A GLANCE at the autobiographical details in the introduction suffices to show Professor Alan Culpepper’s right to speak on this subject. The impression is confirmed by countless details, shrewdly and lovingly offered throughout the book. The concentration on the people involved imparts a humanity that might otherwise be lacking in this encyclopaedic array of factual information.
The book is organised round classes of people to be found in the Gospel parables, such as home and family, the ordinary people of Galilean society, officials, religious leaders, even outcasts, before ending with a tantalisingly short 20 pages on Jesus the Galilean himself. Nearly each of the 21 chapters concludes with a couple of pages of reflection by the author (and he is not afraid to speak his mind, vigorously, but with both courtesy and originality) and — an unusual and valuable feature — a couple of pages of bibliography for the particular section.
A major limitation is the failure to evaluate the veracity of the sources, both biblical and extra-biblical, but especially the rabbinic sources and Josephus (though his exaggeration is remarked). This would, of course, have doubled the length of the book. On the other hand, excellent use is made of hints drawn from recent archaeology to show both the piety and the economic strength of Galilee under Herod Antipas, and that Nazareth in particular was both a productive and a prosperous district, and to illustrate many details, such as the practices of first-century fishing in the Lake.
Agricultural life was tough, but there is no evidence for the old thesis that Galilee was dominated by absentee landlords. There is some suggestion of medium-sized estates, especially in the fertile Plain of Esdraelon, and plenty of export to the coast of grain, wine, and olive oil (and salted fish from the Lake), corresponding to the implements and pottery found in the many flourishing villages of the region. The picture of agricultural labour conditions is filled out by extracts from the first-century Latin sources, Pliny, Varro, and Columella. There is no reason to assume the widespread dire poverty that has often been suggested.
No doubt agricultural produce was supplemented by paid labour. As a craftsman, Joseph (and his son) could have supplemented income from any land that he possessed with a builder’s salary at a time of great building enterprises such as the Temple (employing 18,000 workers, according to Josephus) and Antipas’s capital, half a dozen miles from Nazareth.
Nor do we know the rigour of conditions of slavery in Galilee, though the biblical acceptance of slavery is here roundly condemned. For instance, we simply do not know whether the seven-yearly remission of debt in the Sabbatical Year was observed, though it is claimed that the great Rabbi Hillel is credited with instituting a comparable arrangement which would have assured its observance. No doubt, as the Gospel parables suggest, there were rascally managers who defrauded their masters, and rascally tenants who went to any lengths to avoid paying their dues. But there is no impression of widespread or dire need. Josephus, of course, is loud in praise of the fertility of the region.
More distressing is the short span of life and the prevalence of sickness. Infant and youth mortality was dauntingly severe: “almost no children ever knew their grandfathers.” In discussing family life, the author assumes that Jesus had brothers and sisters. The busy life of a housewife is illustrated and honoured. The treasure-trove of documents of Babatha, who owned date orchards near En-Gedi, is used to show that a woman’s life was not necessarily all drudgery, and could involve a fair amount of business acumen.
Much of the information concerning characters who pop up only occasionally in Galilee (Pharisees, Levites, Samaritans) is generously illustrated from better-documented areas such as Judaea, together with wider social issues, such as the complicated Roman systems of tax and toll-gathering. In any case, the book makes gripping and rewarding reading. Anyone planning a time-travel expedition to the Galilee of Jesus’s time would be well-advised to include this in the lightest baggage-pack, ready to rub shoulders with a wide variety of local inhabitants.
Fr Henry Wansbrough OSB is a monk of Ampleforth, emeritus Master of St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, and a former member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.
The People of the Parables: Galilee in the time of Jesus
R. Alan Culpepper
WJK £36
(978-0-664-26884-8)
Church Times Bookshop £32.40
