Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§9.6 The Historical Context
focal points for buying and selling rural produce. 208 On the contrary, he argues,
the Galilean villages were basically self-sufficient; any surplus produce would
go in taxes and tithes, which were paid/collected in kind from the threshing
floors; the local economy was not heavily monetized. 209 And the picture of villagers
flocking into Sepphoris ignores the hostility with which Sepphoris was
viewed in the Galilean villages, as illustrated most dramatically by the devastation
of Sepphoris in the revolt of 66 CE, 'the Galileans . . . venting their hatred
on one of the cities which they detested' (Josephus, Life 375). 210 Perhaps the silence
of the Jesus tradition as to any contact of Jesus with Sepphoris is eloquent
after all!
On the other hand, Reed points out that Nazareth was bound to be oriented
more to Sepphoris than to the south: Nazareth was one of the southernmost villages
in Galilee; travel south would encounter the steep incline of the south side
of the Nazareth ridge, and so would probably have been via Sepphoris and
Tiberias, to skirt Samaria as far as possible; and the lines of trade did not run
southward from the Nazareth ridge. 211 Moreover, the rebuilding of Sepphoris
and maintenance of it as an administrative centre would presumably have required
tax revenue and a shift in agricultural patterns in lower Galilee (to feed its
population). 212 The wine installations, olive presses, threshing floors, and millstones
found round and even inside Sepphoris indicate that it must have served as
some kind of local centre. 213 And if the population as a whole was less
Hellenized and more Jewish than has often been claimed, there would be less
reason for devout Jewish villagers to bypass or avoid it.
In any case, the existence of some tension between city and village need
not be doubted. One can readily surmise that there will always be a tendency towards
friction between local bureaucrats and administrators on the one hand and
the producers of agricultural and other material goods on the other. All the more
so if much of the good land close by a city like Sepphoris (particularly the Beth
208. 'Villagers go to town to sell produce, both to buy goods and to acquire cash to pay
taxes and tolls. Market gossip filters back' (Downing, Cynics 149); Horsley, Galilee 203 and
n. 6, quotes similar assumptions of a European 'market' economy made by M. Goodman, State
and Society in Roman Galilee, AD 132-212 (Totowa: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983) 54-60; and
Z. Safrai, The Economy of Roman Palestine (London: Routledge, 1994).
209. Horsley, Galilee 176-81, 202-207; also Archaeology 70-76, 83-85.
210. Horsley, Archaeology 118-30; in critique particularly of D. Edwards, 'The Socio-
Economic and Cultural Ethos of the Lower Galilee in the First Century: Implications for the
Nascent Jesus Movement', in Levine, ed., Galilee 53-73.
211. Reed, Archaeology 115-17; Freyne, 'Archaeology' 169-70, 171-73.
212. See also Freyne, 'Jesus and Urban Culture' 191-93. Both Freyne (191-92) and
Reed (Archaeology 126) observe that Sepphoris's pottery and stone storage jars came from
Galilean villages.
213. Reed, Archaeology 83-89.
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