Judas of Galilee

“ But when the neighboring nations understood that he was returned they got together in great numbers in the land of Gilead and came against those Jews that were at their borders, who then fled to the garrison of Dathema, and sent to Judas to inform him that Timotheus was endeavoring to take the place whither they were fled. And as these epistles were reading, there came other messengers out of Galilee who informed him that the inhabitants of Ptolemais, and of Tyre and Sidon, and strangers of Galilee, were gotten together. ”

“ But, go where I might, I found it quite contrary; for all men were wroth with him for departing. Barabbas was there, and James the son of Judas of Galilee, and many others of the Galilean sect; but I could not have much speech with them, so hot was their anger against Jesus; but on the morrow, lighting upon my cousin Baruch, I questioned him touching that which had happened, and he said that "the Prophet had turned from him all the hearts of the Galileans because he would not raise up Israel to avenge the death of John." ”

“ Other Factions there were among the Jews, which are improperly termed Sects. Of these there were principally two. First, Gaulonitæ. Secondly, Herodiani. The Gaulonitæ had their names from one Judas, who sometimes [183] was called Judas Gaulonites, sometimes [184] Judas Galilæus, of whom Gamaliel speaketh, Acts 5. 37. After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the daies of the tribute. The tribute here spoken of, was that made by Cyrenius, sometimes called Quirinius: the name in Greek is one and the same, but differently read by Expositors. ”

“ GALILEANS. or GAULITES, [1] a political sect, or rather party among the Jews, the followers of Judas, a native of Gaulan in Galilee, who in the tenth year of Jesus Christ excited his countrymen, the Galileans, and many other Jews, to take arms, and venture upon all extremities, rather than pay tribute to the Romans. The principles he instilled into his party were, not only that they were a free nation, and ought not to be in subjection to any other; but that they were the elect of God, that he alone was their governour, and that therefore they ought not to submit to any ordinance of man. ”

“ Gaulonitis lay east of the Jordan, opposite Galilee. Judas of Galilee was probably his common designation, given to him either because his revolt took rise in Galilee, or because Galilee was used as a general term for the north country. He was evidently a man of position and great personal influence, and drew vast numbers to his standard, denouncing, in the name of religion, the payment of tribute to Rome and all submission to a foreign yoke. The revolt spread very rapidly, and the whole country was thrown into excitement and disorder ”

“ But this would not hold so well of cases like those of Judas Iscariot and Joseph of Arimathaea, whose relation to Jesus is associated with His religious work. Of course the proof is not decisive; but both these and many other indications would be better satisfied if the ministry had really been carried on in Judaea as well as Galilee. ”

“ He had long had his eyes on Jesus, and in secret conclave with his own relatives and friends, with the authorities, and the Sadducees, had decided the fate of the Prophet of Galilee. But he did not trust Judas, who he had heard was a bad, untruthful man, and he had no confidence in his flippant faith in the cowardice of the disciples, and of the people. Annas believed in his own power, but he feared bloodshed, feared a serious riot, such as the insubordinate, irascible people of Jerusalem lent itself to so easily ”

“ The territory entrusted for defense to Joseph ben Matthias, by reason of its position, its astonishing fertility, its sturdy population, and its various resources in time of danger, was looked upon as the post of greatest importance next to the capital; it was, in fact, the bulwark of Jerusalem. Galilee was divided into Upper and Lower Galilee. This, the country of enthusiasts, the birthplace of the Zealot Judas and of Jesus of Nazareth, did not receive the news of the revolt of Jerusalem and the defeat of Cestius with indifference. ”

“ For sagacious doorkeepers are quick in detecting, for it is difficult to conceal the feelings, and not to betray them by the look. Perhaps, also, she had seen Peter with the other Apostles, and had carefully noted his appearance.
0f Galilee: For Jesus was of Nazareth in Galilee, and he calls him a Galilean, both as despised by the Jews, who thought that no Prophets came from thence (John vii. 62) , and also as a seditious person, a follower of Judas of Galilee (Acts v. 37) .
Ver. 70. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. ”

