Thus, at the time of Jesus’ public career, Galilee was governed by the tetrarch Antipas, who was sovereign within his own domain, provided that he remained loyal to Rome and maintained peace and stability within his borders. Judaea (including Jerusalem) was nominally governed by Pilate, but the actual daily rule of Jerusalem was in the hands of Caiaphas and his council. Relations between Jewish areas and nearby Gentile areas
Galilee and Judaea, the principal Jewish areas of Palestine, were surrounded by Gentile territories (i.e., Caesarea, Dora, and Ptolemais on the Mediterranean coast; Caesarea Philippi north of Galilee; and Hippus and Gadara east of Galilee). There also were two inland Gentile cities on the west side of the Jordan River near Galilee (Scythopolis and Sebaste). The proximity of Gentile and Jewish areas meant that there was some interchange between them, including trade, which explains why Antipas had telōnēs—often translated as “tax collectors” but more accurately rendered as “customs officers”—in the villages on his side of the Sea of Galilee. There also was some exchange of populations: some Jews lived in Gentile cities, such as Scythopolis, and some Gentiles lived in at least one of the Jewish cities, Tiberias. Jewish merchants and traders could probably speak some Greek, but the primary language of Palestinian Jews was Aramaic (a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew). On the other hand, the Jews resisted paganism and excluded temples for the worship of the gods of Greece and Rome from their cities, along with the Greek educational institutions the ephebeia and gymnasion, gladiatorial contests, and other buildings or institutions typical of Gentile areas. Because Jewish-Gentile relations in the land that the Jews considered their own were often uneasy, Jewish areas were usually governed separately from Gentile areas. The reign of Herod the Great was the exception to that rule, but even he treated the Jewish and the Gentile parts of his kingdom differently, fostering Greco-Roman culture in Gentile sectors but introducing only very minor aspects of it in Jewish areas.
In the 1st century Rome showed no interest in making the Jews in Palestine and other parts of the empire conform to common Greco-Roman culture. A series of decrees by Julius Caesar, Augustus, the Roman Senate, and various city councils permitted Jews to keep their own customs, even when they were antithetical to Greco-Roman culture. For example, in respect for Jewish observance of the Sabbath, Rome exempted Jews from conscription in Rome’s armies. Neither did Rome colonize Jewish Palestine. Augustus established colonies elsewhere (in southern France, Spain, North Africa, and Asia Minor), but prior to the First Jewish Revolt (ad 66–74) Rome established no colonies in Jewish Palestine. Few individual Gentiles from abroad would have been attracted to live in Jewish cities, where they would have been cut off from their customary worship and cultural activities. The Gentiles who lived in Tiberias and other Jewish cities were probably natives of nearby Gentile cities, and many were Syrians, who could probably speak both Aramaic and Greek. Economic conditions
Most people in the ancient world produced food, clothing, or both and could afford few luxuries. Most Palestinian Jewish farmers and herdsmen, however, earned enough to support their families, pay their taxes, offer sacrifices during one or more annual festivals, and let their land lie fallow in the sabbatical years, when cultivation was prohibited. Galilee in particular was relatively prosperous, since the land and climate permitted abundant harvests and supported many sheep. Although it is doubtful that Galilee was as affluent in the 1st century as it was during the late Roman and Byzantine periods, archaeological remains from the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries nevertheless confirm the plausibility of 1st-century references to the region’s prosperity. There were, of course, landless people, but the Herodian dynasty was careful to organize large public works projects that employed thousands of men. Desperate poverty was present too but never reached a socially dangerous level. At the other end of the economic spectrum, few if any Palestinian Jews had the vast fortunes that successful merchants in port cities could accumulate. However, there were Jewish aristocrats with large estates and grand houses, and the merchants who served the Temple (supplying, for example, incense and fabric) could become very prosperous. The gap between rich and poor in Palestine was obvious and distressing to the poor, but, compared with that of the rest of the world, it was not especially wide. The Jewish religion in the 1st century
Judaism, as the Jewish religion came to be known in the 1st century ad, was based on ancient Israelite religion, shorn of many of its Canaanite characteristics but with the addition of important features from Babylonia and Persia. The Jews differed from other people in the ancient world because they believed that there was only one God. Like other people, they worshipped their God with animal sacrifices offered at a temple, but, unlike others, they had only one temple, which was in Jerusalem. The sanctuary of the Jewish temple had two rooms, as did many of the other temples in the ancient world, but the second room of the Jewish temple was empty. There was no idol representing the God of Israel. The Jews also believed that they had been specially chosen by the one God of the universe to serve him and obey his laws. Although set apart from other people, they believed God called on them to be a “light to the Gentiles” and lead them to accept the God of Israel as the only God.
An important part of Jewish Scripture was the Torah, or Pentateuch, comprising five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) that were believed to have been given to Moses by God. For Jews and their spiritual descendants, those books contain God’s law, which covers many aspects of ordinary life: it requires that males be circumcised, regulates diet, mandates days of rest for humans and animals alike (Sabbaths and festival days), requires pilgrimage and sacrifice, stipulates recompense and atonement following transgression, and specifies impurities and required purification before entry to the Temple. Moreover, it provides both rules and principles for the treatment of other people: for example, calling for the use of honest weights and measures in trade and for “love” (that is, upright treatment) of both fellow Jews and foreigners (Leviticus 19). The laws governing worship (sacrifice, purification, admission to the Temple, and the like) were similar to the religious laws of other people in the ancient world. Judaism was different because in most other cultures divine law covered only such topics, but in Judaism it regulated not only worship but also daily life and made every aspect of life a matter of divine concern.
Since both faith and practice were based firmly on the five books of Moses modified slightly over time, they were shared by Jews all over the world, from Mesopotamia to Italy and beyond. The common features of Jewish faith and practice are reflected in the decrees from various parts of the ancient world that allowed Jews to preserve their own traditions, including monotheism, rest and assembly on the Sabbath, support of the Temple, and dietary laws. There were, naturally, variations on each main theme. In Jewish Palestine, for example, there were three small but important religious parties that differed from each other in several ways: the Pharisees (numbering about 6,000 at the time of Herod), Essenes (about 4,000), and Sadducees (“a few men,” according to Flavius Josephus, in The Antiquities of the Jews 18.17). A largely lay group that had the reputation of being the most-precise interpreters of the law, the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead. They also relied on the nonbiblical “traditions of the fathers,” some of which made the law stricter while others relaxed it. The Essenes were a more-radical sect, with extremely strict rules. One branch of the group lived at Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea and produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. At some point in their history the Essenes were probably a priestly sect (the Zadokite priests are major figures in some of the documents from Qumran); however, the composition of their membership at the time of Jesus is unclear. Many aristocratic priests, as well as some prominent laymen, were Sadducees. They rejected the Pharisaic “traditions of the fathers” and maintained some old-fashioned theological opinions. Most famously, they denied resurrection, which had recently entered Jewish thought from Persia and which was accepted by most Jews in the 1st century.