GALILEE
1:28 At once Jesus’ fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
In the history of early Christianity, Galilee is one of the most important theaters right after Jerusalem. Most of the miracles Jesus performed, happened in the cities and towns of Galilee, in Cana, in Korazin, in Bethshaida, and especially in Capernaum, where the home of the Apostle Peter became the headquarter of the baptizing movement.
There is a certain level of agreement among Christian scholars that Jesus was called Jesus of Nazareth, because, that was his home, growing up and becoming an adult. However, we do not know this with absolute certainty, because according to the archaeological findings the town of Nazareth did not exist until the 2nd century AD.
The City of Nazareth was never mentioned anywhere in any contemporary, historical sources. Many times many Bible texts stand as an intentional puzzle, and from a distance of thousands of years the deciphering of these is not the easiest task, at all.
The official name of the Jesus followers were at that time, the Nazarenes, or the Poor, or simply the Way. These Nazarene sectarians may have created a settlement in the close proximity of the provincial capitol city, called Sepphoris, which is today six km from Nazareth only. Later on the Nazarene settlement might have developed into the town of Nazareth in the second century.
Sepphoris itself was not mentioned, not even once in the Gospels, but its existence had been well documented by the Greek, Jewish and Roman administrations since the 4th century before Jesus was born. Strange, but Christian tradition holds that Sepphoris was the very birthplace of Jesus’ mother Mary. On the other side, Nazareth is mentioned in the Gospels on multiple occasions, but the town appears nowhere in the contemporary documents, not even in Roman tax books.
Nonetheless, one phenomenon is perceivable from the Gospels that after the certain point of his baptism by John, Jesus began to spend more and more time in Galilee or almost all his time in the cities and towns of the Lake of Galilee, in Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum.
Although Apostle Peter and Andrew, his brother, hailed from Bethsaida originally, Peter married his wife from Capernaum and after his wedding he settled in Capernaum, so this latter became technically command center of the Gospel movement.
John and his brother James the older, and Matthew the tax collector lived there too.
The other reason why Peter and his brother moved to Capernaum from Bethsaida, because Capernaum gave them tax break as fishermen. Many times Jesus stayed at Peter’s house in Capernaum, and he spent there even more nights after he had healed his mother-in-law from a drastic fever. The two towns were only 5 miles away from each other, but strangely they belonged to two different countries at that time as Bethsaida was the Golan area jurisdiction of Herod Philip, while the Capernaum in Galilee belonged to Herod Antipas.
We know Herod Antipas from the Gospels, as one of the heirs of his father, Herod the Child Killer of the Children, and we also know Antipas as the ruler of Galilee who ordered John the Baptist to be executed by beheading.
As it is also written in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter four, that “Now when Jesus heard that John was delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he came and lived in (the town of) Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying:
‘The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sat in darkness saw a great light; to those who sat in the region and shadow of death, to them light has dawned. ’ ”
Thus, after the death of John, Jesus withdrew to Galilee, though he also had to admonish the Galilean towns, that they did not listen to him, as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 11, that “Then he began to denounce the cities in which most of his mighty works had been done, because they didn’t repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. You, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, you will go down to Hades. ”
Still these Galileen towns had seen most of his mighty works. Galilee as an extraordinary territory indeed. Meanwhile in Jerusalem the Galileans were not highly esteemed; their dialect was not pure, being faulty in pronunciation ; the population had blended with the heathen; they were seditious, and were considered a bit like hilly-billy barbarians.
However, when the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, the very rabbi who saved the Jewish Rabbinic scholarship and Judaism from extinction, was originally from Galilee, his name was Yochanan ben Zakkai. With the Temple, the the Jewish Priesthood was destroyed, and most of the highly regarded scholars were killed.
Tradition has it, that Yochanan ben Zakkai was smuggled out in a coffin by his disciples right to Vespasian the Roman general. The Rabbi made the enemy general, latter Emperor, grant, among other favors, that a Rabbinic school will be established in the city of Yavne, where a handful of Rabbis resurrected the Bible studies and the Bible scholarship literally from ashes.
After the Roman wars most of the Bible Schools moved to Galilee, and the territory became the utmost religious center for centuries. Around 320 CE, Christian bishop Epiphanius reported that all the major cities and villages in Galilee were entirely Jewish, and their communities flourished until the Arab conquest.
The Ottoman Turkish Empire allowed some Jews to resettle in Galilee, thus The Four Holy Cities in the Land of Israel are today the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias, which were the four main centers of Jewish life after the Ottoman conquest from 1517.
The Jewish Encyclopedia says: "Since the sixteenth century the Holiness of the Holy Land, especially for burial, has been almost wholly transferred to four cities—Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed."
Out of these, Tiberias and Safed are in Galilee. Thus, we can see, how the old tradition meets the Gospel, as it is written that “Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sat in darkness saw a great light; to those who sat in the region and shadow of death, to them light has dawned.”
In Jesus the land of Galilee became so blessed, that even the Bible scholarship of the Old Tradition became blessed for Him, and survived incredible hardships and persecutions.
The New Testament can not stand without the Old Testament, like its foundation, as the two Testaments as united makes a Christian Bible.
May the Lord be blessed that he used to preserve extraordinarily holy places on Earth on many continents, that we had the sacred opportunity to sanctify God’s name generation by generation, by the Holy Spirit, as we pray in Jesus’ name, AMEN
