Jesus Endorsed by Galilean Fisherman's Union. By John Petty

The Sea of Galilee was also known as the Sea of Tiberias. Tiberias was Roman Emperor -- Caesar -- from AD 14 to AD 37. The Sea of Galilee was "Caesar's Sea," in other words. Caesar said who could and could not fish on "his" lake.

The first century Galilean fishing economy was not a "free market." Fishermen had to get a license from the local tax collector, quite likely in Capernaum. Capernaum had both a tax office, and a major harbor. In fact, it was probably the major fishing village on the Sea of Galilee. The tax collector might well have been Matthew, in fact, who was a tax collector in Capernaum.

Licenses tended to be sold to associations of fishermen, quite often based in kinship--James and John, for example, who had a "kinship-based fisherman's association," you might say, as did Peter and Andrew. Incidentally, all four of them were from Capernaum.

The fishermen's relationship to the larger economy was quite complicated. The main dynamic was the flow of money from people on the bottom to the people on the top. There were taxes on almost everything. The total level of taxation approached 50%. (K.C. Hanson, whose article "The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition," is the source for much of the information in this post, has an interesting diagram of those relationships.)

The political "higher-ups" got enormously wealthy from taxation. According to the Jewish historian, Josephus, annual revenue for Herod Antipas, ruler of the region of Galilee, was 1.2 million denarii, roughly equivalent to at least $15 million today. Jesus spent a lot of time in these fishing villages, and seems to have used Capernaum as something of a "base" for his campaign. Various other fishing villages, some also with harbors, are mentioned in the gospels.

Jesus spent time in Bethsaida, Gennesaret, Magdala, Gerasa, Tyre, and Sidon. (Magdala, home of Mary Magdalene, Jesus' girlfriend, was also known as Tarichaeae, which means "processed fish town.") In terms of social pecking order, fishermen would have been about one notch up from land-less artisans, such as carpenters, for example, but half-a-notch lower than a landed peasant. Having even a small plot of land made it possible for a family to provide for its physical needs.

During the Roman occupation, the number of peasants with land was declining rapidly as a result of Roman tax and commercialization programs, thus driving more and more people further into poverty. When people couldn't pay their taxes, whatever property they might have would be confiscated. (If you didn't have any property, they might take one or more of your children.) It's not for nothing that the four gospels often record Jesus talking about debt and appearing before magistrates.

First century Palestine was a place of seething ferment. There were repeated insurrections and rebellions. When Quirinius became Governor of Syria in AD 6, replacing Herod Antipas, he promptly wanted to raise taxes. (Quirinius was appointed Governor because he was a political and military associate of Tiberias. Appointments such as this were tickets to immense wealth.)

When Quirinius called for a tax census -- the mechanism for increasing taxes -- there were uprisings throughout the region which were brutally put down by Roman soldiers. In fact, it is believed that the "zealots" -- the Palestinian terrorists of their day -- had their beginning in this revolt. (One of Jesus' disciples is identified as "Simon the Zealot.")

People today look upon the ministry of Jesus as primarily spiritual and not political. In the world of his time, however, there was no such neat distinction. Jesus talked much about the "kingdom of God," for example, and "kingdom" is a political word. In the kingdom of God, said Jesus, hierarchical relationships are upended, and replaced by radical egalitarianism, gender equality, and open table fellowship. This had significant political import, and was threatening to the hierarchical powers-that-be.

Jesus directed his ire directly at the Jerusalem Temple and, more indirectly, toward the Roman government. The two entities had strong connections. The Temple was controlled by the chief priests and elders. Chief priests served at the pleasure of the Romans, and the elders were, basically, the rich ruling families of Jerusalem. They both had an interest in preserving the political status quo. Moreover, these "sophisticated" city-dwellers tended to look down their noses at the boorish plebeians in the northern hinterlands.

In effect, Jesus was rallying the peasants, who constituted over 90% of the population, to an active, but non-violent, resistance to Roman occupation and Temple complicity in that occupation. This campaign would have had considerable resonance among the fishermen of Galilee who were facing not only increased taxation but also increased competition from landless peasants trying to work their way into the fishing economy. In rough times, Jesus' message of resistance would have had considerable appeal.