Who were the shepherds of Bethlehem? Why do they figure so prominently in Luke’s birth narrative? What do we learn about Yeshua and his context?

Richard Horsley makes the case that too little attention has been given in historical Jesus research to the latest information and guesses about religious and political differences between Galilee and Judea. Suddenly statements such as in the fourth gospel about the “Passover of the Jews” begin to make more sense (Passover at the Temple run by the Judeans and based on Judean interpretations of the Torah and the obligations of Israel).

What follows is a summary of some main points from Horsley’s book (restated in my own words and greatly simplified) and a comparison with the four controversy stories between Yeshua and the Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees of Judea in Matthew 22.

Some Major Issues of Religious and Political Difference Between Galilee and Judea

(1) The Judeans had an aristocracy and worked with Rome through aristocrats and diplomacy. Galilee was ruled directly by the Herodians under Roman power with no representatives of their own to stand between.

(2) Judeans ran the Temple and obligated all the Israelite regions, such as Galilee, to send tithes and taxes.

(3) Galileans did not support the Temple en masse. Evidence is fragmentary, but it suggests that few Galileans went. (This does not suggest a rejection of Torah, but perhaps a sense of protest against a corrupt Temple regime).

(4) The traditions of the elders lobbied for by the Pharisees and scribes were part of Judean control, as far the Galileans saw it, and were resisted. (Note: this is not an argument that Pharisees had controlling power or influence at the time, but their power and influence was substantial and was likely resented as coming from Judea). Pharisees have no power over Galilee.

(5) The Sadducees would have had even less love from the Galileans, being the corruptors of the Temple and collaborators with Rome. They have no power over Galilee.

Matthew 22 and the Four Controversies

THE POLL TAX – MT 22:15-22
-Pharisees and Herodians.
-Pharisees are Judean scribes who seek to conform Israel to their version of Torah customs. Herodians are Galileans who collaborate with Rome and rule Galilee with a heavy hand.
-The goal of the parties is to trap Yeshua, either hurting his popularity if he approves of the Roman tax or entangling him with Rome if he speaks publicly against it.
-Yeshua condemns his opponents (implicitly) by asking if one of them has a denarius, a coin which has an image of Caesar and the motto filius divius, son of god. This is supposedly the religious reason for objecting, yet one of his opponents has such a coin in his possession.
-Yeshua calls them hypocrites.
-Yeshua’s reasoning: one can obey the government and also God. The tax is of little consequence, but are his opponents rendering their total allegiance to God?

RESURRECTION/AFTERLIFE – MT 22:23-33
-Sadducees.
-The Sadducees were the aristocrats and chief priests who mediated between Rome and Judea and in so doing compromised for personal power and wealth.
-The Sadducees induced a clever argument from the levirate marriage laws of Torah to ridicule the idea of resurrection and afterlife.
-Yeshua’s reasoning: Torah is permeated with hints of resurrection and Yeshua claims knowledge of the afterlife which appears to come from his own authority.
-Possible Galilean twist: experience with the living God (prophetic) as a sign of truth versus the rationalist Sadducean (Hellenism and Torah mixed) approach.

THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT – MT 22:34-40
-Judean Pharisees test Yeshua, thinking perhaps his grasp of Torah will be poor since he is Galilean.
-Yeshua answers wisely and the conflict is abated (note: Mark’s version is even more positive).

THE MESSIAH – MT 22:41-46
-Yeshua challenges the Judean Pharisees and shows them unschooled in the Psalms and prophets (possibly a Galilean affinity for prophetic and poetic spirituality?).
-Yeshua raises a mystery in Psalm 110 which is about his own identity (Messiah is not David’s lesser but his greater, which reveals a lack of Pharisaic understanding of the depths of God’s prophetic plan).

The biblical verses which have lent credence to the gentile Galilee view are in Isaiah 8:23 (9:1 in Christian Bibles) and Matthew 4:15, which speak of “Galilee of the gentiles.” In Isaiah’s prophecy, this is looking ahead to the days when Assyria will deport foreign peoples to Galilee. In Matthew, there may be some sense in Yeshua’s time that Galilee still was thought to have a higher concentration of gentiles than Judea.

But the gentile Galilee theory, which asserts that Yeshua was heavily influenced by wandering cynic philosophers (Burton Mack and John Dominic Crossan suggest Yeshua patterned his traveling and teaching after these cynics), goes too far. Craig Evans provides overwhelming evidence of the Jewish character of Galilee in Yeshua’s time (see The Cambridge Companion to Jesus):

(1) Sepphoris, a town very near Nazareth, was thought to be very Greco-Roman, but in the pre-70 CE layers researchers have found almost no pig bones (whereas these make up 30% of the remains after 70 CE).

(2) Jewish items including stone vessels (important for purity regulations) have been found in quantity in Sepphoris as well as mikvahs (Jewish ritual baths for purification).

(3) Coins in Sepphoris from pre-70 layers do not have the image of emperors or pagan gods (but these are very much present in 2nd Century coins).

(4) There are no Greco-Roman baths, coliseum, hippodrome, etc., in the pre-70 period.

(5) Jewish objects such as oil lamps with a menorah decoration and a fragment of Hebrew writing have been found here from the pre-70 period.

(6) Throughout Galilee, Jewish pottery is widespread, but non-Jewish pottery exists only in Greco-Roman settlements. Jews avoided gentile pottery due to concerns about impurity. This shows that Galilean Jews practiced the dietary laws.

(7) Revolts in Galilee in 4 BCE, 6 CE, and Galilean participation in the First Jewish Revolt (66-70 CE) show that Galilee was fiercely Jewish and resented gentile domination.

Acts 1:11 (NET): This same Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in the same way you saw him go into heaven.

Where will Yeshua return? The answer, it seems, is to the Mount of Olives next to the old city of Jerusalem.

And this is all the more interesting since we read in Zechariah 14:4 that during a time of many nations attacking Jerusalem (a battle known as Armageddon):

Zechariah 14:4 (NET): On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives which lies to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in half from east to west, leaving a great valley. Half the mountain will move northward and the other half southward.

For tourists in Israel, Capernaum is a major stop. For many Bible readers, Capernaum is little known. This humble fishing village was the headquarters for Yeshua’s work, his home during much of his career (Matt 4:13). Yet Capernaum gets little notice compared to Nazareth and Bethlehem.

Other towns mentioned in the life of Yeshua are very close to Capernaum. Bethsaida, for example, is only 2.5 miles to the east, also located on the north shore of the lake.

Capernaum was the home of Peter, Andrew, and family (Mark 1:29, though they apparently had lived also in Bethsaida, John 1:44). Visitors to Capernaum today can see a house which may in fact be the home of Peter’s family. Capernaum had a customs booth (a tax collection station). Quite possibly Jairus the synagogue ruler was in Capernaum also (Mark 5:21). Visitors today can see a limestone, white synagogue from the fourth century with basalt foundations. The basalt foundations are likely from the synagogue that existed on the site previously, probably the synagogue of Jairus which Yeshua attended often (see Luke 4:16 about Yeshua’s Sabbath customs).