects, ... activities (land uses), individuals, classes and other social groupings.&dquo; The second is &dquo;domination and control of space,&dquo; under which rubric one reflects on &dquo;how individuals and powerful groups dominate the organization and production of space.... And thirdly, &dquo;the production of space examines how new systems ... of land use, transport and communication, territorial organization
etc. are

produced&dquo; (1989: 219, 222).

Place under Domination?

To understand Galilee in terms of &dquo;Jewish&dquo; or &dquo;Hellenistic&dquo; is to give primary place to the cultural aspect of social identity. Such a reading may force the interpretation of archaeological and literary evidence in a one-sided

These aspects outline various types of social practices and power relations used in geographical, historical and sociological studies. They are relevant to studies of land use in any society with a social structure dominated by patron-client relationships, and hence they are immediately relevant to a study of control of land and production in first century Galilee-for instance, in agriculture, fishing, and activities like trade and exchange. Who controlled or dominated these activities, and what were the power relations implied in these activities? In what ways are Jesus relations to the socio-economic and power structures in Galilee relevant for the study of the historical Jesus? This question is different from the old question of whether there were any relations between Jesus and the politics of his day. That discussion was most often based on the view that religion and politics belonged to separate spheres. It is no longer possible to understand ancient societies in that way. Religion and politics may have used different types of rhetoric, but they were both . related to power in society. Therefore an understanding the social dynamics of Palestine and Galilee at the time of Jesus might help us understand better the social context for his preaching and actions. K. C. Hanson and Douglas E. Oakman have done sig-

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nificant work in this area, making explicit use of social science models that are relevant for ancient Mediterranean societies, e.g. family, kinship, politics and economy (Hanson & Oakman). Furthermore, Oakman presents a systemic approach to the interpretation of the archaeology of Galilee, and explicitly relates his suggestions to the construction of the historical Jesus. He emphasizes that archaeological evidence, like other forms of historical evidence, needs interpretation to shed light on the social world of the historical Jesus. Arguing that archaeological interpretation must be able to distinguish between cultural and social indices, Oakman (2000) claims that, whereas most archaeologists have been concerned with cultural interpretation, criteria must be developed using material culture for social interpretation, partly as alternatives to cultural interpretation that has been mostly interested in finding evidence for a Jewish presence in Galilee. It is Richard Horsley who has most insistently argued the case for a picture of Jesus on the basis of a non-idealistic approach to Galilee. He presents Jesus as a renewer and defender of traditional village life in Galilee against the power of the elite. His latest book-size contributions, GALILEE, HISTORY, POLITICS, PEOPLE (1995) and

find enough evidence for urbanization in Galilee to conclude that there was a cosmopolitan Hellenistic culture in which Jesus acted as a &dquo;Cynic-like countercultural sage.&dquo; Rather, Horsleys view of the imperial dominance and the effect of Antipas rule if anything strengthens his conviction that the problem was the threat to traditional life posed by the disintegration of the basic social forms of family and village. Galilee -A Society in

Conflict or Harmony?

Horsleys picture of Galilee is a classic example of a region under domination by an imperial power, either directly or indirectly through client rule. The socio-economic pressure that is exerted is directed first of all towards the traditional village way of life, in terms of economy, social structures, and customs. The most prominent task for a popular leader is to protect this traditional village life

against outward pressure and domination, and the most effective strategy is not armed insurrection, but rather the empowerment of the local people of the villages. Jesus, as the leader of a popular movement, would actively work to renew traditional culture, and in the
process encounter political opposition. Despite Horsleys criticism of Gerd Theissen, he shares a functionalist approach in this construction of Jesus activity. Jesus must have had an integrative function in society, at least at the

ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY AND SOCIETY IN GALILEE (1996) represent an attempt to interpret the literary and archaeoevidence by using social science models. In his introduction to ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY AND SOCIETY IN GALILEE he outlines an approach to the study of Galilee as &dquo;place&dquo; that integrates cultural, social, and economic relations. To understand the origins and patterns of social movements like the Jesus movement, he says, we must understand &dquo;the (political-economic-cultural) structural or power relations and dynamics between the village communities and their rulers&dquo; ( 1996:10) . This is the central question of domination and control of space (Harvey: 222). Since ancient Galilee and Jewish Palestine were not self-contained, they cannot be treated independently; it is therefore &dquo;important to give special attention to the imperial situation that determined the conditions of the peoples lives in key connections&dquo; (Horsley 1996: 11). As a result of this approach the cultural conflicts that were configured as a contrast between Jewish and Hellenistic are redefined in categories specifically related to power. Horsley suggests that we look at political-economic-cultural relations, in particular the influence of Roman political culture on the cities and the interaction between administrative cities and villages, rather than at &dquo;cultural essences&dquo; (1996: 177). &dquo;Jewish&dquo; and &dquo;Hellenistic&dquo; are essential, idealistic categories that do not do justice to their concrete expressions in these unequal power structures. In contrast to Mack and Crossan, Horsley does not

logical

level of village community. This, to Horsley, disproves Theissens hypothesis of wandering charismatics. According to Horsley such an itinerant individualist

lifestyle was an highly unlikely option (1996: 181). We Horsleys presuppositions here: that Jesus activity must be supportive of traditional village values, and that an itinerant lifestyle was necessarily individualistic. Thus, Horsleys image of Jesus in Galilee is of one who gives
notice
power to the local communities.

This picture of Jesus as a leader of the peasant community in opposition to the elite represents a conflict perspective on the situation in first century Galilee. Not unexpectedly, this picture has met with strong criticism from scholars who hold a different view of first-century Galilean society, like E. Meyers, E.P Sanders, and A. Overman. These scholars appear to employ a model of social harmony, emphasizing the integrative aspects of social actions. Part of their criticism is directed against the picture of cities that oppressed rural communities. Eric M. Meyers has argued strongly against this on the basis of archaeological finds. One important form of contact was trade, made possible through a system of roads. The

archaeological finds of pottery enable

routes

us to establish trade and transactions between various towns and regions.

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Meyers interprets these

pottery finds

as

indications of

major economic interactions between Jewish areas and the Decapolis, as well as within Jewish areas, with no signs of urban predominance. Thus, he concludes: &dquo;the Galilean context of Jesus was such that both its incipient urbanism
and its
we

predominantly rural village culture could live in harmony. City and town were economically interlinked as
have demonstrated from ceramics&dquo; (1997: 64). Andrew Overman has questioned another presupposition in the works of Horsley and Crossan: viz., the use of &dquo;peasant&dquo; as a typos to describe Jesus and the use of peasant uprisings as a model to interpret the situation in Galilee and the first Jesus movement. Overman argues that they use this typos, taken from studies of medieval or modern peasant movements and revolts, uncritically, and that the literary evidence in, e.g., Josephus is more myth than fact. Overman regrets that &dquo;archaeological material from Galilee is used selectively to pursue contemporary paradigms and claims about Jesus and his first followers&dquo; (1997: 68). Some of the criticism against Horsley appears to be well grounded, but it leaves several questions unanswered. It is important to take into account the available archaeological material, but that material needs interpretation. Thus, Meyers may ascribe too much interpretative power to archaeology when he says that &dquo;Theories that suggest that urban centers exploit the surrounding countryside are to be soundly rejected on the basis of archaeological evidence alone&dquo; (my italics-1993:12). A large volume of pottery may prove that city and town were economically interlinked, but that does not in itself solve the question of the character of this relation. How should we think of the relations between city and &dquo;hinterland&dquo;? Was it an equal relationship, without any difference in power, and thus without possibility of exploitation ? Does trade in and by itself prove this? This seems to be the presupposition of Z. Safrai (1994). He has gathered an impressive collection of information on economic issues in Roman Palestine, but unfortunately with no attempt to put the material within a larger socio-political context, or even to distinguish between various periods, instead lumping the whole Roman period together. Sean Freynes recent studies show how fruitful it is to raise the question of how power functions in social relations. In these studies (1995a, 1995b, 1997) he has moved closer to a conflict model in his understanding of the situation in Galilee at the time of Jesus. The foundation of Sepphoris and Tiberias by Herod Antipas is his starting point. Why did Jesus never enter these cities, if the Gospel narratives are to be believed? Freyne argues that it was a deliberate avoidance on the part of Jesus &dquo;as an act of solidarity with the victims in order to generate a prophetic critique of their oppressors.&dquo; Freyne sees the establishment

