Problematic aspects of the ethno-religious affiliation of Jesus of Nazareth to Jewish Judaism in the context of the "Third Search for the Historical Jesus"

Mezentsev Ivan Valer'evich ORCID: 0000-0001-5585-5821 PhD in Philosophy Independent researcher 690025, Russia, Primorsky Krai, Vladivostok, Dzhambula str., 7, sq. 1 mezivan@yandex.ru Chekrygin Oleg Vsevolodovich ORCID: 0009-0007-4393-1445 Independent researcher 115419, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Serpukhov Val str., 24/1, sq. 34 ochek@bk.ru

Nadeina Dar'ya Aleksandrovna ORCID: 0009-0006-6063-8171 Postgraduate student, Department of Philosophy of Science and Technology, St. Petersburg State University 115419, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, blvd. Walnut, 59, office 89 andeo.me@gmail.com

Introduction.

Since about the 80s of the last century, a scientific process has been going on, conventionally designated as the "third search for the historical Jesus", which in a sense has been reduced to the search for historical Galilee. For the purposes of our study, it will be sufficient to point out that the two previous stages, in fact, were reduced to arbitrary historical reconstructions of the personality of Jesus, mainly based on the analysis of the texts of Holy Scripture, some apocrypha and related documents. In this sense, the third stage differs from the previous ones by the interest in Galilee as the birthplace of Jesus, where, according to experts in the field of sociology, comparative anthropology, and since the 90s - the archaeology of Galilee, the formation and formation of the personality of Jesus took place under the influence of the environment. Galilee of the time of Jesus, in the view of the "third-party explorers", was ethnoreligiously completely Jewish, with a population consisting of descendants in the third or fourth generation of Maccabean immigrants from Judea to Galilee in order to expand and join the Hasmonean Empire of the original Jewish, as they believed, northern territories. This version of the Hasmonean exodus made it possible, using archaeological data, to develop and put into use the idea of a special Galilean version of Judaism, which combined elements of everyday Hellenization along with normative Jewish religiosity: "... it should be about more precisely determining what kind of Judaism Jesus represents" ^{[12, p. 437]}. And also to once again substantiate and confirm the exceptional devotion of the Judaism-born "good Jew" Jesus to the biblical god and the Jewish religion in general.

It is not surprising that there are few preserved historical written monuments testifying to the history of Galilee. It is also not surprising that there are many versions and reconstructions of the personality of Jesus and the content of his teachings in studies of various kinds – based on the same scant documentary evidence. What is surprising from our point of view is the accepted axiom about Jesus, represented by ancient Judeo-Christianity of the first century, as Christ, the "same" Jewish Messiah of the ancient prophecies of the Hebrew Bible, which has been common to all over the centuries, both church leaders from Paul to the present, and numerous representatives of the non-denominational study of the legacy of Jesus. Any attempts to question this image of Jesus, and even more so to refute this dogmatic axiom on the basis of known facts, are simply ignored by both the scientific community and public opinion, despite the serious weight of the arguments given by supporters of other opinions about the ethno-religious origin of Jesus and His Teachings. For example, F.F. Zelinsky in his fundamental work "The History of Ancient Religions" in the sixth chapter "De-Judaization" writes: "§ 26 Christianity arose from Judaism. This is the first lie, gentlemen, a blatant lie that causes great harm… Supporters of this point of view, and there are many of them, continue to insist that the founder of Christianity, as they insist, was himself a Jew. This is the second lie, which is also obvious and causes even more harm than the first one."^[2]

The interest in the history of Galilee shown in the "third search" is quite justified for understanding the historical realities in which Jesus' life and His formation as a person took place. However, from our point of view, the dogmatized statement about Jesus as an ethnic Jew and a religious Jew obviously leads to voluntary or involuntary scientific bias. This fully applies, from our point of view, to the interpretation of data from the archaeology of Galilee. This gives the authors of this article a reason to take a closer look at the available ancient sources, as well as those archaeological facts that are presented as evidence – in order to objectively assess them for the ethnoreligious affiliation of Jesus.

1. Mention of Galilee in ancient written sources.

In view of the already indicated concentration of the "third search" on the Hasmonean period of Galilee's history, all previous periods will be indicated only dotted lines: the volume of the journal publication does not allow to confirm them citationally, we have to limit ourselves to references.

