The construction of Galilee as a place for the historical Jesus--Part I.

Abstract

How have scholars understood and constructed Galilee as a place for the historical Jesus? This study traces the development of the image of Galilee from the early nineteenth century until the Third Quest. The picture of Galilee in the nineteenth century was influenced by the major cultural ideas of Europe at the time: colonialism, and the emergence of nationality, ethnicity, and race as categories of identity. Central figures in this period were F. Schleiermacher, D. F. Strauss and E. Renan. Drawing on nineteenth century studies of ethnicity and race in Nazi Germany in the first part of the twentieth century, some scholars portrayed Galilee as a non-Jewish region and the home of a non-Jewish Jesus. This question of race was discredited after World War II, and in the Second Quest there was little interest in Galilee. Jesus was seen over against Judaism merely as a religious system.

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Why is it that the quest for historical Jesus has become a quest for the historical Galilee? There seems to be a conviction that is not discussed, but taken for granted, that the more we can know about Galilee, the more we know about Jesus. Hans Dieter Betz points out that by some scholars "Jesus uniqueness was attributed to his origin in Galilean Judaism. Jesus appeared to be unique because his Judaism was non-normative or regionally conditioned by Galilee" (100). That added an almost existential dimension to information about ancient Galilee that went beyond a general interest in the ancient history of various regions of the Mediterranean.

It is this relationship between Galilee and Jesus research that I would like to look into. How have scholars understood and constructed Galilee in discussions of the historical Jesus? What are the presuppositions behind the attempts to describe Galilee as the home or background for Jesus? And what aspects of Galilee are considered to be important? Moreover, what do we mean by Galilee? Place is not something that can be taken for granted, as something which has an existence independant of viewers; it is always something which is posited. We do not have an immediate, unmediated access to Galilee but approach it only through maps, films, photos, books that are produced by somebody. To say that Galilee is socially constructed is, therefore, to question that it is "natural," that the categories used to understand it can be taken for granted, as self evident. What are the presuppositions that color an interpretation, and what are the powers implied in the creation of an image of Galilee? Moreover, they create, not only Galilee, but also "the other," i.e., what is outside and in contrast to Galilee (Duncan & Ley: 330-31).

To follow some of the traditions of interpretations of Galilee, I will start with the construction of Galilee as part of "the Holy Land" in the nineteenth century. The idea of "the Holy Land" is of course much older; it goes back at least to the fourth century, with the establishing of Christian churches and monasteries, and the start of pilgrimages (Wilken 1992: 101-25). But the nineteenth century represented a new beginning. It started with European political and military engagement, followed by scientific explorations and archaeological investigations, as well by individual adventurers and eventually "mass" tourism and pilgrimages (Shepherd). Finally, towards the end of the century the Zionist movement focused its attention upon Palestine. As a result of these activities "the Holy Land" became part and parcel of the imagination of Western Christians (Obenzinger). And the development of historical-critical Bible studies as well as Jesus research created a market for histories, geographies and atlases of the Holy Land.

What was the cultural context for these studies and their underlying presuppositions? First, they originated in the context of the Western colonising influence in the Middle East and therefore represented a form of Orientalism. Moreover, since geography and history were an integral part of the scientific development of the nineteenth century, they shared many presuppositions about culture and race with disciplines like anthropology and biology. One such presupposition was the idea of a close relationship between physical geography and the character of the inhabitants of the area. Finally, ideas of nationality, ethnicity and race were all of major concern in nineteenth-century Europe and North America. I will use these presuppositions to establish the main issues in the images of Galilee from the nineteenth century: Holy Land as colony; geography shapes personality, nationality and race and ethnicity. Since the nineteenth century was so influential in establishing biblical scholarship, these paradigms of understanding continued to exert their influence upon studies in the twentieth century. Consequently, it is relevant to ask how these questions developed, which ones declined in interest, and which continued to play a role. It is also pertinent to ask whether new perspectives were brought into the attempt to construct "the Holy Land" and Galilee in the twentieth century.

Setting the Agenda: Nineteenth--Century Galilee, Geography, and Nationalism

Colonialism and the creation of the Holy Land

The political, economic and religious history of nineteenth-century European expansion into the Near East was important for the construction of Palestine in historical Jesus research. Thus, the picture of Palestine and Galilee was shaped by the cultural and intellectual categories of this period of colonialism (Ben-Arieh). It started with Napoleon's unsuccessful military expedition to Egypt, which was accompanied by a large scientific expedition. This became the beginning of a military and scholarly competition for influence in the Ottoman Empire throughout the nineteenth century--mainly between England and France, but with Germany, Russia and other European powers also playing a role. This competition extended to Palestine, which became the destination for innumerable visitors, scholars and also modern pilgrims. Many of these visits resulted in eyewitness reports, as well as in scientific, especially geographical studies that were often carried out by scholars as part of or in conjunction with military expeditions. That was true of the first French surveys following in the steps of Napoleon I as well as Ernest Renan's archaeological expedition under the reign of Napoleon III (Gavish). Officers from the Royal Engineers did the surveys undertaken by the British Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF).

