ABSTRACT
In an appendix to his book Sha’ar Ha-Gilgulim (Gate of Reincarnations), R. Hayyim Vital, a disciple of R. Yitzhak Luria (known as Ha-Ari) and the editor of Luria’s teachings at the end of the sixteenth century, provides a list of holy places that he attributed to his teacher. One of the entries is surprising and seemingly incomprehensible: “North of Safed… as you go from Safed to the north, on the way to the village ‘Ein Zeitun’, via a carob tree, Jesus of Nazareth is buried.” 1 This is the most recent reference we have to the many aspects and incarnations of Joshua, both the name and the figure, in popular Jewish culture in the Galilee. Joshua first makes an appearance in the Galilee in very early times, before the Common Era. Mentions of him multiply during the first centuries of the Common Era, and a subsidiary string of references concerns another Galilean Joshua – Jesus of Nazareth. The tradition fades gradually at the end of the Byzantine period until it nearly vanishes, leaving only traces that allow us to chronicle the progression of this forgotten belief. 2
