9 - The Early Roman (Herodian) Period (40 B.C.E.–70 C.E.)

Summary

Roman Palestine was an agrarian, preindustrial society. Nearly all the wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of a small percentage of the population. Most of this elite population – which included the high priestly families – lived in and around Jerusalem and Jericho. Roman Galilee was overwhelmingly rural, with a population consisting of farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, and artisans who had little disposable income and lived just above the subsistence level. The New Testament indicates that Jesus came from a lower-class Galilean family. As the New Testament scholar John Meier remarks, “He [Jesus] was in one sense poor, and a comfortable, middle-class urban American would find living conditions in ancient Nazareth appalling. But Jesus was probably no poorer or less respectable than almost anyone else in Nazareth, or for that matter in Galilee.”

Lower-class Jews populate the Gospel accounts and seem to have been Jesus’ target audience. Typically they were villagers who owned houses and had a few possessions but were not destitute like the leper who begs Jesus to heal him in Mark 1:40. The agrarian nature of rural Galilee is reflected in Jesus’ parables and teachings, which mention picking and sowing grain, netting fish, herding sheep, and so on. References to patched clothing (Mark 2:21), hired laborers in vineyards (Matthew 20:1–16), and debtors sold into slavery (Matthew 18:23–35) must have resonated with Jesus’ audience. This chapter reviews the archaeology of Bethlehem and Galilee – which the Gospels describe as the setting for Jesus’ birth and ministry – in the time of Jesus.