This was not a mere coincidence, but corresponded to a mentality about the relations between the great European powers and the region. This mentality was summed up in one of the PEF publications: "The Ordnance Survey of Palestine was so obvious a duty for the English nation to undertake, that it is needless to dwell on its importance" (Stanley: xxii). This comment could be read as an illustration of how the maps and descriptions of Palestine made it a familiar place to the English, so to speak naturalized it as an English place. But the statement could also be given a less benign, and a more colonizing interpretation. It illustrates the points made by Ley and Duncan regarding a drawing by Joanne Sharp titled Topographical Survey, which juxtaposes a surveyed area with the cartographer's large eye. Topography claims to be an objective science, but it is actually a "science of domination," and the surveyor has the power of observation. "In practice," moreover, "it is usually a white, male elite, Eurocentric observer who orders the world he looks upon, one whose observations and classifications provide the rules of representation, of inclusion and exclusion, of precedent and antecedent, of inferior and superior" (Duncan & Ley: 2) Thus, we might say that to undertake the survey of Palestine was a colonizing effort to make it a part of England, emphasizing the importance of Palestine as the Holy Land for the English nation. Surveillance and mapmaking went hand in hand with collecting Near Eastern antiquities, proudly displayed in the major museums of European capitals as symbols of the continuity between these nations and the great nations of the past (Silberman: 105). And even if Palestine did not have a memorable past as great power in the same way as Egypt, because it was the scene of biblical history and especially the life of Jesus, it still had a very important role.

The main interest behind many of the descriptions of Palestine was to provide background information for Western readers of the Bible. As a result the authors' interest was primarily historical, and the present inhabitants and their conditions hardly entered into the picture--at least not in a positive way. The region was part of the declining Ottoman Empire and was divided into various administrative sub-regions. But these divisions were of no interest to Western visitors, who were interested in Palestine as the "Holy Land" and who based their picture of the land upon their readings of the Bible. Since "the Holy Land" did not correspond to any political or administrative region, there were no agreed upon fixed borders. However, there was widespread agreement about what were the central parts of the "Holy Land" (Ben-Arieh: 71). A comparison of various nineteenth-century sources shows that the areas could be ranked according to degrees of holiness: Jerusalem was the most holy, then followed the core areas of Judea, Samaria and Galilee, i.e., Western Palestine. Eastern Palestine, i.e. the area on the Eastern side of the Jordan and the Negev, was considered secondary in holiness.

Geography and Character

Within this constructed Holy Land, after Jerusalem, Galilee held a special place. This is summed up by the British cartographer Captain Wilson in his introduction to the survey of the Sea of Galilee: "With the exception of Jerusalem, there is no place in Palestine which excites deeper interest than that lake district in which our Lord passed so large a portion of the Last three years of his life, and in which he performed so many of his mighty works." But it was not easy to describe this place in light of expectations of its uniqueness:

   What is the Sea of Galilee like? Is one of the first questions a traveller
   is asked on his return from the Holy Land, and a question which he finds it
   extremely difficult to answer satisfactorily. Some authors describe its
   beauties in glowing terms, whilst others assert that the scenery is tame
   and uninteresting; neither perhaps quite correct, though perhaps
   representing the impression produced at the time on the writer's mind
   [Wilson: 337].

This is an interesting observation, because it seems to question one of the main presuppositions of human geography until the middle of last century: that descriptive fieldwork, based on observation, could give an accurate understanding of the area under study (Duncan & Ley: 2). Instead, Wilson appears to represent a different approach to representation, where there is no "objective" truth underneath. He appears to point towards a hermeneutical approach, in which the interpreter is engaged with the data in an act of interpretation. Here the uniqueness of the place, for the visitor, is attributed to its role as the place where Jesus lived and worked. It is because he is unique that the place becomes so interesting.

The observations by Wilson on "the lake district" shows what first caught the interest of the visitor: the geography of the Galilee: what it looked like and its relationship to Jesus' life and activities. Thus, we shall ask: how did the nineteenth century authors conceive of the relations between geography and human life, landscape and characters? They perceived that there was a close relationship between place as nature, landscape, geography and the human situation, in particular the human mind (Ben-Arieh: 76-77). This becomes visible especially in Renan's 1863 work, LA VIE DE JESUS. The way in which Renan makes place, the Galitean countryside, into gospel, is quite extraordinary in its explicit expression of a position that in a weaker form was shared by many scholars of historical geography. Historical geography combined many elements that played a part in the general cultural climate in the middle and later part of the nineteenth century. Social biology, philology and ethnography shared a set of presuppositions about the interdependence between race, nature and character. It was taken for granted that nature and landscape made an impression upon the character of an individual.

Renan is explicit about the role of geography; he finds in the landscape of Galilee nothing less than a "fifth gospel." But he also comments on the present state of the area, which he sees as desolate and disappointing; this makes him describe Galilee as a gospel that is "torn, but still legible." Renan presents himself, then, as a person who is able to read this landscape. His descriptions of Jesus in Galilee are now perhaps best known through Albert Schweitzer's scathing criticism of his romantic pictures of a sun-drenched Galilee peopled by Jesus and his happy group of disciples (181-82). The main theme that runs trough these descriptions is the correspondence between nature and the people in Galilee (Renan: 85-86). When Renan describes Nazareth it is as a representation of the ideal state: "Even in our times Nazareth is still a delightful abode, the only place, perhaps, in Palestine in which the mind feels itself relieved from the burden which oppresses it in this unequalled desolation." Nazareth was an exceptional place, in that it had escaped the contemporary desolation and showed the same correspondence between charming environment and a happy population that characterized its situation in antiquity. Thus, Renan could conclude: "The people are amiable and cheerful, the gardens fresh and green." In a way the Nazareth of the present was living in an idealized past.

