by
Damien F. Mackey
“[The Pharisees] replied, ‘Are you from
Galilee, too? Look into it,
and you will find that a prophet does not
come out of Galilee’.”
Some years ago the
question was asked:
biblical basis - What
prophets came from Galilee? - Christianity Stack Exchange
What prophets came from Galilee?
According to the Pharisees
at the time of Jesus, no prophet ever came from Galilee.
And I
suspect that these nit-pickers of Scripture would have been perfectly correct
in their knowledge of, and insistence upon, this.
However, the
suggestion is made in the following discussion that the Pharisees were actually
wrong when they claimed that no prophet came from Galilee.
And so we
read:
This question talks about how in John 7:52, the
Pharisees claimed that "no prophet comes out of Galilee." The
accepted answer discusses how commentators often point out the Pharisees'
mistake, and N.T. Wright points out that "both the prophets Jonah and
Hosea came from Galilee." In addition, I found this link, which says that 5 prophets came from
Galilee: Jonah, Nahum, Hosea, Elijah, and Elisha. BibleStudyTools.org has an article with a discussion about how Micah,
Elijah, and Jonah being from Galilee, and how Nahum and Hosea could possibly
have come from Galilee.
Which prophets are from Galilee, and how do
we know?
An associated question, what is the source of
the uncertainty surrounding this question? Perhaps I could word the question,
what is the (Biblical and archeological) basis for saying that these 5 prophets
are from Galilee?\
1.
Jonah from Gath-hepher
2 Kings 14:25 "He was the one who
restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in
accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his
servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher."
Wikipedia
on Gath-hepher says it is in modern-day Galilee
(maybe that's what it is saying?). Joshua 29:13 describes more where this place
is.
2.
Micah from Moresheth
Micah 1:1 The word of the Lord that came
to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and
Hezekiah, kings of Judah—the vision he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
BibleAtlas.org doesn't
mention Galilee at all in the article on Moresheth, nor does Wikipedia in their article on Moresheth-Gath.
Wikipedia says Moresheth = Moresheth-Gath.
3.
Elijah from Gilead
1 Kings 17:1 "Now Elijah the
Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, 'As the Lord, the God of
Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few
years except at my word.'"
2 Kings 15:29 actually seems to differentiate
between Gilead and Galilee, which suggests that Gilead is not contained within
Galilee.
Wikipedia
on Gilead makes no mention of Galilee, and
the Bible Atlas also seems to
differentiate Gilead from Galilee by saying that in Gilead there is "the
white chalk of the desert plateau, the same as that found in Samaria and Lower
Galilee."
4.
Elisha
(I don't know the basis).
5.
Hosea
(I don't know the basis).
I would like to see the basis for 4 and 5
(Elisha and Hosea) being from Galilee, and I would like to see how we can know
1-3 are actually from Galilee. I would also be interested if there are any
other claims that additional prophets are from Galilee. My questions stems from
the fact that none the verses say explicitly from Galilee, and I have seen
almost nothing supporting the connection between the city mentioned and
Galilee. Pardon my lack of knowledge in biblical geography. Perhaps it is
obvious that these cities are contained in the region that is Galilee. There
may also be a notable difference between the geographical boundaries in Galilee
between the Old and New Testament timeframes or even within the Old Testament
timeframe, which contains several thousand years of history on its own.
[End of quote]
Here six Old
Testament prophets are identified as potentially arising from Galilee: namely, Jonah, Nahum, Hosea, Micah, Elijah,
and Elisha – except that they didn’t.
First of all, regarding
these six prophets listed above, they are actually only four: namely, Elijah,
Elisha, Micah and Hosea (= Jonah/Nahum).
We can immediately run a
line through Elijah, who was from Gilead, not Galilee (I Kings 17:1): “And
Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead …”.
And we can immediately run
a line through Elisha, who dwelt not very far from Gilead (I Kings 19:16): “And Elisha
the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah …”.
And we can immediately run
a line through Micah, who was from Judah (Micah 1:1): “The word of
the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth …”.
That leaves us with just
our one, composite prophet, Hosea = Jonah/Nahum.
He was a prophet of the
tribe of Simeon, largely a Judah-located tribe:
God can raise up
prophets at will - even from a shepherd of Simeon
(3) God can raise
up prophets at will - even from a shepherd of Simeon
He was the great prophet
“Isaiah son of Amoz [Amos]” (Isaiah 1:1), or Amaziah:
Amoz | The amazing name
Amoz: meaning and etymology , who was the “Amittai”, father of Jonah (Jonah 1:1).
And we know from Tobit
14:4 that Jonah was Nahum.
So, now, it really boils
down to how to reconcile the geography of Jonah, “Gath-hepher” (2 Kings 14:25),
with that of “Nahum the Elkoshite” (Nahum 1:1) - while all the while keeping in
mind that this was a composite prophet of the tribe of Simeon?
It seems altogether
impossible!
However, I have already
covered much of this geography in various articles.
The fact is that our
composite prophet, Isaiah (Hosea), as the Simeonite Uzziah now governing “Bethulia”,
“… the prince of Juda[h]” and “the prince of the people of Israel” (Judith
8:34; 13:23: Douay), moved about from one end of Israel to the other, and even
beyond the borders of Israel.
As Isaiah, for instance, we
potentially find him fleeing the wrath of King Ahaz and heading northwards into
Galilee:
Isaiah took his
family north to escape the wrath of king Ahaz
(3) Isaiah took
his family north to escape the wrath of king Ahaz
I suggest that the family may
have taken up residence there in what would become known as Capernaum, from Kfar
Naḥum (כְּפַר נַחוּם), literally, ‘Nahum’s village’, named
after the prophet himself as Nahum (a Simeonite):
Prophet Nahum as
Isaiah Comforted
(3) Prophet Nahum
as Isaiah Comforted
Capernaum’s ancient name
may have been Jonah’s “Gath-hepher”.
But Jonah did not hail
from there, nor was he a Galilean prophet.
Nor, again, did he, as
Nahum, hail from Al Qosh (“Elcesite”), a location near Nineveh in Assyria.
No, he simply dwelt there
for a time while being Jonah in his mission to Nineveh.
Conclusion
None of Jonah, Nahum, Hosea, Micah, Elijah,
Elisha, came from Galilee.
The Pharisees were quite correct in this matter.
Elijah (Gilead), Elisha (close to the Jordan River), Micah (Moresheth,
Mareshah), Hosea (= Jonah/Nahum), a Simeonite from Judah (cf. Amos 7:12: ‘‘Get out, you seer! Go back to the
land of Judah’), all hailed from locations to the south of the land of Galilee.
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