JEWISH GALILEE

Etienne Nodet

Galilee as such plays no appreciable role in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the Galilean milieu in which Jesus moves is rural: there is never any mention of Sepphoris or Tiberias. Nevertheless, it is very active in religious terms. We read of expectations, and debates and confl icts between various groups and tendencies. We must therefore inquire into the nature and the origin of this Jewish milieu which has no obvious biblical roots, remote from the big cities, and separated from Jerusalem by a hostile Samaria.

When Josephus wished to justify his claim to speak on behalf of his people, he wrote an autobiography ca. 90 CE. Th is Life or Vita paints a fl attering picture of a man who in reality probably played a rather modest role. Curiously enough, he devotes most of this work to retell-ing his campaigns in Galilee from the uprisings in 66 onwards. Th is is obviously an apologia, but unlike his fi rst exposé in the Jewish War, Josephus’s second account of the events completely omits every direct military encounter of any importance with the Romans and concen-trates almost exclusively on the divisions among the Jews. We may of course grant that such an omission may well be due to his present position as a notable man who had been set free by the emperor and is now defending the imperial policies; but the result, seen from the perspective of Rome, is that the political and social signifi cance of the events which he relates seems limited to the strictly local sphere, with no contact with any important center. At the same period, when he describes the principal “philosophies” within Judaism, he is obliged to add a fourth tendency to the celebrated triad of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, viz. the Galilean Zealots, and he traces their origins back to the beginnings of the Roman domination. We may however wonder what led him to confer such a dignity on this movement—aft er all, he has just expressed a ferocious criticism of these Zealots, since it was they who bore the responsibility for the confl icts which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem. It seems, therefore, that there are specifi cally Jewish reasons which oblige him even in Rome to take seriously the distant Galilee and the Galileans, more than twenty years aft er the events

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he is describing. Since the Life was fi rst an appendix to the Antiquities, we may ask for whom he wrote this major work.

In a completely diff erent context, we note that the Mishnah, the foun-dational collection of rabbinic Judaism, likewise comes from Galilee. It was edited ca. 200 CE, and alongside many recollections of Jerusalem and of the temple, its general atmosphere is rural. We also note that at a period when the Severan dynasty tended to show favor to the Jews, and aft er Caracalla had granted Roman citizenship in 212 to all the free subjects of the empire, whether Jews or not, this Mishnah could be brought to Babylon and adopted there ca. 219; but we never hear anything at this period of its diff usion in the Mediterranean countries. Subsequent generations of commentators produced two collections known as the Jerusalem Talmud (which in fact originated in Galilee) and the Babylonian Talmud, and these are cultural twins. Nevertheless, the Mishnah presents itself not as the work of Babylonians who had arrived in Galilee, but of schools founded by those who had escaped from Judea aft er the defeat of Bar Kokhba, the transformation of Jeru-salem into the pagan city of Aelia, and the expulsion of the Jews from Judea. Th is leads to a further question about the nature and origin of this later Galilean Judaism and about what seems to be a Babylonian orientation—all of which appears marginal, or at least lateral, in rela-tion to the Roman world.

1. Galilee up to the Time of Jesus

Th e name “Galilee” evokes the undulating hills which extend from the high valley of the Jordan to the Phoenician coast. Th e region of Galilee corresponds roughly to four tribes of biblical Israel, viz. Asher, Issachar, Naphtali, and Zebulon. Although the soil is fertile, it is a small rural province which hardly plays any role in the Bible as a whole, a part from the conquest of Hazor (Josh 11) and various important events mentioned in the period of the judges. From the reign of Solomon onwards, these tribes formed part of the kingdom of Israel, but not the coast (Acco), at least according to most of the relevant texts. 2 Chr 30:11–12 tells us that the people of Asher, Zebulon, and Manasseh (cen-tral Samaria) humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem in the reign of Hezekiah. Th is information is more appropriate to the historical period of the Chronicler himself, but at any rate it shows that the devotion of these persons to Jerusalem was a remarkable exception. Th e celebrated

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designation “Galilee of the nations” comes from Isa 8:23 (according to the LXX), and is quoted at Matt 4:15. In the fi nal scene of Matthew’s Gospel (28:16–18), the risen Jesus summons his disciples to meet him in Galilee, so that he can send them out to all the nations. Galilee is thus presented as the gateway leading to the other nations.

Nevertheless, what we have here is a play of words on the expres-sion, since the original text in Isa 8:23 designates simply the “circle of nations” and has a hostile nuance:1 it speaks of a small, exposed region which does not possess many fortifi ed towns.

Josephus, who had fought there, knew Galilee well, but when he writes about Joshua’s division of the land, he does not make any pre-cise link between this region and the corresponding biblical tribes (cf. Ant. 5.63f.). For Josephus (War 3.35–40), it extends from Carmel to Golan, as far as Tyre in the north and the city of Samaria-Sebaste in the south. In reality, he speaks of “two Galilees,” the Upper and the Lower (War 2.568); the extension which he gives to this region, on the east of the Jordan and to the south of the plain of Jezreel, goes back to the contours of the kingdom of Herod. Geographically, the term is more restricted: in the strict sense, it designates the region of rolling mountains situated to the north of the plain of Jezreel and to the west of the Jordan, i.e. in eff ect Upper Galilee.

According to Ezra-Nehemiah, those who returned from exile in Babylon were interested only in Jerusalem and Judea; at most, the term “Judea” extends to the north and includes Benjamin. Later, at the period of the Maccabean crisis, the reconquest properly speaking concerns only Judea itself, bordered by Emmaus on the east (by the hill country) and Bethzur to the south (halfway between Bethlehem and Hebron). Nevertheless, there are Jews in Galilee at this period: during the persecutions, they appeal for help to Judas and his brothers, declar-ing that they are the victims of a coalition consisting of Ptolemais, Tyre, Sidon, and the whole of Galilee (this corresponds well to the “circle of the nations”). Th is took place between 167 and 160 BCE. At the most, this was a scattered minority without any fortifi ed town of their own—unlike the situation in other regions. Accordingly, when Simon is sent to provide reinforcement, he does not attempt to organize the security of the Jews in this region: instead, he prefers to take them with

1 In 1 Macc 5:15 (the original text of which is Hebrew), “Galilee of the foreigners” (gelil ha-goyim) is a circle of enemies, whom Josephus understands as “the foreigners in Galilee” (Ant. 12.331).

