Galilee

“ What is there in the Galilee of the first century which prepares one for discovering there and then the revolutionizer of the virtues of the world, the most original, profound, and unique of all teachers, Him Whose example is still mightier than His precepts, and only not more perfect, because these also are without a flaw, Him Whom even unbelief would shrink from saluting by so cold a title as that of the most saintly of the saints. ”

“ Nazareth was a little town high among the hills of Galilee. It still stands there, but it is not so large a town as it was when Mary and Joseph and the Child Jesus lived there. Then Galilee was full of cities and villages, and men and women were busy among its fields, and vineyards, and gardens, and the shores of the beautiful Lake of Galilee were lined with the boats of fishermen.
Nazareth was more quiet than the crowded cities by the Lake. A great green plain lay below it, and a narrow road winding among the limestone rocks led up to it. ”

“ The Nazarene is not the King; neither has he the spirit of a king. We were with him when he came into Jerusalem; we saw him in the Temple; he failed himself, and us, and Israel; at the Gate Beautiful he turned his back upon God and refused the throne of David. He is not King, and Galilee is not with him. He shall die the death. But hear you, son of Judah. We have your swords, and we are ready now to draw them and strike for freedom; and so is Galilee. Be it for freedom, O son of Judah, for freedom! ”

“ A beautiful external nature tended to produce a much less austere spirit—a spirit less sharply monotheistic, if I may use the expression, which imprinted a charming and idyllic character on all the dreams of Galilee. The saddest country in the world is perhaps the region round about Jerusalem. Galilee, on the contrary, was a very green, shady, smiling district, the true home of the Song of Songs, and the songs of the well-beloved. ”

“ But the eye that could pierce the stormy shades of night on the boisterous waves of Galilee, and that could search the hearts of all men, could also penetrate the thick, leafy veil of the fig-tree, and observe the most secret actions of this guileless Israelite, when he supposed the whole world to be shut out, and gave himself to the undisguised enjoyment of his thoughts, feelings, and actions, without restraint. ”

“ If Galilee could produce such a man as Joseph, Galilee was going up in the world. We will receive thee and gladly, but speak no more to us of thy shepherd prophet, and betake thyself to our schools of philosophy, which thou'lt enjoy, for thy Greek is excellent. But who taught thee Greek? And while Joseph was telling of Azariah, little smiles played about his eyes and mouth, for the incredulity of the Alexandrian Jews had begotten incredulity in him, and he began to see how much absurdity his adventure made show for. ”

“ But the light that rose over Galilee emanated from a spirit so sublime that it has taken eighteen centuries to accomplish its course of penetrating the world, and only now is beginning to reveal itself in its true purity. ”

“ For the Jews would not have permitted them to assemble in Judæa. Thirdly, because in Galilee Christ had for the most part preached, and had performed very many miracles.
Symbolically: S. Gregory (Hom. 21) says, “For Galilee means a passing over from death to life; for our Redeemer had already passed from His Passion to His resurrection, from death unto life. And He is seen first by His disciples after His resurrection in Galilee, because we shall have joy in seeing the glory of His resurrection, if only we pass over from vice to the heights of virtue. ”

“ Greece has drawn pictures of human life by sculpture and by charming poetry, but always without backgrounds or distant receding perspectives. In Galilee were wanting the marble, the practiced workmen, the exquisite and refined language. But Galilee has created the most sublime ideal for the popular imagination; for behind its idyl moves the fate of humanity, and the light which illumines its picture is the sun of the kingdom of God.
Jesus lived and grew amid these enchanting scenes. From his infancy he went almost annually to the feast at Jerusalem. ”

“ The words spoken on the shores of Galilee, and on the mountains over-looking Galilee, are the hope of the world. They are the final words of our all-loving Father to his children. Times may change, but these words will never be exceeded or superseded; nothing can ever go beyond these teachings of the brotherhood of man, and the way that the heart may find God, and become conscious of the presence of God, and know its immortality, and the everlasting truth. What did the great Teacher say on Galilee?"
The Parable began to repeat from memory the Sermon on the Mount and the Galilean teachings. ”

“ Yet everywhere he is the same; displaying a character of unearthly perfection, symmetrical in all its proportions, and encircled with splendor more than human. Either the men of Galilee were men of superlative wisdom, and extensive knowledge and experience, and of deeper skill in the arts of deception, than any and all others, before or after them, or they have truly stated the astonishing things which they saw and heard. ”

“ A stronger illustration of tranquil thought in terrible tumult was never drawn.
“O Galilee, Sweet Galilee,” whose history has been given at the end of chapter six, was not only often sung in Sunday-schools, but chimed (in the cities) on steeple-bells—nor is it by any means forgotten today—on the Sabbath and in social singing assemblies. Like “Precious Jewels,” it has been, in many places, taken up by street boys with a relish, and often displaced the play-house ditties in the lips of little newsboys and bootblacks during a leisure hour or a happy mood. ”

“ There is occasionally found in a cathedral, or other large church, a porch of unusual depth, known as a Galilee. Here, during Lent, those assembled who were bidden to do public penance; the coming of Maundy Thursday being the signal for their admission once more into the church itself. Ely has a western Galilee entered by an arch, divided by a central pillar, and filled in the upper part with tracery. Lincoln has a Galilee, deep and dignified in plan, with a vaulted roof. ”

“ In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet for the birth of a religion able to save a world; and meet for the stately Figure appointed to stand upon its stage and proclaim its high decrees. ”

