andrewcriddle

Galilee of the Gentiles is widely taken to mean upper or northern Gailee, it may not mean Galilee as a whole ie both upper and lower or both Northern and Southern Galilee.

I am speculating here but I think Matthew by Galilee of the Gentiles means Northern or Upper Galilee and that Jesus in moving from Nazareth to Capernaum is moving Northwards within the Galilee rather than into the Galilee from somewhere outside the Galilee altogether.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Nazareth (traditional site) is at least much nearer to Issachar territory than Capernaum is.
Just possibly Matthew thought the whole plain of Esdraelon was in Isachar.
One problem with your interesting reading is that it requires Matthew (at least in its present form) to be internally inconsistent.

Andrew Criddle

spin

Widely by whom and what are their sources for such a conclusion? Josephus happily talks of two Galilees, upper and lower (BJ 3.35), but there's no trace of one being "Galilee of the Gentiles".

I would have thought that Zebulun and Naphtali together are a good reflection of the territory of Galilee.

Can you be saying something like: "Galilee of the Gentiles" was a subset of Galilee and so only a part of Zebulun and Naphtali, a part that didn't include Nazara -- this latter still in Galilee, while outside Zebulun and Naphtali?

If it were true, it would seem to deal with the prophecy,

15 "Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, along the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles—
16 the people living in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned."

The Matthean, writer using this passage, mentions Zebulun and Naphtali twice, indicating that they are the territory of concern. He moves Jesus from Nazara to the area of Zebulun and Naphtali.

13 Leaving Nazara, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali

In BJ 2.573 Josephus mentions places in Galilee he fortified. One of these was Japha, mentioned in Josh 19.13 as Japhia, which is along the southern border of Zebulun. Nazareth is 1 & 1/2 miles north of Japha, so Nazareth would still be in Zebulun in Josephus's time, despite what you think Matthew might have thought.
Magic words are "at least in its present form", but there are other inconsistencies in its present form, such as the difference between Nazara and Nazareth, which I can now clarify within the notion of an evolving gospel tradition.


spin

the_cave

I like this idea but I'm not sure I see any evidence for it. "Galilee of the Gentiles", as I understand it, is just like saying "Dixie of the Southerners" or something like that.

OTOH I'm not sure we can brush aside Mt 2:22-23 so easily--if it weren't for those verses, I think spin's observation seems quite correct. It's unclear whether Jesus was being tempted in Nazareth, or whether he was just moving his base of operations, so to speak, but he does seem to be moving from a place that is not in Zebulun and Naphtali, to a place that is.

However, he does seem to distinguish between Galilee and Zebulun and Naphtali between verses 13 and 14. So I think it could be that "Galilee" did indeed mean a larger area to Matthew than it did to Isaiah. Matthew is just quoting Isaiah to show that the prophecy is coming true--he doesn't really care whether Galilee was limited to Zebulun and Naphtali at the time. All he knows is the Galilee of the Herodians.

Note also in 4:13 he mentions that Capernaum is in Zebulun and Naphtali--he doesn't mention that it's in Galilee. Suggesting that he was specifying a smaller area than what he thought Galilee was. But it's hard to say.

I do think that Matthew probably did not identify the traditional location of Nazareth with his Nazareth. I think Matthew doesn't actually know where Nazara/Nazareth was; he just knows there aren't any cities called that near a body of water, and hence Nazareth could not fulfill that particular prophecy. So I think he might have just assumed it was in some part of Issachar or Asher or Dan or something that was part of what he knew as "Galilee", and he just quoted the Isaiah verse verbatim because that's how the prophecy went.

The only other way to go, is to assume that the same author did not write Mt 2:22-23 and 4:13-16. Which I think is spin's assumption.

spin

You should note that I was talking about Nazara, not Nazareth. Best text tradition says that 4:13 has Nazara, while the oldest (and therefore perhaps best) tradition has Nazara at 2:23 as well. We cannot assume that they were the same reference, so talking of "Nazara/Nazareth" at this stage may be inappropriate.

I don't know how many writers were involved in the writing of Matthew, but I do know the writing was not one sitting: there were at least three. It is more likely that the notion of "sitting" here is too simple. A text that belongs to a community will tend to represent the community's traditions at any given time. There is an ancient Hindu religious document I remember which deals even with Mohammed and also Queen Victoria.

The important issue is that at the time of the writing of the redactional unit Mt 4:13-16 Nazara had become a part of the tradition and that was after the writing of the version of Mark that the Matthean community received. To understand both Nazara and Capernaum, the tradition went through another change, explaining how the conflicting tradition towns Nazara and Capernaum could be important as places of Jesus. That was to fulfill a prophecy that required Jesus to move from Nazara to Capernaum and they stopped being in conflict.