of these two cities as administrative centers as an attempt by Herod Antipas to introduce an economic model that built on Hellenistic presuppositions. In this system a social elite dominated in economic affairs and justified its activities by extending patron-client relations. In light of Harveys model of space (218-19), Antipas attempt represents a situation in which the &dquo;material practice&dquo; in space was dominated and controlled by powerful groups in Galilean society. Moreover, this practice was legitimated through an ideology based on Hellenistic ideals. Freyne presents this use of models of urban-rural relations as an alternative to &dquo;juxtaposing discrete pieces of evidence either from archaeology or literary sources and making generalized claims from these&dquo; (1995b: 605). Even if the relationship between towns and countryside in Antiquity is held by many (e.g., Meyers, Overman and J. Strange) to be more symbiotic than in some earlier theories, Freyne finds that this does not answer the question whether the relationship was balanced or not (1997). He argues that urban centers were perceived as mediators of distant power and control over a region. In the case of Tiberias and Sepphoris, they represented an economic structure that brought changes in the lives of Galilean peasants, in that they powerfully represented a different mentality and ethos. Freyne finds a clash between two worlds, that of the urban centers and that of the rural hinterlands (the latter represented in the Gospel parables concerned with &dquo;day labourers, debt, resentment of absentee landlords, wealthy estate owners with little concern for tenants needs, exploitative stewards of estates, family feuds over inheritance, etc.&dquo; (1995b: 609). This picture provides Freyne with a setting that makes plausible an image of Jesus &dquo;espousing a prophetic critique of the dominant prevailing ethos, based on covenantal ideals for a restored Israel, within an apocalyptic framework that made it possible to imagine and propose a radically different lifestyle and values&dquo; (1995b: 611). Jesus proclamation of the basileia represented a protest against the political power of Herod and of the &dquo;market economy&dquo; of provincial aristocracy. Freyne has integrated economic, social and utopian aspects; that is, he has presented an integrative cultural context for Jesus. This is not just a &dquo;religious&dquo; Jesus, nor only a &dquo;political&dquo; one. Each term represents a compartmentalized approach to what was a &dquo;cultural whole.&dquo;

How

to

Interpret Galilee in the

.

Twenty,First Century?

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The Heritage

of the Twentieth Century

position that is in continuation with that of Scheiermacher

the nineteenth century. Schleiermacher, it will be recalled, held that there was no special relationship between Jesus and Galilee, and that there was no conflict between Galilee and the religious leadership in Jerusalem. The other line of thought, represented by Burton Mack and J. D. Crossan, develops the position of Strauss. They see a marked contrast between Galilee on the one hand, and Judea and Jerusalem on the other, and they hold that Galilee was determined by Hellenistic culture in contrast to a Jewish culture with its center in Jerusalem. The main weakness in this &dquo;cultural approach&dquo; is that it has preserved many elements of an idealist interpretation, with culture interpreted mainly in terms of Judaism
in

What characterizes the present quest for Galilee? Compared to the situation 100 years ago, the Holy Land has decidedly become more of a Jewish Holy Land. The present situation with Galilee as an integral part of the Jewish State of Israel brings to the fore the question of the Jewish continuity in Galilee and the issue of Israeli nationalism. This represents a change of context for the quest for the historical Jesus between the Second and Third Quests. The main concern for the Second Quest was the continuity between the Jesus of Galilee and the Jesus Christ of faith. This concern has, at least to some degree, been replaced by the quest for the continuity between the Galilee of the first century and the Jewish Galilee of today.

longer uncomplicated to presuppose an immediate correspondence between geography and human character, in particular since the latter is now understood
no