There is a statement that encapsulates Renan's view on the ideal relations between nature and populations: "The environs, moreover, are charming and no place in the world was so well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness." He elaborates on that in the following section on the view from the mountains overlooking Nazareth, concluding with the observation that "such was the horizon of Jesus." Renan's interpretation of this scene of natural grandeur and beauty as well as of historical reminiscences is that these mountains formed an "enchanted circle." To this circle, moreover, is attributed a new meaning: it is the "cradle of the kingdom of God." Here description and interpretation are mixed, and the movement from "enchanted circle" to "cradle of the kingdom of God" is so swift that it appears obvious--natural--that this meaning should be attached to the scene that Renan draws up before his readers with the authority of "us" who have seen it. He concludes that this "was for years his [i.e., Jesus'] world." Thus, on the basis of his belief in a correspondence between nature and the character of the inhabitants, Renan has established a unity between Jesus and the nature of Galilee.

This type of picture of Galilee was not just a romantic idea of Renan. In his famous HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOLY LAND the Scottish theologian and geographer G. A. Smith draws a broad picture of the benefits of combining a vision of the land as a whole and its history (Butlin). He thinks that students can

   discover from the `lie of the land' why the history took certain lines and
   the prophecy and the gospel were expressed in certain styles--to learn what
   geography has to contribute to questions of Biblical criticism--above all,
   to discern between what physical nature contributed to the religious
   development of Israel, and what was the product of purely moral and
   spiritual forces [G. A. Smith: ix].

Smith sees similar parallels between the landscape of Galilee and its inhabitants (420-22). In speaking of the luxurious vegetation of Upper Galilee he finds a relationship of cause and effect: "To so generous a land the inhabitants, during that part of her history which concerns us, responded with energy." In other instances he sees parallels, as when he describes "one another national feature of Galilee," viz., its volcanic extrusions into the limestone massive of mountains, sulphur springs and a history of earthquakes. Smith proceeds: "The nature of the people was also volcanic. Josephus describes them as `ever fond of innovations, and by nature disposed to changes, and delighting in seditions.' They had an ill name for quarrelling." Smith adds a whole range of examples from the Gospels, the First Testament, and the Talmud to bring home his point, how human nature corresponds to nature. The Galileans showed real manhood, they were "a chivalrous and gallant race," they were sincere, anxious for honor more than for money, etc. We may find in this list more a reflection of Victorian masculine ideals than of Galilean nature, but Smith confidently draws the conclusion: "For this cause also our Lord chose His friends from the people, and it was not a Galilean who betrayed him."

Thus, the idea of a causal relationship between geography and the psychological character of the inhabitants was typical of the nineteenth century. This idea was shared by Joseph Klausner in the first part of the twentieth century in one of the earliest Jewish studies of the historical Jesus (229-38). For him, it was particularly the view from Nazareth that was important, with a range of mountains that was awe-inspiring. At the same time they cut Nazareth off from the world and formed a perfect setting for dreams and visions, so that Jesus became a dreamer and a visionary. In modern time the relation between geography and identity is found in a modified way in Sean Freyne (1980), based on relations between geography and the nature of communities.

Galilee and Nationality

When Renan and Smith drew their pictures of the nature of Galilee and the character of the Galileans, they were implicitly or explicitly contrasting them with their images of Jerusalem and Judea. It is important, therefore, to consider how they conceived of this larger area at the time of Jesus. What were the categories that nineteenth-century scholars used to describe Galilee? I shall look at two different nineteenth-century approaches to the question of the uniqueness of Galilee. F. Schleiermacher gave his lectures on the life of Jesus in the first part of this century, while D.F. Strauss wrote his later work on Jesus "for the German people" in 1864.

Schleiermacher gave his lectures on Jesus in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars in Europe. His remarks on Galilee should be read against his own endeavors at the time to develop democratic ideas of a German nation and a German people amidst a situation of conservative, autocratic rule by kings and princes (Dawson). Schleiermacher denies any special relationship between Galilee and Jesus. This is partly because he follows the chronology and outline of John's Gospel, but I think there are also other presuppositions that have to do with his notions about country, people and nation. It is in the context of Jesus' mission to proclaim the Kingdom of God that he discusses his relations to various localities:

   If we now take a look at all the local relationships and ask how the public
   life of Jesus was related to the totality of the Jewish country, since he
   himself considered his vocation as limited to Palestine, this is the way
   things appear: Judea was a Roman province and other parts of the country
   were sometimes under various members of the Herodian family and sometimes
   united, but the terms that were in common use were Judea, Galilee, Samaria
   and Perea. If we now have to say that Christ thought of himself as called
   to proclaim the kingdom of God and to establish it among his people [Volk]
   by that proclamation, this fact explains why he put himself as much as
   possible into contact with them.

After describing how Jesus chose two strategies, of remaining in Jerusalem where people from all over the country could come and meet him, and of visiting other parts of the country, he concludes: "We see, then, that Christ neglected no part of the Jewish land (das judische Land), and excluded no part of it from the scene of his personal ministry" (Schleiermacher: 172, 173).