“ I take it, however, that Luke knew Mark’s tradition ‘to Galilee,’ and rejected it as erroneous. Matthew also says that certain women, meeting Jesus after death, ‘took hold of his feet,’ and Jesus sent word by them to the disciples to ‘depart into Galilee.’ Here you see ‘Galilee’ again. But this tradition is not in any other gospel. Luke makes no mention of any appearance in Galilee. ”

“ The Galilee would also appear to have been the vestibule of an abbey church where women were allowed to see the monks to whom they were related, or from which they could hear divine service. The foundation of what is considered to have been a Galilee exists at the west end of Fountains Abbey. ”

“ He, therefore, left Jerusalem at an early period in His ministry and betook Himself to Galilee; and now, after some months’ preaching and mingling with the people, things have worked round in Galilee to precisely the same point as they had reached in Judæa. Great crowds are following Him to be healed and to be fed, while the politically inclined have at last made a distinct effort to make Him a king, to force Him into a collision with the authorities. His proper work is in danger of being lost sight of. He finds it necessary to sift the crowds who follow Him. ”

“ He had nothing from other teachers or thinkers. He was only a Jew, never out of Palestine, of a peasant family in Galilee. The Galilean was a narrow, suspicious, and revengeful man; provincial to the last degree; holding fast old ideas and rejecting new ones with little regard to argument or evidence—the “Bourbon” of his time. He was a man of bitterer prejudices than characterized even the men of Judea. But even Galilee had its best and its worse, and Jesus was brought up in a disreputable mountain town. “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” ”

“ In Judaea nearly all the people were Jews, and very proud they {18} were of the fact. In Galilee many belonged to other nations, and the Judaeans looked down on Galilee and thought it was half heathen. But even in Galilee there were many earnest Jews, and it may be doubted if, after all, half-heathen Galilee was not a better place for a boy to grow up in than was proud Jerusalem. It is better for a boy to be able to sympathize with those who do not belong to his set, than to look down on other people because they are somehow different from him. ”

“ After the ascension, all the apostles seem to have removed their families and business from Galilee, and to have made Jerusalem their permanent abode. From this time no more mention is made of any part of Galilee as the home of Peter or his friends; and even the lake, with its cities, so long hallowed by the presence and the deeds of the son of man, was thenceforth entirely left to the low and vulgar pursuits which the dwellers of that region had formerly followed upon it, without disturbance from the preaching and the miracles of the Nazarene. ”

“ Josephus gives a good description of the Galilee of his time in Wars, iii. 3. 2: “The Galileans are inured to war from their infancy, and have been always very numerous; nor hath the country been ever destitute of men of courage or wanted a numerous set of them; for their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and full of plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation. ”

“ It is easy to read without emotion that Jesus arose from the scene of His last discourse, and came into the borders of Judæa beyond Jordan. But not without emotion did Jesus bid farewell to Galilee, to the home of His childhood and sequestered youth, the cradle of His Church, the centre of nearly all the love and faith He had awakened. When closer still to death, His heart reverted to Galilee, and He promised that when He was risen He would go thither before His disciples. ”

“ His words had no effect but to make the other members of the council ask him, "Art thou also of Galilee?"—that is, art thou one of those who have the folly to believe in this Galilean. "Search and look" in the Scriptures, for they will show that "out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."
Nothing more was at this time said or done, and the Pharisees probably broke up the council in anger, vexed at not having got Jesus into their power. "Every man went unto his own house." ”

“ If he heard Jesus say, "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you ... as ye would that men should do to you do ye to them likewise; for if ye love them that love you what thank have you ... love ye your enemies," what would such a man have thought? In the light of the experiences of our own time there is no reason for wonder that Jesus in the end found it impossible to live in Galilee. ”

“ Of these some dwelt in Judæa, and a few in Peræa; but the more part dwelt in Galilee, insomuch that the sect of Patriots was known by the name of Galileans. There were also living among us James and John, the two eldest sons of Judas of Galilee, and their youngest brother Manahem. To these, for the sake of their great father, we all had [pg 18] respect. Many also (like myself) were ever in a readiness to avenge upon the Romans the blood of kinsfolk shed in the Galilean wars. ”

“ Now the people and the land of Peræa are not like unto the people and the land of Galilee. For in Galilee the fields are small, and they till corn and vines and olives; and the men are exceeding stubborn and resolute, neither very rich, nor very poor. But in Peræa they have great pastures, and some are rich in flocks and herds, while others have scarce bread to eat; moreover the men are of an unstable disposition, fond also of wealth, and given to ease, and not so steadfast as the men of Galilee. ”

“ It was believed (not without reason) that they were not of pure Jewish blood, and no one expected Galilee to produce a prophet. [5] Placed thus on the confines of Judaism, and almost outside of it, the poor Galileans had only one badly interpreted passage in Isaiah to build their hopes upon. [6] "Land of Zebulon, and land of Naphtali, way of the sea, Galilee of the nations! The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." The reputation of the native city of Jesus was particularly bad. ”

“ But where else, except in Galilee could five hundred disciples have been got together? It could not have been at Jerusalem, at the Ascension, because the brethren there only numbered one hundred and twenty souls.336 St Matthew, it is true, only speaks of the eleven disciples as going “into Galilee unto the mountain,” but others must have been present because we are told that “some doubted,” and the eleven would not have doubted. This admission shews that when the writer drew up his account, he felt no eagerness to strengthen the evidence for the Resurrection ”