The motif of the wilderness is central to The Shadow of the Galilean. Andreas views the desert wilderness around Jerusalem as a no man’s land—a dangerous but potentially liberating world outside the control of either the Romans or their Jewish subjects. This impression is heightened when he encounters Baruch, who has been exiled from his Essene community and is wandering the desert on the brink of starvation.

Caught between the Romans and his Jewish community when Pilate asks him to be an informant, Andreas feels that he is still metaphorically in this no-man’s-land. He finds himself drawn to the ideas of men who have also lived in the wilderness: Barabbas, Baruch, Bannus, and Jesus. In times of Political and Religious Upheaval, no man’s land is a place where men can go to “reflect…and seek God’s will in the solitude of an oasis” (13). In the wilderness, ideas that are politically dangerous can become fully developed; it is a place of debate and resistance. Communities take to the wilderness when their ideas are too dangerous for the rest of society: the Essenes and the Zealots both function outside the regular boundaries of Jewish and Roman society. 

Exodus, one of the books in the Old Testament, contains the story of Jewish people fleeing Egypt to wander in the wilderness until Moses tells them “not to wait for divine intervention or the help of other men” but to “trust in themselves and rise above their present distress” (8).