1.1. The Iron Age and the Hebrew Bible. The first biblical mention of Galilee is in the Book of Joshua (c. 1540-1430 BC) in chapter 21: "... from the tribe of Naphtali, the city of refuge for the murderer is Kedes in Galilee and its suburbs" (Nav. 21:32). Further, in chapter 9 of the third book of Kings (v. 11-13), it is said that in the tenth century BC, Solomon rewarded his Phoenician ally, King Hiram I of Sidon, with twenty cities in the land of Galilee, which were then inhabited by Gentiles during and after the reign of Hiram ^[16].

Thus, this was the first deportation (forced or voluntarily-forced) of Jewish Jews from the territory of Galilee, or at least its northwestern part.

1.2. Assyrian captivity. In 732 BC, Tiglath-Pileser III tore Galilee from the kingdom of Israel and, turning it into the Assyrian province of Megiddo, captured the local population of Assyria (4 Kings 15:29; cf. 1 Par. 5:6, 26).

This is the second complete forced deportation of the Galilean population. Instead of the conventional Jewish Jews, Galilee "pagan" was inhabited by Aramaic tribes who brought their own language to these lands, which was preserved there until the time of Jesus. The resettled peoples continued to worship their gods, and while remaining polytheists, they revered the local Jewish god among others (4 Kings 15:29).

1.3. Babylonian captivity. In July 586 BC, after another uprising of Judea, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II captured and destroyed Jerusalem; the great captivity began for the Jews, which lasted for almost 70 years (Antiquity 10.9.7). Galilee was not affected by this eviction.

1.4. After captivity. The post-war restoration of the community was limited only to Jerusalem and its environs. The Jerusalem temple community has received great privileges. This caused serious dissatisfaction among the local population of Palestine, Samaritans and Galileans, who were placed in an inferior, even dependent position (Antiquity 11). As Prof. Welhausen: "It was not the people who returned from exile, but only a religious sect" ^[18].

1.5. The Hellenistic period. In 333 BC, Galilee was conquered from the Persians by the troops of Alexander the Great, and the development of its territory by Greek-Macedonian colonists began. Based on archaeological evidence from Tel Anafa, Kedesh and ash-Shuhara, it is believed that Upper Galilee was inhabited at that time by a pagan population with close ties to the Phoenician coast.

"The periods of rule of Babylonia (from 604 BC) (When Nebuchadnezzar captured Syria and Judea, see 4 Kings 24-25.), Persia (from 539 BC) and the Hellenistic Ptolemaic states (between 323 and 200 BC) and the Seleucids are not marked by exceptional events for Galilee" ^[1].

The remoteness of Galilee from the territory of direct influence of Judea, with which it did not border, as well as the heterogeneous ethnic and religious composition of the population suggest that in Galilee during this relatively peaceful period of coexistence of representatives of various peoples and faiths, there could also be small settlements of Jews who penetrated into Galilee from Judea by natural diffusion through the purchase of fertile land on a completely peaceful, accommodating and tolerant territory towards any aliens, strangers and colonists. Everything changed in the relations of the few Jews who settled in Galilee with their Gentile neighbors after the Hasmonean uprising.

1.6. The Hasmonean period (165-37 BC), prehistory. It is the Hasmonean period that the "Third Search" refers to as the basis for the mass Judaization of Galilee, and therefore its history should be considered in all details

At first, the process of Hellenization in Jerusalem, as, apparently, in many other cities, proceeded peacefully. Part of the population decided to adopt Greek customs and live as a separate community. However, the situation was complicated by the struggle of sects that nominated candidates for the high priesthood, as well as the special "God-chosen" Judaism.

In 170 BC, Antiochus IV had to bring an army into the city to restore order, and in 168 BC, the unrest caused by the rumor of the death of the king turned into a large-scale uprising. After that, the king decided, relying on the pro-Greek part of the priesthood, to proceed to the forced Hellenization of the inhabitants.

1.7. The Maccabean Rebellion. The sudden death of Antiochus IV in 165 BC prevented him from organizing a campaign against the Jews, at the same time the rebellion grew and took on the character of a war of independence; the struggle ended with the victory of the Jews, the creation of an independent Jewish state centered in Jerusalem and the restoration of Temple worship.

1.8. Judas Maccabeus (c. 166-160 BC). "When the surrounding peoples heard that the altar had been built and the sanctuary had been restored, as before, they were greatly indignant" (1 Mac. 2:1). "The surrounding tribes reacted very unfriendly to the successes and increasing power of the Jews" (Antiquity 13.8) – and, in particular, the Galileans, who turned against the Jews who lived there. Judas sent Simon's brother with an army to fight for them, which ended with Simon leading all the Jews who lived there out of Galilee to Judea "with great joy" (1 Mac. 5: 23).

