Why Jesus Went Back to Galilee

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Why did Jesus go back to preach in Galilee? The question may seem a silly one. After all, he was a native of Nazareth in Galilee, and it was natural that he should preach to his own people. The prophet Amos, however, came from Tekoa (Amos 1:1), a village that differed little from Nazareth, but he did not waste his breath on his neighbors in the rural south of Judah. His mission was to the kingdom of Israel, and he went straight to “the very center of the house of Israel” (Amos 7:10), to the sanctuary of the king and the national temple at Bethel (Amos 7:13). The prophet Elijah was apparently from Gilead, east of the Jordan (1 Kings 17:1), but as the champion of Yahweh he crossed the Jordan Valley to confront King Ahab in Samaria (1 Kings 18 and 21).

To succeed, a reform movement has to find and grip the levers of power. No prophets appeared in what used to be the northern kingdom after the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. Thereafter, prophetic voices sounded only in the south, where the central institutions of the Jewish people were located. The parallels suggest that, since Jesus had a mission to the Jewish people, it would have been much more efficient to have concentrated his energies in Jerusalem. Not only were there more people to hear him, but at the pilgrimage feasts his audience would have included visitors from all over the country, as well as from the Diaspora. Moreover, a change of attitude among Jerusalemites might have influenced Jews in Galilee, but certainly not the other way around. Clearly, a ministry of Jesus in Galilee calls for explanation.

I shall argue here that Jesus went to Galilee to replace John the Baptist after the latter had been arrested by Herod Antipas.¹ As we shall see, the Baptist had been preaching in Galilee. His arrest 022put a stop to this. Jesus felt it was his responsibility to take over where the Baptist had been forced to leave off.

Those who think they know the gospel narrative commonly imagine the following succession of events: Jesus made a journey from Galilee down the Jordan Valley to the northern end of the Dead Sea, where he was baptized in the Jordan River by John. Jesus then underwent 40 days of testing by the devil in the desert, after which he returned to Galilee.

This, however, is not what the gospel says. A closer look at the text reveals that he must have spent substantial time in the south. Jesus’ return to the Galilee is dated, not by his 40-day experience in the desert, but by the Baptist’s arrest. According to Mark, “After John [the Baptist] was arrested Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God” (Mark 1:14). Similarly Matthew, “When he heard that John had been arrested, Jesus withdrew into Galilee” (Matthew 4:12).²

Let us look more closely at the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist. We begin with 023Jesus’ baptism—by John. Jesus’ baptism is described in all three Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Luke and Mark.^a The parallel passages are set forth in the first sidebar to this article. An examination of these parallel passages reveals a curious fact: Mark is the only one to say flatly that John the Baptist baptized Jesus!

Although Matthew says that Jesus came to the Jordan to be baptized by John (Matthew 3:13), the actual baptism is expressed in the passive voice, “when Jesus was baptized” (Matthew 3:16). In light of the preceding verses, the baptism can only have been administered by John, but it is a little disconcerting that it is not said explicitly.

Luke also uses the passive voice: “Jesus also had been baptized” (Luke 3:21). Moreover, in Luke there is no implication that John baptized Jesus; on the contrary, this possibility is specifically excluded because in Luke’s account the Baptist has already been imprisoned by Herod Antipas (Luke 3:19–20), and he will never leave his prison alive. (In Matthew and Mark, John’s imprisonment comes much later [Matthew 14:3–4; Mark 6:17].)

Luke must have known that John baptized Jesus. There is no hint in any source that the baptism was administered by anyone else. Luke, therefore, is not telling a straight story. He is manipulating history to convey a theological message. John the Baptist was, for Luke, the last of the prophets. John must be moved off the stage of history before the first public appearance of Jesus. This interpretation is confirmed by what we find at the end of Luke’s gospel and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles.^b Luke is the only evangelist to mention the Ascension of Jesus into heaven (Luke 24:51; Acts 1:9). Jesus must be moved off the stage of history before the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). By these devices Luke divides the history of salvation into three periods: (1) The Time of the Prophets; (2) The Time of Jesus; (3) The Time of the Holy Spirit.

