Jesus: A Jewish Galilean - a new reading of the Jesus story Sean Freyne From the preface Yet another attempt to discover the historical Jesus! This topic has been so overworked in recent decades that soon it must surely be due a sabbatical rest. Yet there is always the temptation to believe, naively no doubt, that a particular aspect of the topic not yet discovered, or at least not properly treated, could, perhaps, hold the key to an adequate understanding of the issue, which its present form has been with us for over 250 years. My particular vista has a Galilean angle, prompted by the way in which the Galilee of Jesus has been constructed by different scholars in the more recent past. One occasionally gets the impression that the quest for the historical Jesus is in danger of becoming the quest for the historical Galilee, with all the attendant hermeneutical pitfalls that particular enterprise has given rise to. Sean Freyne is currently Director of the Programme for Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he previously held the Chair of Theology. He has lectured widely to general audiences, as well as contributing to various television treatments of the historical Jesus. He is the author of several book and numerous articles on ancient Galilee, the Gospels and Early Christianity.