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him to Judea (1 Macc 5:14–15). Th ese scattered groups are certainly not émigrés from Judea, and there is no good reason to see them as direct descendants of the Israelites of earlier times, since in that case their natural attachment would have been to Samaria.2

Th e only notable event to which this precarious establishment of Jews in Galilee might be linked is the charter granted by Antiochus III to Jerusalem ca. 200.3 Th e background is as follows: aft er the Lagids had dominated Coelesyria (Palestine and Phoenicia) for a century, Antiochus had encountered some diffi culty in seizing this territory from them, but the inhabitants of Judea (Ant. 12.133–134) and the Jews in general had taken his side.4 Th is means that the charter which was granted to them was a reward. It gives Jerusalem a recognized status, and permits “all those who belong to the Jewish people” to live according to their national laws.5 Obviously, this ordinance concerns a much larger area than Judea alone; for a long time, in fact, there had been a large Jewish population scattered throughout Mesopotamia and the Seleucid empire. And Antiochus, possibly in the context of a policy that had been traditional since the time of the Persians, is not afraid to

2 S. Freyne, Galilee from Alexander to Hadrian: A Study of Second Temple Judaism (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1980), 1–44, follows earlier scholars and tries to show that the fi delity of Galilee to Jerusalem, bypassing Samaria, was due to the “Deuteronomist” reform of Josiah and to the small number of persons deported when the kingdom of Israel fell (at least according to the Assyrian sources). However, this view is certainly too “Judean” and poses more problems than it solves: (1) the historical substance of this reform is far from clear, since 2 Macc 6:1–3 shows that even at the period of the redaction of this book, the existence of two temples for one single nation did not present any major problem; (2) according to 2 Kgs 15:29, Galilee and the surrounding towns were seized and their inhabitants deported by Tiglath-Pileser more than ten years before Sargon conquered Samaria. Even if the numbers involved here have been exaggerated in the biblical narrative, it nevertheless indicates that social and religious cohesion had been destroyed. More recently, R. A. Horsley, Galilee: History, Politics, People (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1995), attempts a more nuanced approach to Jewish Galilee, without however succeeding in off ering a good explanation of the origins, and above all of the specifi c character, of its traditional culture. See too the essays collected by E. M. Meyers ed., Galilee through the Centuries: Confl uence of Cultures (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999).

3 The authenticity of this charter has been established by E. J. Bickerman, “La charte séleucide de Jérusalem,” in idem, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 2:44–85; Eng. trans. in the 2nd edn, 2007, 41–80.

4 Josephus’s source is a lost passage by Polybius, who speaks of “those of the Jews who dwell around Jerusalem”; this presupposes that there were many other Jews as well.

5 These thus became the offi cial laws of the Jewish ethnos. The project of the Seleucids, who were heirs to Alexander, was to establish an empire. This ordinance is similar to that quoted at Ezra 7:25–27, where Artaxerxes enjoins upon Ezra to establish autho-ritatively the “law of his God” for “all the people in the province Beyond the River.” This expression corresponds exactly to the Jewish ethnos in Syria.

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make use of the Jews here as unarmed colonists in a distant country, in order to stabilize a disputed border (with regard to Asia Minor, cf. Ant. 12.148–149).

It is therefore natural to suppose that the Jewish colonists who were sent or who departed voluntarily in the aft ermath of this charter arrived in the fertile region of Galilee and in the associated urban centers. We may also suppose that the journeys necessitated by pilgrimages and the bringing of sacrifi cial off erings led to the creation of places where travel-ers could spend the night, since the land route from Mesopotamia goes by way of Damascus and Scythopolis. Th ese suppositions are strength-ened to some extent by the results of archaeological investigations in Galilee, which have revealed that the region was very sparsely populated in the Hellenistic period before the second century. Aft er this, there was a signifi cant increase in the rural population, but their settlements were scattered and there was no appreciable urbanization.6

During the Maccabean crisis (167–164) and for some years aft er-wards, Judea remained a Seleucid province under direct administration. Politically, it began to move towards a measure of autonomy only when Jonathan, the son of Mattathias, became high priest in 152 in troubled circumstances: there was no civil government, and the high priesthood had remained a concession by the Seleucid authorities, but Jonathan, the heir to a family which had rebelled against Antiochus IV, succeeded in obtaining his offi ce thanks to a civil war between Demetrius I and Alexander Balas (1 Macc 10:17–19), in which he opportunely took the side of one of the parties. Later, Jonathan also obtained the allocation to Judea of three districts in the region of Lydda-Lod (1 Macc 10:30; 11:34). Th ese had been attached to a region called Samaria-Galilee. Th is implies that the jurisdiction of Judea did not include Samaria, and still less Galilee.

At a later date, John Hyrcanus (135–104), who succeeded his father Simon the brother of Jonathan, conducted an energetic policy of terri-torial expansion. In particular, Josephus relates the conquest of Sichem and the Judaization of Idumaea ca. 128 (Ant. 13.255–257) and notes that later, between 111 and 107, the towns of Samaria and Scythopolis were captured (13.275–277). Th is does not permit us to conclude that

6 E. Meyers, J. Strange, and D. Groh, “The Meiron Excavation Project: Archaeological Survey in Galilee and the Golan” (1976), BASOR 230 (1978): 1–24; E. Meyers, “Galilean Regionalism: A Reappraisal,” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism 5: Studies in Judaism and its Greco-Roman Context, Brown Judaic Series 32, ed. E. Meyers, J. Strange, and D. Groh (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 115–131.

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the whole of Galilee was conquered at that date. Aft er the death of Hyrcanus in 104, his son Aristobulus succeeded him in troubled condi-tions. He annexed a part of the territory of the Ituraeans ca. 103 and circumcised them by force (Ant. 13.319); here, Josephus does not have a direct source, and he is probably quoting Strabo (Geogr. 753–756), but his redactional work suggests to the reader that this “part of Ituraea” was none other than Galilee.7 Th is means that the Galileans would have been Judaized by force and would thus be Israelites of the second rank, without a pedigree, with a provenance even more recent than that of the Idumaeans. One may even wonder whether Strabo, who was acquainted with an instance of enforced circumcision, may have committed the mistake of confusing Ituraeans and Idumaeans, since the two names are very similar. Th e extract in question does not name the king of Judea, and it may be that he was in fact John Hyrcanus, since we are told that he was a king who did good to his nation—something that cannot be said about Aristobulus, whose brief and lamentable reign never rose above the level of quarrels within the palace.