But Luke has another reason for getting the Baptist off the stage before Jesus’ baptism: Luke does not want the Baptist, who had his own following, competing with Jesus. We can appreciate this more clearly by looking at the account in Matthew. Matthew has John confess the superiority of Jesus: John says to Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you,” rather than the other way around (Matthew 3:14). Jesus declines this request (Matthew 3:15).

Both Mark and Luke lack these verses. Were they added by Matthew or were they omitted from Mark and Luke? Since no good reason can be postulated for their omission, they must be considered an insertion by Matthew. Why did Matthew make this addition? He must have had a serious reason. The most obvious hypothesis is that some people in the early Church insisted that Jesus was inferior to John the Baptist. After all, it was Jesus who came to John, not the other way round. In the culture of the Near East, no one condescends to visit a social inferior. Moreover, Jesus accepted baptism for the remission of sins at the hands of John, whereas nothing is ever said about John’s undergoing a similar rite of repentance. Matthew’s insertion must be a reaction against the exaltation of John at the expense of Jesus.

This situation helps us to understand why Luke omits entirely an account of John’s baptizing Jesus, indeed, even excludes the possibility by having John imprisoned prior to Jesus’ baptism. Luke must have been aware of a current of thought that exaggerated the importance of John. Both evangelists, Luke and Matthew, in their own way, attempt to distance Jesus from John.³

On the other hand, if Jesus’ baptism by John proved to be such an embarrassment to the early Church, the story certainly would not have been created by Christian theologians. They had to deal with a fact that they could not deny. The historicity of the event, therefore, is beyond dispute. The details are given by Mark with exemplary thoroughness and brevity: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan” (Mark 1:9).

As Jesus is being baptized, he has a vision of the Holy Spirit descending from the opened heavens and hears a heavenly voice. Did these things really happen? Or are they a theological interpretation of Jesus’ baptism? The second alternative is the more probable, because Jewish theologians were using the same technique at this time to interpret events in their scriptures. To appreciate this fact, simply contrast the text of Genesis 22:10 with the midrashic expansion in the Targum, an Aramaic paraphrase/translation of the biblical text used in synagogues at the turn of the era. In the Hebrew text, Abraham raises the knife to sacrifice his son Isaac, in accordance with God’s direction, when an angel of the Lord calls to him from heaven and tells him to desist. In the Aramaic Targum (the text known as Pseudo-Jonathan), the heavens apparently open at this point for, we are told, “the eyes of Isaac were scanning the angels on high” and “a voice came forth from the heavens.” In the Targum, the original text of Genesis 22:10 is expanded to include an interpretation of the sacrifice of Isaac as involving a vision and a voice.

How would first-century Jews, hearing this 025version in the synagogue, have understood it? Would they have taken the vision and the voice as a description of something that really happened? I think not. They knew the Hebrew text of their scriptures, which contain nothing like that. Similarly, when Christian theologians wanted to bring out the meaning of the baptism of Jesus, of which everyone had heard, they naturally turned to a familiar interpretive technique, whose implications would have been understood immediately by their first-century hearers/readers. The people hearing and reading these accounts would not have taken the vision and the voice literally. Their training in the synagogue would have led them to ask what the symbols were meant to convey. In all probability, the cluster of highly charged terms in the evangelists’ descriptions were designed to evoke the great prayer of Isaiah 63:7 through 64:11. Note the correspondences between the italicized words in the following quotation from Isaiah and the descriptions of Jesus’ vision in the first sidebar to this article, especially in Mark’s version of Jesus’ vision when John baptized him:

Then they remembered the days of old and Moses, his servant. Where is he who brought up out of the sea the shepherd of his flock? Where is he who put his holy spirit in their midst…A spirit from the Lord descended guiding them…Look down from heaven and regard us from your holy and glorious palace! O Lord, hold not back, for you are our father. Were Abraham not to know us, nor Israel to acknowledge us, you, Lord are our father, our redeemer you are named forever…Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you…All that was dear to us was laid waste. Can you hold back, O Lord, after all this? Can you remain silent, and afflict us so severely?

