Galilee

121:2.12The Galileans were not re­garded with full fa­vor by the Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious lead­ers and rab­bini­cal teach­ers. Gal­i­lee was more gen­tile than Jew­ish when Je­sus was born.

139:0.2The apos­tles learned from Je­sus about the king­dom of heaven, and Je­sus learned much from them about the king­dom of men, hu­man na­ture as it lives on Uran­tia and on the other evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of time and space. These twelve men rep­re­sented many dif­fer­ent types of hu­man tem­per­a­ment, and they had not been made alike by school­ing. Many of these Galilean fish­er­men car­ried heavy strains of gen­tile blood as a re­sult of the forcible con­ver­sion of the gen­tile pop­u­la­tion of Gal­i­lee one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously.

121:2.11Herod built the har­bor of Cae­sarea, which fur­ther aided in mak­ing Pales­tine the cross­roads of the civ­i­lized world. He died in 4 B.C., and his son Herod An­tipas gov­erned Gal­i­lee and Perea dur­ing Je­sus’ youth and min­istry to A.D. 39. An­tipas, like his fa­ther, was a great builder. He re­built many of the cities of Gal­i­lee, in­clud­ing the im­por­tant trade cen­ter of Sep­pho­ris.

192:1.2Af­ter the apos­tles had spent the af­ter­noon and early evening of Thurs­day in wait­ing at the Zeb­e­dee home, Si­mon Pe­ter sug­gested that they go fish­ing. When Pe­ter pro­posed the fish­ing trip, all of the apos­tles de­cided to go along. All night they toiled with the nets but caught no fish. They did not much mind the fail­ure to make a catch, for they had many in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ences to talk over, things which had so re­cently hap­pened to them at Je­ru­sa­lem. But when day­light came, they de­cided to re­turn to Beth­saida. As they neared the shore, they saw some­one on the beach, near the boat land­ing, stand­ing by a fire. At first they thought it was John Mark, who had come down to wel­come them back with their catch, but as they drew nearer the shore, they saw they were mis­taken—the man was too tall for John. It had oc­curred to none of them that the per­son on the shore was the Mas­ter. They did not al­to­gether un­der­stand why Je­sus wanted to meet with them amidst the scenes of their ear­lier as­so­ci­a­tions and out in the open in con­tact with na­ture, far away from the shut-in en­vi­ron­ment of Je­ru­sa­lem with its tragic as­so­ci­a­tions of fear, be­trayal, and death. He had told them that, if they would go into Gal­i­lee, he would meet them there, and he was about to ful­fill that prom­ise.

126:5.1Grad­u­ally Je­sus and his fam­ily re­turned to the sim­ple life of their ear­lier years. Their clothes and even their food be­came sim­pler. They had plenty of milk, but­ter, and cheese. In sea­son they en­joyed the pro­duce of their gar­den, but each pass­ing month ne­ces­si­tated the prac­tice of greater fru­gal­ity. Their break­fasts were very plain; they saved their best food for the evening meal. How­ever, among these Jews lack of wealth did not im­ply so­cial in­fe­ri­or­ity.

127:5.1Al­though Je­sus was poor, his so­cial stand­ing in Naz­a­reth was in no way im­paired. He was one of the fore­most young men of the city and very highly re­garded by most of the young women. Since Je­sus was such a splen­did spec­i­men of ro­bust and in­tel­lec­tual man­hood, and con­sid­er­ing his rep­u­ta­tion as a spir­i­tual leader, it was not strange that Re­becca, the el­dest daugh­ter of Ezra, a wealthy mer­chant and trader of Naz­a­reth, should dis­cover that she was slowly falling in love with this son of Joseph. She first con­fided her af­fec­tion to Miriam, Je­sus’ sis­ter, and Miriam in turn talked all this over with her mother. Mary was in­tensely aroused. Was she about to lose her son, now be­come the in­dis­pens­able head of the fam­ily? Would trou­bles never cease? What next could hap­pen? And then she paused to con­tem­plate what ef­fect mar­riage would have upon Je­sus’ fu­ture ca­reer; not of­ten, but at least some­times, did she re­call the fact that Je­sus was a “child of prom­ise.” Af­ter she and Miriam had talked this mat­ter over, they de­cided to make an ef­fort to stop it be­fore Je­sus learned about it, by go­ing di­rect to Re­becca, lay­ing the whole story be­fore her, and hon­estly telling her about their be­lief that Je­sus was a son of des­tiny; that he was to be­come a great re­li­gious leader, per­haps the Mes­siah.