In 63, Jerusalem fell to Pompey (Ant. 14.48–76), thanks to a civil war: Antipater, the father of Herod and apparently the governor of Idumaea, supported the legitimate heir, the feeble Hyrcanus II, against the claims of Aristobulus, who had seized the throne in 67. Initially, the Romans supported Aristobulus, but later they pursued him and besieged him in Jerusalem. Th e victorious Pompey made a solemn entrance. Hyrcanus, who thus found himself on the winning side, remained ethnarch and high priest, but he was stripped of the royal title. Judea was severely amputated, losing a whole series of towns and their dependencies: to the west, the coastal villages from Raphia to Dora, which form a region to the south of Carmel; in the center, Samaria and Scythopolis; to the east of the Jordan, several towns as far as Pella, Gadara, and Hippos to the north. All these towns, with extensive adjoining territories, were attached directly to the Roman province of Syria which had just been created. It is worth noting that in this way, the Romans exercised direct control of all the routes leading to Galilee. Clearly, Galilee could no longer be a part of Judea, but this does not mean that the region (or any one of its cities) was specifi cally attached to Syria on this occa-sion. We have no evidence of any changes, even for the Jewish town of Sepphoris, the future capital. Th e obvious conclusion is that, with

7 This is the commonly held view; cf. E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, ed. G. Vermes et al., 3 vols., (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973–1987), 1:141 and 562; 2:8–9, who assume without genuine proof that the conquered “part of Ituraea” means Galilee.

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the exception of extensive regions to the east of the Jordan (Peraea), Galilee was not an integral part of the Judea which Hyrcanus and Jan-naeus had enlarged.

In 57, Gabinius, the new governor of Syria, put down a Jewish revolt at the time when Alexander, the son of Aristobulus, was trying to regain power (Ant. 14.82–97). Gabinius divided Palestine, or more exactly “the people,” into fi ve districts, each of which was governed by a “Sanhedrin,” and Sepphoris became the capital of Galilee. Th is was a reorganization of the people, not just of Judea, as is evident in the case of Peraea, with the two districts of Amathontis and Jericho: there were many Jews there, but the region had not belonged to Judea since the time of Pompey. Th e same must be said of Galilee, about which Josephus says nothing explicit. From the perspective of Syria, it was important to give the Jews of the region a territorial organization, without however accord-ing too much importance to Jerusalem. Above all, the very notion of a kingdom of Judea had to be sedulously ignored. Accordingly, although a Jewish Galilee did exist, with Sepphoris as its capital, its political links to Jerusalem were tenuous at most. It was only in 47, when Hyrcanus II returned to favor, that Galilee was explicitly attached to Judea, and that the young Herod was given a mission there.

For our present purposes, the conclusion is that the Jews in Galilee were in a singular situation. Th ey have no identifi able relationships with the former northern kingdom (Israel) or with the Samaritans; their origin is not in the political unit of Judea; they are not the eff ect of the enforced circumcision of local tribes. Th e only element in this picture which is reasonably clear is the policy of Antiochus III, but the Galilean Jews are certainly not the same as the Jewish ethnos which was scattered in Syria and Mesopotamia.

2. Under Herod the Great

In 47, Herod was “charged with” Galilee, in conditions about which we know little. He crushed a certain Hezekiah and his band, who were causing havoc on the frontier with Syria (Josephus, Ant. 14.159–161). Th is led to legal proceedings, with an accusation and a trial before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. If this had merely been a question of a police operation consisting in neutralizing robbers, there would surely have been nothing to merit a legal investigation.8 Th is Hezekiah was not

8 The parallel account in War 1.209 simply says that plotters compelled Hyrcanus to summon Herod, by then a rising star, before the court. He was acused of having acted

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just a simple bandit: he is regarded as the ancestor of the movement of the Galileans (War 2.56). Th is incident thus involved both political9 and religious issues. In political terms, Herod’s victims cannot have been partisans of Aristobulus, Rome’s enemy in the time of Pompey, because the tearful mothers come to present their supplications during the trial to Hyrcanus himself, who was wholly a vassal of the Romans. One might argue that Herod was seeking to carve out a stronghold for himself against Hyrcanus, and that this was the cause of the jealousies at court; but his actions won the favor of the governor Sextus Caesar, who cannot have been an opponent of Hyrcanus (a protégé of Julius Caesar). Nor can Sextus Caesar have looked favorably on a sedition which threatened the pax romana. As things turned out aft er these exploits, Herod was appointed governor of Coelesyria and Samaria by Sextus, and there is every reason to credit him with possessing excep-tional political skill—as indeed his entire career shows.

Th e conclusion must therefore be that these “brigands” were anti-Roman Jews. Th e legal proceedings taken against Herod were prompted by Jews who defended the Law and were not in the least interested in allegiance to Rome. During the trial, the Pharisee Sameas was note-worthy for his frankness. Th is means that the diffi cult or legendary elements in Josephus10 fail to conceal the fact that there existed a Gali-lean Judaism on which the Pharisees looked with favor. Th is Galilean Judaism may have given signs of irredentism, but there is no doubt that it was strongly opposed to Herod the Idumaean, who was described as a “half-Jew” (Ant. 14.403): this is a principled stand which is taken without regard to the possible political consequences. Th e Galilean opponents of Herod were certainly not marranos, i.e. Ituraeans or

in contempt of the “Jewish law” and the “national customs” by killing many persons without a trial. This redaction, which avoids stating that these schemers were partisans of Hezekiah, waters down the precise situation of the brigands and centers attention upon a monopoly enjoyed by the tribunal in Jerusalem.

9 Cf. Sean Freyne, “Bandits in Galilee: A Contribution to the Study of Social Con-ditions in First-Century Palestine,” in The Social World of Formative Christianity and Judaism, ed. Jacob Neusner et al. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 50–68, who emphasizes the socio-political circumstances. Helmut Schwier, Tempel und Tempelz-erstörung, Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 11 (Fribourg: Universitätsverlag, 1999), 145–146, discusses various scholarly opinions about these bandits.

10 In particular, it is diffi cult to know whether or not this trial conducted at Jerusalem for actions committed in Galilee presupposes the disappearance of the other provincial Sanhedrins. The scene of the trial is reported in b. San. 19a–b, with diff erent names (Jannaeus instead of Hyrcanus, etc.), and with a special emphasis on the independence of the Pharisees.

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others who had been circumcised by force: Hezekiah was defending a form of Judaism.

