The final chapter considers the intimacy Faulkner creates between Gavin Stevens and Linda Snopes Kohl in his late novels The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1959). While Gavin and Linda eventually profess their love for one another, they never consummate the relationship sexually, and critics have often described their connection as platonic. In The Town, Gavin tries to teach Linda poetry, but her boyfriend Matt destroys one of the books Gavin gives her such that the book loses its weave of text and thing, becoming more the latter. In The Mansion, set years later, Linda has lost her hearing while fighting for the loyalists in the Spanish Civil War. When she returns to Jefferson, she and Gavin communicate with the writing devices of an ivory tablet with a gold stylus and pads of foolscap paper. Faulkner presents Linda’s husband, who died in the war, as a virile sculptor, and her relationship with Gavin becomes for Faulkner a meditation on the extent to which writing can substitute for more traditionally understood forms of physical intimacy. Finally, in a conclusion to this study as a whole, Boon Hogganbeck in The Reivers (1962) finds an intimate link between bodies and the telephone.

In order to pinpoint the centralization of wealth and power in Palestine, this chapter compares and contrasts levels of wealth across Galilee and Judea. There is no longer a clear demarcation between urban and rural settlements in first-century Galilee. Some villages demonstrate urban characteristics reflected by a variety of building styles and house decoration, and this is indicative of a distinct socio-economic hierarchy, with the emergence of an elite espousing Graeco-Roman tastes. In addition to arable and pastoral farming, various industries flourished, some on an industrial scale. The infrastructures of both Sepphoris and Tiberias had scarcely been developed by the early first century, with the houses of the rich at Sepphoris dating to the second century. Taking Magdala aside, which Jesus appeared to avoid as with other Galilean cities, the level of wealth identified in Galilee is far surpassed by that uncovered in Jerusalem, in particular the lavish mansions of the priestly aristocracy in the Upper City. The Upper City priestly quarter and its relationship to the nearby Temple embodies the centralization of wealth and power that Jesus opposed in first-century Palestine.

This chapter explores socio-economic versus halachic explanations for the distribution of ethnic indicators between Judea and Galilee. Fewer miqwa’ot and scant ossuaries have been found in Galilee. Regarding ossuaries, the trickle-down effect from the Judean elite, who had adopted this Roman mode of burial, to the Galilean elite, would have taken time and resulted in smaller and more modest adjustments; this could partially account for any ossuary disparity between Galilee and Judea pre-70 CE. But, more importantly, the difficulties in distinguishing between first-century and second-century Galilean tombs have hampered firm conclusions being made. The miqwa’ot data demonstrate a difference in the interpretation of the Halacha (religious rules), that reflects a diverse Judaism firmly underpinned by a common Judaism identified through a number of archaeological artefacts, such as the Herodian or knife-pared oil lamp common in both Galilee and Judea. The widespread presence of pig bones on Jewish sites, albeit in low numbers, also demonstrates a diverse Judaism. Stone vessels were discovered on all types of site across Judea and Galilee and, with the exception of large jars clearly produced for the wealthy, were used by all classes. This stone vessel revolution has been interpreted as establishing Jewish identity and self-sufficiency.