(Isaiah 63:11, 14, 15–16, 19; 64:10–11)

The number of the correspondences excludes coincidence. Christian theologians intended in the Gospels to present the beginning of the public life of Jesus as the response of God to the petition of his people. His people are no longer alone because God is no longer silent. God has spoken about Jesus, and God acts in and through Jesus. This interpretation, however, presupposes the whole ministry of Jesus culminating in his death and resurrection. The interpretation grew out of the experience of divine grace in the early Church, which was the medium by which the first believers gradually came to know who Jesus really was. Our concern here, however, is with the historical question. What did Jesus’ baptism mean to Jesus?

Since Jesus himself nowhere explains his motives, we can only speculate. At one end of the scale are those who argue that Jesus was simply making a public gesture of support for John’s role and message.⁴ At the other end of the scale are those who think that Jesus needed forgiveness. Thus, for example, Paul W. Hollenbach tells us, “We may suspect that through John’s preaching Jesus discovered that he had participated directly or indirectly in the oppression of the weak members of his society.”⁵

The possible permutations and combinations are virtually infinite. And in the end no certitude is possible. To spend further time on the issue would be futile. What can be said with certitude, however, is that John the Baptist was explicitly recognized by Jesus as a figure of key importance in his own religious development. Given what we have seen of the resistance of the Church of the late first century to admitting the dependence of Jesus on John, it is most improbable that believers would have invented the praise that Jesus lavishes on John. The evangelists had to record Jesus’ baptism by John, Jesus’ praise of John and Jesus’ recognition of John’s importance because all this was part of the tradition—but, where possible, the evangelists attempted to neutralize it.

For example, both Matthew and Luke quote Jesus as saying, “Among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11a//Luke 7:28a), but an editor added immediately thereafter, “Yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matthew 11:11b//Luke 7:28b). Similarly, Jesus says that John “was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light,” but in its present context this compliment is immediately followed by, “But the testimony which I have is greater than that of John” (John 5:35–36). Elsewhere, the ministry of John is presented in unmistakably positive terms, which it would have been difficult to attenuate: “John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him; and, even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him” (Matthew 21:32). Finally, Jesus sets in parallel criticisms of himself and of John: “John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He had a demon.’ The son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold a glutton and a drunkard’” (Matthew 11:18–19//Luke 7:33–34).

The cumulative effect of these passages has been well summed up by James M. Robinson: “To this extent Jesus did look back on [John the Baptist] as the Church later looked back on Jesus…There is as a matter of fact in Jesus’ clear confession to John 026something analogous to the Church’s kerygma.”⁶ In other words, what Jesus was to the Church, so in some sense John was to Jesus. The Church is incomprehensible without Jesus. Equally, Jesus is incomprehensible without John the Baptist. Jesus felt that he owed something fundamental to John.

The next question we must ask is this: If Jesus owed something fundamental to John, could that debt have been incurred in the few moments of John’s baptism of Jesus? This seems highly improbable. Jesus must have spent considerable time with John.

But when and where? The answer may come from the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John (don’t confuse this John with John the Baptist). By a careful reading of the Fourth Gospel, we can uncover a longstanding relationship between Jesus and John. Indeed, Jesus apparently started out as a disciple of John, working with him in his ministry. The Fourth Gospel consistently places the opening phase of John the Baptist’s ministry beyond the Jordan (peran tou Iordanou [John 1:28, 3:26, 10:40]). This had become a technical term for the east bank of the Jordan, which in consequence was known as Peraia, “Perea.” This area was a wilderness (Mark 1:4). An analysis of first-century occupation patterns in the area reveals that all the towns and villages in Perea were located around springs above the foothills on the east side of the Jordan Valley.⁷ The valley floor, according to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, was “desert and rough.”⁸ It was an area where almost nobody lived and only the hardiest of wild plants survived.

Passing travellers, and in particular Jews on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, would have been the Baptist’s sole audience in Perea.⁹ In winter, their numbers were supplemented by the curious among the nobles of Jerusalem and their households when they went down to the warmth of the Jordan Valley to escape the cold of Jerusalem. From Jericho it would have been a pleasant stroll to hear the prophet of the hour.