In 40, Herod had himself appointed king of Judea by the senate in Rome (Ant. 14:381–382), but he obtained this promotion only thanks to the war. Rome had need of local allies: Antigonus, the last Hasmo-naean king, had just obtained his throne thanks to the Parthians, who had forcibly driven the Romans out of Syria and taken Hyrcanus pris-oner. In 39, Herod landed at Ptolemais-Acco to begin the reconquest of Judea. He was supported by the Romans, who were still fi ghting against the Parthians. Aft er some initial successes, Herod encountered diffi culties in Galilee and was obliged at once to deploy considerable numbers of soldiers against “brigands living in caves.” Josephus relates how this enemy was defeated all along the line. Th is was followed by the assault on the caves where the last survivors had fl ed. Th ese caves are situated in the cliff s of Arbela, which overhang Magdala on the shore of the lake (Ant. 14.421–422). We hear a remarkable detail: on the point of being taken captive, an old man (or an “elder”) refused to let himself be taken prisoner and preferred rather to kill his wife and his seven children, before throwing himself off the cliff . Herod was present at this scene and off ered him his pardon, stretching out his hand to the man. But he found the time, before throwing himself off the cliff , to hurl abuse at Herod, reproaching him for his origins. For the brigands, therefore, this was not an economic war, and the scene recalls the story of the prisoners at Jotapata a century later, or even the collective suicides at Gamala and Massada. Th ese brigands were in a similar situation to Hezekiah, whom the same Herod had killed ten years earlier. Th e hand which Herod stretched out gives a glimpse of his hope, not only of conquering, but of being acknowledged. A cen-tury later, Josephus was motivated by the same concern, in somewhat parallel circumstances.

Josephus tells us in a later chapter (Ant. 17.23–25) that at a period which is not precisely specifi ed (but was probably shortly aft er the begin-ning of his reign),11 Herod wished to protect himself against bandits

11 Josephus places Zamaris’s appeal after he had been installed at Daphne near Antioch by Saturninus, who was the governor of Syria at the end of Herod’s reign (9–6 BCE), i.e. at a period when Herod was already submerged in domestic diffi culties (cf. Schürer, History, 1:257). This is highly unlikely. We should rather think of the period when Herod was consolidating his authority, viz. 37–25. There was a governor named Calpurnius in 34–33, and this date is better; the names may simply have been mixed up.

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in Trachonitis. Once again, these are Jewish “brigands” with political intentions, not nomads. Th e king wished to establish a buff er zone in Batanaea (Golan, to the east of the Jordan) by creating a settlement populated by Jewish subjects, so that he could protect both the region and the pilgrimage route. He installed a group of Babylonian Jewish colonists there who were already in Syria and enjoyed the favor of the Romans. He gave them ground to clear and exempted them from taxes. Th eir leader, Zamaris, built a city called Bathyra (most probably on the site of Qatzrin, the Rabbinic Cesarea) and a number of strongholds. He gathered together from many diff erent regions “people faithful to the Jewish customs”; both the exemption from taxation and the remote location were very attractive, especially for people who had a strong religious motivation and had no interest in seeking power. Herod’s choice of Babylonian Jews without political ambitions was certainly prudent, bearing in mind the neighboring Galileans who had resisted him on the other shore of the lake, and who had the same Babylonian origin from a more distant period in time.

When Herod died in 4 BCE, the situation reverted to confusion, with quarrels about the succession focusing on Archelaus, abuses committed by the Roman army, and a number of revolts, especially on the occa-sion of pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the Passover and Pentecost. Th e religious factor played a signifi cant role in the uprisings: at Jerusalem, people were demanding that the new ethnarch purify the cult, and revenge was sought for the Pharisaic teachers whom Herod had killed when they sought to remove a golden eagle from the temple (Ant. 17.206–207). Varus, the governor of Syria, hastened to Jerusalem with an armed force and restored order. He showed clemency to Jerusalem, but was implacable in dealing with the “brigands.”

In Galilee, Sepphoris was the center of a rebellion inspired by Judas of Gamala, who profi ted from the weakness of Jerusalem and attempted to take over the government. Th is revolt was crushed, and the city was destroyed by Varus’s son (17.289). Th is Judas is none other than “Judas the Galilean,” the founder together with a Pharisee of that “folly” which Josephus was later compelled to call the “fourth philosophy” (18.4–6).12 Th is Judas is described as “the son of Hezekiah,” viz. of the man whom Herod had defeated more than forty years earlier. Obvi-ously, Judas is one who continues the work of Hezekiah; he is not his “son” in the strict sense.13 Th is is indicated not only by the gap between

12 Cf. M. Hengel, Die Zeloten, AGSU 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1961), 57–61 and 322.13 Similarly, “a certain” Menahem, “the son” of Judas the Galilean, appeared later,

ca. 65 (War 2.433). Here too, we have an heir rather than a son, not only because of

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the dates, but above all by his lack of pedigree. In other words, he is called “son” in order to affi rm that he belongs to the same category of persons. During the fi scal census of Quirinius, in 6 CE, Judas was suf-fi ciently infl uential to be able to stir up a large-scale resistance to the Roman power (and especially to its taxes) in the whole of Judea. Th is is why he was called “the Galilean”—a sobriquet which was certainly not bestowed by the Galileans on themselves, and attests a large-scale migration and infl uence beyond the borders of Galilee.14 Th is infl uence was not born overnight, and the repressions by Varus had been directed to this profoundly anti-Roman group.15 Th is means that Jewish Galilee was reinforced under Herod, until it acquired a national importance which continued to grow in subsequent years. We must bear in mind here the fact that the Pharisees were never willing to pay allegiance to Herod, who feared them and persecuted them (cf. Ant. 17.41–42).

3. Hillel and Galilee

Th e preceding section, which has related Herod’s actions vis-à-vis Gali-lee and the Pharisees, provides the framework for the activity of Hillel the Elder, and lends some credibility to the rabbinic sources which speak of him. Hillel is one of the great founding fi gures of normative Judaism (m. Abot 1:12), and the fi rst to whom the tradition accords the title of “patriarch.”16 It is also with Hillel that the rabbinic tradition

the lengthy period separating the dates, which is highly unlikely if Menahem was the biological son of Judas, but also because of the contradiction between “a certain” (which presupposes that his genealogy was unknown) and the indication “son of” (which expresses exactly the opposite). Cf. É. Nodet, “Jésus et Jean-Baptiste selon Josèphe,” RB 92 (1985): 504–506, where I demonstrate inter alia that the doublet between Judas the looter and Judas the founder comes from a system of doublets in which the same episodes, after the death of Herod, are related twice and interwoven with each other in keeping with two diff erent perspectives.

14 This is attested by Luke’s reference to the Galileans whom Pilate killed (Luke 13:1–3). This passage shows that Luke understands the term Galilean in the secondary sense of “brigand.”

15 The Seder Olam Pabbah (ed. Ratner, 145) has preserved the memory of a war by Varus which was just as important as that waged by Vespasian, although it ignores both the civil war and the arrival of Pompey. The fi rst event (which it cites) concerned primarily Galilee; the latter, of which it knows nothing, concerned Judea.

