Bibliography
| Title: Archaeology, History and Society in Galilee. The Social Context of Jesus and the Rabbis Type: Book Year: 1996 Abstract: "According to Horsley five problems recur in archaeology and study of the rabbinic writings: (1) tendency to focus on religious elements in texts and artifacts; (2) a tendency to decontextualize the data, treating them under headings; (3) continued use of categories that rest on faulty knowledge; (4) the tendency to categorize the data in terms of its 'essential' quality (i.e. 'Jewish', 'Pagan', 'Christian'), thus obscuring their complex and overlapping qualities; and (5) the tendency to exaggerate the amount of social cohesion in the societies under study, such as the Roman Empire or Israel (pp.6-9). Horsley offers a brief history in Galilee, a description of the major cities (esp. Sephoris and Tiberias), the economy of Galilee, the villages of upper and lower Galilee, synagogues of Galilee, and the languages and cultural traditions of Galilee. Horsley offers New Testament scholars a wealth of well-digested information on the latest archaeological information. Two of his conclusions may be mentioned briefly. First, he notes that few Greek inscriptions have surfaced in northern Galilee. From this he concludes that 'pidgin Greek may have been common but a bilingual situation seems unlikely given evidence now available' (p. 171). Horsley believes Aramaic was the dominant language. In my estimation this is correct, for its consistent with the Roman-trained Jewish aristocrat Josephus who wrote Jewish War in Aramaic and then published a Greek edition, with the aid of an assistant who was fluent in Greek. Secondly, Horsley finds little evidence to support recent, fashionable proposals that Jesus was a Cynic philosopher. The archaeological evidence suggests that Roman culture and influence in Galilee were only in their beginning states in the early part of the first century. It is therefore highly unlikely (against the North American Jesus Seminar) that Jesus would have adopted such a foreign wordview and then attracted a significant following. In this Horsley is surely correct". Keywords: Palestinian Judaism, Galilee |