Historical geography of Herodian Galilee : a study in geography, society, and trade

Abstract

The aim of this study is to try to reconstruct some aspects of the historical geography of Galilee, the northernmost region of Palestine, in the Herodian period, from the reign of Herod the Great (40BC) to that of Agrippa I (AD44). Before doing so, I sought to give a short account of the political background of the region. The above-mentioned aspects will include geography, society and trade. Special attention will be given to the Phoenician language in the concluding paragraphs. Galilee was the province where Jesus was brought up by his Galilean parents, lived, met some of his apostles and preached his teachings. In Galilee, he turned water to wine (John 2:1-12), he healed a blind man (Mark 8:22-26), he fed the multitude (Matthew 15:29-39), he restored the widow's son to life (Luke 7:11-27) and tamed the storm (Matthew 8:23-27). Some of these locations will be explored in this essay. Section one relates the history, the political development and the corresponding changes in the political boundaries of the region. Section two discusses the topography and geographical features of the province. This shows the effect of topography on human settlements. Section three deals with communications, demography, villages, and cities of Galilee. Section four treats some features of the Galilean society, with special care given to the languages of the region. The final section talks about the economic resources and trade relations within the region and between Galilee and other provinces. In writing this essay, I have made use of various literary/ classical sources and archaeological data. A great part of this essay is indebted to the works of the great scholars, in particular, George Adam Smith, Michael Avi-Yonah, Richard Horsley, and Sean Freyne. The classical sources which I have made use of are the works of Josephus and the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Encounters and references to the Mishnah and other Rabbinic writings was done exclusively through secondary sources. In this essay, I have used the Hebrew toponyms to refer to geographical locations and sometimes the Greek name where pertinent (e.g. Bippus). However, I have put the Arabic equivalent to these place nan1es in the list of appendices. Common place names such as Jerusalem are written in English for obvious reasons. The word Palestine in this work does not include all the lands of the Bible, but refers only to the land west of the Jordan. A note to the reader to cross reference a certain figure is inserted where it might be helpful to do so. The following paragraph gives a brief history of the term Galilee.