Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

earth. Yet even Jesus marks John’s activities as part of
     the inauguration of the Kingdom of God on earth: “The Law and Prophets were [in effect]
     until John; afterward, the Kingdom of God is proclaimed” (Luke 16:16).
CHAPTER EIGHT: FOLLOW ME
    Josephus’s description of the Galileans can be found in
The Jewish War
3.41–42. Richard Horsley expertly details the history of Galilean resistance, even
     when it came to the “political-economic-religious subordination to the Hasmonean high
     priesthood in Jerusalem,” in
Galilee: History, Politics, People
(Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1995). Horsley writes that “the
     Temple itself, temple dues, and rule by the high priesthood would all have been foreign
     to the Galileans, whose ancestors had rebelled centuries earlier against the Solomonic
     monarchy and the Temple. Thus the Galileans, like the Idumeans, would have experienced
     the laws of the Judeans superimposed on their own customs as the means to define and
     legitimate their subordination to Jerusalem rule” (51). Hence Luke’s assertion that
     Jesus’s parents went to the Temple for Passover every year quite clearly reflects
     a Lukan agenda rather than Galilean practices (Luke 2:41–51). See also Sean Freyne,
Galilee, Jesus, and the Gospels
(Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1988), 187–89.
    On the distinctive accent of the Galileans, see Obery M. Hendricks,
The Politics of Jesus
(New York: Doubleday, 2006), 70–73. For the implications of the term “people of the
     land,” see the comprehensive study done by Aharon Oppenheimer,
The ’Am Ha-Aretz: A Study in the Social History of the Jewish People in the Hellenistic-Roman
     Period
(Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1977).
    For more on Jesus’s family as followers, see John Painter,
Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press), 14–31.
    The Greek word for “disciples,”
hoi mathetai
, can mean both male and female disciples. Obviously the sight of unaccompanied women
     following an itinerant preacher and his mostly male companions from town to town would
     have caused a scandal in Galilee, and in fact there are numerous passages in the gospels
     in which Jesus is accused of consorting with “loose women.” Some variants of the gospel
     of Luke say Jesus had seventy, not seventy-two, disciples. The discrepancy is irrelevant,
     as numbers in the Bible—especially evocative numbers such as three, twelve, forty,
     and seventy-two—are meant to be read symbolically, not literally, with the exception
     of the twelve disciples, which should be read both ways.
    There can be no doubt that Jesus specifically designated twelve individuals to represent
     the twelve tribes of Israel. However, there is much confusion about the actual names
     and biographies of the Twelve. Thank God for John Meier, who presents everything there
     is to know about the Twelve in
Marginal Jew
, vol. 3, 198–285. That the Twelve were unique and set apart from the rest of the
     disciples is clear: “And when it was day, he called his disciples to him and from
     them he chose twelve whom he named apostles” (Luke 6:13). Some scholarsinsist that the Twelve was a creation of the early church, but that is unlikely. Otherwise,
     why make Judas one of the Twelve? See Craig Evans, “The Twelve Thrones of Israel:
     Scripture and Politics in Luke 22:24–30,” in
Luke and Scripture: The Function of Sacred Tradition in Luke-Acts
, ed. Craig Evans and J. A. Sanders (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 154–70; Jacob
     Jervell, “The Twelve on Israel’s Thrones: Luke’s Understanding of the Apostolate,”
     in
Luke and the People of God: A New Look at Luke-Acts
, ed. Jacob Jervell (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972), 75–112; and R.
     P. Meyer,
Jesus and the Twelve
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1968).
    For more on Jesus’s anticlerical message, see John Meier,
Marginal Jew
, vol. 1, 346–47. Meier notes that by the time the gospels were written there were
     no more priests in Judaism. After the destruction of the Temple, the spiritual heirs
     of the Pharisees—the rabbinate—became the primary Jewish opponents of the new Christian
     movement, and so it is natural that the gospels would have made them appear as Jesus’s
     chief enemies. This is all the more reason why the few hostile encounters that Jesus
     is presented as having with the Temple priests should be seen as genuine. Helmut