Why did the "surrounding peoples", who had previously got along well with the Jews, suddenly "strongly resented" the restoration of the altar in Jerusalem, and began to exterminate the Jews who lived among them? We find the answer in Flavius, who in book 11 of the Jewish Antiquities notes that the final formalization of the dogmas of Judaism was completed only at the beginning of the IV century BC. That is, shortly before the beginning of the Hellenistic period, a new Jewish religion of the special God-chosen Jewish people arose in Judea. While it was being mastered by the Jews themselves within Jerusalem and Judea, the times of Hellenic domination came, and the religion of the Jews turned out to be persecuted, being forced to hide its true face of the religion of the special election of the Jewish people by the one and only biblical god for all peoples – and so it was until the Maccabean uprising. The restoration of the altar and the sacrifices in Jerusalem was a signal to Jews throughout Palestine: it has begun! And the reaction of the Jews, who lived scattered among other peoples, whom they had always considered alien invaders of ancestral Jewish lands, was predictably triumphant: We will show you who is the boss here. So the reaction of those around them who were quite friendly to Jews before was obviously, alas, in response, and a completely different picture of what happened in Galilee seems more realistic, namely: not the Galileans, but, on the contrary, the Jews, aggressively opposed to the "alien" Gentiles, inspired by the uprising in Judea, in turn raised a Jewish uprising in Galilee, to whose aid Simon went. And, most likely, despite Flavius' victorious statements, after the invasion of Galilee, he was beaten due to the small number of his troops compared to the population of Galilee, who united against the Jewish invaders. Therefore, he had to urgently get out of Galilee, which he had seemingly defeated, but which, nevertheless, Simon could not capture and annex to Judea – and then why did he come at all? This failed action of his, firstly, led to the complete and final deportation of the small Jewish population that had formed during the previous period, and secondly, to the reciprocal hatred of the Galileans towards Jews as invaders and robbers, which hatred never again (until the end of the First Jewish War) allowed any Jews to settle on a permanent basis in Galilee among the Galilean population.

In the works of the German biblical scholar Albrecht Alt ^[9], the point of view is defended that the events of the Maccabean war were limited only to the western outskirts of Galilee and the coast, and not all Jews were evacuated: Allegedly, sources speak of their presence here before the Hasmonean conquest. However, upon close examination of the sources mentioned by him, it turns out that the arguments he presented are not convincing from our point of view, and will be challenged and convincingly refuted below, namely: 1) the freedom with which the Hasmonean military commander Jonathan moved around Galilee (c. 145 BC) is explained by his support by local residents; 2) the sending of the young Alexander Yannai to Galilee for education, approximately in kon. II century BC; 3) Ptolemy's capture of Asochis at Yannai 103 BC).

This is the third complete deportation of the Jewish population from Galilee – this time voluntarily-forced by the Maccabean Jews themselves.

1.9. Jonathan (c. 160-143 BC). "When Jonathan began to ask the king to be satisfied with a rent of thirty talents for the whole of Judea and the three toparchies of Samaria, Perea and Galilee, Demetrius II (!) agreed to this: "I assign him three nomes, Apherim, Lydda and Ramaphas which they took from Samaria and annexed to Judea"" (Antiquities 13.4.9).

That is, the king exempts Judea from all taxes with the southern Samarian lands it has already conquered, and not a word about toparchies – why? Only because Jonathan has designs on all the lands (Jewish and Israeli) that belonged to the Jews before the Assyrian-Babylonian captivity, and with this request informs the king of his claims. The king's reaction is passive-negative, he mentions only Judea and what it has already captured, but not a word about the rest of the territories, and this means "no".

Later in chapters 4-10, Flavius mentions Galilee only once as the site of the battle of Jonathan's troops with Demetrius II, which does not in any way indicate that Galilee belonged to the Maccabean kingdom: the troops of many kings constantly moved and moved throughout Palestine, but this does not say anything about the ownership of the lands for which there were constant wars between the Greeks, Egyptians and Jews and later also by the Romans, much less about the ethnic and religious composition of the peoples inhabiting them. Flavius' casual mention of the army's march from Lake Genisaret towards the Asor plateau speaks only about geography, and nothing about geopolitics.

