Problematic aspects of the ethno-religious affiliation of Jesus of Nazareth to Jewish Judaism in the context of the "Third Search for the Historical Jesus"

This article analyzes the "third search for the historical Jesus", which is based on the archaeological research of Galilee. This approach opposes arbitrary experiments of historical reconstruction of the personality of Jesus, primarily based on the analysis of the texts of the Bible, some apocrypha and some related documents. The new approach developed with the involvement of the scientific tools of sociology, comparative anthropology and archaeology. The authors give a brief description of the essence of the "third search", consider references to Galilee in ancient written sources and provide an alternative interpretation of the results of archaeological research in this area. The article analyzes the opinion of the "third-party researchers" about the "substantial regional pluralism of Galilean Judaism." The authors pay special attention to the issue of the religious identity of the Galileans in connection with traditional Jewish beliefs and rituals. Based on the available evidence, the historical dynamics of the ethnoreligious composition of Galilee is traced, starting from the Iron Age, including the periods of Assyrian and Babylonian captivity and the period of Hellenization. The authors pay special attention to the position of Galilee at the end of the I millennium BC. The article calls into question the hypothesis that in the early Roman period Galilee was inhabited by descendants of the Jewish exodus to Galilee under the Hasmoneans. The article shows that Galilee, starting with mentions in 732 BC and before the Birth of Jesus, actually remained under the Jewish rule of the Maccabees only during the reign of Alexander Yannai from 106 to 79, that is, only about a quarter of a century. The authors analyze the opinion of representatives of the "third search" on the substantial regional pluralism of Galilean Judaism and identify problematic aspects in substantiating the generally accepted statement about the Jewish origin of Jesus and about the ethno-religious affiliation of Jesus to religious Jewry. The article shows that from the archaeological data of excavations in Galilee it does not necessarily follow that its population in the period under review was entirely Jewish.