The Jewish Cultural Nature of Galilee in the First Century

How to cite this article: Shmuel Safrai, “The Jewish Cultural Nature of Galilee in the First Century,” Jerusalem Perspective (2010) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/4452/].

There is a great deal of literature describing the Jewish cultural nature of Galilee in the first century C.E. Several scholarly fields are involved.

The issue is discussed by scholars of Jewish history and of the history of the Oral Torah for subsequently, during the second to fourth centuries and even later, Galilee was the living center of the Jewish people and its leadership, and the place in which the Oral Torah was collected and in large degree created. It also is extensively dealt with by scholars of the beginnings of Christianity, since Jesus grew up in Nazareth in Lower Galilee, and his activity was centered mainly within the bounds of Galilee. Conversely, Jewish scholars of the history of the Halakhah or of talmudic literature in general, when discussing the cultural image of Galilee, refer in some degree to the history of Christianity or to the background of the beginnings of Christianity.

Furthermore, the issue has been discussed in the general literature of Jewish history and of the history of the Land of Israel. Similarly, many scholars, especially Christians, deal with it extensively both in general works on the life of Jesus and in studies devoted to Galilee and its Jewish cultural image.^[1] 

This article originally appeared in The New Testament and Christian-Jewish Dialogue: Studies in Honor of David Flusser, Immanuel 24/25 (1990): 147-186. Jerusalem Perspective wishes to thank Rev. Dr. Petra Heldt and The Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity in Israel, publishers of Immanuel journal (edited by Prof. Malcolm Lowe), for permission to publish the article in electronic format. Readers can purchase the print version of Immanuel 24/25 at www.etrfi.org/Publication.html.

1. This article was translated from Hebrew by Edward Levine. Recently published books that bear directly upon the subject of this article include: F. Malinowski, Galilean Judaism in the Writings of Flavius Josephus (Ann Arbor, 1973); G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew (London, 1977); E. M. Meyeres and J. F. Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis and Early Christianity (Nashville, 1981); S. Freyne, Galilee from Alexander the Great to Hadrian (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1987); R. Riesner, Jesus als Lehrer (Tübingen, 1987); M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee A.D. 132-212 (Totowa, New Jersey, 1983); W. Bosen, Galiläa als Lebensraum und Wirkungsfeld Jesu (Basel and Vienna, 1985). ↩