It is

composite of human society, social structures, and material culture. The large number of archaeological finds have provided more material for this understanding, but they have also complicated matters and emphasized the element of construction and hypothesis inherent in all interpretation. &dquo;Culture&dquo; has become a modern catchword for studies of identity, and has replaced terms like &dquo;ethnicity&dquo; and &dquo;race.&dquo; However, it appears that the earlier focus on Jewish versus non-Jewish has been preserved, in the form of a contrast between Jewish and Hellenistic. But this dichotomy between the two concepts has also been questioned, and their interrelationship needs to be reformulated. Most interesting is Eric Meyers suggestion that Hellenism was a way for Jewish indigenous culture to express itself authentically. Thus the conflict between Judaism and Hellenism is muted. Hellenistic expressions are regarded as forms that do not reconfigure a Judaism that in its substance remains primarily halakhic. The implied criticism in this construction is directed against (among others) Burton Mack, who holds that the Jewish Hellenism of Galilee represented a variant that was markedly different from halakhic and eschatological Judaism. This results in two significantly different constructions of Jesus. One is the apocalyptic prophet who proclaims the coming Kingdom, and the other is the peripatetic sage who preaches wisdom. There are also two different perspectives on the importance of Galilee as a specific place. For E.P Sanders it is the Jewish context in general that matters, not Galilee. For Meyers, Galilee, despite its regionalism, is considered to be a Jewish place. Galilee represents a Judaism that is not basically different from that of Jerusalem and the Temple. In some respects Meyers and Sanders represent a
as a

and Hellenism. The challenge is therefore to integrate into culture the socio-economic-political material that has moved the question of Galilee out of the history of ideas and onto &dquo;real history.&dquo; But this development has also introduced a possible new line of conflict, that between city and village, that may be more important than the conflict between Jerusalem and Galilee. What is at issue in this discussion? For one thing, it is a question of how to understand soci-

antiquity, with two main positions: either cities oppress and exploit their rural hinterland (this is the posi, tion derived from Moses Finley), or there is a more mutually beneficial relationship between the two. But in the
eties in
case

of Galilee, there

seems to

be

more at

stake: the ques,

mes-

tion of how to understand the role of Jesus and his

sage. Within the conflict pattern, the

to

village population so

speak represents the ideal Jewish community, based on the &dquo;old&dquo; values, whereas the cities represent a &dquo;foreign&dquo; element of exploitation. Here Jesus becomes a leader for the village population, and his message and actions represent a &dquo;religious&dquo; expression of a social protest. Thus, in a way the conflict pattern between Galilee and Jerusalem is replaced by an internal Galilean conflict between villages and cities.
Galilee and the Historical Jesus
What are some of the present challenges of interpreting Galilee as a place for the historical Jesus? Each of the four perspectives that I have discussed in the presentation

of studies from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seems to present a challenge. First, the larger context of Galilee needs to be extended from Judaism and modern Israel to the larger geographical areas surrounding and in close contact with Galilee. Second, in presentations of the geography and social structures of Galilee, the role of the interpreter must be made visible. Third, in the shaping of

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the identity and character of the Galilean landscape, the role of resistance to the power structures must be considered. And finally, it is not just a matter of constructing a Galilee as a context for Jesus; rather, we must see Jesus as

First, the study of culture

The

creates

the participant observer.