1.10. John Hyrcanus (c.143-106 BC). When Antiochus died in Parthia, John immediately began to take over the Syrian cities, subjugated the Samaritans (in the north) and the Idumeans (in the south), and forcibly forced them to convert to Judaism and circumcision. He died in 107 BC.

Under Simon and Hyrcanus – all this was contained in the 13th book of Flavius' Antiquities – Southern Samaria was partially occupied – and not a word about neighboring Galilee.

1.11. Aristobulus 1, son of Hyrcanus (c.106-107 BC). Reigned for only a year; after defeating the Iturians who captured part of Upper Galilee, he converted them to Judaism and in 106 BC annexed the whole of Galilee to the kingdom of the Hasmoneans: "... and forced those of the Iturians who wanted to stay in their to accept circumcision and live according to the laws of the Jews" (Antiquity, 13.11.3) (that is, he evicted the dissenters).

That is, Galilee was not included in the Hasmonean kingdom at all until 106 BC. Ithurea was north of Galilee, even further from Judea than Galilee. However, nowhere is there any mention of the conquest of Galilee under Hyrcanus or his son Aristobulus. Apparently, after Aristobulus conquered the more northern territories, Galilee formally entered the Hasmonean Empire without his knowledge, and nowhere is there any mention of Judaization – voluntary or forced – of the peoples who inhabited it. At the same time, there were not enough people for the noticeable colonization of Galilee from Judea under Aristobulus due to the large losses of the Jewish population during the Maccabean wars ^[10].

It turns out that it was only in 106 BC that Galilee was at least formally annexed to the Maccabean kingdom.

1.12. Alexander Yannai (c. 106-79 BC). "Hyrcanus loved Antigonus and Aristobulus more than all other children. And so, when he saw the Eternal One in a dream, he asked Him which of the children would be his successor. The Lord God pointed at Yannai. Then Hyrcanus, grieved that this particular son of his would become the heir to all his goods, ordered, when Yannai was born, to give him up for education in Galilee" (Antiquities, 13.12.1).

Hyrcanus went against his god and his prophecy, removing the hated child from himself to pagan Galilee, where, as he hoped, he would forget both his family and his ancestral religion – that's the meaning of this exile: to deprive his son of his roots, his past, present and future. This reference proves that Galilee was a foreign, alien and hostile country for the Jews of that time. This version is confirmed by another quote from Flavius, which he does not explain: "In addition, the people began to revile him (Hyrcanus – author's note) that he was born from parents of prisoners of war and therefore cannot be recognized worthy of the honor of performing sacrifices" (Antiquities, 14.13.5). Apparently, Yannai was raised in Galilee in a foster family of Gentile non-Jews, who were considered prisoners of war in Judea, since they formally belonged to foreign peoples conquered by the Jews, precisely in order to permanently block his path to the royal throne and high priestly rank – and the rumor about this distorted over time, turning him from a royal son into the son of pagan "prisoners of war".

1.13. Yannaya's enmity with Ptolemy. "But since Alexander [in time] learned about Ptolemy's intention, he gathered about fifty thousand soldiers, and according to some historians, even eighty thousand, and with this army marched against Ptolemy. Then the latter unexpectedly attacked the Galilean city of Asochis, stormed it one Saturday, took about ten thousand prisoners from there and carried off significant loot" (Antiquities, 13-12:4.5).

Many researchers of texts interpret this place as evidence that the population of Asochis (and therefore the whole of Galilee) was entirely Jewish: the Jews observed the Sabbath and on the Sabbath could not resist the pagans of Ptolemy. Flavius himself refutes this erroneous opinion in another place of the Antiquities: "the fact is that the law allows to repel an offensive and attack, but does not allow to hinder any other enterprise of the enemies" (Antiquities, 14-4:2). That is, Ptolemy took Asochis on Saturday not because the townspeople could not resist because of the observance of the Sabbath rest, but because the Sabbath was observed by the army of Yannai, which was on the way, which because of this could not reach Asochis on time.

1.14. Yannai: Conquests. The Golan Heights and Mount Hermon were conquered by the brother of Alesander Yannai, Aristobulus. However, uprisings regularly took place in Iturea until Iturea was finally conquered by Alexander Yannai, and its inhabitants were converted to Judaism ^{[8; 5]}.