16 Or nasi. This title is certainly anachronistic, since it does not correspond to anything in Jewish society that can be identifi ed before 70; at the most, Hillel had the rank of a recognized master. The patriarchal institution, properly so called, is not attested before Bar Kokhba, without any connection to the Tanaites. From Judah the Prince onwards, it was assuredly projected back onto the earlier generations: cf. A. Oppenheimer, Galilee in the Mishnaic Period (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1991), 51–52.

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begins to relate controversies. Th is disturbed later commentators and led to a fusion of originally distinct currents. Hillel was a Babylonian who lived in the days of Herod, but we have little precise information about him.

Josephus, who has eyes only for what counts in societal terms, ignores Hillel, but he knows the Pharisees Shemaiah and Abtalion (Sameas and Pollion) in Judea,17 who were the immediate predecessors of Hillel and Shammai (m. Abot 1:10–11). Th e story of the elevation of Hillel to the patriarchate is supplied only by the rabbinic sources, and its princi-pal concern is to demonstrate a pronounced discontinuity between him and his predecessors. Th e event is related in various analogous forms; I comment here on the longest and best documented recension ( j. Pesah. 6:1 p. 33a),18 omitting a few secondary developments:

This law was unknown to the elders of Bathyra.

Th is refers to the breaches of the sabbath law which were permitted in order to prepare the paschal lamb, such as we read in m. Pes: 6:1–2:

It happened one day that Nisan 14 coincided with the sabbath, and they did not know whether or not the paschal sacrifice took precedence over the sabbath. They said: “There is a certain Babylonian here whose name is Hillel, who has studied under Shemaiah and Abtalion. He will know whether or not the paschal sacrifice takes precedence over the sabbath.”—“Can he be of some use to us?” They sent people to look for him, and they said to him: “Have you ever heard whether or not Nisan 14 takes precedence over the sabbath, when the two days coincide?”

Hillel attempts to establish the point by means of various arguments, based primarily on the Bible and employing his own rules for inter-

17 Cf. L. H. Feldman, “The Identity of Pollion, the Pharisee, in Josephus,” JQR 49 (1958): 53–62. The transcription “Sameas” is ambiguous: it may come from Shemaiah, his colleague, or from Shammai, his disciple and the inseparable adversary of Hillel. However, the second form may be considered as an abbreviation of the fi rst: cf. J. N. Dérenbourg, Essai sur l’histoire et la géographie de la Palestine (Paris: Impr. Impériale, 1867), 1:35 n. 1 and 95 n. 1. In Ant. 15.3, Josephus mentions “the Pharisee Pollion and his disciple Sameas,” and attributes to Pollion an intervention at Herod’s court which he has already attributed to Sameas at 14.172. He thus mixes up a colleague and a disciple of Pollion.

18 The two other versions are in t. Pes. 4:13–14 and b. Pes. 66a. J. Neusner, Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1984), off ers a dif-ferent analysis, which severs every link between Josephus and the rabbinic tradition. This is certainly simpler, but it is a priori arbitrary. Cf. also idem, The Tosefta: Second Division, Moed (New York: Ktav, 1981), 136–137.

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pretation, but the others reject his arguments or refute them, and then conclude:

“There is nothing to be got out of this Babylonian!” Although he remained there all the day to provide them with explanations, they did not accept him until he said to them: “Woe is me! This is what I received from Shemaiah and Abtalion.” When they heard him say these words, they arose and appointed him patriarch.

Th e examination to which Hillel is subjected is remarkable for various reasons.

First, the body which interrogates Hillel has the power to appoint him “patriarch,” or at any rate head of the school. We are nowhere told that this body was a Sanhedrin: they are merely “the elders of Bathyra,” about whom we know little from other sources. Th ey have links to Babylon, just like Zamaris’s group.

Secondly, the masters who are mentioned, Shemaiah and Abtalion, are the authorities whom everyone recognizes, but they are absent and they have not been replaced. Other passages too indicate a discontinuity between them and their successors (cf. m. Ed. 1:3); their authority is intact, but they are inaccessible. We must therefore assume that they have died, or have been killed. In any case, they have not been able to establish a succession which is recognized by the colony in Bathyra.

Th irdly, they are looking for a candidate with a particular profi le: a Babylonian who has studied under these Judean Pharisaic masters. In the narrative, however, some cast doubt on the Babylonian precisely because he is a Babylonian—in other words, we have the problem of how to reconcile divergent currents in the tradition.

Fourthly, the context of the elders’ question is not academic, but practical. It concerns a specifi c urgency, for which no authority is accessible—on two levels.

Fift hly, the question itself is remarkable, because according to the customary lunar calendar, Passover falls on a sabbath roughly every seven years. It is therefore rather improbable that this entire assembly, which was entitled to confer promotion on Hillel (even if this authority was recognized only at a later date), should have forgotten a custom-ary point which was of such universal relevance—and was therefore so simple.

Th is means that the redaction of the episode, although it is very condensed, presents a whole number of problems. We have seen the discontinuity which precedes Hillel, whose title of “patriarch” is certainly

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a later addition. We can say a little about the emergence of the elders of Bathyra, who never appear in any of our sources as a permanent body: Josephus tells us that many persons came and settled in the city founded by Zamaris because they felt safe there. Herod persecuted the Pharisees, but he did not interfere with the statute of this colony, because of general political considerations relating to the Babylonians and the Parthians. Th is made it a refuge for very pious persons who could not hope for protection from the priestly milieus, which were forcibly subjected to Herod. As for the question of the Passover, which is posed far from Jerusalem, this raises issues that go far beyond the limits of the present study.19

4. Th e Galilee of Jesus

Th e elements which we have identifi ed in the preceding sections per-mit an initial access to the Galilean milieu in which Jesus recruited his disciples. Th is is a rural milieu, a scene of intense and highly diversi-fi ed activity20 on both shores of the lake. Th is supplies a framework for many details in the gospels; at the same time, the gospels can help clarify some decisive points in the history of Judaism on the periphery of Judea, since both Christianity and the rabbinic tradition had their beginnings on the same soil. I limit myself here to a summary list of characteristic traits which identify more precisely the milieu from which Jesus and his disciples came.