“ But Judas, resolving to be beforehand with any opposition they might offer, carried his victorious arms into the territories of the Idumæans and Amorites. Then, having strengthened the outer wall of the Temple, and placed there a garrison to act against the Syrians in the Acra, and fortified the stronghold of Beth-zur, he divided his army into three parts. With 8000 men he himself crossed the Jordan into the land of Gilead; his brother Simon with 3000 was stationed in Galilee ”

“ And this was the state of the Jews at this time in Babylonia.
↑ Since St. Luke once, Acts 5:37, and Josephus four several times, once here, sect. 6; and B. XX. ch. 5. sect. 2; Of the War, B. II. ch. 8. sect. 1; and ch. 17. sect. 8, calls this Judas, who was the pestilent author of that seditious doctrine and temper which brought the Jewish nation to utter destruction, a Galilean; but here (sect. 1) Josephus calls him a Gaulonite, of the city of Gamala; it is a great question where this Judas was born, whether in Galilee on the west side, or in Gaulonitis on the east side, of the river Jordan ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have already heard of John the Baptist (Essene) , who so stirred the people by preaching that "the kingdom of God" was at hand; this was the Messianic hope. He evidently inspired one youth, who was in close sympathy with the Essene brotherhood, Joshua (Greek Jesus) from Nazareth, in Galilee. Galilee, like the other provinces in northern Palestine, was away from the learning and culture of Jerusalem. It was the home of simple folk who spoke a corrupt dialect, and who credulously accepted popular superstitions; such as, every disease comes from an indwelling spirit or demon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 was simply a sweet and beautiful Galilean youth, with the grace of God upon Him.
In all Palestine now people were not agreed as to what the new kingdom that was coming to the world would be. Some looked for the earth suddenly to be crashed to pieces. Some looked simply for a renewal of the earth. Some said the righteous dead would come out of their graves and help govern. Some said all nature would be changed, and a wondrous king would come straight from Heaven. When the simple folks of Galilee talked to the Carpenter about it, He told them they were all mistaken. ”

“ The voice that echoed from the hills of Galilee is echoing today from hills the Romans never trod, and the story of that life is rendered in tongues unknown at Pentecost. The more you look at it from the standpoint of the contemporaries of the carpenter of Nazareth the more incredibly marvelous it appears.
And this is the great gain of the Passion Play. It takes us clear back across the ages to the standpoint of those who saw Jesus, the Galilean, as merely a man among men. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ From KAUFMANN KOHLER Ph.D., Rabbi of Temple Beth-El, New York:
The true history of Jesus is so wrapped up in myth, the story of his life told in the gospels so replete with contradictions, that it is rather difficult for the unbiased reader to arrive at the true historical facts. Still the beautiful tales about the things that happened around the lake of Galilee show that there was a spiritual daybreak in that dark corner of Judea of which official Judaism had failed to take sufficient cognizance. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” of a new world. ”

“ It is not impossible that on some of the earlier visits of Jesus to Jerusalem he did not accompany his Master, and in reporting the things which he knew he naturally confined himself to his own experiences. If this can explain the predominance of Galilean incidents in the ministry as depicted in Mark, it will explain the predominance of Galilee in the first three gospels, and the contradiction between John and the three is reduced to a divergence between two accounts of Jesus' ministry written from two different points of view. ”

“ It differs in character from the Galilean ministry: for among the simple, unsophisticated folk of Galilee Jesus presents Himself as a healer and helper and teacher, keeping in the background as far as possible His claim to be the Messiah; whereas in Jerusalem His authority is challenged at His first appearance, the element of controversy is never absent, His relation to God is from the outset the vital issue, and consequently His Divine claim is of necessity made explicit. ”

“ Yet there was one thing that perplexed many, and opinion went hither and thither among the minds of men concerning it. The Christ who was to deliver Israel and to rule over mankind, was he not to be the son of David? Yet this Jesus was of Galilee, where the admixture of blood had been greatest in all Israel. "There is no unleavened bread in all Galilee," the scoffers used to say, meaning thereby that their genealogy was sprinkled with yeast, as we call foreign admixture. ”

“ It must remain an open question whether he went to Jerusalem and was executed there (!) ; that he should seek disciples of his new teaching in the centre of Judaism would not be surprising; that he was confused on account of some imprudent remark with the Messianic pretenders of that excited world, and executed, is not unthinkable, but it is just as possible that he never left Galilee and died there in obscurity (!) ”

“ 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. ”