Schleiermacher shows that he is aware of the forms of rule that existed in Palestine at the time of Jesus. They were Roman provinces and personal princedoms over shifting areas (like Germany), but these are not important to him. He recognises various regions, according to "common use," but what is most important to him was "the totality of the Jewish land" and "his people." These are entities that are difficult to define clearly: there are no fixed borders, and there are also Jews outside of the land, but it is the idea of a Jewish people in a Jewish land, regardless of political divisions, that is introduced. Moreover, Schleiermacher also speaks highly of national interests. This subject is so important to him that he portrays Jesus as avoiding conflicts with the Pharisees and the Sadduces because he shared with these groups a common concern for the nation. I think that we can read here reflections of Schleiermacher's attempts to argue for the existence of a "Volk" as the basis for the nation and for the state, instead of an ideology built around a sovereign monarch who ruled over his people. In this structure, with Jesus as a teacher for the totality of the Jewish land, there is no room for a special relationship between Jesus and Galilee. Galilee is part of the Jewish land and Jewish "Volk."

In Schleiermacher's construction of national unity there is no room for a uniqueness of Galilee. That, however, we find in D. F. Strauss and his revision of his LIFE OF JESUS (1835). The English title, A NEW LIFE OF JESUS (1879) does not convey the double meaning of the German orginal: DAS LEBEN JESU FUR DAS DEUTSCHE VOLK BEARBEITET (1864), i.e., a Life of Jesus "revised for the German people," The introduction shows that Strauss did not intend this merely as a popular version; he meant explicitly "the German people." The critical spirit of the life of Jesus research was in direct continuation with the spirit of the Reformation, which was a characteristic representation of the identity of the German people. Strauss saw himself therefore in opposition both to Catholic Southern Germany and to state and church bureaucracy. In consequence, his description of Palestine is different from that of Schleiermacher, not only because he uses the Synoptic Gospels for his outline of the life of Jesus, with a focus on his Galilean ministry. Strauss does not use terms like "Jewish land," but a vocabulary of political geography. The regions of Palestine are described explicitly in their relations to Rome, with Jerusalem and Judea under direct Roman administration. Galilee is the main scene for Jesus' ministry, while he avoids Judea and Jerusalem, which are under Roman administration. Strauss presents the scene not as one of national unity, but as one of contrast between Galilee and Jerusalem, and with the presence of the Roman empire always in view (Strauss: 334).

Strauss' presents Jerusalem as a picture of the "Other," in utterly negative terms: "There the Pharisaic part ruled over a population readily excitable to fanaticism, there the spirit of formalism in religion, the attachment to sacrifices and purifications, had its hold in the numerous priesthood, the splendid temple and its solemn sacrifices" (345). Strauss here employs stereotypes that were prevalent in contemporary Christian studies of the Pharisees and Jewish religion. These stereotypes were also employed in inter-Christian conflicts, particularly in Protestant accusations against the Catholic church. Galilee, of course, represented the opposite of this; it was above all characterised by an open mind. To explain this, Strauss points to three elements: the population was mixed with Gentiles, Galilee was far away from Judea, and the Galileans, despised by the Judeans, were not granted full privileges as Jews. Here enters the idea of uniqueness ascribed to Galilee. The uniqueness of Jesus' speech is ascribed to his background in Galilee, very different from the dry school traditions of the Pharisees. Strauss lists most of the characteristics of the uniqueness of Galilee that are also found in later scholarship: the negative attitude of the Jerusalem elite (and maybe also the non-elite), their remote location, and--above all--the mixed ethnic composition of the population. Since this last aspect has come to play a significant role, it is time to look more closely at the role that ethnicity and race played in discussions of identity in the nineteenth century.

Race and Ethnics

With the argument that a <<mixed population>> was a positive sign of uniqueness; Strauss shows how important issues of ethnicity and race were for identity and character in the nineteenth century. It may seem strange that a mixed race should be regarded as more positive than a pure race, but this widely held notion frequently appears in discussions of nationality. It appears to be an argument from biology that has been transferred to humans. Especially in his last work, THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW, originally published in German in 1872, in which he also returns to the question of "mixed races," Strauss is influenced by Charles Darwin. Darwin argued that it was "hybrid vigour," not racial purity, that was the key to success. Darwin held this as an explanation of the European colonial expansion (Christie: 37). Strauss explains the success of the large European nations in the same way. In the English, French and German nations old Celtic, Teutonic, and other elements have blended into a new formation, the present nationality. This proves that purity of race is no advantage.

The question of ethnic and racial identity was raised in particular within the context of German <<Volks-ideology>> that prepared the way for the later Nazi ideology. Of particular relevance were Paul de Lagarde and H.S. Chamberlain. Lagarde, an ardent critic of his contemporary German Protestant church, argued for a Germanized religion, with ideas that later inspired Deutsche Christen. He was especially concerned to divorce Christianity from Judaism, as he held that Christianity was distorted by Jewish ideas, introduced from the start by the apostle Paul. Therefore, part of the solution was a return to Jesus, whom Lagarde distanced from Judaism: Jesus grew up in the mountain country of Galilee, distant from the centre of Judaism, and his Winner being" was formed in conflict with the Judaism of his time (Lagarde:229-30). A central piece in this argument was the contention that Galilee in fact was not Jewish--that it distinguished itself not only by geographical and religious distance from Jerusalem, but also by a different ethnic composition. This last proposition was part of a discussion of what happened after the capture of Galilee in 732 liCE when the region became an Assyrian province. Did the Assyrians set. tie other ethnic groups in Galilee at that time? This discussion was well known among historians and biblical scholars, but it assumed a new importance when the question of the ethnic composition of Galilee was made into a matter of Jewish identity and the identity of Jesus. The argument from Strauss about mixed population re-enters, but the consequences that Lagarde draws are more drastic.

