Why Galilee embarrasses Jesus in Mark

[Giuseppe]

They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, because he was teaching his disciples.

(Mark 9:30-31)

Mark 14:70:

Surely thou art one of them: for thou art a Galilaean

If Galilee is someway equivalent of Low Christology, then the Jesus "who did not want anyone to know" his presence in Galilee works as an implicit denial of his being a mere man.

The fact is:

1) that "Mark" (author) had a source/hearsay connecting Jesus with Galilee

2) that "Mark" (author) couldn't silence that source/hearsay, even if he knew that it reduced the christological status of Jesus

3) hence, the silence commanded by Markan Jesus about his connection with Galilee is both a concession of a previous source/hearsay about a human Jesus coming from there and a neutralization of its theological effects.

[Giuseppe]

Drews could explain the provenance of Jesus from Galilee, but not his preaching precisely there:

According to the gospels, the Saviour does not at first live in the holy city. Whence did he come? Again we find the answer in Isaiah: “I have raised up one from the north” (xli, 25). In the north is Galilee, of which it is said in the prophet: “At the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined” (Isaiah ix, 1-2). That, in point of fact, Galilee was generally regarded as the land from which the Messiah would come is confirmed by the Talmud, which says that, as the Galileans were the first to be driven into exile, they should be the first to receive consolation, in harmony with the law of compensation which governs all the divine plans.[33] Hence the following words of the prophet might be referred to the Galileans and their rejoicing: “They joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil……For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever” (Isaiah ix, 3, 6, 7).

Hence it is the word of the prophet, not a “hard fact of history,” that demands the birth of the Saviour in Galilee. Then Nazareth, with its relation to nazar, occurred at once as the proper birthplace of Jesus, as soon as men began to conceive the episode historically.

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wi ... /Section_7

[Giuseppe]

The simplest explanation I can find about the reason of the connection of Galilee with an adult Jesus is an echo from a real Jesus active in Galilee during the First Jewish Revolt of 66-70 CE: Jesus son of Saphat.

In addition, Celsus connects an adult Jesus with an embarrassing presence in Egypt.

Was "Egypt" a codeword for "Galilee", in Celsus?

[Giuseppe]

Evidence that "Egypt" was used allegorically to conceal a theater of war is found in Revelation 11:8:

Their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is allegorically called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.

[Giuseppe]

The one clear opening in the documents for a theory of personal emergence occurs in respect of a circumstance never critically faced by the biographical school, namely, the Galilean background. In the gospels that background is built up to no purpose. The Christ emerges, operates, and in a manner triumphs in Galilee ; then fails and leaves it to die at Jerusalem ; where, nevertheless, he is made to speak of returning to the Galilean scene. Yet not even is the supernatural machinery used to make him do so ; and there is finally no reason for believing that there was ever any Galilean “Christianity” at all. This is expressly admitted by the defence. Here then is a ground for sur-mising that “ something ” quite alien to the gospel story had happened in Galilee which motived the gospel parade of that locality ; and a tentative hypothesis in that regard is submitted in the Epilogue to the present work. But, once for all, this is no fulfilment of the assumption of a supernormal Personality answering to the gospel Jesus. That, we shall see, remains a fiction, a Myth.

(J.M. Robertson, Jesus and Judas, p. 69, my bold).

[Charles Wilson]

Once again, Giuseppe, you miss an entire History here. Galilee would NOT have been an embarrassment to a (Fictional) "Jesus" character or most any other actual Jew at that time. Galilee had been given over to the Priesthood and the 24 Mishmarot Groups as their homes. The Settlements were known and the Lists of the Settlements have been found in multiple sites throughout Galilee. It's there on the ground. The Information is found in the excavations. You don't have to go all Metaphysical here.