It should be emphasized that the formal annexation of Galilee did not entail what the Maccabees did in other occupied territories: there was no genocide of Gentiles, no deportations, no forced religious conversions – there is no mention of such a thing anywhere in the territory of Galilee, if there are mentions in other territories north and south of Galilee. There is no information about the assumption of the "third–party explorers" mentioned above about the mass exodus of Jews to Galilee, which could have caused the continuous settlement of Galilee by their descendants in the third or fourth generation in the early Roman period. In addition, the mass settlement of Galilee by immigrants from Judea alone under Aristobulus and Yannai for only twenty-five years required such an excess of the Jewish population to completely replace the population of Galilee with a Jewish one, which simply had nowhere to go, especially in view of the large losses of the population of Judea during the Maccabean wars ^[10]. It is also unclear where the population of an entire country could be evicted outside Galilee – neighboring countries would hardly agree to accept immigrants, indulging a Jewish whim. From all this, we can conclude that such an assumption looks unconvincing, as well as the statement based on it about the continuous settlement of Galilee by Jewish descendants in the early Roman period, allegedly based on archaeological research in Galilee over the past thirty years, the achievements of which we will consider below.

Based on the above, it can be argued that Galilee under the Hasmoneans, despite its formal affiliation to the Maccabean Empire as a Jewish province, nevertheless remained "pagan" in the eyes of the Jews themselves. However, its population, being polytheistic, did not reject the biblical god and accepted Judaism as a respected religion, even perhaps adopting from the Jews, and assimilating the ritual and ceremonial side to properly please this god, one of many. By the way, this may explain the tradition of pilgrimage from Galilee to Jerusalem, and the veneration of Jewish holidays, and the inscriptions in the Temple that forbade uncircumcised Gentiles from entering the courtyard, and, finally, the exclamation of Johanan ben Zakkai "Galilee, Galilee, you hate the Torah!" (Talmud 16.8.3 (15d)) – as well as perhaps also those archaeological finds referred to by adherents of the theory of mass Galilean Judaism.That is, on the formal side, the Hasmonean conquerors had no reason to massacre the Galilean population. However, mutual hatred did not go away, and the Jews continued to rob in Galilee, but not to live in it.

1.15. The conquest of Galilee by Rome in 63 BC. Pompey, having conquered Palestine in 63 BC. e., gave Samaria and other areas under the authority of Roman governors in Syria, and Galilee, remaining a province of Judea, was practically isolated from it.

"He (Pompey – author's note) forced Jerusalem to pay tribute to the Romans... but the entire [Jewish] people, who had previously reached a high degree of power and spread, he squeezed back into the borders of his country" (Antiquities 14.4.2).

"Squeezed back" – that is, back to Judea from the lands of Ithurea, Galilee, Perea, Samaria, Idumea, and so on, conquered during the Maccabean period.

This is the fourth total deportation of Jews from Galilee in its entire history – this time forced.

1.16. Herod the Great. Herod began his career in 48 BC as the tetrarch of Galilee, where he became famous for defeating the rebels of Hezekiah, the father of Judas the Galilean.

"Antipater ... entrusted the young Herod ... with the management of Galilee... The young man immediately found an opportunity to show his valor, namely, he managed to capture Hezekiah, the chieftain of the robbers, who raided the regions bordering Syria at the head of a huge detachment; then he executed him and many of his comrades in the gang" (Antiquities 14.9.2).

The defeat and execution of the "Galilean robbers" provoked approval from the Roman governors of Syria and condemnation from conservative Jews. Hezkiah belonged to a well–known family, from which several scientists came out - which did not prevent him from robbing in Galilee and throughout Syria.

Hezekiah's son, Judas the Galilean, followed in his father's footsteps and became one of the leaders of the anti-Roman movement, continuing robber raids on Galilee, for which, obviously, he received his nickname. This again confirms the predatory nature of the Jews' relations with the population, in particular, of Galilee, which, quite understandably, treated the Jews with hatred and distrust because of this alone.

1.17. The invasion of the Parthians in 40 BC forced Herod to leave Galilee and flee south: first to Jerusalem, then to Idumea, from where through Egypt to Rome. There he was presented to the Roman Senate and "elected" the new king of Judea and, with the support of the population of Galilee, expelled the Parthians, took Jerusalem and reigned (Antiquities 14.15.1). He died in 4 or 1 BC.

1.18. Herod Antipas (c. 1 BC – 39 AD). Octavian Augustus, for whose approval Archelaus the heir took the will to Rome, granted him only half of the kingdom (Idumea, Judea, Samaria, Caesarea, Joppa and Jerusalem) with the title of ethnarch. He divided the second half into two tetrarchies, which he granted to the other two remaining sons of Herod: Philip (Batanea, Trachoneia and Avran) and Antipas (Perea and Galilee).

