Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1994 - 37

Galilee. The result of this expedition was his own Life of
Jesus (1863). However, Renan's still somewhat romantic
impressions of the simple nobility of the modern Muslim and Maronite villagers deeply colored his descriptions of the birth of Christianity. Indeed, romanticized
Middle Eastern peasant life remained the main motif of
archaeological descriptions up to and including Franciscan scholar Bellarmino Bagatti's 1950s excavations
beneath the Church of the Annunciation at Nazareth.
Bagatti placed great importance on his discovery of
first-century A.D. wells, granaries, and olive presses as
evidence of Galilean village life. In the early 1980s,
with the start of large-scale excavations at Sepphoris,
three miles northwest of Nazareth, archaeologists
gained a striking new perspective on the kind of society
in which Jesus grew up.
Though Sepphoris is not mentioned in the gospels,
it plays a prominent part in the first-century Jewish history of Josephus Flavius as a regional administrative
and political center, lavishly rebuilt in the Roman style
by Herod's son, Antipas, in A.D. 6. Excavations by
James Strange of the University of South Florida, Eric
and Carol Meyers of Duke University, and Ehud Netzer and Zev Weiss of the Hebrew University have
focused scholarly attention on the social and economic
effects of the first-century Romanization of Galilee.
Though only scattered potsherds and a few fragmentary walls have been discovered from the preceding
Iron Age, Persian, and Hellenistic periods, the reign of
Antipas as Roman client ruler over Galilee (4 B.C.-A.D.
39) brought with it the construction at Sepphoris of a
gleaming marble theater and surrounding public buildings that were not merely architectural innovations, but
powerful, pervasive symbols of the new, Roman way of
culture, economics, and life.
The results of the excavations at Sepphoris have
helped shape Crossan's quest for the cultural matrix of
Christianity. In contrast to the idyllic landscapes of
Renan, Crossan has created a world in which the
looming power of Roman civilization is always present,
influencing the political and religious message of Jesus
of Nazareth. Utilizing the archaeological evidence from
Romanized Sepphoris, Crossan depicts Jesus and the
farmers, fishermen, and tradesmen of Galilee who became his followers not as Middle Eastern bumpkins,
but as people fully exposed to cosmopolitan Roman
civilization and empire - who consciously rejected it.
Eric Meyers believes that Jesus of Nazareth knew and
reacted passionately to Roman culture, "growing up
along one of the busiest trade routes of ancient Palestine, at the very administrative center of the Roman
provincial government."
But what was the nature of the interaction? Though
An illuminatedmanuscriptfrom The Jewish War,facing page,
depicts the surrender of the book's author, Josephus Flavius,
to the Roman general Titus.Josephus' descriptions ofJudean
and Galilean topography have proved uncannilyaccurate.

November/December 1994

Meyers and Strange suggest a vibrant syncretism of
Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures, other scholars like
Richard Horsley suggest a tense and often confrontational relationship between the Galilean peasantry and
the Roman officials and urban aristocracy. "The economic impact of Antipas' building programs following
upon the heavy taxation of Herod," Horsley writes of
the economic changes of the period, "would have left
many producer-households
heavily in debt." And
- the
Herod
although
Antipas
patron of Sepphoris is
known from the gospels primarily as the tyrant who
executed John the Baptist and who refused to become
involved in the trial of Jesus, archaeology now suggests
he played a far more pervasive role in the story of firstcentury Galilee. Inheriting the region from his father,
with the blessing of the Romans, Antipas ruled it as his
private fiefdom; his costly building projects at Sepphoris and his establishment of the lakeside town of
Tiberias in A.D. 18 as the region's new capital enabled
him to maintain ever tighter administrative control.
Increasing taxation and economic centralization would
certainly have had an enormous, negative impact on
the lives of many Galilean townspeople, farmers, and
fishermen.
Archaeologists working at Roman sites in Italy and
Britain have observed that the linking of rural areas to
the empire - through regional urban centers, Roman
civic ceremonies, and the spread of Roman coinage sparked an intensification of trade, an increase in cashcrop farming over subsistence, and the creation of vast,
plantation-like estates. The work of Stephen Dyson
near Cosa, Italy, in particular, has demonstrated the
close connection between land-tenure patterns and economic and political change. Given Josephus Flavius'
repeated reports of rural unrest and banditry in
Galilee through the first century, it is likely that the
social and economic changes of the early Roman
period were not viewed favorably by everyone.
In light of what we now know about messianic ideology and first-century Romanization in both Judea
and Galilee, it would not have been surprising that a
nonconformist Galilean preacher would find it necessary to journey southward to confront the Forces of
Darkness - Herodian aristocrats, corrupt priests, and
Roman oppressors - in the temple city of Jerusalem. It
is astounding how little was known about this ancient
city until about 25 years ago. Like Galilee, there was
- a
always a fairy-tale quality about Jerusalem
city
filled with unforgettable
characters
and events.
Although the topography of the city began to be studied intensively by European and American scholars in
the nineteenth century, excavation opportunities were
limited by local religious sensibilities to scattered probes
in gardens and empty lots. After the 1967 Israeli
takeover of the Old City, however, ambitious excavations were begun throughout the Jewish Quarter and
on the western and southern sides of the Temple
Mount. For the first time, extensive areas within the

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Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1994

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