involved in creating Galilee. The Larger Context: &dquo;Galilee

problem of the study of culture is the question of the intelligible pattern or order of &dquo;culture as a complex whole&dquo;-is the order in the things themselves, or is it in the mind of the observer? The most plausible answer, it
me, is that the pattern and order become visible &dquo;from a very specific, highly disciplined point of obseronly vation&dquo; (Masuzawa: 87-88). That is, they are attempts to interpret a complex mass of information. This perspective focuses on the role of the interpreter, and presents the task as that of drawing a map, not walking a territory (J. Z. Smith 1978) This of course, opens the way for different maps. Whereas there is general agreement that the local and socio-economic factors (especially through archaeology) play a significant role in the reconstruction of Galilee, there are strong disagreements as to the patterns or orders that they disclose. The strongest theoretical and model orientation has been on the side of interpretations from a conflict perspective on Mediterranean and Galilean society. The criticism that has been raised from a harmony oriented perspective has often been more on the level of arguments regarding factual evidence than explicitly in terms of different models. If we ask what picture of Jesus results from the conflict, and what from the harmony perspective, it appears that within the harmony perspective specifically &dquo;religious&dquo; ideas become more important: e.g., Jesus relations to sinners. It is only within the conflict perspective that the social context becomes an integral part of Jesus identity and activity, so that social activity and symbolic acts and speech are combined. This points to the role, not only of the interpreter in the twenty-first century, but also of the human subject in the first century in the construction of a place. Ley and Duncan give a useful suggestion of how to understand the interaction between Galilee and Jesus when they speak of how &dquo;social phenomenology and symbolic interaction&dquo; have been used &dquo;to interpret the mutual construction of place and identity.&dquo; This &dquo;mutual construction&dquo; takes the form of a dialogue: &dquo;To a theoretical argument that sees the self becoming defined through interaction, the dialogue with place itself, with rhythms, and routines of distinctive locales, frames the outlines of a shared identity&dquo; (332). I see this emphasis upon dialogue between &dquo;self&dquo; and &dquo;place&dquo; as a refinement of Jonathan Z. Smiths position in his discussion of place in To TAKE PLACE . Here he sides against a long intellectual tradition that has held that it is &dquo;place that creates man and his culture as well as his character.... Topos and physis is what shapes, what gives form and content to nomos and ethos&dquo; (1987: 30). Instead, Smith argues, &dquo;Human beings are not placed, they bring place into being.&dquo; This is a statement typical of Smithseems to

of the

Pagans&dquo;

&dquo;

The focus on Jesus and his relations to Judaism as well the implicit picture of Galilee belonging to a Jewish Holy Land identified with the state of Israel, seems to have unduly limited the context for the study of Galilee. It has substituted a diachronic for what should be a synchronic perspective. To put it another way, scholars have focused on the road between Galilee and Jerusalem but have overlooked the much closer areas to the North, East, and South, that are all within easy walking distance from any area in Galilee-actually visible from the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee. This includes not only the cities of the Decapolis, but also the areas to the North and East: Gaulanitis, Batanea, etc., as well as Perea to the Southeast (Richardson: 300-03). For instance the possible similarities between Jesus and Cynics, which have been argued especially by B. Mack (1988, 1993) and L. Vaage (1994), cannot be cannot be discussed without a proper study of the communications and possible contacts via roads and boats on the Sea of Galilee between Galilean areas and the nearby Decapolis city of Gadara, well known for its philosophical schools (Vaage 2000). It is at least possible that closer studies of these areas and the interrelations between them and Galilee, will provide a broader picture of the context of the Galileans and also of Jesus.
as

The Role

of the Interpreter and the

Human

Subject

I consciously use the term &dquo;interpreter&dquo; as an allusion Renans reference to Galilee as the fifth Gospel, but also to signal a hermeneutical approach to the task. The essentialism implied in earlier presuppositions of a mimetic representation of landscape is no longer a viable option, nor is the deduction from a static &dquo;place&dquo; to human society. This change in perspective corresponds with the herme- neutical approach in interpreting &dquo;place&dquo; in cultural geography. Ley and Duncan suggest that a thick description of place does not just describe a pattern but a process: &dquo;the constellation of economic interests, power relations, cultural predispositions and social differentiation which together constitute the character of a place&dquo; (330). This provides a comprehensive model for factors that must be included in a description of Galilee. The emphasis upon process points to two other significant aspects of this new orientation.
to

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suggestive, but often left without

an

explicit explanation.

ble that

How do human beings &dquo;bring place into being,&dquo; or how does a &dquo;mutual construction of place and identity&dquo; take concrete form?

they deliberately walked around the city, Sawicki as is suggested by the omission of any mention of Sepphoris in the Gospels (see Freyne, above). If so, this might be a strategy to symbolically &dquo;take back&dquo; their landscape from the urban colonization of Herod Antipas.
suggests,

Creating Place through Resistance

Jesus versus Herod Antipas?
We find examples of such activities in studies by Sean Freyne and especially Marianne Sawicki. Freyne raises the question of the symbolic significance of the &dquo;urban overlay,&dquo; i.e., the dominance of the Roman urbanization of Galilee (1997: 51) and he once more brings in his own experience of &dquo;how West of Ireland peasants resisted colo-

