[Dialogue] 5-28-09, Spong: Galilee: The True Origins of the Jesus Story

Thu May 28 14:42:45 EDT 2009

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Thursday May 28, 2009 

Galilee: The True Origins of the Jesus Story

I spent several days recently in the region of Israel called Galilee. Contrary to what most people might expect I found my time in Galilee to be far more authentic than my time in Jerusalem. I actually wondered why, for it seemed counterintuitive. Seeking an answer to this question, I plunged into a brief study of the relationship between Jerusalem and Galilee in the Jesus story and in the history of the Jewish people. 
The Jewish nation has always been divided into two competing parts. Throughout history they have been called by a variety of names: the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, Galilee and Judea, and Samaria and Jerusalem. Even Jewish mythology found in the book of Genesis recognized the division and sought to explain it by suggesting that the patriarch Jacob, who according to the tradition was the father of twelve sons who formed the twelve tribes of Israel, had two principle wives, both of whom were the daughters of a man named Laban. According to this biblical narrative Jacob loved Rachel and agreed to work for Laban for seven years to receive her hand in marriage. Laban, however, veiled his older daughter Leah and tricked Jacob into marrying her instead, arguing rather lamely that it was not proper 
for the younger daughter to be married prior to the older one. Joseph was then allowed to marry Rachel as his second wife by agreeing to give Laban seven more years of labor for that privilege. This story was clearly written by those sympathetic to Rachel since it always portrayed her as beautiful, while Leah was described in rather unflattering ways (she was said to have had eyes like a cow). Leah, however, bore Joseph a number of sons, which in that culture was supposed to have given her great status, while Rachel had trouble conceiving, having only one son, Joseph, before dying in childbirth with her second and Jacob's last child, Joseph's only full brother, named Benjamin. 

One of Leah's sons was named Judah and his descendents became the dominant tribe that settled in the South. Jerusalem was in the land of Judah, which meant that the Temple was also there. The land of Judah was ruled by kings who were the descendents of King David, Judah's most distinguished son. Rachel was the mother of Joseph, whose descendents populated the Northern Kingdom. As the son of Jacob's favorite wife, Joseph is portrayed in the Genesis story as the favorite son and Jacob acted this out by making for him a coat of many colors. So it was that the mythology of the Jews located the traditional animosity between the two regions of Israel in the fact that their ancient patriarchs had not been full, but half brothers and that there had always been tension between the two. This is seen most poignantly in this 
biblical narrative when Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, an act which Judah instigated and from which he agreed to receive money for ridding their world of their irritating brother. 

When the tenuous unity of the Jewish nation was finally destroyed following the reign of Solomon about the year 920 BCE, the division was along this ancient fault line. When Solomon's son Rehoboam succeeded to the throne in Jerusalem after Solomon's death he faced immediately a rebellion in the North. Under the leadership of a military general named Jeroboam, demands for the redressing of Northern grievances were made to King Rehoboam, who refused to accede on any point. The people of the North declared themselves to be independent, and by making Jeroboam their king sought to create a new royal family as they seceded from the South. The two new competing entities were Judah, or the Southern Kingdom, organized around the city of Jerusalem, the Temple and the throne of David, and Israel, known as the Northern Kingdom, organized around Galilee, the ancient shrine of Bethel and the new capital city that when built would be called Samaria. The Northern Kingdom lasted from its birth around 920 to 721 BCE, when it was defeated by the Assyrians and its people were carried off into captivity. Without a long history and established institutions they lacked cohesiveness and finally disappeared through intermarriage, becoming part of the DNA of the Middle East, never to be heard from again. They are known today as the "T
en Lost Tribes of Israel." The Southern Kingdom continued about 140 years longer than the North, from 920 to 586 BCE, when they were defeated by the Babylonians. Jerusalem and its Temple were both destroyed, and the people were carried off into captivity in the land of Babylon. These conquered Judeans, however, were possessed of a deeper sense of both purpose and unity and so they managed to keep themselves separate from their captors. They did this by being different. They observed the Sabbath every seventh day by refusing to work, they ate only kosher food prepared in a kosher kitchen and by reviving the act of circumcision they put the mark of Judaism quite literally on the body of every Jewish male. These things were all designed to make intermarriage difficult and to keep themselves separate. They were thus able subsequently to return home several generations later to reclaim their land and ultimately to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. By the time of the New Testament the remnant of the Northern Kingdom was called both Galilee and Samaria. These were generally looked down on as racially compromised regions. The remnant of the Southern Kingdom was called Judea and Judea became so dominant that the word "Jew" became the name by which all of the Hebrew people were identified. 

Jesus was, however, a product of Galilee. He was clearly identified with the village of Nazareth. In all probability that was the place of his birth. His ministry was carried out on and around the Sea of Galilee, a 13.5-mile
-long and 7-mile-wide lake, sometimes called the Sea of Gennesaret, and in modern Israel known as Kinneret, and in such well known biblical towns near that lake as Tiberius, Bethsaida, Capernaum and Gedara. To visit these places today is to experience the physical setting that is not dissimilar from the way it was in Jesus' day. The tourist industry has not yet wrecked the authentic imprint of Jesus. 