Nevertheless, John’s choice of location for the beginning of his ministry is a very curious one. The Baptist believed that he had a mission to convert all Israel. Why did he waste his breath in Perea, where there was hardly any permanent population?

The answer is suggested by the fact that the area in which he preached was precisely where the prophet Elijah was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:4–11). John’s hairy cloak and leather loincloth (Mark 1:6//Matthew 3:4) were identical to those worn by Elijah (2 Kings 1:8). We can only conclude that John was making a prophetic gesture—a non-verbal statement—intended to evoke the proximity of the day of eschatological judgment, which the return of Elijah would precede (Malachi 4:5).¹⁰

Once the statement had made its impact, however, John had to seek out Jews. Time was running out; as he himself said, “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees” (Matthew 3:10//Luke 3:9). He could no longer stay in the wilderness in the hope that penitents would come to him.

When the Baptist did decide to move into the populated areas on the west side of the Jordan River, it was in accord with a careful plan, and he did not go alone. According to the account in John 3:22–24, “Jesus and his disciples went into the land of Judea, and there he remained with them and was baptizing. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there; and people came and were baptized. For John had not yet been put into prison.”

Note that by this time Jesus has disciples. Apparently, Jesus had spent sufficient time with the Baptist in Perea that some of John’s disciples transferred their allegiance to Jesus. According to the final version of the Fourth Gospel, this process took only three days (John 1:29–51), but the schematic nature of this presentation is obvious. The literary evolution of the material in John 1:29–51 is complex, but one can detect an early level of the story in which disciples of John seek out Jesus in response to a recommendation of the Baptist.^c In John 1:35, the Baptist is “standing with two of his disciples,” who, we later learn, are Andrew and Simon Peter. After hearing John call Jesus the Lamb of God,^d they decide to “follow Jesus” (John 1:37).^e

The imperfect tense—Jesus “was baptizing” in Judea (John 3:22)—underlines that this was the 027location of Jesus’ habitual ministry at this stage of his career. In the same verse we read that “there [in Judea] he remained with them [his disciples]” (John 3:22); this is redundant unless it is a reaction to the view reflected in John 4:2—that Jesus’ visit to Judea was brief and that Jesus’ personal involvement in the baptizing ministry was insignificant. This concern for the accuracy of the historical record is also confirmed by the note in John 3, which tells us that at the time Jesus was baptizing in Judea, “John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there; and people came and were baptized” (John 3:23). The text of the Fourth Gospel that immediately follows assures the reader that John was able to baptize because “John had not yet been put in prison” (John 3:24). Why is this note added here? Obviously, if John were in prison, he would not have the freedom to go around and baptize. There appears to be no need to say this. The point of this note must be to date the Judean baptizing ministry of Jesus, and to make it clear that this ministry of Jesus was both prior to, and distinct from, the ministry of Jesus in Galilee at a later date.

As noted, while Jesus was in Judea, John was baptizing at Aenon near Salim (John 3:23). Salim lies almost three miles due east of Tel Balata, the site of ancient Shechem, in the center of ancient Samaria.¹¹ There is no doubt about the location of Salim.

The site of Aenon, which simply means “springs,” is more problematic, although it was probably in the same vicinity as Salim.¹² Within a mile of Tel Balata, on the eastern slope of Mount Gerizim are five springs at an altitude of between 555 and 655 yards.¹³ Each undoubtedly had its own name, as they have today, but as a group they were probably identified by reference to Salim, which was then the nearest inhabited site. (Shechem, a much more important city, was closer, but it was never reoccupied after having been sacked by John Hyrcanus in 107 B.C.¹⁴)

