Galilee by Hepworth Dixon

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Dec 12, 1878

Galilee.

By Hepworth Dixon

"You have ridden through Galilee? You have sailed on the lake? You have seen the city of Nazareth, and the site of Magdala, Gerasa, and Capernaum? You have been on the spot of the marriage feast? You have stood on the slope from which He preached the Sermon on the Mount? Is Cana known? Where is Capernaum? Has the spot been identified, and what kind of a place is it now?" Such questions break in cataracts on every pilgrim from the Holy Land. Jerusalem may have a deeper and sterner interest for a Christian Frank than any place in Galilee; yet Galilee is properly the country of our Lord. Here His early life was spent; here His chief companions lived; here His most important words were spoken, and His most important work was done.

The whole province of Galilee was called the country of our Lord. Whence comes this name of Galilee, so closely connected with sacred history, and so sweetly sounding in all Christian ears? It is not sacred to a Jew, nor sweetly sounding in a Jewish ear! The first name under which we know the country is Gelil haggoyim—Land of the heathen. In the midst of Israel a Gentile people clung to the soil, and could not be expelled by fire or sword. They were a remnant of the ancient dwellers, but a hardy and unconquerable remnant, occupying the stony hills and thickets, much as the Druses cling to the hill-sides in Lebanon and the Waldenses to the valleys of Piedmont. Joshua ravaged their towns, and Solomon tossed them as a fee to Hiram; but the leader of Israel and the King of Tyre were equally baffled by the passive tenacity and endurance of these ancient tribes. In the language of Jewish scribes, the country remained a land of strangers and heathens—Galilee of the Gentiles.

Many Hebrews lived in this heathen province, but the high priests looked on such Hebrews as low rabble who were not unwilling to live among strangers for the sake of gain. The feeling was not unlike that which English country squires used to express for people who sought their bread and salt in Van Dieman's Land or Botany Bay. Galilee never ceased to be a term of reproach. To be called a Galilean in the court of Annas and Caiaphas was to be called a rogue and churl. Josephus frequently speaks of the Galileans as brigands. Hence the saying of a strict Jew like Nathaniel, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Hence the opprobrium attaching in the minds of strict metropolitan Jews to such epithets as Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the Nazarene.—Hepworth Dixon.