First, scholars have seen a general opposition between the Zealot milieus to the west of the Sea of Tiberias and other milieus to the east which were more submissive. Th is lake plays an important role in Jesus’ wanderings, not only as a geographical element, but also through symbolic eff ects linked to water and to fi shing. Besides this, the theme of crossing the lake and the numerous allusions to “the other shore” take on a new signifi cance (cf. John 6:1, etc.); the symmetrical curse of Bethsaida and Chorazin (Matt 11:21 par.) concerns the two shores; the fi rst multiplication of the loaves takes place on the western shore (Matt 14:13–34 par.) with twelve baskets, while the second multiplica-tion takes place on the eastern shore (Matt 15:32–39 par.) with seven

19 Cf. É. Nodet and J. Taylor, The Origins of Christianity: An Exploration (College-ville: Liturgical, 1998), 138–144.

20 Cf. S. Appelbaum, “Judea as a Roman Province. The Countryside as a Political and Economic Factor,” ANRW II 8 (1977): 355–396.

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baskets. Originally, these communications between the two shores are not a bridge between the Gentile Decapolis and Jewish Galilee,21 but rather between two contrary tendencies in one and the same culture. Th is culture is very closed, and Jesus has come only “for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Th e usual interpretation, which sees the twelve baskets as an allusion to the twelve tribes of Israel, and the seven baskets as a reference to the nations (recalling the “seven nations” of Canaan), accords with the spirit of a Christian redaction.

Secondly, when he writes about the town where Jesus “was brought up,” Eusebius cites an instructive legend (Hist. Eccl. 1.7.14): according to a letter of Julius Africanus, the “family of Jesus” originally came from the Jewish villages of Nazareth and Kokhaba. Th e latter town was in Batanaea (Golan). Let us begin by noting that this doubling of the locality accords with the doubling (on the east and the west of the lake) which Herod had organized. Our next point: this family is none other than the posterity of James, whose entourage formed the Jewish Christians in the strict sense of the word, or “Nazoreans” (the nozrim of the rabbinic sources). It is natural to associate this word with “Naza-reth” (“Nazara”), but we may ask which name comes fi rst, when we look at the parallel case of the other village: Kokhaba too is completely unknown,22 but its name means “star,” and it is hard to avoid seeing a symbolic meaning in this word, inspired by the star of Jacob from Num 24:17, since Jesus—like all his family—is also a “Bar Kokhba.” It is therefore certainly possible that Nazareth, a village about which we know nothing from other sources, was initially a town of Nazoreans, i.e. a number of families or one group who eagerly awaited the Messiah. Finally, it is interesting to note that Africanus came from Emmaus-Nicopolis in Judea, which had been a prominent center (both really and symbolically) of active “messianism” since Judas Maccabeus. Th is was a place where more or less legendary Jewish Christian memories may have been elaborated, without precise links to the New Testament. Besides this, Jesus’ own town is Capharnaum on the lake, not far from Tiberias (Mark 2:1; 3:20; 9:33). Archaeological excavations on this site have shown that the fi shing village predates Herod. Jesus was familiar

21 Cf. the bibliography by A. Hennessy, The Galilee of Jesus (Rome: Editrice Pontifi cia Università Gregoriana, 1994).

22 Four sites with this name have been identifi ed up to now in the relevant territory, two to the west of the Jordan and two to the east, but it is diffi cult to follow their traces before the Byzantine period.

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with this milieu, where he recruited his disciples, and he seems to have known something about fi shing and navigation.

Th irdly and more generally, the milieu in question is rural and a scene of intense religious activity, with various tendencies engaged in debate or in confl ict. Th e last question which the apostles put to Jesus is: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Th is scene is situated at Jerusalem, and this terminology, which resembles that of some rabbinic sources, completely ignores the real territory of Judea and the successors of Herod. It bears traces of a dream of independence, like that of the Zealots; we fi nd the same in the third temptation (Matt 4:8–10), in the sadness of the two disciples who leave Jerusalem for Emmaus, and in the people’s choice of Barabbas, who is a “brigand”—i.e., not merely a common criminal, but a Galilean of the most genuine kind (to borrow Josephus’s terminology). We should note that although he moves around in Galilee and recruits his disciples there, Jesus remains far from the two Romanized capitals, Sepphoris and Tiberias (which was founded by Herod Antipas on the site of a cemetery, in honor of Tiberias: Ant. 18.37). Th e milieu of Jesus and his disciples lay certainly alongside the traditional Galileans.

Fourthly, the group which follows Jesus has a diverse composition. It includes Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot, men who were opponents a priori (and who correspond to the two shores), as well as Joanna, the wife of the steward of Herod Antipas—this represents a third pole opposed to the other two, linked to the ruling milieus of the cities, especially of the new capital, the despised city of Tiberias. Some disciples of John the Baptist leave him to follow Jesus. When Jesus celebrates the Last Supper at Jerusalem, he has access to a room in a hostelry about which the disciples know nothing, and this means that he has other relationships. He has adherents among the Pharisees, who warn him about the danger posed by Herod, but he counters the Pharisees by insisting on the primacy of scripture over the oral tradition; the scribes, irrespective of whether they follow Jesus or reject him, are the guardians of scripture and the opponents of the Pharisees. Taken together, these various tendencies form a spectrum of the Judaism in Galilee, where we fi nd scarcely any Sadducees or priests. Jesus breaks all barriers—but within Judaism. He even joins the deviants, the lepers and the prostitutes, but his contacts with Gentiles do not go beyond a few symbolic gestures,23 which were doubtless the maximum that his

23 Cf. J.-F. Baudoz, Les miettes de la table, EB NS 27 (Paris: Gabalda, 1995), who

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milieu could tolerate; and these gestures are always carried out in the presence of Jewish onlookers. Th is is the signifi cance of the “sign of Jonah,” a narrative meant for the people of Israel: even the most wicked of the prophets is capable of converting a Gentile city. We must add to this list of transgressions the visit which he receives from Samari-tans, who follow scripture and await a new Moses, and who utter one of the most solemn acknowledgments of Jesus. All these crossings of boundaries form an ensemble of signs which show that Jesus is not afraid of ritual impurity.

Fift hly, just as John the Baptist is surrounded by disciples, so Jesus, in addition to all these occasional encounters, recruits and forms a group in which he is recognized as master (“Rabbi”), although this is not a school in the narrow sense of the term, since the apostles were subsequently regarded as “uneducated, common men” (cf. Acts 4:13); although they were not ignoramuses, they did not fi t into any system of recognized doctrinal competence. At the same time, the group shared a common life and to some extent formed a closed unit. Th is is illustrated especially by the example of the Last Supper, which presupposes that the group habitually met for meals. What we see, therefore, is a more or less itinerant brotherhood with its own organization.