2:23 is the icing. The implications of 4:13 are clear regarding the placing of Nazara outside Zebulun and Naphtali and by extention (in the prophecy) outside Galilee. 2:23 now puts Nazara in Galilee! We are now another step closer to the tradition that we have received. All you need is Nazareth to complete the journey.


spin

andrewcriddle

See for example Easton's_Bible_Dictionary_(1897)/Galilee
This sort of claim is widespread but I'm not sure how solidly founded it is.

Added Material
See also catholicbible/matt4.htm I think Matthew regards "Galilee of the Gentiles" as a subset of Galilee, I'm not sure whether or not it is meant to be a subset of Zebulun and Naphtali.
I quite agree that Nazareth is actually about a mile North of the Zebulun-Issachar border. Whether Matthew was clear on this point seems less certain.

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

Spin,

"Nazara" (which is the Greek form of the word that the RSV, and all the English translations I consulted, rightly or wrongly translates "Nazareth" in Matt 4:13) is not in Galile, but Judaea, if the following statement by Eusebius of Caesarea (Church History 1.7.14) is correct:

"A few of the careful, however, having obtained private records of their own, either by remembering the names or by getting them in some other way from the registers, pride themselves on preserving the memory of their noble extraction. Among these are those already mentioned, called Desposyni, on account of their connection with the family of the Saviour. Coming from Nazara and Cochaba, villages of Judea, into other parts of the world, they drew the aforesaid genealogy from memory and from the book of daily records as faithfully as possible."

Also, Hegesippus (Commentaries on the Acts of the Church, in Eusebius, History of the Church 3:20) says:

"After the capture of the Jews by (Emperor) Vespasian “there still survived of the kindred of the Lord the (two) grandsons of Judas, who (Judas) according to the flesh was called his (Jesus’) brother. These were informed against, as belonging to the family of David, and (an official named) Evocatus (or a person who held the rank of an evocati in the army) brought them before Domitian Caesar: for (that one) dreaded the coming of Christ, as Herod had done. Of the family of the Lord there were still 1 living the grandchildren of Jude, who is said to have been the Lord's brother according to the flesh. Information was given that they belonged to the family of David, and they 2 were brought to the Emperor Domitian by the Evocatus. For Domitian feared the coming of Christ as Herod also had feared it. And he asked them if they were descendants of David, and they confessed that they were. Then he asked them how much property they had, or how much money they owned. And both of them answered that they had only nine thousand denarii, half of which belonged to each of them; and this property did not consist of silver, but of a piece of land which contained only thirty-nine plethra (a Greek plethra equates to a little less than a quarter acre, but may here be used as a substitute for a Latin iugerum which equates to a little over a half acre - meaning the farm was 10-20 acres in area ... 20 acres would feed two families of four each), and from which they raised their taxes and supported themselves by their own labor."

So, it seems, the "family farm" was in Judaea.

DCH

FWIW, I am amazed this thread has gone on for 2 pages now without this coming up.

spin

I wouldn't cite Easton as scholarly.

The political boundaries of the territory fluctuated under Herod, but surely Josephus is a fair representation of how people perceived the situation in the era.

This seems to me to be conjecture! Besides it doesn't sound that way from what is written.

You are trying this:

1. Galilee of the Gentiles is not the same as Galilee, but a subset;
2. Nazara was in the latter, not the former and, though Matthean writer was unclear about the boundaries, his text is coherent with what we've come to know.

The first is old apologetic conjecture, which has no basis in the early literature and Cabul is to the west of Zebulun in Asher, Josh 19:27. Solomon giving cities from the area around Cabul has no impact on the areas we are discussing.

I asked way back,

Widely by whom and what are their sources for such a conclusion?

Did you find any ancient sources to support the conjecture?


spin

spin

You're giving away trade secrets with the Eusebius citation. But it isn't too convincing in itself, especially when linked with Cochaba, which seems to relate to the leader of the second Jewish war. Such tradition is hard to pin down for its historical value. It's in conjunction with Matt 4:13-6 that it takes on a little significance.


spin

DCHindley

Spin,

You're making me dizzy.

IMHO, there doesn't have to be a Bar Kosiba connection. Nazara is probably derived from Hebrew "netzer" ("branch") and Cochaba from Hebrew "kokhba" ("star"), both of which are related to messianic prophesy. These villages would be the ancient equivalent of a group of survivalist communes today waiting for the day when civilization collapses so they can rise up to set the world aright again as God intended for them to do.

Bar Kosiba borrowed on the image of a messianic "star" by replacing his given name "Kosiba" with the nickname "Cochba" in the 130's CE. I would not be surprised if a messianic pretender (Jesus, in case anyone is unsure what I mean) borrowed on the "branch (of David)" motif in the mid 1st century CE.

DCH