Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§9.6 The Historical Context
Recent archaeological findings, however, have transformed the debate, and
when correlated with the literary data seem to settle the issue fairly conclusively. 173
Study of the settlement patterns of Galilean sites reveals two striking features.
First, the data indicate an almost complete abandonment of the region, painting 'a
picture of a totally devastated and depopulated Galilee in the wake of the Assyrian
campaigns of 733/732 BCE'. 174 Second, the sudden burgeoning of data around the
end of the second century BCE (architecture, pottery, and Hasmonean coins) indicates
that there was a rapid rise in new settlements in the wake of the Hasmonean
conquest, attesting also economic and political ties between Galilee and Jerusalem.
175 All these data refute Horsley's idea of a Hasmonean aristocracy imposing
themselves over a continuing Israelite population and point clearly to a wave of
Judean settlements spreading over a depopulated territory.
To this has to be added what Jonathan Reed calls four indicators of Jewish
religious identity: stone vessels (chalk or soft limestone), attesting a concern for
ritual purity; 176 plastered stepped pools, that is, Jewish ritual baths (miqwaoth);
burial practices, reflecting Jewish views of the afterlife; 177 and bone profiles
without pork, indicating conformity to Jewish dietary laws. Such finds have been
made across Galilee, whereas they are lacking at sites outside the Galilee and the
Golan. 178 In the light of such finds we can hardly do other than speak of the characteristically
Jewish population of Galilee in the late Second Temple period.
Volkes Israel II (Munich: Beck, 1959) 346-62, 363-435. Horsley has further developed his case in
finding 'Israelite traditions in Q' as reflecting popular tradition in Galilee (Whoever da. 5).
173. I draw particularly on Reed, 'The Identity of the Galileans: Ethnic and Religious
Considerations', in Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus 23-61. The discussion by M. Goodman,
'Galilean Judaism and Judaean Judaism', in Horbury, et al., eds., Judaism 3.596-617, is
already somewhat dated.
174. Reed, Archaeology 28-35 (here 29); 'in the Galilean heartland . . . every single excavated
site . . . was destroyed or abandoned at the end of the eighth century' (31); 'there is no
archaeological evidence for an indigenous population in the centuries after 733/2 BCE' (33).
Reed concludes: 'The position of Alt and its revival by Horsley must be abandoned' (34). Similarly
Freyne, 'Archaeology' 177-81, who has also abandoned his earlier support of Alt ('Town
and Country Once More: The Case of Roman Galilee', Galilee and Gospel 59-72 [here 67-68];
also 'Galilee', OEANE 2.371-72).
175. Reed, Archaeology 39-43. Reed also notes the (Hasmonean) destruction of Gentile
sites between Judea and Galilee and on Galilee's periphery (42-43). The evidence also confirms
Freyne's rejection of Schiirer's hypothesis ('Archaeology' 177-79) that the Galileans were converted
Itureans (Reed 34-39; n. 168 above). See again Freyne, 'Galilee', OEANE 2.372-73.
176. According to the Mishnah stone vessels are impervious to ritual impurity (m. Kelim
10.1; Ohol. 5.5; Para. 5.5).
177. 'Placing ossuaries inside so-called kokhim or loculi, horizontally shafted underground
family tombs, was a distinctly Jewish phenomenon at the end of the Second Temple period'
(Reed, Archaeology 47).
178. Reed, Archaeology 43-52.
295