Houston S. Chamberlain, the English-born son-in-law of Richard Wagner, was influenced by Lagarde. For Chamberlain (189-260) too, it was the historical Jesus in contrast to the developments of the later church that was his main interest. And more than Lagarde he explicitly discusses the character of Galilee and its people. History had shown that the population of Galilee was a mixture. Even if the people of Galilee might be observant Jews, that does not give proof of their descent; religion is not the same as race. Moreover, Galileans had a different national character from other Palestinians, they were energetic, idealistic "men of action" who stood up against the Romans, not tike the Jews who accommodated to Roman rule. However, the determining factor was race according to biology. Chamberlain here relied on the new science of anatomical anthropology and on racial theories that were now becoming popular, incorporating social Darwinism and "survival of the fittest" (Mosse 1964: 92-93).

The ultimate purpose of the discussion of Galilee is of course to distance Jesus from Judaism of his day: Chamberlain holds that Jesus as a Galilean did not have a drop of Jewish blood--he did not belong to the Jewish race, characterized by purity, whereas Galilee was a mixed area. Moreover, although Jesus was a Jew by education, he did not have anything in common with Judaism.

The ideological presupposition in asking about "blood," i.e., the emphasis upon the ethnic aspect of identity, is thrown into relief by a comparison with Ernest Renan's discussion of Jesus and Galilee. In term of his observations there are many similarities between the discussions in Strauss, Lagarde, Chamberlain, and Renan. Renan, too, remarks that the population of Galilee was very mixed, and that the province had many inhabitants who were not Jews, but Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, and even Greeks. He likewise remarks that conversions to Judaism were not rare. But the inference he draws seems almost designed to counter the growing interest in race and ethnicity in the nineteenth century: "It is therefore impossible to raise here any question of race, and to seek to ascertain what blood flowed in the veins of him who has contributed most to efface the distinction of blood in humanity" (83). Before we eulogize Renan too enthusiastically, however, we should notice that he too, spoke about Jews as a race, and that was not a positive characterization. But especially in his famous 1884 lecture "What is a nation?" (Christie: 39-47) we should notice two very different concepts of "nation" within Europe, most markedly contrasted in France and Germany. The German concept was based on ethnicity, race and language, while the French was based on democratic participation.

The Heritage of the Nineteenth Century

What was the heritage of the nineteenth century so far as the description of Galilee was concerned? In terms of Galilee as part of the Holy land, we noticed how the very concept of "Holy Land" was part of a colonizing attitude from Western--i.e., European--powers, especially England and France. Described and disguised as a religious right to the land of Jesus, a Holy land as a special privilege for Christians, it was part of a political attempt by European powers to establish a sphere of influence in the Middle East when the Ottoman empire was in decline. Pious pilgrimage and political power thus belonged together and continued to do so even more in the twentieth century.

Likewise the explanatory force of geography that was established in the nineteenth century continued to play a role. To nineteenth-century historians and geographers the geographical characteristics as well as the location of Gall. lee influenced human factors like beliefs, language and disposition towards "others." For Strauss and Renan it was important that Galilee was a border area between a predominantly Jewish area and areas with Gentile populations. This made for easy contacts with non-Jews and created an openness towards others, or in Strauss's term, an open mind in religious matters as well. This view was based on the presupposition of the mimetic role of geography that was common until the last part of the twentieth century. This "mimetic role" suggested that it was possible to reach a description of geography that gave a true representation of the essence of the place.

When nationality and the nation state emerged in nineteenth-century Europe as references for identity, they became important for images of the Holy Land and Galilee as well. In this regard, Schleiermacher and Strauss represent two different descriptions of Galilee. For Schleiermacher, Jewish "people," "land." and "nation" are the important categories of identity. Political and regional differences are not so important, and Galilee remains part of this larger entity. It seems as if national and religious identity are so similar that they cannot be distinguished. Since Jesus' ministry is directed to the people as a totality, there is no special relation to Galilee. From Schleiermacher's work we may draw the conclusion that if the main concern is to argue for the unity of a Jewish nation, the special character of Galilee will be downplayed.

Schleiermacher's concern with "country," "people," "nation" is characteristic of the nineteenth century. The nation as state was one of the most common assumptions of nineteenth-century Europe (Mosse 1988: 65-100; Woolf: 1-39), but with different configurations in different regions or countries. It took on a special significance in Germany (with the association with "Volk") and later for the ideology of Nazi Germany (Mosse 1964). Of special importance for Palestine was the role the idea of the nation had for Zionism, which was strongly influenced by European nationalism in the nineteenth century (Christie: 165-94). The engagement of European powers in the Near East was also part of their own national endeavors, and it happened in a period when the idea of the nation state became stronger.

