Galilee in the Time of Christ

Abstract

From whatever aspect we approach the study of Galilee, our conclusions have the most vital interest in so far as they cause us to picture this land when it became the home of him who is pre-eminently Man of If anything can enable us to see what he saw, to be influenced as he must have been, or to reconstruct in our imagination the human life of him who is our example for all the ages, then our efforts are not in vain. We may also recall in passing that the same environment profoundly influenced the apostles and many members of the infant church. In a previous article we dealt with the subject of the size of in the time of Christ. It was a small land, by no means so large as the natural boundaries would suggest. If we may judge from the description of Josephus,' the southern boundary was, for practical purposes, rather the northern than the southern edge of the great plain. The region described as Galilee was all included, but the northern boundary traversed the mountain region on a line drawn from the deep Wady Hindaj (just south of Kades) on the east to the neighborhood of el Jish, and thence south along the line of Jebal Jermak till these mountains abut on Lower Galilee. All north and west of this line was Tyrian territory (as was Carmel on the southwest) with doubtless scattered Jewish communities here and there, like that we read of as existing at Caesarea Philippi. Although the mountain district of Safed belonged to the of Christ, yet we have no proof from the gospels that he ever visited this district. The most striking thing about this region is the way it was hemmed in on all sides by hostile neighbors. How much the Jews hated these gentiles may be seen in the pages of Josephus where he describes how