Drawing on his years of field experience in Galilee, the author illustrates how the archaeological record has been misused by New Testament scholars, and how synthesis of the material culture is foundational for understanding Christian origins in Galilee and the Jewish culture out of which they arose.

In order to provide an up-to-date report and analysis of the economic conditions of first-century C.E. Galilee, this collection surveys recent archaeological excavations (Sepphoris, Yodefat, Magdala, and Khirbet Qana) and reviews results from older excavations (Capernaum). It also offers both interpretation of the excavations for economic questions and lays out the parameters of the current debate on the standard of living of the ancient Galileans. The essays included, by archaeologists as well as biblical scholars, have been drawn from the perspective of archaeology or the social sciences. The volume thus represents a broad spectrum of views on this timely and often hotly debated issue. The contributors are Mordechai Aviam, David A. Fiensy, Ralph K. Hawkins, Sharon Lea Mattila, Tom McCollough, and Douglas Oakman.

Speculating from the surviving evidence, it was during excavations at Sepphoris in the summer of 1993, doubtless while sweating in the afternoon sun, chewing gritty dirt, and flexing aches in all their limbs, that Edwards and McCollough bethought themselves how much nicer life would be editing a book than digging holes in the dirt. The result is a collection of 16 essays exploring both the region in classical times and the study of it. Among the topics are the spatial management of gender and labor, the clash between literary and archaeological models of provincial Palestine, Jesus and his Galilean context, German scholarship on Rabbinic Judaism, the Zodiac in synagogue decoration, and a second-to-first century BCE fortress and siege complex. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Based on studies at Bethsaida, Capernaum, Nazareth, Jerusalem, and elsewhere, this volume shows how recent archaeological studies clarify the world, life, and thought of Jesus of Nazareth. It contains the revised and edited lectures that leading archaeologists and biblical scholars presented at a gathering in Jerusalem to celebrate the new millennium. Many contributors came directly from their excavations in places like Bethsaida, Capernaum, Nazareth, and Jerusalem to share their discoveries and insights, focusing on the question In what ways do new archaeological discoveries clarify the world, life, and thought of Jesus from Nazareth? Readers of Jesus and Archaeology will gain many new insights into the life and times of this fascinating Galilean Jew.

Recent books about Jesus and early Christianity can be divided into two kinds: those that examine the life and work of the historical Jesus prior to his death and those that reconstruct events between Jesus' death and the writings of the first Gospels. Sawicki's provocative book challenges the results of both kinds of research by using both archaeology and anthropology to situate Jesus clearly in his Galilean cultural context. Sawicki contests recent portraits of Jesus as a Mediterranean peasant, a Cynic sage, or the convener of a fellowship of equals. In addition, she calls into question readings of ancient Galilee that emphasize it as a society marked simply by economic stratification or by an "honor-shame" sociology. Rather, she discovers the Galilean Jesus' indigenous cultural idiom in its material structures for the negotiation of kinship, the management of labor, the distribution of commodities, and the construction of gender. Sawicki's book is the first to balance classical urban archaeology against the more recent archaeology of villages and of local and regional commerce. It frames current issues in Jesus research in terms that can guide both ongoing village excavations in Israel and responsible exegesis of the Gospels in church and academy. Marianne Sawicki is the author of Seeing the Lord: Resurrection and Early Christian Practices. For: Seminarians; graduate students; biblical archaeologists

In this book Richard Horsley attempts to construct bridges of communication and engagement between the fields of archaeology and history focused on a new understanding of Galilee. He contends that neither the material nor the textual remains from Galilee can be adequately understood without consideration of the prevailing patterns of power relations in Galilee, Palestine, and the Roman Empire. He also uses recent work in the wider field of anthropological archaeology to reconfigure and reinterpret key findings of archaeological excavations in Galilee.Chapter by chapter Horsley constructs a picture of social relations Galilee that is based upon and helps explain both the artifacts and texts, and that takes fully into consideration the changing historical circumstances between the time of Jesus and the rabbis.Chapter 1 sketches the history of Galilee from biblical times through late antiquity; chapter 2 examines the character of the cities constructed during the lifetime of Jesus and their economic and cultural impact on the peop≤ chapter 3 challenges archaeological and textural interpretations that tend to assume a " Smarket model of economic life in Galilee; chapters 4 and 5 portray the villages of Upper and Lower Galilee respectively, exploring the numerous indications of conflicts between the villages and cities in the first century; chapter 6 reviews archaeological reports on synagogue buildings in Galilee with attention to date, architectural style, and d c∨ chapter 7 reexamines the evidence for the relative use of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek in Galilee.Here, then, is an accessible new picture of Galilee that sheds light on the social context in which Jesus and the rabbis lived and functioned.Richard A. Horsley is Professor of Classics and Religion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and author of Galilee: History, Politics, and People published by Trinity Press.>

In his latest book, Sean Freyne draws on his detailed knowledge of Galilean society in the Roman period, based on both literary and archaeological sources, to give a fresh and provocative reading of the Jesus-story within its Galilean setting. Jesus, a Jewish Galilean focuses on the religious as well as the social and political environment and examines the ways in which the Jewish religious experience had expressed itself in Galilee. It examines the ways in which the Jewish tradition in both the Pentateuch and the Prophets had constructed notions of an ideal Galilee. These provided the raw material for Jesus' own response to the issues of the day, from which he fashioned his own distinctive views of Israel's restoration and his own role in that project. Although Freyne is in touch with all recent scholarship about the historical Jesus, he brings his own distinctive take on the issues both with regard to Galilean society and Jesus' grounding in his own religious tradition. His Jesus is both Jewish and yet distinctive in his concerns and the ways in which he responds to the ecological, social and religious issues of his own time and place. Freyne seeks to retrieve the theological importance of Jesus' own message, something that has been lost sight of in the trend to present him primarily as a social reformer, while acknowledging the dangers of modernising Jesus.