Jesus’ Galilee

Villages, nets and new cities

A land of villages, farms and fishing boats, ruled by Herod Antipas. It was between Nazareth and Capernaum, by the lake, that Jesus spent almost all his life.

A small, fertile land

Galilee was small: about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from north to south and some 40 (25 miles) from east to west, between the Mediterranean and the lake the Gospels call the Sea of Galilee. The lake measures roughly 21 by 13 kilometers and lies more than 200 meters below sea level, ringed by hills that make it hot and prone to sudden winds. Josephus, who commanded the region at the start of the war against Rome, praises its fertility and says it had 204 towns and villages; he also claims the smallest village had over 15,000 inhabitants, an obvious exaggeration. Archaeology shows that in the first century the village population was mostly Jewish: stone vessels tied to ritual purity, ritual baths and an almost total absence of pig bones. Politically, Galilee belonged to Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, who ruled it as tetrarch from 4 BC to AD 39.

Nazareth, a village of stone and caves

Nazareth does not appear in the Old Testament, in Josephus or in the Mishnah. It was a small village on a hillside, probably with a few hundred inhabitants; estimates range from under two hundred to over a thousand, and many archaeologists lean toward the lower end. Houses made use of caves in the limestone, with simple rooms in front, cisterns, storage pits and olive and wine presses. In 2009 archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre announced the remains of a first-century house near the Basilica of the Annunciation. No wonder Nathanael asked whether anything good could come from Nazareth. Jesus is called a tekton, a Greek word translated carpenter but covering a builder who worked in wood and stone. About 6 kilometers away lay Sepphoris, in the midst of rebuilding; many suppose Joseph and Jesus worked there, but the Gospels do not say so.

Sepphoris and Tiberias, Antipas’ cities

When Herod the Great died in 4 BC, rebels seized the armory at Sepphoris. The Roman legate of Syria, Varus, responded by burning the city and selling its inhabitants into slavery. Antipas rebuilt it and made it, in Josephus’ words, the ornament of all Galilee. Around AD 19 or 20 he founded a second capital on the lakeshore, Tiberias, in honor of the emperor Tiberius. There was a problem: the city was built over tombs, and Jews faithful to the Law avoided living on impure ground; Josephus says Antipas populated it partly by force and partly by offering houses and land. Both cities were showcases of Herodian power and Greco-Roman style, and they concentrated taxes and trade. Strikingly, the Gospels never show Jesus entering either one. He moves among the villages and around the lake, and he calls Antipas a fox.

Capernaum, home base

After leaving Nazareth, Jesus made Capernaum his base. It was a town of fishermen and farmers on the lake’s north shore, near the border with Philip’s territory, which helps explain the tax office where Levi worked. Its population may have ranged from a few hundred to just over a thousand. Houses were built of black basalt, the local stone, grouped around courtyards shared by related families; roofs of beams, branches and mud could be opened up, as in the healing of the paralyzed man. Franciscan excavations begun in 1968 found, beneath an octagonal Byzantine church, a first-century house that Christians venerated from very early on, identified by tradition as Peter’s house. The imposing white limestone synagogue visitors see today dates from the fourth or fifth century, but it rests on basalt foundations that may belong to the synagogue of Jesus’ day, a point still debated.

Nets, boats and salted fish

The lake sustained a whole economy. People fished with the cast net, thrown by hand from shore or boat, like Simon and Andrew; with the dragnet, hauled by several people to the beach, as in the parable; and often at night. Fishing was not work for the destitute: Zebedee had a boat and hired men, and fishermen worked in partnerships, under licenses and fees controlled by the Herodian authorities. Some of the fish was salted and sold far away; Magdala, Mary Magdalene’s hometown, is often identified with Josephus’ Taricheae, a Greek name tied to salted fish. In 1986, during a drought that lowered the lake, brothers Moshe and Yuval Lufan found near Ginosar the hull of a boat about 8 meters long and 2.3 wide (27 by 7.5 feet), dated between the first century BC and the first century AD. It is not Jesus’ boat, but it is the kind of boat the disciples sailed.