For Strauss, on the other hand, the picture was not one of unity, but of conflict and contrasts not only between Jesus and the leadership in Jerusalem, but also between Jerusalem and Galilee and their respective inhabitants. Strauss saw the contrast explicitly as one of religious attitudes, in short, between fanaticism and liberal openness. It is this picture of the Jewish milieu that has dominated Christian scholarship on the historical Jesus for more than hundred years after Strauss. Moreover, it has become a paradigm within which to interpret many other conflicts, not only between Jews and Christians, but also between Roman Catholic and Protestants. Thus, there has been a mutually reinforcing relationship between historical studies of Jesus and contemporary religious and cultural conflicts. Both are based on descriptions characterized by dichotomies that have been regarded as "natural" or "given," and therefore not questioned.

Towards the latter part of the nineteenth century ethnicity and race made up a very popular area of research in human biology, anthropology, etc. Great explanatory power was ascribed to it regarding both animal and human characteristics. This added a new twist to the question of nationality: it could be used to make divisions within a population. Strauss and Renan, for instance, used the "mixed" ethnic character of Galilee to explain characteristics of the population, something that set them apart, and made them superior to others, viz., the Judeans and Jerusalemites. However, they did not focus so strongly on race as Chamberlain. He used race as a category in a study of Galilee, to distinguish privileged people (Aryans) from degenerate ones (Jews). Obviously, this was a distinction with clear implications for debates in contemporary Germany.

Thus we can say that the descriptions of Galilee in the nineteenth century were formed by the major cultural paradigms of European societies of the time. It is time to ask what happened to these paradigms in the twentieth century. What changes took place in descriptions of Galilee, and thereby also in the relations between Jesus and Galilee?

Galilee in Twentieth,Century Interpretation

Extreme Nationalism

In the first part of the twentieth century there was less interest in the historical Jesus, and consequently less interest in Galilee as well. But there was one question that received intense, if limited interest. Specifically in Nazi Germany, special attention was paid to the question of the race and identity of the Galileans, which had been raised by Lagarde and Chamberlain. German Second Testament scholars elaborated the non-Jewish character of Galilee in a number of studies in the 1930s and 1940s. Walter Grundmann's book, JESUS DAS GALILAER UND DAS JUDENTUM (1941) was introduced as a response to the question of the relationship of Jesus to Judaism that, according to the author, was of burning concern for the German people. Grundmann argued that the "Jewish danger" was so great that the need to defend oneself against Judaism in all aspects of life became vital. Grundmann struggled with the facts of the historical origin of Jesus. It was the Jewishness of Jesus that caused the problem. Grundmann therefore reformulated the question of the relationship of the German church to the historical origin of Jesus in terms of place: the loyalty of Christians is not to Judaism, but to the historical space of Jesus, to Palestine as his place of origin.

Given Grundmann's ideological warfare against Judaism, it became imperative to find a part of Palestine that was not identified with Judaism. Galilee provided the answer. Grundmann's first point was to establish the religious identity of Galilee (81-90). It had two major components: a small, radical Judaism represented by the Zealots, and the larger group, the am-haarez, the "common people," whose syncretistic beliefs were represented in the Henoch literature. Second, and more important, was the question of the ethnic identity of file Galileans and of Jesus (165-74). Grundmann argued that Galilee at the time of the Maccabean revolt had a mixed population. The judaization that followed under the Maccabeans was a forced measure, with the result that the Galileans might belong to the Jewish confession, without being ethnically Jewish.

Grundmann concludes that Jesus' Galilean origin was secure, but most likely he was not an ethnic Jew. Rather, he belonged to some of the other ethnic groups in Galilee. Like most Galileans he belonged to the Jewish confession, but he had utterly broken with Judaism. Grundmann holds that the structure of Jesus' thoughts brought him closer to the Greeks than to the Jews. He ends his discussion of the ethnic background of Jesus by saying that it is not possible to reach a positive conclusion as to Jesus' identity, since we find traces of both "non-Aryan and Aryan peoples" in the population of Galilee (200). Since Jesus could not have been a Jew in terms of his spirituality, most likely he was not a Jew "by blood" either (205).

Here surfaces once more the nineteenth-century concern with "blood" as the basis for ethnic identity. In addition to "blood," culture was regarded an important aspect of identity. Grundmann emphasises the heavy Hellenistic influence in Galilee, e.g., in terms of Hellenistic philosophy, architecture and art. This influence was partly conveyed through the Decapolis cities, but also by the Hellenistic inhabitants of Sepphoris and Tiberias. The ideological context of Grundmann's discussion is obvious. Ethnic identity is expressed in terms of "Blut und Boden" ("blood and soil"), and Galilee is characterised by an ethnically non-Jewish diversity that corresponds to a Hellenistic cultural identity. The Jewish confession is only a layer that was superimposed by oppressors. Thus, Galilee is viewed primarily in terms of the ethnic composition of its inhabitants. It is also seen in terms of its cultural diversity, represented by Hellenistic dominance, in contrast to Jewish legalism and Jewish ethnicity.

Obviously, it was the political situation in Nazi Germany that governed this construction of Galilee. Galilee became a part of Palestine with which Germans could identify. It became, if not quite a "little Germany," at least a place where there were enough Aryans to make Jesus a plausible non-Jew. This attempt by Grundmann represented the end of the construction of Jesus' Galilean identity in terms of race. That question was totally discredited after the Second World War, and Jesus' relation to Galilee became a taboo in German biblical scholarship. Even if there is still a discussion of whether there was a continuity of (Jewish) population in Galilee or an influx of new settlers (see, e.g. Freyne 1997: 53), the question (and its relevance for the identity of Jesus) is no longer phrased in terms of race or ethnicity.