In short, while Jesus was baptizing in Judea, John was baptizing in Samaria. The obvious implication is that the baptizing ministries of John and Jesus were a coordinated campaign among Judeans and Samaritans. John as the leader took the more difficult task; he worked in Samaria. The state of relations 028between Jews and Samaritans is graphically illustrated in a parable in which Jesus tries to force Jews to admit that a Samaritan could be good (Luke 10:23–37). The hatred was such that Samaritans refused hospitality to Jewish pilgrims from Galilee en route to Jerusalem (Luke 9:52–56). In Samaria, John had two strikes against him. Not only was he a Jew, but he came from priestly stock (Luke 1:8–13) and was thus associated with the Temple in Jerusalem, which represented the antithesis of everything the Samaritans stood for. Until it was destroyed, the Samaritans had their own temple on Mt. Gerizim. In their version of the Pentateuch, Mt. Gerizim, not Jerusalem, was the holy mountain. Not surprisingly, therefore, John was less successful than Jesus (John 3:26, 4:1). Jesus had an advantage, because he worked ground that had been prepared by those who had come to hear John at Perea (Mark 1:5).

Eventually John decided to call it a day and to seek greener pastures. He had little choice about where to go. He had already preached in Perea. Jesus was doing well in Judea. Of the three Jewish provinces, only Galilee remained.¹⁵

Whether John recognized the danger of going to Galilee is difficult to say. Sometime before 23 A.D.,¹⁶ Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and Perea, dismissed his wife in order to marry Herodias, his brother’s wife, who was also his niece (Mark 6:17–18).¹⁷ Jewish law forbade marriage with a brother’s wife (Leviticus 18:16).¹⁸ As early as his preaching in Perea, John may have felt it his duty to attempt to correct Antipas: The ruler of a Jewish state should provide a good example to his people. Antipas could do nothing to stop John as long as John stayed outside Antipas’s territory. John was safe in Judea and Samaria because these areas were under direct Roman control. Only when John went to Galilee did he again become vulnerable.

John saw his criticisms of Antipas’s behavior from a religious perspective; the law of God had been broken. For Antipas, however, John’s criticisms created a political danger.¹⁹ Antipas cannot have been unaware of the severe political damage his brother Archelaus suffered because of his illegal marriage to Glaphrya, who had previously been married to Archelaus’s half-brother Alexander.²⁰ Antipas had every reason to fear that John’s scathing attack on his marriage to Herodias would alienate his Jewish constituency in Galilee just at the moment when he needed to have his country completely on his side.

Josephus describes the situation in detail.²¹ The dismissed wife of Antipas was a Nabatean princess, a daughter of Aretas IV of Petra. Her spies among Antipas’s retainers had informed her of his intention to divorce her. Before he was aware that she knew of his plans, Antipas gave her permission to visit the great fortress/palace of Macherus in the southern part of Perea overlooking the Dead Sea. With the aid of the troops of Aretas, she slipped across the border into Nabatea and was reunited with her father. The insult to the honor of the Nabatean royal family was intolerable, and it was clear to everyone that Aretas would seek revenge. The only questions were where and when.

To forestall a Nabatean invasion of his territory in Perea, Antipas moved south from Galilee to Macherus. He also had the Baptist arrested for criticizing his marriage to Herodias. He could not allow John to stay loose in Galilee while he himself went to Perea to meet the Nabatean threat; instead, he brought his prisoner with him to Macherus. At some point, while John was imprisoned in Macherus, Antipas had him beheaded at the request of Herodias’s daughter Salome (Matthew 14:6–10; Mark 6:21–28).

The Nabatean ruler Aretas used a border dispute as a pretext for war, which he won decisively. Antipas returned to Galilee to lick his wounds among a population who blamed his defeat on his treatment of the Baptist.

How long it took for news of the arrest of the Baptist to reach Jesus in Judea is difficult to estimate. He may have had to wait for a chance word brought by merchants or pilgrims. More likely, one of John’s disciples made the four-day journey from Galilee to inform Jesus. In the first century, no one was condemned to prison as a punishment. Those held in confinement were either under investigation (there was no bail) or were awaiting execution. At the beginning, Jesus could not have known which scenario applied to John. There was some hope as long as John was held in Galilee, presumably in its capital city, Tiberias. Jesus would have become seriously worried only when he heard that the Baptist had been transferred to the remote fortress of Macherus in Perea. Although John’s death had not yet been decided, it was imperative to maintain the momentum of the Baptist’s ministry in Galilee. Jesus decided that it was his responsibility to replace John in Galilee. As the Gospels record, “When [Jesus] heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee” (Matthew 4:12//Mark 1:14). Jesus’ disciples could carry on in Judea.

