Urban Jesus

Ray Bakke ( A Theology As Big As the City ) wonders how the apostles, and the gospel, could have made such a rapid transition from rural Galilee to the cities of the Mediterranean.  He suggests that Jesus discipled the disciples in an urbanized Palestine.  He writes, “Rome . . . reorganized and centralized these Greek social and cultural realities, and the milieu spread throughout Palestine and in the whole Near East.  There was no place to hide from these influences.  The populations then were as large or larger than those in the same areas today, according to various scholars.  There was far more to Galilee than shepherds, fields, and olive groves.”  In short, “the disciples were not so parochial or so ‘pale’ as we might have supposed.  They were prepared to follow Jesus in an urbanized world because that is where and how they were discipled.”