Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§9.8 The Historical Context
their own hands the power of capital punishment, though infringement of the
Temple sanctuary was agreed to merit the death penalty. 249 During the years of
direct rule there would have been a garrison stationed in Jerusalem (a cohort of
perhaps only 500 men), and the prefect/procurator made a point of being present
in person for major feasts, though he normally resided at Caesarea on the coast.
But it is a striking fact that for most of the first half-century CE the governor of
Judea may have had only some 3,000 auxiliary troops to uphold law and order,
with small garrisons stationed in cities like Jericho and Ascalon, and the main
body of the (three or four) legions retained in Syria (primarily for defence of the
eastern frontier). 250 That hardly suggests a mounting 'spiral of violence' (Horsley)
in the period of Jesus' mission. 251 These will be matters which we can clarify
further later to the extent that it is necessary in discussing Jesus' final days,
trial and execution in Jerusalem. 252
For Galilee during the whole of Jesus' life there the fact of Roman rule
would be, for the most part, even less obtrusive. As Sanders has repeatedly reminded
us, the Romans were not an army of occupation. The typically ruthless
Roman suppression of the uprising after Herod (the Great)'s death (4 BCE) would
no doubt have formed a major scar on the local consciousness for the generation
following. According to Josephus, the Galilean insurgents had been routed,
Sepphoris captured and burnt, and its inhabitants enslaved {War. 2.56; Ant.
17.289). 253 And the fact that major cities were named in honour of the emperor
and his family (Tiberias, Caesarea Maritima, Caesarea Philippi, Bethsaida Julias)
would have been a constant reminder of the political realities. But otherwise,
249. Schürer, History 1.367-72; 2.219-23.
250. Schürer, History 1.361-67; E. M. Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule from
Pompey to Diocletian (Leiden: Brill, 1976) 146-47. Helen Bond notes that during the first six
years of Pilate's prefecture (26-32), that is, the period of Jesus' activity, there was no Syrian legate
in residence to oversee affairs in Palestine (Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation
[SNTSMS 100; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1998] 14).
251. The image is misleading; Horsley explicitly refutes the suggestion that Jewish society
at the time of Jesus was a hotbed of violent revolution (Jesus 116; see also n. 264 below).
Contrast the assumption of G. W. Buchanan, Jesus: The King and His Kingdom (Macon: Mercer
University, 1984) that 'almost every year there was at least one guerrilla encounter with
Rome in an attempt to evict the Romans from Jewish territory' (38-39, 142).
252. See further below § 15.3a and §17.1e.
253. The excavations at Sepphoris have not so far unearthed any clear evidence of massive
destruction in the early Roman period; Horsley therefore suggests that the Roman attack
may have been directed against villages around Sepphoris (Archaeology 32). Either way it
would have been a traumatic time for any young family. Does this provide a strengthening for
the tradition that Jesus was born away from Nazareth, or, alternatively, some sort of historical
basis for the tradition of Matt. 2.16?
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