124:2.9Joseph early be­gan to in­struct Je­sus in the di­verse means of gain­ing a liveli­hood, ex­plain­ing the ad­van­tages of agri­cul­ture over in­dus­try and trade. Gal­i­lee was a more beau­ti­ful and pros­per­ous dis­trict than Judea, and it cost only about one fourth as much to live there as in Je­ru­sa­lem and Judea. It was a prov­ince of ag­ri­cul­tural vil­lages and thriv­ing in­dus­trial cities, con­tain­ing more than two hun­dred towns of over five thou­sand pop­u­la­tion and thirty of over fif­teen thou­sand.

162:2.9Eber and his as­sis­tants re­fused to ar­rest Je­sus; they re­turned to their meet­ing place with­out him. When, there­fore, the chief priests and the Phar­isees up­braided Eber and his as­sis­tants be­cause they had not brought Je­sus with them, Eber only replied: “We feared to ar­rest him in the midst of the mul­ti­tude be­cause many be­lieve in him. Be­sides, we never heard a man speak like this man. There is some­thing out of the or­di­nary about this teacher. You would all do well to go over to hear him.” And when the chief rulers heard these words, they were as­ton­ished and spoke taunt­ingly to Eber: “Are you also led astray? Are you about to be­lieve in this de­ceiver? Have you heard that any of our learned men or any of the rulers have be­lieved in him? Have any of the scribes or the Phar­isees been de­ceived by his clever teach­ings? How does it come that you are in­flu­enced by the be­hav­ior of this ig­no­rant mul­ti­tude who know not the law or the proph­ets? Do you not know that such un­taught peo­ple are ac­cursed?” And then an­swered Eber: “Even so, my mas­ters, but this man speaks to the mul­ti­tude words of mercy and hope. He cheers the down­hearted, and his words were com­fort­ing even to our souls. What can there be wrong in these teach­ings even though he may not be the Mes­siah of the Scrip­tures? And even then does not our law re­quire fair­ness? Do we con­demn a man be­fore we hear him?” And the chief of the San­hedrin was wroth with Eber and, turn­ing upon him, said: “Have you gone mad? Are you by any chance also from Gal­i­lee? Search the Scrip­tures, and you will dis­cover that out of Gal­i­lee arises no prophet, much less the Mes­siah.”

162:6.4And Je­sus con­tin­ued to an­swer the ques­tions of both the mul­ti­tude and the Phar­isees. Some thought he was a prophet; some be­lieved him to be the Mes­siah; oth­ers said he could not be the Christ, see­ing that he came from Gal­i­lee, and that the Mes­siah must re­store David’s throne. Still they dared not ar­rest him.

166:4.4“The Fa­ther causes his rain to fall on the just and the un­just; the sun like­wise shines on the righ­teous and the un­righ­teous. You know about those Galileans whose blood Pi­late min­gled with the sac­ri­fices, but I tell you these Galileans were not in any man­ner sin­ners above all their fel­lows just be­cause this hap­pened to them. You also know about the eigh­teen men upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, killing them. Think not that these men who were thus de­stroyed were of­fend­ers above all their breth­ren in Je­ru­sa­lem. These folks were sim­ply in­no­cent vic­tims of one of the ac­ci­dents of time.

