Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

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corpus, reflect a distinctly Galilean critique of the lavish lifestyles of the Judean
     priesthood, their exploitation of the peasantry, and their shameful collaboration
     with Rome.
    No doubt the Galileans felt a meaningful connection to the Temple as the dwelling
     place of the spirit of God, but they also evinced a deep disdain for the Temple priests
     who viewed themselves as the sole arbiters of God’s will. There is evidence to suggest
     that the Galileans were both less observant of the Temple rituals and, given the three-day
     distance between Galilee and Jerusalem, less likely to make frequent visits to it.
     Those Galilean farmers and peasants who could scrape enough money together to make
     it to Jerusalem for the sacred festivals would have found themselves in the humiliating
     position of handing over their meager sacrifices to wealthy Temple priests, some of
     whom may have owned the very lands these peasants and farmers labored on back home.
    The divide between Judea and Galilee grew wider after Rome placed Galilee under the
     direct rule of Herod the Great’s son, Antipas. For the first time in their history
     the Galileans had a ruler who actually resided in Galilee. Antipas’s tetrarchy transformed
     the province into a separate political jurisdiction no longer subject to the direct
     authority of the Temple and the priestly aristocracy in Jerusalem. The Galileans still
     owed their tithes to the ravenous Temple treasury, and Rome still exercised control
     over every aspect of life in Galilee: Rome had installed Antipas and Rome commanded
     him. But Antipas’s rule allowed for a small yet meaningful measure of Galilean autonomy.
     There were no longer any Roman troops stationed in the province; they had been replaced
     by Antipas’s own soldiers. And at least Antipas was a Jew who, for the most part,
     tried not to offend the religious sensibilities of those under his rule—his marriage
     to his brother’s wife and the execution of John the Baptist notwithstanding.
    From around 10 C.E. , when Antipas established his capital atSepphoris, to 36 C.E ., when he was deposed by the emperor Caligula and sent into exile, the Galileans
     enjoyed a period of peace and tranquillity that was surely a welcome respite from
     the decade of rebellion and war that had preceded it. But the peace was a ruse, the
     cessation of conflict a pretense for the physical transformation of Galilee. For in
     the span of those twenty years, Antipas built two new Greek cities—his first capital,
     Sepphoris, followed by his second, Tiberias, on the coast of the Sea of Galilee—that
     completely upended traditional Galilean society.
    These were the first real cities that Galilee had ever seen, and they were almost
     wholly populated with non-Galileans: Roman merchants, Greek-speaking gentiles, pursy
     Judean settlers. The new cities placed enormous pressure on the region’s economy,
     essentially dividing the province between those with wealth and power and those who
     served them by providing the labor necessary to maintain their lavish lifestyles.
     Villages in which subsistence farming or fishing were the norm were gradually overwhelmed
     by the needs of the cities, as agriculture and food production became singularly focused
     on feeding the new cosmopolitan population. Taxes were raised, land prices doubled,
     and debts soared, slowly disintegrating the traditional way of life in Galilee.
    When Jesus was born, Galilee was aflame. His first decade of life coincided with the
     plunder and destruction of the Galilean countryside, his second with its refashioning
     at the hands of Antipas. When Jesus departed Galilee for Judea and John the Baptist,
     Antipas had already left Sepphoris for his even larger and more ornate royal seat
     at Tiberias. By the time he returned, the Galilee he knew—of family farms and open
     fields, of blooming orchards and vast meadows bursting with wildflowers—looked a lot
     like the province of Judea he had just left behind: urbanized, Hellenized, iniquitous,
     and strictly stratified between those who had and those who had not.
    Jesus’s first stop upon returning to Galilee would surely have been Nazareth, where
     his family still resided, though he did notstay long in his hometown. Jesus had left Nazareth a simple
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. He returned as something else. His transformation created a deep rift in his community.
     They seem hardly to recognize the itinerant preacher who suddenly