Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee

Book excerpt: What is a Galilean? What were the criteria of defining a person as a Galilean - archaeologically or with respect to literary sources such as Josephus or the rabbis? What role did religion play in the process of identity formation? Twenty-two articles based on papers read at conferences at Cambridge, Wuppertal and Yale by experts from 7 countries shed light on a complex region, the pivotal geographic and cultural context of both earliest Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. In these papers, ancient Galilee emerges as a dynamic region of continuous change, in which religion, 'ethnicity', and 'identity' were not static monoliths but had to be negotiated in the context of a multiform environment subject to different influences.