In contrast to its extreme anti-Jewish attitude, but in a certain way also parallel to the nationalism of German scholars, the first major monograph on Jesus by a Jewish scholar in the twentieth century presented a Zionist nationalism. It was written by Joseph Klausner, who was born in Lithuania, but became an eager Zionist and moved to Palestine, which was at the time a British protectorate. The book was written in Hebrew in 1922 and translated into several languages; the English translation, published in 1925, is entitled JESUS OF NAZARETH: HIS LIFE, TIMES AND TEACHING. Klausner claims that Jesus was fully part of Judaism of his time and has a description of his background in Galilee that is totally different from that of Chamberlain and Grundmann. Granting that there were many non-Jews in Galilee, Klausner claims that they did not in the least influence Jesus. Galilee was a centre of Jewish observance of the Law, and Jesus represented the Pharisaic Judaism of his time that was loyal to the Holy Scriptures. Klausner claimed that Jesus obeyed the Torah as well as the ritual laws until the end of his life. Thus, Klausner found Galilee to be a center of Pharisaic piety. This is probably a result of Klausner's view of "normative" Judaism, which seems to have been strongly influenced by his Zionist ideology. As a result, he saw Judaism above all as a religion for a people, a nation, and the Scribes and Pharisees were carriers of the idea of a Jewish state. On the basis of this picture of Judaism, Klausner found Jesus wanting: his individualism represented an absolute break with the collectivism of Klausner's Judaism. Thus, Klausner's evaluation of Jesus as a Jew is extremely ambivalent: he is a Jew, but he does not conform to a Zionist ideology. Klausner's Jesus, moreover, also represents a reading of him within a consciously nationalistic ideology. Many of the positions that Klausner held became standard among later Jewish studies of Jesus, especially his emphasis on the "Jewishness" of Jesus. His negative reading of Jesus within a Zionist version of Judaism does not seem to have been followed up in the same way. Another influential Jewish study of Jesus, G. Vermes' Jesus the Jew (1973) explicitly reads the Judaism of Jesus much more in individualistic categories.

Jesus against Judaism: The Disappearance of Galilee in the Second Quest

The New Quest continued the trend of distancing Jesus flora Judaism, but the distancing was done now in ideological rather than in ethnic terms. Therefore there was little interest shown in specific social, cultural or regional aspects of Judaism in Palestine. It was quite exceptional that N.A. Dahl, in his 1953 argument for a new quest (96), said that more knowledge about Judaism in Palestine at the time was one of the most important sources for the history of Jesus. This suggestion anticipated the contribution of Qumran studies to a picture of a much more multiform Judaism than had been known before. But the picture of Judaism in this period remained above all the religious system and the various religious groups, like Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. The interest in "Jesus the Jew" was more concerned with the general traits of Judaism, attitudes toward the Law, the temple, etc., and not with specific locations.

A typical example is Gunther Bornkamm's JESUS VON NAZARETH. In a discussion of "Period and Environment," Bornkamm writes about the Jewish people, Jewish religion, and groups and movements, but not regions, locations or social issues. Galilee is presented as an area with a mixed race, but rejecting the Aryan hypothesis (53), Bornkamm places Jesus in the Jewish part of the community, and it is only this Jewish community that comes into view. Moreover, Bornkamm places Galilee squarely within the bounds of Judaism. Galilee had no religious peculiarities; it was only the distance from the temple that made synagogues into the religious centres, and this distance also made it easier for religious movements to develop (42). In cultural terms, Bornkamm holds that Jesus showed no trace of Greek influence, nor were any of his activities located in Hellenistic towns. Thus, Jesus is identified as a Jew, fully part of a Jewish community in Galilee, which itself was an integral part of Judaism at the time.

Between the Quests: Is there a Galilean Judaism? G. Vermes and E. P. Sanders

The division of studies of the historical Jesus into various quests is only provisional, and does not create absolute boundaries or categories. For instance, Jewish studies of Jesus are not easily put within the framework of the three quests. They do not share the specific presuppositions, often of a Christian and theological type, that underlie these quests and that aim at placing Jesus within a specifically Christian trajectory. On the contrary, as is to be expected, they emphasize those elements that place Jesus within a Jewish context. That is true of the first major study of Jesus by an Israeli scholar in this period, David Flusser's 1968 work JESUS. Flusser is primarily concerned with Judaism as a religious system. He gives a picture of Galilee that is close to Klausner's, but without his agressive Zionism. Flusser emphasizes that Galilee is the main geographical setting for Jesus' activities, but the region does not enter with distinctive religious characteristics in his discussion of Jesus' relations to, e.g., John the Baptist, the Law, or ethics.

The works of Geza Vermes, who consciously locates Jesus in Galilee as a region with specific characteristics, thus represent a new beginning of interest in Galilee. Vermes' goal in JESUS THE JEW is "to fit Jesus and his movement into the greater context of first-century Palestine." When he poses the question of which aspects of Palestinian history and religion are most relevant, he focuses on the need to fill in Jesus' "natural background, first century Galilee," and speaks specifically of a "Galilean Judaism of his day" (43). Vermes builds his picture of Galilee primarily on the descriptions in Josephus and in the Gospels. He finds in Gall. lee a special religious identity based partly on the fact that the province was an autonomous, self-contained politico-ethnic unit, different from Judea. Galilee was also wealthy, but at the same time people led simple lives more concerned with honor and pride than wealth. Vermes finds that the picture of Jesus in the Gospels conforms to the specifically Galilean type: Jesus was "at home among the simple people of rural Galilee" where he had a following of people. Vermes does not see Jesus as a revolutionary, concluding instead that his popular following made him look like a potential rebel to the political authorities. He also represented a challenge to the established religious order, Vermes emphazises Jesus' role as an exorcist and healer and places him in a charismatic Judaism that he associates with Gall. lee, in contrast to halakhic Judaism that became the corner stone of rabbinic Judaism. Combining socio-economic and religious factors in his picture of Jesus' Galilean background, Vermes therefore finds a specific Galilean regional identity.