Thus, Galilee, starting with mentions in 732 BC and before the Birth of Jesus, actually remained under the Jewish rule of the Maccabees only during the reign of Alexander Yannai from 106 to 79, that is, only about a quarter of a century, the rest of the time it had no connection with Judea, its people and its religion.

The Galileans were not against accepting the Jewish god, they were openly polytheists: they did not renounce their former gods, and accepted and revered strangers. They kept their old beliefs, and it didn't matter if there was one god more or less. On the part of the Jewish monotheists, the situation was quite different: how could the ancient Jews accept foreigners into their closed community of God's chosen people? By increasing their numbers due to the conversion of the Idumeans, Ithureans and Samaritans to Judaism, the Jews received "proselytes from the gates (inhabitants)" or "proselytes of piety", despite the fact that the principle of ethnoreligious distinctiveness served only their interests. These aliens could become Jews, but never Jews, עִבְרִי [Hebrew] (In total, in the Hebrew Bible, this word is used exactly in the meaning of "Jew" 34 times.).

1.19. Petronius' campaign against Judea. In the Caesarship of Caligula in the autumn of 39 AD, after the destruction by the Jews of an insignificant local pagan altar, he was ordered to put his statue in the Jerusalem temple. Troops led by Petronius were sent to Judea. The confrontation with the Jews lasted a year and a half, and in February 41 A.D. Caligula was killed, and the installation of his statue in the temple did not take place.

This event is described in detail by two of his contemporaries: Philo of Alexandria and Josephus (Antiquities, 18.8; On the embassy to Gaius, 32-33).

The "Inhabitants of the holy city and the whole country" mentioned by Flavius and Philo; "people desperate to preserve the precepts of their ancestors"; "huge crowds of Jews" are religious fanatics who rebelled against the desecration of the Jerusalem temple, that is, orthodox Jews who lived exclusively in Judea. In Samaria, which was located between Judea and Galilee, the inhabitants of which, depending on political gain, either recognized themselves as Jews or renounced their Jewishness, had their own sacred place of worship, Mount Garizim. So the Samaritans weren't worried about the Jerusalem temple, that's for sure. What can we say about Galilee, which in general had the contemptuous name "pagan" among the Jews, and all the diversity of the peoples living there worshipped entire pantheons of their own gods, among whom was Yahweh, as the guardian god of the territory that he gave to the ancient Jews in immemorial times according to a covenant with them. God is more, God is less – so the Galileans didn't worry about someone else's temple somewhere in the distance, in mountainous Judea, either. That is, the crowds were exclusively Jewish, consisting of Jewish Jews rushing to Petronius from Judea through hostile Samaria and Galilee. Moreover, the mention of some "local" Jews in Tiberias cannot but surprise against the background of Flavius' enumeration of the population in the newly built Tiberias:

"All kinds of aliens from everywhere, including many Galileans, many people forcibly removed and sent into exile... all kinds of poor people recruited from everywhere, as well as a number of persons whose free origin was not even established" (Antiquities 2:13).

What kind of Jews will be defiled by living in a cursed city (built in a cemetery), and in a "pagan" country among the population that consists of those listed by Flavius? Herod even built a synagogue there to attract Jews there, but in vain. So the "huge crowds" of Jews were exclusively the population of Judean Judea, and they came from there, since there were simply no local Jews in Samaria-Galilee and they had nowhere to go, as we have already shown throughout the history of Galilee.

Why, then, did Petronius go to Tiberias "to get acquainted with the mood of the Jews there"? Yes, because Tiberias was the capital of Galilee at that time, and Petronius was simply mistaken when he mistook Tiberias for the capital of those Jews whom he found in Ptolemais.

1.20. Ioannan ben Zahai (1st century A.D.). It is claimed, however, that despite the defilement of Tiberias from the point of view of a Jew (built on bones), John ben Zachai, a contemporary of Jesus, was a native and pupil of the yeshiva in Tiberias – and this proves that Tiberias was a Jewish city, with a synagogue and a yeshiva, a Jewish theological school.

"According to the Mishnah, Johanan ben Zakkai was the successor disciple of Hillel and Shammai. Amora Ula claims that Johanan ben Zakkai lived for 18 years in the city of Arav (Lower Galilee), where he settled, apparently, after a period of apprenticeship" ^[4].