Maybe we should see Jesus and his activities in Galilee in terms of creating alternative places for people and of resisting the powerful claims upon them (Moxnes 2000). The implications of this form of counter strategy is illuminated by David Harveys model of social and symbolic
practice of space (1989). We have mentioned his outline of various material spatial practices, e.g., the production of new systems of land use, transportation, and communication (cf. the building of aqueducts, roads, and cities in Galilee) and the domination and control of space (e.g., through taxation or forced labor). Such forms of material

nizing influences, and transformed those dimensions they did absorb&dquo; (1997: 53). This perspective on colonization and varied strategies of resistive and transformative responses to colonization by indigenous people is put to
instructive
use

in

an

extraordinarily illuminating study by

Marianne Sawicki. She focuses on how to read GrecoRoman Galilee through a combination of literary texts and archaeological evidence. This is not an innocent reading; there is no straightforward relation between the texts and the land. Meaning is encoded in space and needs to be decoded, with an hermeneutics of suspicion that also includes the interpretation of ones own position as interpreter. Sawicki concentrates upon three areas of spatial management: the construction of ethnicity, of gender, and of the presence of the Roman Empire in Galilee. In the last area, she discusses waterworks, roads, and city planning as spatial expressions of the Roman presence in Galilee. One

supported by an ideological underpinning represented them as the natural order of things. This represents the ideology of those in power. But there is also an ideology of resistance, from below, which Harvey desigpractice
that
were

that &dquo;the roads, waterlines, and city grids by Roman occupation both advertised and accomplished the Roman intention of bringing the benefits of imperial civilization into the province&dquo; (12). But there were covert functions as well, market pressures brought to bear, for example, to move labor to cities from the land, thereby loosening the village kinship obligations and introducing alternative cosmologies.
overt
was

effect

imposed

upon Galilee

nates imagination (&dquo;that imagine new meanings or possibilities for spatial practices&dquo;-218-19). In this perspective, deliberately to walk around Sepphoris and not to mention the cities established by Herod Antipas might be a strategy to recreate the landscape in accord with the traditional village landscape with its kinship solidarity. Or, in the case of Jesus and the Jesus movement, it might be a way of imagining the kingdom of God as a landscape with an alternative spatial management of power. Thus we may see in the activity of Jesus and the Jesus movement a give and take between their experience of landscape and their own attempts to recreate landscape in a different fashion,

altered, and the effects might be very different from the promises attached Thus, the landscape of Galilee
was

these innovations. But Sawicki indicates how colonized use the environment created by the empire for their own purposes. That implied adaptations and modifications as well as resistance. We should not suppose that they used just one strategy (e.g. integration or non integration) ; on the contrary, the responses could well have been multifaceted and conflicting. It is difficult to find evidence of responses on an individual basis-whether, e.g., villagers from Nazareth walked through Sepphoris on their way to Cana because it was the shortest route. It is possito

people might

then, a matter of constructing Galilee as a for the historical place Jesus in conformity with a straightforward, objective picture drawn directly from the textual and archaeological evidence. There needs to be an attempt at an hermeneutical interpretation, recognizing the role of the interpreter as well as the role of the ancient inhabitants of Galilee in encoding their space with meaning. Their strategies varied, from direct material practices to ideological interpretations and imaginative utopian spatial formations. In this perspective it is not a matter of putting Jesus into a fixed place. Rather, Jesus was himself part of the Galilean community, involved in creating and recreIt is not,

ating

space.

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Note: This work is the result of a long process, with help from many collegues. Its start goes back to a seminar with Eric Meyers at Duke University in 1997. One version was presented at the meeting of the Cultural Context Group in March 1998, the (almost) final version at the SNTS seminar on the Historical Jesus in Tel Aviv in 2000. Special thanks for helpful criticism to Doug Oakman at the CCG meeting, Leif Vaage at Emmanuel College, Toronto, and to Bernt Hagtvet, the University of Oslo, who introduced me to nineteenth-century German inter-

Hanson, K.C. & Douglas E. Oakman, 1998. PALESTINE IN THE TIME OF JESUS. SOCIAL STRUCTURES AND SOCIAL CONFLICTS.

pretations of Palestine.
The quest for Galilee continues! After I completed this manuscript, three important studies have appeared: a collection of Sean Freynes essays on Galilee (2000), and two monographs by John S. Kloppenborg Verbin and Jonathan L. Reed. In his comprehensive, critical study of scholarship on Q, Kloppenborg Verbin situates Q in a Galilean context. Reed gives an up-to-date discussion of how the arachaeological material helps to illuminate the Galilean context of Jesus, including many of the issues introduced in this article.

Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Harvey, David. 1989. THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY. Oxford, UK: Blackwells. Horsley, Richard. 1996. ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND SOCIETY IN GALILEE. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International. 1995. GALILEE, HISTORY, POLITICS, PEOPLE. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International. Kloppenborg Verbin, John S. 2000. EXCAVATING Q. THE HISTORY AND SETTING OF THE SAYINGS GOSPEL. Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress Press. Levine. Lee I. (ed.) 1992. THE GALILEE IN LATE ANTIQUITY. New York, NY: Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Masuzawa, Tomoko 1998. Culture. Pp. 70-93 in CRITICAL TERMS FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES, edited by M. C. Taylor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Mack, Burton. 1993. THE LOST GOSPEL. THE BOOK

OF

AND

Works Cited
(Included here
are sources

cited

part of the present article; works cited in both parts.)

see our

only in this second preceding issue for

Coote, R.B., & Keith W Whitelam. 1987. THE EMERGENCE

EARLY ISRAEL
IN

OF

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE. Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series 5. Sheffield, UK: Almond Press. Edwards, Douglas R. & Thomas McCollough (eds.) 1997. ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE GALILEE. South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 143. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Finley, Moses. 1973. THE ANCIENT ECONOMY. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Freyne, Sean. 2000. GALILEE AND GOSPEL. WUNT 125.

Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck.

1995a. Herodian Economics in Galilee. Searching for a Suitable Model. Pp. 23-46 in MODELLING EARLY CHRISTIANITY, edited by Philip E Esler. London, UK: Routledge. 1995b. Jesus and the Urban Culture of Galilee, Pp. 75-121 in Texts and Contexts, edited by T Fornberg & D. Hellholm. Festschrift for L. Hartman. Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Press. 1994. The Geography, Politics and Economy of Galilee and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, in STUDYING THE HISTORICAL JESUS: EVALUATIONS OF THE STATE OF CURRENT RESEARCH, edited by B. Chilton and C.A. Evans. Leiden, The Nether-lands: Brill. 1988. GALILEE, JESUS, AND THE GOSPELS. Dublin, Ireland: Gill & MacMillan.

CHRISTIAN ORIGINS. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Meyers, Eric M. 1997. Jesus and His Galilean Context. Pp. 57-66 in ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE GALILEE, edited by Douglas R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. 1985. Galilean Regionalism: A Reappraisal. Pp. 115-31 in APPROACHES TO ANCIENT JUDAISM, vol. V, edited by W S. Green. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. 1979. The Cultural Setting of Galilee: the Case of Early Judaism. ANRW II19.1: 686-701. 1976. Galilean Regionalism as a Factor in Historical Reconstruction. BASOR 21:93-101. Meyers, Eric M. (ed.) 1999. GALILEE THROUGH THE CENTURIES. CONFLUENCE OF CULTURES. Duke Judaic Studies Series 1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Moxnes, Halvor. 2000. Placing Jesus of Nazareth. Towards a Theory of Place in the Study of the Historicasl Jesus. Pp. 158-75 in Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity, edited by S. G. Wilson & M. Desjardin. Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson. Studies in Christianity and Judaism 9. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 1999. The Historical Jesus: From Master Narrative to Cultural Context. BIBLICAL THEOLOGY BULLETIN 28: 135-49. Murphy-OConnor, J. 1986. THE HOLY LAND. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Nagy, R.M., C. L. Meyers, E.M. Meyers, & Z. Weiss. 1996. SEPPHORIS IN GALILEE: CROSCURRENTS OF CULTURE. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Oakman, Douglas. 2000. Models and Archaeology in the Social Interpretation of Jesus. Pp. 102-31 in SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC MODELS FOR INTERPRETING THE BIBLE, edited by John J. Pilch. Essays by the Context Group in Honor of Bruce J. Malina. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

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