A village economy under pressure

Most Galileans lived off the land: wheat and barley, olive trees, vines, figs, lentils, a few goats and sheep. On the harvest weighed the taxes of Antipas, who in turn paid Rome, plus the tithes and offerings for the Temple. A bad year could mean debt; debt could mean losing the land and becoming a tenant farmer or day laborer. Scholars debate how much the founding of Sepphoris and Tiberias squeezed the peasants: some see an acute social crisis, others a more stable picture with some growth. Jesus’ parables show this world from the inside: the sower on rocky ground, the landowner hiring day laborers in the marketplace, the absentee owner who leases his vineyard, the debtor who cannot pay, the woman sweeping the house for a coin. He does not speak from outside; he uses the life his hearers knew to speak of the kingdom of God.

Did you know?

• The Galilee boat, found in 1986, was repaired so many times that researchers identified 12 kinds of wood in it. It is estimated to have carried about fifteen men. Galilee boat, Ginosar, 1986 (Yigal Allon Museum)
• The first mention of Nazareth outside Christian texts is a Hebrew inscription found at Caesarea in 1962, from the third or fourth century, listing the priestly courses. Priestly courses inscription, Caesarea, 1962
• Tiberias was built over a cemetery. Since living there made a person impure, Antipas had to lure residents with houses and land, and force others. Josefo, Antiguidades Judaicas 18.36-38
• Josephus says Galilee had 204 towns and villages and that the smallest had over 15,000 inhabitants. The first figure is plausible; the second, pure exaggeration. Josefo, Vida 235; Guerra Judaica 3.43
• In 2009, construction of a pilgrim center at Magdala uncovered a first-century synagogue with a carved stone bearing the menorah, the Temple lampstand. Magdala synagogue, 2009

Where this shows up in the Bible

• Marcos 1:16-20: Simon and Andrew cast a net; James and John mend nets in a boat with their father and hired men. Mark shows two levels of the same lake economy. Leaving the nets was not a romantic gesture: it meant walking away from a family business, with licenses, debts and customers.
• John 1:46: Nathanael’s irony makes sense: Nazareth was a farming village with no famous past, absent from Scripture and the chronicles. He himself came from Cana, nearby, which makes the remark almost a neighborly rivalry. Philip’s invitation, come and see, answers prejudice with experience.
• Marcos 6:3: The neighbors know Jesus by his trade and his family: the carpenter, the son of Mary, with brothers and sisters everyone knew. In a village of a few hundred people, no one was anonymous. That is why familiarity becomes an obstacle: it is hard to accept that the village builder speaks with a prophet’s authority.
• Lucas 7:3-5: A centurion, probably in Antipas’ service and a foreigner, helped build the Capernaum synagogue, and Jewish elders plead on his behalf. The detail shows local relationships more complex than a simple Jew-versus-Gentile opposition, and it sets up Jesus’ praise of a faith he had not found even in Israel.
• Marcos 4:37-38: Winds coming down from the hills can whip up the lake suddenly. Mark notes that Jesus was asleep in the stern, on a cushion. The 1986 boat helps picture the scene: an open hull, probably with a small deck at the stern, where someone could lie down while the others rowed and bailed.
• Lucas 13:32: Antipas, the builder of Sepphoris and Tiberias, had ordered John the Baptist killed. Calling him a fox meant he was cunning but small, nothing like a lion. Jesus, who avoided the tetrarch’s cities, is not intimidated and keeps on his way to Jerusalem.

To go deeper

• Flavius Josephus, Jewish War, book 3 (description of Galilee)
• Flavius Josephus, Life (autobiography)
• Sean Freyne, Jesus, a Jewish Galilean (2004)
• Mark A. Chancey, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (2002)
• Jonathan L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus (2000)
• Shelley Wachsmann, The Sea of Galilee Boat (1995)

Where to read in the Bible

• Matthew 4:13
• Marcos 1:16
• John 1:46
• João 6:23

Connections

• inclui Nazareth · factual · Lucas 1:26
• inclui Capernaum · factual · Matthew 4:13
• surrounds the Sea of Galilee · factual · Marcos 1:16
• linked to Herod Antipas · factual · Luke 3:1

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