emphasis.56
Galilee and Rabbinic Literature
If certain features of the Gospel portrait acquire new life when set within the Galilee described by Josephus, others are provided with fresh meaning when complemented by rabbinic literary sources. The warning must nevertheless be repeated that, although Galilean in geographical origin, the Mishnah may not be employed indiscriminately to describe Galilean life as such prior to the end of the Bar Kosiba rebellion (AD 135). As one of the recently discovered letters dictated by the leader of the second Jewish War indicates, regional differences remained clear-cut until then,57 but from the middle of the second century AD Galilee was the only lively Jewish centre in Palestine and the distinction between Judean and Galilean became largely anachronistic. Comparative material must therefore be restricted to those sections of rabbinic literature in which Judean and Galilean customs, language and way of life are deliberately contrasted. The texts themselves often show that the situation envisaged in them is that which prevailed before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.
Josephus’s image of the Galilean as the indomitable fighter has little in common with the rabbinic portrait of the Northerner as a figure of fun, an ignoramus, if not both. One of the commonest jibes directed against the Galileans is that they did not speak correct Aramaic: U-Aramaic in other words. According to a well-known anecdote preserved in the Talmud, a Galilean went to the marketplace in Jerusalem to purchase something which he called amar. The merchants ridiculed him:
You stupid Galilean, do you want something to ride on (a donkey = ḥamār)? Or something to drink (wine = ḥamar)? Or something for clothing (wool = ‘amar)? Or something for a sacrifice (lamb = immar)?58
The distinction between the various gutturals almost completely disappeared in Galilean Aramaic; the weaker guttural sounds, in fact, ceased even to be audible. Put differently, in careless everyday conversation the Galileans dropped their aitches. Third-century AD Babylonian rabbis maintain that it was because of the slipshod speech of Galilee that Galilean doctrine disappeared, whilst Judean teachings, in the precise enunciation of the southern dialect, survived.59 Apparently people from certain northern towns – Tib‘on, Haifa and Beth Shean are singled out – were so notorious for their mispronunciation of Hebrew that they were not called on to read the Bible in public when they were away from home.60
Even the Greek New Testament refers to the distinctive dialect of Galilee. In the courtyard of the high priest’s house Peter is recognized as a follower of Jesus as soon as he opens his mouth.
‘You are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.’61
Again, the name Lazarus in one of Jesus’ famous parables62 is the ‘incorrect’ dialectal form of Eleazar as attested both in the Palestinian Talmud and in Greek transliteration of the name surviving in inscriptions in the celebrated Galilean necropolis of Beth Shearim.63
Although the subject of precise dialectal differences is complex and still under debate, there can be little doubt that Jesus himself spoke Galilean Aramaic, the language, that is to say, surviving in the popular and somewhat more recent paraphrase of the Pentateuch, the Palestinian Targum, and in the Talmud of Palestine. Practically all the terms which the Synoptic Gospels preserve in Aramaic before rendering them in Greek point in that direction. In the command addressed to the daughter of Jairus, Talitha kum, ‘Get up, my child’, the noun (literally, ‘little lamb’) is attested only in the Palestinian Targum.64 Another Aramaic word, mamona, ‘money’, used in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6: 24, mostly occurs in the Targums. The rabbis, even in Aramaic phrases, usually employ the Hebrew word, mamon. Targumic parallel is similarly decisive in determining that when Jesus said Ephphetha, ‘Be opened’, he spoke Aramaic and not Hebrew.65 Yet although Jesus expressed himself in dialect, it would be wrong to argue from the misunderstanding of his words on the cross, Eloi Eloi lama sabachtani, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ as ‘Hark, he is calling Elijah’, that he was unintelligible to the people of Jerusalem.66 Clarity cannot be expected of the cry of a crucified man at the point of death.
Far graver, however, than the criticisms provoked by their regional accent were the accusations levelled at the Galileans by the Pharisees and their rabbinical successors concerning matters related to sacrifices and offerings in the Temple of Jerusalem, to levitical cleanness and uncleanness, and to the rabbinic code of proper behaviour in general. The Mishnah, for example, ordains that imprecisely formulated vows regarding the Temple and its priests are binding in Judea. In Galilee, by contrast, because of the presumed local ignorance of ritual, only those vows were acknowledged valid which included every detail of the undertaking.67 Furthermore, Palestinian rabbinic sources refer to pious men (Ḥasidim) ignorant in the field of ritual purity.68 Even eminent Galilean rabbis such as Hanina ben Dosa and Yose the Galilean are reported to have disregarded the laws of seemly conduct. Hanina is tacitly criticized for walking alone in the street by night;69 and Yose has to endure the indignity of a reprimand by a woman for being too talkative when enquiring the way to Lydda.
You stupid Galilean, have the Sages not commanded: ‘Do not engage in a lengthy conversation with a woman!’70
In brief, for the Pharisees and the rabbis of the first and early second century AD the Galileans were on the whole boors. Moreover, the epithet ‘am ha-areẓ, ‘peasant’, which as Adolph Büchler has shown was generally applied to them,71 carried, in addition to the expected implication, the stigma of a religiously uneducated person. Though obviously overstatements, the following Talmudic quotations reflect the sentiments prevailing between the ‘orthodox’ and the ‘am ha-areẓ.
No man may marry the daughter of the ‘am ha-areẓ, for they are like unclean animals, and their wives like reptiles, and it is concerning their daughters that Scripture says:
‘Cursed be he who lies with any kind of beast’ (Deut. 27: 21 (RSV)).
Greater is the hatred of the ‘am ha-areẓ for the learned than the hatred of the Gentiles for Israel; but the hatred of their wives is even greater.72
Strangely enough, the clearest echo of the antagonism between Galileans and Judeans reported in rabbinic writings is to be found in the Fourth Gospel in the New Testament. For motives which are not historical but doctrinal, this late work offers seemingly reliable evidence that attitudes definitely attested in the late first and the second century AD are traceable to the age of Jesus.73
According to the same evangelist also, when the Jerusalem crowds proclaim Jesus as the expected prophet, or the Messiah, doubts are voiced:
‘Surely the Messiah is not to come from Galilee?’74
The subsequent episode of the return of the Temple police to the chief priests is even more characteristic. Asked why they have not brought Jesus, they reply: ‘No man ever spoke as this man speaks.’ The Pharisees then counter:
‘Have you too been misled? Is there a single one of our rulers who has believed in him, or of the Pharisees? As for this rabble, which cares nothing for the Law, a curse is on them.’
When Nicodemus, himself a Pharisee, takes up Jesus’ cause, he is silenced by the humiliating question:
‘Are you a Galilean too?’75
As in the rabbinic quotations, the qualification ‘Galilean’ is synonymous with a cursed, lawless rabble.
Returning to the evangelists, or simply to the outline of the
