ABSTRACT

In his discussion of Judea, the Greek geographer Strabo, writing in the time of the emperor Augustus, records the interesting demographic aside that the country’s northern regions are “inhabited in general … by mixed stocks of people from Egyptian and Arabian and Phoenician tribes”; they live, he says further on, “mixed up thus” (16.2.34 § C760). Such a remark, made to and repeated by an outsider, likely reflects what at least some observers saw as significant about the region. Like any off-hand characterization of an entire area, it was surely as generally misleading as it was true, though those who lived in and knew northern Judea first-hand would have easily fleshed out the social picture behind the words. We stand at a disadvantage, trying to discern from words and disparate remains what such a remark might actually mean in terms of Galilean culture and society. Many historians and archaeologists have combed and compared the period’s literary sources for answers to this fundamental question. In what follows, I hope to add a material thread to the picture they have developed. I will present new evidence that documents and clarifies the lifestyles and choices of the inhabitants of Galilee.