Religion, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Galilee

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.

Auteur
Studium der evangelischen Theologie in Erlangen, Heidelberg und Edinburgh; Promotion zum Dr. theol. 1996 an der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; 2003 Habilitation an der Kirchlichen Hochschule und der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal; seit 2006 Professor für Neues Testament und Frühchristliche Literatur sowie seit 2008 auch an der Fakultät für Archäologie der Universität Leiden/Niederlande. Born 1946; 1967 A.B. Boston College; 1969 B.A. Cambridge University; 1975 PhD Harvard University; currently Sterling Professor of Divinity, Yale Divinity School.