I arrived in Galilee the week before Easter and in Nazareth itself on Easter Sunday. It is a hilly town, not impressive then or now. It is easy to understand how Jesus' origins there were something of an embarrassment. The New Testament even proclaims, "Nothing good can come out of Nazareth." This negativity toward Nazareth and Galilee surely caused early Christians to develop the tales of his birth in the nobler town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of King David. 

This regional negativity also caused the story of the resurrection to be moved from Galilee to Jerusalem. The earliest sources in the Bible, Paul, Mark and Matthew, suggest that it was in Galilee that the experience of resurrection emerged. By the time the later gospels, Luke and John, were written Jerusalem had replaced Galilee as the center of the resurrection appearance stories and still later of the ascension and the Pentecost story. Even here, however, there are hints of a Galilean original behind the developed Jerusalem narratives. Luke goes so far as to have Jesus command the disciples not to return to Galilee, thus suppressing Christianity's G
alilean origins. 

In John the primacy of the Jerusalem tradition is also undermined by what is portrayed as a later Galilean story that is found in the epilogue or final chapter of John's Gospel. Following the developed narrative of Thomas feeling the nail prints in Jesus' body in a Jerusalem setting comes this much more primitive Galilean story, in which the disciples have returned home, still in grief, only to experience Jesus alive by the Sea of Galilee. They have a meal together by that lake and then Peter is restored following his threefold denial of Jesus. Time after time the authenticity of the Galilean origins of the Jesus story is affirmed, even though hidden in the gospel tradition. 

It was this authenticity of Galilee that I sensed and enjoyed the most while in the land of Israel. The terrain is rugged. Jesus and the disciples had to be strong physically. Their journeys through the towns and villages of Galilee were through a physically demanding countryside. The gentle Jesus of Sunday School fame, portrayed as sitting on a hillside inviting the little children to "come unto me," is not the portrait that emerges in Galilee. The idea that Joseph could have taken his wife, who was described in Luke as "great with child," on an almost 100-mile journey from Nazareth either by foot or by donkey so that the messiah could be born in Bethlehem stretches credibility beyond the breaking point when one sees the land of Galilee. 

Galilee was also a hotbed of resistance to the yoke of Rome.20Its hills gave Jewish guerilla fighters the protective lair they needed to carry out their hit and run attacks on the legions of Rome. Was Jesus' disciple band involved in these guerilla activities? That too is a source of much speculation. We do know from several references that the disciples of Jesus were armed. Jesus has to order them to put up their swords. We know that one of them was called "the Zealot," which was the name of the resistance fighters. We believe that the word Iscariot comes from "Sicarii," the name of a militant revolutionary group. These are the things that have compelled contemporary scholars to lean more and more in this startling direction. 

In any event, if you wish to have some sense of the Jesus of history, it is to Galilee, not Jerusalem or Bethlehem, that you will go. Galilee is the province that shaped Jesus of Nazareth. The story of Jesus is drawn into the Jerusalem orbit by the power of that city and by the negativity of the Jewish people toward Galilee in the first century. As the Bible tells the Jesus story, however, his Galilean roots and Christianity's Galilean origins become obvious. My journey to Israel helped me to recover and reinforce those roots. I commend Galilee to you.

–John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Lynda Beltz, from western Pennsylvania, writes: 
Was Jesus also God? Or was he just a wonderful, inspired man more in touch with spiritual things than most other men?

0A
Dear Lynda,

Unfortunately, the way you ask this question does not lend itself to a simple answer. I need to know what you mean by the word "God" and what you mean by an "inspired man." This confusion has been created by the Church itself out of a dualistic mindset that believed that God and human life, heaven and earth, souls and bodies, spirit and flesh were radically separate categories. That reflected an ancient mindset that is not part of our world view. 

The Christian experience best articulated by St. Paul affirmed that "God was in Christ," that is, in the person of Jesus we met, engaged and interacted with the presence of God. Later when Christians tried to define how God, whom they thought lived above the sky, got into Jesus living on this earth, they had a problem. That is where you begin to get the explanations you find in the gospels.

Mark, the earliest gospel (ca. 70) said that at Jesus' baptism the heavens opened and the spirit of God entered him. The word you used, inspired, really means filled with the spirit. 

When Matthew wrote (82-85) he introduced the Virgin Birth story that said God entered Jesus at conception. At that moment, Jesus' full humanity was compromised. Luke, writing a bit later (88-93), confirmed Matthew's Virgin Birth account, but with greatly varying details. John, writing at the end of the century (95-100), asserted that Jesus was "The Word of God" present as part of God at the dawn of creation, and that this "Word" was enfleshed in the fully20human Jesus. It is of note that John totally omits the miraculous birth story. 

I think most of this debate is irrelevant. I believe that God can dwell in all of us and that the experience of the early Christians was that God indwelt Jesus in a particularly full and complete way. 

To say that "Jesus is God" in a simplistic way is absolute nonsense. Jesus prayed to God. Was he talking to himself? Jesus died. Can one say God dies? 

I meet God in Jesus. I also meet God in people like you. The difference, I am convinced, is one of degree not one of kind.

–John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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