185:1.5An­other thing which brought him into great dis­fa­vor with the Jews was that he dared to take money from the tem­ple trea­sury to pay for the con­struc­tion of a new aque­duct to pro­vide in­creased wa­ter sup­ply for the mil­lions of vis­i­tors to Je­ru­sa­lem at the times of the great re­li­gious feasts. The Jews held that only the San­hedrin could dis­burse the tem­ple funds, and they never ceased to in­veigh against Pi­late for this pre­sump­tu­ous rul­ing. No less than a score of ri­ots and much blood­shed re­sulted from this de­ci­sion. The last of these se­ri­ous out­breaks had to do with the slaugh­ter of a large com­pany of Galileans even as they wor­shiped at the al­tar.

125:1.5Joseph saw how his son had sick­ened at the sight of the tem­ple rites and wisely led him around to view the “Gate Beau­ti­ful,” the artis­tic gate made of Corinthian bronze. But Je­sus had had enough for his first visit at the tem­ple. They re­turned to the up­per court for Mary and walked about in the open air and away from the crowds for an hour, view­ing the As­monean palace, the stately home of Herod, and the tower of the Ro­man guards. Dur­ing this stroll Joseph ex­plained to Je­sus that only the in­hab­i­tants of Je­ru­sa­lem were per­mit­ted to wit­ness the daily sac­ri­fices in the tem­ple, and that the dwellers in Gal­i­lee came up only three times a year to par­tic­i­pate in the tem­ple wor­ship: at the Pass­over, at the feast of Pen­te­cost (seven weeks af­ter Pass­over), and at the feast of taber­na­cles in Oc­to­ber. These feasts were es­tab­lished by Moses. They then dis­cussed the two later es­tab­lished feasts of the ded­i­ca­tion and of Purim. Af­ter­ward they went to their lodg­ings and made ready for the cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over.

123:0.5Mary had never fully given up the idea that Je­sus ought to grow up in Beth­le­hem, the City of David. Joseph did not re­ally be­lieve that their son was to be­come a kingly de­liv­erer of Is­rael. Be­sides, he knew that he him­self was not re­ally a de­scen­dant of David; that his be­ing reck­oned among the off­spring of David was due to the adop­tion of one of his an­ces­tors into the Da­vidic line of de­scent. Mary, of course, thought the City of David the most ap­pro­pri­ate place in which the new can­di­date for David’s throne could be reared, but Joseph pre­ferred to take chances with Herod An­tipas rather than with his brother Archelaus. He en­ter­tained great fears for the child’s safety in Beth­le­hem or in any other city in Judea, and sur­mised that Archelaus would be more likely to pur­sue the men­ac­ing poli­cies of his fa­ther, Herod, than would An­tipas in Gal­i­lee. And be­sides all these rea­sons, Joseph was out­spo­ken in his pref­er­ence for Gal­i­lee as a bet­ter place in which to rear and ed­u­cate the child, but it re­quired three weeks to over­come Mary’s ob­jec­tions.

124:0.1Al­though Je­sus might have en­joyed a bet­ter op­por­tu­nity for school­ing at Alexan­dria than in Gal­i­lee, he could not have had such a splen­did en­vi­ron­ment for work­ing out his own life prob­lems with a min­i­mum of ed­u­ca­tional guid­ance, at the same time en­joy­ing the great ad­van­tage of con­stantly con­tact­ing with such a large num­ber of all classes of men and women hail­ing from ev­ery part of the civ­i­lized world. Had he re­mained at Alexan­dria, his ed­u­ca­tion would have been di­rected by Jews and along ex­clu­sively Jew­ish lines. At Naz­a­reth he se­cured an ed­u­ca­tion and re­ceived a train­ing which more ac­cept­ably pre­pared him to un­der­stand the gen­tiles, and which gave him a bet­ter and more bal­anced idea of the rel­a­tive mer­its of the East­ern, or Baby­lo­nian, and the West­ern, or Hel­lenic, views of He­brew the­ol­ogy.