Nothing is reported about the birth and studies at the yeshiva in Tiberias, but only about the teachings of Uhillel and Shammai, both headed the Sanhedrin, they have nothing to do with Galilee. Since the Sanhedrin was in Jerusalem, both they and the disciple were there. It is not known what he did for 18 years after studying, living in Galilee. But it is known that Judas the Galilean was a Jewish theologian, the founder and head of the "fourth" sect, and at the same time robbed in Galilee. If one did not interfere with the other in his case, then why not assume an analogy in the case of Zakkai?

Written historical information about Galilee is exhausted by all of the above. Based on them, the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. Galilee, from the time of the Assyrian captivity of Israel and up to the First Jewish War, in fact, was never Jewish in population, was not converted to Judaism, was not inhabited by Jews or Jewish proselytes, and with a formal quarter-century dependence on the power of the fanatical Jewish kings of the Hasmonean dynasty, it actually did not depend on them.

2. The Jews did not live or settle in Galilee, but only robbed, robbed, raped and oppressed the local population, considering them strangers and temporary occupiers of the ancestral Jewish lands – which the local population mutually considered occupiers, colonizers and invaders, robbers and bandits, starting with the Hasmonean uprising.

3. The intensity of mutual hatred simply could not allow and allow the neighboring existence of Jews with the local population: they simply would not have dared to settle in pagan Galilee except under the protection of troops behind the fortress walls.

However, the results of archaeological research in Galilee are very significant in the issue of a correct understanding of the ethnoreligious composition of the Galilean population. Unfortunately, it is not possible to conduct a direct analysis of the entire huge volume of Galilean archaeology research results obtained over thirty years within the framework of a journal publication – it is only possible to limit ourselves to a critical examination of those conclusions that are made on the basis of such an analysis, for the integrity and impartiality of which we cannot vouch, in a number of solid monographs by the authors of the "third search"Jesus.

2. Archaeology in the interpretation of the "third-party explorers".

K. V. Neklyudov in his research summarizes the results of archaeological excavations in Galilee and comes to the conclusion that "archaeology shows" the Jewish identity of the Galileans of the first century, they are descendants of Hasmonean immigrants from Judea ^{[6, p. 214]}. We will conduct our own, as far as possible, unbiased analysis of these archaeological data, interpreted in numerous publications of the "third-party explorers" as a special kind of "Hellenized Judaism" ^[19].

Researchers have identified markers of Jewish affiliation: the presence of synagogues, mikvahs (stepped pools for performing ritual ablutions), ossuaries (Jewish graves), elements of stone vessels and the absence of pig bones in everyday life ^[17] – all this, according to "third-party researchers", irrefutably testifies to the ethnoreligious belonging of the population of Galilee of the Early Roman period (68 BC A.D. – 70 AD) of the period to the descendants of the Hasmonean exodus of the Jews to Galilee in order to expand the northern territories.

Three cities have been excavated: Sepphoris, Tiberias and Gamala. All three cities bear all the signs of typical Greek cities, we will not list them in detail. From the finds of the Jewish culture, buildings identified as synagogues were found in them – but inaccurately, and their "dating is controversial" ^[14]. With regard to the mikvah, it is necessary to recall the religion of the Mandaean Nazarenes, widespread in the territory of Galilee at the time of Jesus, who conducted their baptisms necessarily in "yord", that is, running water (John the Baptist was a Nazarene prophet and baptized in the Jordan) - they could also build pools with running water for their needs, which are distinguished from the mikvah archeology He will not be able to if he does not find ritual inscriptions, drawings and dating, none of which has ever been made public.

In "rural" cities, the same thing is available: in some places, synagogues of uncertain dating, mikvahs of unclear purpose, and stone shards are among the many Greco–Roman finds ^[19].

There is simply nothing in the villages ^[11].

At the same time, it is recognized that the layers of the first century were very poorly preserved ^[11]; from, in fact, the villages of Galilee of the first century. There is very little archaeological material left, "The finds of the first century in Nazareth are fragmentary and poorly published" ^[17]. Where did the statement about the doubling of villages and, moreover, the population come from during the Hasmonean period in comparison with the previous one ^[13] is unclear. How is it possible to record something archaeologically in the absence of material? But even if this is the case, this is not a categorical sign of the resettlement of Jews from Judea to Galilee under the Hasmoneans, especially since historical sources claim just the opposite. They could have been Greeks, Egyptians, and the same Idumeans from the southern territories of modern Lebanon conquered by Aristobulus. And indeed anyone, since Galilee formally belonged to the Hasmonean Empire for only the last 25 years at the very end of the Hasmonean period. The same applies to the claim of a twofold increase in the population of Galilee in the early Roman period, and for this period of complete separation of Galilee from Judea as an independent Roman province, the increase in population due to the exodus from Judea does not look convincing even as an assumption.

