Although there had been a large deportation of its inhabitants by Tiglath-pileser, and no doubt much destruction of life in other wars, Galilee seems to have entirely recovered from these calamities, for there is abundant evidence that in our Lord's time the country was densely popu- lated. The conditions of life there — climate, soil, enterprise, and industi'y, and a ready market for all products — favoured such a result. The exact number of its inhabitants at any given time may be a matter of speculation ; it has been reckoned from two millions to three millions at the begin- ning of our era ; but since it was then customary for people to congregate in cities and towns, we shall be aided in our judgment if we turn our attention briefly to them. When the division of the land took place among the four tribes, sixty- nine cities at least are mentioned by name. Josephus in his account of Galilee mentions by name about forty cities and villages. It is inter- esting to note that of the nineteen cities assigned to Naphtali sixteen were 'fenced' Ci'?? '^'v), Jos 19^5. About the Sea of Galilee there were ten or
twelve flourishing towns. Were not this fact corroborated by historical evidence, it might be dis|)uted were one to judge solely by the present ruined condition of that region.
Beginning at Tiberias and going round by the S. we come first to Iktlimans, where was a syna- gogue, and which conseiiuently ranked as a city. Beyond that was Tarichfa, famous for Us .ship- building and its fisheries, of whose inhabitants six thousand young men were sent by Vespasian to Corinth to work on the Isthmus oanal, and tinrty thousand more were .sold as slaves ( llVo'.s-. Ili. X. 10). A line bridge crossed the Jordan where it leaves the Lake, and beyond that on the !•). side was Gergesa, the scene of the demoniacs and the herd of swiiu; (Mt S-*-''^). On the brow of the moun- tain K. of Gergesa was Gamala, ' the strongest city in that part' {M'ars, U. xx. 4), which withstood a siege of seven months, and was subdued only when Vespasian led against it three of his legions. Near Gamala was Hippos, one of the cities of the Decapolis. At the N.E. corner of the Lake was JiiUds. which previous to our era bore the name of Hethsaida, and which Herod Philip II. trans- formed into a beautiful and flourishing city, where he himself in .\.l). 34 was buried in a costly toinb. On the W. side we have Choragin, not far from the Lake, and Capernaum, Bethsaiila, and Maijilula directly on the shore. Capernaum was called Christ's 'own city' (Mt 9'); Hethsaida was the home of Philip, Andrew, and Peter, possibly also of Zebedee and his sons James and John ; and Magdala is memorable for the toucliing story of Mary and her connexion with our Lord. Close to Magdala, just above the famous robber-oaves of Wady Hainan, was Bcth-arbel, a stronghold from the earliest times (Hos 10"). We have now reached our starting-point, Tiberias, which was a city of great political importance, having beer, rebuilt in magniflcent style by Ilerud Antipas not long before Christ began His public ministry, when it became the capital of the province.
No more than a glance at the country itself is needed to convince one that this ijrovince pos- sessed an unusual number of large towns, to some of which was attached special historic interest. There may be mentioned Safed, visible from the shore of the Sea of Galilee, 'a city set upon a hill,' one of the sacred cities of the Jews ; Haznr, the royal city of king Jabin (Jg4-); Cana, where our Lord's first miracle was performed (Jn 2); Sep- phoris, the capital of the province till it was removed to Tiberias,— it was a strong place, where was a roj'al magazine of arms, and where the public archives were kept; Kedesh, one of the cities of refuge, and, under Tyrian rule, a centre of pagan worship ; Jotapata, where one of the longest and most desperate sieges during the war with Rome took place ; Tabor, conspicuous and beautiful in its position, and strongly fortified from the earliest times ; Japha, which ' had very strong walls and a large number of inhabitants' (Jos. Life, 45) ; Zabulon, whose houses were built after the model of those of Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut, that is, with great elegance and of unusual height ; Gabara. mentioned with Tiberias and Sepphoris, as one of the largest cities of Galilee (Jos. Life, 25); Gadara, where Vespasian's first blow was struck in his campaign in Galilee ( M'ars, III. vii. 1); Bethshea.n, interesting in its ancieiu, history, and still more famous under its new name Scythopolis ; Tt(demais, where the Koman fleet and army gathered that had come to destroy the .Jews as a nation ; and, finally. Cwsarea Philippi, which under the name Banias was a seat of idol- worship ten centuries befoi'e it was known to the Greeks, and by tliese people in turn transformed into a shrine of I'nu under the name I'aneas,
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adorned by Herod the Great, and still more by bis son Herod Philip II., a place visited by Vespasian as the guest of Herod Aiji'ippa 11., and later by Titus, wonderfully attractive in its situation, but chiefly intere,sting to the Christian from its con- nexion with our Lord. This rapid review, which embraces only a few of the better-known places of Galilee, indicates that wherever we turn our eyes, on hillside or plain, we look upon town, city, or village of prosperous Galilee, and the conclusion is forced upon us that its population was dense.