Sixthly, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem several times, alone or in a group. Although he is critical of the temple, he never ceases to regard it as the center of the promises. At the decisive moment, he insists absolutely on challenging the authorities, although the disciples disagree (cf. Matt 16:22 par.; according to John 7:8–9, he hesitates). And it is clear that some of them have never made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, because although they are already adults, they are fi lled with amazement at the architecture. Th ere is a certain parallel in the trajectories of Jesus and the movement of Judas the Galilean, who was conceived in Galilee and later attempted to make Judea the base of his activity, which included a protest against the temple (cf. Ant. 18.3–4); similarly, Luke 3:1 relates that Jesus, who had been conceived in Galilee, came to Judea to start his public activity, which ended with an analogous protest. Gamaliel himself is said to have drawn this parallel (Acts 5:37), and Josephus tells us that Judas’s movement was very close to the Pharisees in doctrinal terms. On the other hand, Jesus’ confrontation with the civil and priestly authori-ties, which was followed by a discontinuity and a diffi cult succession,

discusses especially the position of J. Jeremias, Jesu Verheißung für die Völker (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1956), who argued that the mission to the Gentiles can be found in the ipsissima verba of Jesus.

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recalls the specifi cally Pharisaic problem (as Josephus uses this term) of the analogous confrontations and discontinuities at Jerusalem under Alexander Jannaeus and Herod, and perhaps as early as the period of the Maccabean crisis. On his way back from Judea, Jesus dismisses equally the temples of Jerusalem and Garizim in his conversation with the Samaritan woman (John 4:21–23), and then heads for Galilee: once again, the horizon is Galilean Judaism.

Finally, we should note that the sources studied here give particular prominence to the symbolic and religious factors, and that these explain very well why Josephus devotes so much attention to Galilee. Obviously, socio-economic circumstances, famines, and political oppressions also played a role, but it is remarkable that those studies of Galilee at this period which have centered on materialistic determinisms do not pro-duce any coherent synthesis which can integrate the specifi c character-istics of the local culture, even when they make use of such concepts as the “people of the land” or “the poor”; they are oft en obliged to make the historical Jesus a somewhat unreal fi gure who emerges by chance in Galilee, without any deep links to tradition.24

Nevertheless, these links were durable. Let us look at two important periods, that of the War of 70 and aft er the defeat of Bar Kokhba.

5. Josephus, Galilee, and the School of Jabneh-Jamnia

In 66, following a long series of troubles with complex origins, Cestius Gallus, the governor of the province of Syria, arrived from Antioch with a body of soldiers to take Jerusalem. However, he failed to realize that the “brigands” were no longer the masters and that the people were ready to throw open the city gates to him. He did not dare to push his advantage and conquer the city at once (according to Josephus, this would have averted the subsequent wars). Instead, he withdrew, and this provoked the rebels to pursue him and fi nally to infl ict a severe

24 S. Freyne, Galilee, Jesus and the Gospels: Literary Approaches and Historical Investigations (Dublin: Gill & Macmillian, 1988), who takes up anew the discussions of his predecessors, is typical of this tendency, which is heir to the nineteenth-century German liberal thought which saw Jesus as one who promoted emancipation from the Law. This tendency can be seen almost in the form of a caricature in the thesis of W. Grundmann, Jesus der Galiläer und das Judentum (Leipzig: Wigand, 1940), 82–83, who attempts to show that Jesus was an Aryan. This tendency always detaches Jesus from his Jewish context. Cf. also W. Bauer, “Jesus der Galiläer,” in Festgabe für Adolf Jülicher (Tübingen: Mohr–Paul Siebeck, 1927), 16–34.

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defeat on him between Beth-Horon and Antipatris (War 2.540–545). Th is tactical victory was a strategic disaster: the Romans must inevitably undertake reprisals, for otherwise they would have appeared weak. It was therefore necessary to prepare for war, and it was on this occasion that Josephus was once again in Galilee, charged with a mission.

It is here that the second narrative begins (Life 17–19), but with a very diff erent presentation of the events. Josephus, who has just returned from a mission to Rome, sees the preparations being made for insurrection. He sticks close to the leading Pharisees and tries in vain to warn them against a military confrontation with the Romans. Aft er the rout of Cestius, these leading men send him with two priests to Galilee, which has not yet completely risen up against Rome. In Galilee, Josephus attempts to calm the “brigands” and to gather in their weapons, so that these may be available to the leading Pharisees if—and only if—the Romans attack. We are then given a long account of the divisions among the Jews and of the confl icts (oft en bloody) between the various factions (Life 30–70). In his many attempts at appeasement, Josephus states several times that he is an emissary of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem; and he tells us that he cultivated the friendship of the seventy elders who governed the land, in order to ensure the faithful-ness of the people.

Th is is not the place to investigate which is the better version of events.25 In the conclusion to the Antiquities, Josephus proclaims his competence in doctrinal matters, and even the Jews acknowledge this. Despite his vanity, we must admit that he knows Judaism very well, certainly better than he knows history and philosophy. He then goes on to announce that he intends to write his autobiography. Th e Life, which is (or has become) an independent book, presents itself as an appendix to the Antiquities (Life 420). It is devoted almost entirely to the few months which Josephus spent in Galilee in 66–67 (Life 17–412), and the narrative stops just before a decisive military attack on the Romans. At this point, Josephus refers to the Jewish War, where he has already

25 S. J. D. Cohen, Josephus in Galilee and Rome: His Vita and Development as a Historian, Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1979), has shown convincingly (cf. the summary, 242) that one of the keys to understanding the new redaction of the Life is Josephus’s concern to portray himself as an observant Pharisee, and hence to disparage systematically the religious fi delity of the Galileans. Following other scholars, U. Rappaport, “Where Was Josephus Lying—In His Life or in the War?,” in Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith, ed. F. Parente and J. Sievers, Studia Post-Biblica 41 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 279–289, accords priority to the Life.

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written of this whole campaign and of ensuing events. Th is leaves us with a strictly provincial narrative about disputes between Jewish fac-tions whom Josephus tries in vain to reconcile with one another. Such a work has no prospect of interesting the Gentiles, especially more than twenty-fi ve years aft er the events. Th is means that Josephus is essentially writing for the Jews. Th is autobiography is the exposé of his entitlement, from the time he went to Rome onwards, to pose as the guide of the nation, with the Pharisaic note which was in accordance with the most popular tendency. He comes from a good family, and has studied in the principal schools; above all, his actions in Galilee were motivated by a perfect national loyalty which contrasted with the folly of the factions. Galilee, with its links to Babylon, was a major point of reference.

