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 put a stop to this. Jesus felt it was his responsibility to take over where the Baptist had been forced to leave off.
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Keywords: Galilee, Nazareth, Aenon, Death of John, Death of John the Baptist, Jesus returns to Galilee, Jesus Galilee
Bible reference(s): Matthew 4:12, Mark 1:14, Mark 6:17-18, John 3:22-24, John 4:1-3, John 7:52, John 1:28, John 3:26, John 10:40
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