ancient Galilee, I would surely have felt no less estranged. The Jesus I learned about as a child spoke King James (or Revised Standard) English and seemed to fit without great difficulty into modern Western culture and values. But the historical Jesus spoke Aramaic, a Semitic language, and lived in a nondemocratic world very different from modern North America. This sense of cultural distance is important and must always be kept in mind if we are not to remake Jesus and his world in the image of