Josephus’s principal adversary was John of Gishala, who had con-tacts with the leading Pharisees in Jerusalem, especially with Simon b. Gamaliel (Life 190–191). Although these men were not Zealots, they held views similar to those of the traditional Jewish Galilee, from which they may have originally come. At the period when Josephus was writing, however, this Simon was Josephus’s main Jewish opponent, because he was the father of Gamaliel II, under whom the school of Jabneh-Jamnia, founded by Johannan b. Zakkai, came to its full fl owering. We must look briefl y at this foundation.

Th e town of Jabneh-Jamnia, situated between Jaff a and Ashkelon, was ten kilometers from the sea, to which it was linked by a canal, so that it had a maritime harbor. Th e town, which had belonged to Judea since the days of the high priest Simon, had been given by Herod to his sister Salome (War 2.98). When she died, this private property passed to the empress Livia, and subsequently became a personal property of Tiberius, her son and heir. Juridically speaking, therefore, it did not belong to Judea, although most of its population was Jewish (Philo, Leg. 200–203). It was here that the controversy about the statue of Caligula in the temple at Jerusalem began, following an insurrection: he wished to punish the Jews for seeking to establish their own law in his domains. In 68, when the Galilean war was extended to Judea, Vespasian took with him “numerous citizens who had surrendered themselves in con-tradiction of the laws,” and installed garrisons at Jabneh and Ashdod (War 4.130). He then installed “a suffi cient number of Jews who had gone over to his side” as inhabitants of the town (4.444). Th ese were probably compelled to take up residence there, and this means that he had imported Galileans.

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Th e rabbinic sources allow us to suppose that Johannan b. Zakkai was a member of this group, and hence that he founded his school before 70. He had held a private school for about twenty years at Arab near Sepphoris ( j. Sabb 16:8, p. 15d); a strange Christian legend relates—still in Galilee—that his father (Zakkai-Zacchaeus) was compelled to bow down before the knowledge of the child Jesus (Infancy Gospel of Th omas 6–8).26 Finally, we are told that he was the last disciple of Hillel the Elder (b. Meg. 13a), the Babylonian from Bathyra. Later traditions relate that he surrendered to Vespasian and predicted to him that he would become emperor; Vespasian then permitted him to settle at Jabne with some teachers. Other accounts relate that aft er trying in vain to persuade his compatriots in the besieged Jerusalem to abandon a hopeless war, he fl ed the city, hidden in a coffi n, and then made his way to Vespasian, who granted him concessions.27 Th is is certainly a transfer, slightly modifi ed, to Johannan of what Josephus writes about himself, with the intention of denying that Josephus played any role as founder, and of implying that Johannan actually came from Jerusalem. Th e links to Galilee are clear, despite various legends which make him a master of the Sanhedrin who was forced to go into exile from Jerusalem.

Johannan was succeeded by Gamaliel II ca. 90, at the period when Josephus was writing the Antiquities. He was a man of a diff erent cali-ber. His grandfather Gamaliel I, the teacher of Paul of Tarsus, and his father Simon, whom Josephus criticizes, were well known and leading Pharisees from Jerusalem who accepted the Roman rule. Gamaliel II strengthened the prestige of the school in Jabneh, which he wished to make a point of reference for the entire people. He used his author-ity to bring together diff erent groups or brotherhoods, and this is the source of the controversies about the law or about political action. Nevertheless, he always respected the Galilean customs. He maintained good contacts with the Roman authorities and visited the Jewish com-munities as far as Rome itself.

At a later period, when schools were developing around Jabneh, we know little about Galilee until the revolt of Bar Kokhba (132–135). Th e reasons for this gap in our knowledge are disputed.28 Th e clearest

26 This legend circulated, for it is known to Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. 1.20.1.27 Cf. ARN A.4; these accounts are transmitted in several versions, which are pre-

sented and commented by J. Neusner, A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai, ca. 1–80 C.E., 2nd ed., Studia Post-Biblica 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 152–154. I adopt rather diff erent conclusions here, except with regard to the date of Johannan’s arrival in Jabneh.

28 Cf. S. Liebermann, “Persecution of the Jewish Religion,” in Festschrift Salo Baron

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elements in the picture concern the general policy of Hadrian, viz. the prohibition of circumcision by all those peoples in the empire who practiced this custom, the elimination of customs deemed barbarous, and projects for founding or rebuilding towns (Jerusalem was only one of these).29 Th is was a repristination of the civilizing policy of Alexan-der, but we do not know up to what date the temple had continued to function. In other words, we do not know whether Hadrian was a new Antiochus Epiphanes. At any rate, it was aft er this war that refugees from Judea emigrated to Galilee, in particular the disciples of Aqiba, the master who had believed Bar Kokhba to be the messiah, and who had been executed by the Romans. Th e documents found in the desert of Judah indicate that these disciples, who later became the masters of the rabbinic tradition, had been removed from the leading circles around Bar Kokhba.30

Subsequently, there are traces of an organization in Galilee around various centers: Usha, Shefaram, Beth-Shearim, Sepphoris, and Tiberias. Usha was the home town of Juda b. Ilai, one of the principal disciples of Aqiba, and the assembly which had its seat there joined up with the “elders of Galilee” (cf. b. Ber. 63b–64a), who are no longer the descendants of Judas the Galilean. When these Galilean schools began to expand, there were disputes with the leaders of the Babylonian communities about questions of precedence and the regulation of the calendar, but we cannot detect any organic links to the Greek-speaking Judaism in the Roman world, which Josephus had sought to address. A lapidary evaluation of this epoch says that to the west of Tyre, the western border of Syria, “one does not know Israel, nor their Father who is in heaven” (b. Men. 110). When the Mishnah was published ca. 200, it was immediately communicated to Babylonia, but not elsewhere. It had a posterity parallel to that which it had in Galilee, viz. the two Talmuds.

We must therefore conclude that at the end of the second century, Jewish Galilee had had a Babylonian culture for at least four centuries,

(Jerusalem: Magnes, 1979), 3:214; M. D. Herr, “Causes of the Bar Kokhba Revolt,” Zion 43 (1978): 6, with bibliography.

29 According to Dio Cassius, Hist. Rom. 69.12,1–2; cf. the discussion by Schürer, History, 1:537.

30 Cf. Schürer, History, 1:544 n. 133. The rabbinic tradition, which banished the memory of Bar Kokhba and rejected 1 Maccabees, leaves a gap between the patriar-chates of Gamaliel II and his son Simon II. This gap corresponds approximately to the reign of Hadrian.

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although this does not exclude various evolutions linked to Judea; and this is how the situation remained until the Byzantine rule in the fourth century. Geographically speaking, this concerned primarily the region around the Sea of Tiberias, where the remains of synagogues have been found.31

31 English translation: Brian McNeil.