Vermes continues a perspective that was launched by Klausner in 1925, and at the same time in a study of Jesus and Galilee by the German scholar W. Bauer. The conclusions are, however, quite different: whereas Bauer and later Grundmann drew the conclusion that since Jesus was a Galilean, he was not a Jew, Klausner and later Vermes used the Galilean context to explain what sort of a Jew Jesus was. In contrast to Bauer and Grundmann, Vermes has a much broader concept of Judaism. His more recent picture of the complexity and plurality of Judaism makes it easier to defend the assertion that Jesus was a Jew.

Vermes' focus on Galilee and a specifically Galilean Judaism was not followed up by E.P. Sanders. More than any other Christian First Testament scholar in the present generation, Sanders has contributed to a new understanding of ancient Judaism. Protesting strongly against the negative picture of Judaism and the dichotomy that characterized many of the second-quest studies, Sanders has successfully established a much more positive picture with his JESUS AND JUDAISM (1985). In contrast to the "second questers," he understands himself as an historian, not a theologian. However, in many ways he continues the tendency in the second quest to focus on Judaism primarily as "religion." In consequence, he does not pay much attention to Jesus' Galilean context. Sanders mentions that Jesus was "a Galilean who preached and healed" as one of the "facts" about him (1985: 11), but he does not have a section on Galilee, and not even a reference in the index. Thus, for Sanders it is possible to write a book about the historical Jesus and his relations to Judaism without broaching the question of whether his Galilean background contributes to our understanding of who Jesus was as a preacher and healer.

Sanders concludes his book by saying, "We have also situated Jesus believably in first-century Judaism" (1985: 335). But "situated" refers, not to place, but rather to Judaism as a system of religious beliefs. Important aspects of this system are Jewish restoration eschatology, covenantal nomism (a central category in Sanders' major reconstruction of Jewish beliefs in PAUL AND PALESTINIAN JUDAISM), which Sanders regards as the common denominator underlying all varieties of Judaism. So, "place" in the geographic sense does not play an important part in Sanders' description of Jewish identity. Parallel to Sanders' Contextualization of Paul in a Palestinian Judaism, Jesus is situated in Judaism not as a geographical, but as a theological context. Thus, it is not surprising that Galilee blends into Judaism. The peasants of Galilean villages are law-abiding Jews, and Galilee is an example of "the same" in terms of Jewishness.

In some later studies, notably in the more popular book The Historical Figure of Jesus (1993), Sanders has discussed the situation in Galilee, prompted by the positions of scholars like Mack (1988), Crossan (1991), Kee (1992), and Horsley (1987), all of which he rejects. Sanders minimizes the presence and influence of gentiles in Galilee; he says that "Antipas' Galilee was mostly Jewish" and that Jesus probably had little contact with the cities of Galilee, so that "the world Jesus knew was that of the small towns and villages of Galilee" (1996: 76-77). He rejects the idea that there was a strong influence of Hellenistic culture and Roman politics in Galilee, as well as an economic oppression of the peasant population by the elite. Thus Sanders does consider the social, cultural, and economic situation of Galilee, but mostly in criticism of other positions in which they play an integral part (1993a: 20-22, 101-07; 1993b). Although he does recognize some differences between Galilee and Judea, they appear to be of little consequence for the historical reconstruction of Judaism and of Jesus. Thus it is Jesus' relationship to the Temple that is Sanders' starting point for his description of Jesus.

In terms of the heritage from the nineteenth century, Sanders has decidedly broken with the tradition from Strauss, with its dichotomy between Judaism and Christianity, between "law" and "faith," etc. This dichotomy often implied that there was also a split within Judaism, a contrast between Galilee and Jersualem, and between the Galilean Jesus and the leadership in Jerusalem. In some ways Sanders' position shows similarities with that of Schleiermacher: national unity was more important than regional differences. In Sanders' conception, the national characteristic is expressed as "religion," Judaism is the common factor, and the regions, like Galilee, are not important in this regard. We shall see that in the Third Quest, with its strong interest in socio-historical context, there is renewed interest in Galilee as the home place of Jesus.

Works cited

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Halvor Moxnes, Dr. Theol. (University of Oslo) is Professor of New Testament at the Faculty of Theology, the University of Oslo, Norway (e-mail: [e-mail]). He is presently working on a book on the historical Jesus in relation to place. His recent publications include Kingdom takes Place. Transformations of Place and Power in the Kingdom of God in the Gospel of Luke (pp. 176-209 in SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC MODELS FOR INTERPRETING THE BIBLE. ESSAYS BY THE CONTEXT GROUP IN HONOR OF BRUCE J. MALINA, edited by John J. Pilch. [Leiden: 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 Religion, 2000]).