According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus left Judea and went to Galilee because of his fear of the Pharisees, who were dismayed by the success of his baptizing reform ministry (John 4:1–3). To avoid this danger, we are told, he sought security in Galilee. This scenario, however, makes no sense. The Pharisees would have been delighted with anyone who persuaded the people to live up to a higher standard of religious observance. It is much more likely that the Johannine editor was just 029guessing and, like Luke in other contexts,²² found Jewish hostility a convenient motivation for a change of location of a character in his story.

Jesus must have been aware that by going to Galilee he was putting himself in danger. Like all rulers in the Middle East, Antipas doubtless had an efficient network of spies and informers. Anyone with a following was an object of suspicion; it might have meant the beginning of an uprising. John was undoubtedly a marked man from the moment crowds gathered to hear him speak in Perea. We must assume that those permanently associated with the Baptist were also noted, and in particular Jesus, who functioned independently in Judea. Since Antipas regularly came into Jerusalem on pilgrimage (Luke 23:7; Josephus Antiquities 18:122), he was in a position to have first-hand knowledge of the fact that Jesus’s ministry was an extension of the Baptist’s. Antipas must have anticipated that Jesus would repeat the Baptist’s criticism of his unlawful marriage.

Jesus, in consequence, must have had a very good reason to go to Galilee despite the danger. What was his motive? The little evidence we have unambiguously suggests that he wanted to continue what John had begun, a ministry that had terminated with the Baptist’s arrest.

Once in Galilee, Jesus was identified as the Baptist. We learn this from the three parallel passages from the Synoptic Gospels in the second sidebar to this article.

Three points reveal that, of these three passages, Mark’s account is the most primitive: (1) In 6:14, Mark does not tell us what Herod heard. For this we depend on Matthew (“the report about Jesus”) and Luke (“all that was done”). (2) Mark calls Herod “king,” which is incorrect. Matthew and Luke give him his correct title, “tetrarch.” (3) Mark’s tautological and obscure “a prophet like one of the prophets” is simplified and clarified by Luke’s reference to the ancient prophets of Israel. Unless we are willing to assume that Mark set out to be awkward and inaccurate, we must conclude that Matthew and Luke smoothed out and corrected his account.Let us look 042more closely, then, at Mark’s account, which is the closest to the event. What is striking in this short narrative is the amount of verbal repetition. The fact that Herod “heard” is mentioned twice, as is the “raising” of John from the dead. This normally indicates that something has been inserted into a story. A phrase from the source is repeated after the insertion (in this case the “hearing” of Herod) to facilitate the use of the rest of the material from the source. It provides a smooth continuation.

In this hypothesis, the source would have read, “Herod heard, for Jesus’ name had become known, and said ‘John, whom I beheaded has been raised.’”²³

If in Mark’s source Jesus was thought to be the resurrected John, it can only have been because Jesus was doing and saying the same things that John had said and done in Galilee. Jesus was proclaiming and performing a baptism for the remission of sins. Jesus’ sense of noblesse oblige drove him to minister in the Galilee despite the danger. The mantle of the imprisoned Baptist had fallen on him. He felt that he had no choice but to continue the reforming mission of the Baptist in the place he had been preaching.

While in Galilee Jesus underwent a second conversion; the first had been his acceptance of the call to serve beside John. In Galilee, however, the pattern of his behavior changed. His message was no longer “Repent,” but “Follow me!” The change was radical. But how that came about is another story.

Why did Jesus go back to preach in Galilee? The question may seem a silly one. After all, he was a native of Nazareth in Galilee, and it was natural that he should preach to his own people. The prophet Amos, however, came from Tekoa (Amos 1:1), a village that differed little from Nazareth, but he did not waste his breath on his neighbors in the rural south of Judah. His mission was to the kingdom of Israel, and he went straight to “the very center of the house of Israel” (Amos 7:10), to the sanctuary of the […]