That is, neither the synagogues discovered nor the excavated mikvahs can accurately indicate the presence of Jews as part of the settled population of Galilee in the early Roman century; it is impossible to date these buildings within a hundred years, and the purpose of these buildings may be questioned.

As for the fragments of stone vessels, it remains unclear on what basis the claim is based that these are certainly the remains of Jewish vessels for ritual ablutions. Firstly, the culture of stone vessels was widespread in the ancient world, and stone vessels were used not only in Judea alone, but everywhere from the Greco–Roman ecumene to Egypt, where thousands of them were found in perfect preservation. The argument that in Palestine they were used only by orthodox Jews for their ritual needs, since, unlike pottery, stone dishes cannot be "desecrated" does not look convincing: in Judea, along with stone, pottery was widely used.

The absence of pork bones, that is, not eating pork, is also mentioned as a marker of "Judaism". It is possible, however, that pig farming was not developed at all in Galilee as an agricultural industry, for reasons that were by no means religious. There are plenty of places in the world where pigs are simply not bred – for example, in mountainous Georgia. References to the mention of pig farming in the synoptic gospels "in the land of Gadara" or Gergesin are not historically reliable, at least because of the absence of steep banks there, from which pigs rushed, drowning themselves. Moreover, the other side of Lake Genisaret is especially emphasized "opposite Galilee" (Lk. 8:32-33; Mk. 5:1-16; Mt. 8:28-32).

In addition, the household subculture is spreading much faster and more widely than religious views and beliefs. Modern Christians observe many rituals and customs in their everyday life: they fast, baptize children, get married, and bury the dead – all this with mass religious apostasy. So, based on the discovery of alleged mikvahs, synagogues and stone utensils in excavations on the territory of Galilee, as well as the absence of pig bones, it is categorically incorrect to assert that the Galileans belong to mass ritual Judaism, to put it mildly. And even if the Galilean polytheists adopted some religious customs from the Jews (including an aversion to eating "unclean" pork for reasons more hygienic than ritual), the discovery of material artifacts characteristic of Judaism cannot be reliable proof that their users belong to Jewish Jewry.

The same applies to ossuaries: the practice of burying the bones of the dead in special containers is by no means exclusively Jewish, and nothing is reported about purely Jewish inscriptions on ossuaries.

Conclusion.

And finally, all this discovered archaeological economy is indistinguishable by the time of its origin in the I century BC from the I century AD, when the very real historically recorded exodus of Jews to Galilee occurred, in which the number of population, synagogues, mikvahs and all Jewish household increased by a multiple, no dating was found on all this it was, and without it, it is obviously impossible to establish a time difference of 100 years by archaeological methods.

The opinion of the "third–party researchers" about the "substantial regional pluralism of Galilean Judaism" can only be accepted in the sense– and agree with it - that the inhabitants of pagan Galilee, as we have established in our study of sources, throughout the history of Galilee "were open polytheists and did not renounce their former gods." If we look at the archaeology of Galilee from this point of view, the true meaning of the "pluralism of Galilean Judaism" becomes clear: those Galileans who, along with other deities, believed in the "master" of the Galilean land – the Jewish tribal deity Yahweh, could well have assimilated the forms of worship adopted by the Jews of their ancestral biblical god. And then the "special Judaism" of the Galileans acquires a completely different meaning: the perceived ritualism did not make the Galileans Jews in the main sense of Judaism as worship of the one and only biblical god, and even more so - Jews.

Thus, it does not follow from the excavations in Galilee that its population was entirely Jewish – such a categorical conclusion can largely be based only on the dogmatic axiom mentioned at the beginning about the ethno-religious affiliation of Jesus to Jewish Judaism, and indicates only scientific bias. However, from our point of view, archaeology does not confirm the settled residence of the "pagan" Jewish population in Galilee at the time of Jesus.

So, neither the available documentary historical evidence nor the results of archaeological research directly and unambiguously confirm either the hypothesis of the settlement of Galilee in the early Roman period by the descendants of the Jewish exodus to Galilee under the Hasmoneans, nor the generally accepted dogmatic "axiom" about the Jewish origin and religious affiliation to Judaism of Jesus the Galilean and his Galilean disciples.