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In this continuation of part I, Tom Lee provides a background overview of the situation of the Jewish people and their relationship with the Roman's leading up and into the time of Jesus.

The Invention of Christianity and the Papacy
The first 500 years
by Tom Lee
Setting the Scene for the arrival of Christianity Part II
The relationship of the Jews and the Romans

The Jewish people under Roman domination…

One small people, the Jews, widely scattered throughout the empire, before the inception of the empire, had managed to place themselves in a unique position in relation to the Romans; procuring privileges while at the same time making it evident that they were not to be integrated in any other system of society.

Originally a localized cult, that of the Hebrew god of wind, Yahweh, it suffered displacement when the Jewish people were taken away into the Babylonian exile (6th cent. BCE), whence Abraham, the first patriarch, had been born. The original Hebrews were invaders who entered Palestine soon after 1400 BCE. For them, Yahweh was also a war god, identified with a particular tribe and with particular kinds of religious, as well as territorial, war.

Coptic icon of St John the Baptist

The Jews had already acquired moral and spiritual overtones of exceptional richness through the teaching of prophets in protest against religious laxity or social injustice. In the humiliation of the Exile the Jewish faith survived only by its enlargement. From being the national cult of a small people it became a religion with a universal message in the teaching of the Second Isaiah. The return from the exile gave the Yahweh cult once more a local habitation in Jerusalem, reversing the spiritual expansion, so that the Jewish religion became bound in fetters of national exclusiveness and legalistic minutiae.

The God of Israel…

Under the Empire the Jews could not be induced to participate in the imperial cult. For this people the God of Israel was paramount and there were no gods beside him. As he had been the creator so was he the sole and true ruler of the whole world and the arbiter of its destiny. His laws, his justice, his salvation, were fearlessly to be proclaimed and propagated.

A race that stubbornly believed it alone was chosen of God, and that all other religions were false, was bound to invite persecution. The liberal attitude of the ancient world towards another man's gods, or towards another nation's pantheon, was not shared by this remarkable Semitic people. In the end, as is well enough demonstrated in history, one intolerance always breeds another, and the second will often prove more fearsome than the first.

There was a great deal of respect among the Jews for Roman law and order and for the traditional Roman virtues. In the same way, the Jewish way of life made a great impression on the Greeks and Romans. Jewish devotion to spiritual, family, and scholastic ideals was much admired. In the two century span, 100 BCE to 100 CE, thousands of Sabbath candles flickered in Grecian and Roman homes — so many in fact, that the Roman philosopher Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) noted this phenomenon by remarking that Jewish customs were everywhere so prevalent that the Romans were in danger of being swallowed up by them.

More than ten percent of the population of the Roman Empire was Jewish — seven million out of seventy million, only four million by descent, the rest were convert Gentiles. However, many Romans resented both those who converted to Judaism and the Jews who did the converting. For Jews, once the empire was committed to a position that violated the sovereignty of the One God it stood self-condemned as the Kingdom of Arrogance.

In Jerusalem the collaborationist Jewish government and hierarchy, the establishment, tried to appease the Roman government by offering Temple sacrifices for the emperor, but not to him. But to the rank and file in Israel, Rome was the archenemy. Like fundamentalist Islamists in the 21st century, their animosities and prejudices were readily aroused by religious hot heads and revolutionaries, whose slogan was no ruler but God. All Jews in the homeland who dared to support the Roman rule, whether in high places or low, were scorned and despised. When you oppose a theocracy, its adherents brand you as evil. God is used as a weapon, something to tyrannize unbelievers with, utilizing outward rectitude at the same time as violence.

Especially in the northern territory of Galilee there was hatred of the heathen Romans and their Judaean priestly minions, particularly the Sadducees, who controlled the country. The priests were believed to have sold their souls to serve the foreigners and appeared to be living with a good conscience on the proceeds. This was the opinion of the Essenes and of the Jewish writers Philo and Josephus. Preachers in the synagogues castigated the Jerusalem hierarchy and urged repentance to hasten the advent of the Messiah.

To recount the mission of Jesus, scholars have until recently treated the Gospels as history, in so far as they can be thus treated. The Gospels are now believed to be liturgical works, not histories. They were devised to be read in the Christian synagogues of early Jewish Christianity in tandem with the Old Testament readings for each Sabbath.

John the Baptist…

As Hugh J. Schonfield pointed out in several erudite books: "In its origins the movement which gave rise to Christianity was wholly Jewish." It was believed that the Messiah would not appear until the return of the Prophet Elijah, who would reveal and anoint the Messiah, a descendant of David. When John the Baptist appeared from the wilderness dressed in a hair shirt with a leather girdle, like the Prophet Elijah, and started preaching the imminence of the Kingdom of Heaven, which would be established very soon by the long awaited Messiah, and baptizing in the Jordan, from the banks of which, it was believed, Elijah had been taken up to heaven, many concluded that he was the forerunner of the Messiah, or even the Messiah himself.

"All Judea and all the people of Jerusalem made their way to him, and as they were baptized by him in the river Jordan they confessed their sins," reports the Gospel attributed to Mark (c. 75 CE), confirmed by contemporary Jewish historian Josephus. Among the throng, early in 34 CE, was Jesus from Nazareth (or Nazara) in Galilee. We don't learn that he was accompanied by his mother, brothers and sisters, or any of their names until the later Gospel attributed to Matthew. Shortly before John the Baptist was imprisoned by King Herod Antipas (son of Herod the Great), Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan.

King Herod the Great died in 4 BCE, having reigned for more than thirty years over all Roman Palestine, which encompassed the former kingdoms of Israel and Judaea. Herod ruled as a dependent of Rome, but free from Roman taxation. He was descended from the pagan Idumean's conquered at the same time as the Galileans and forcibly converted to Judaism by the Jews eighty years before.

Herod insinuated himself into the Roman's good books with wheedling skullduggery and some military skill, adroitly allying himself successively with Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Emperor Augustus, holding onto his appointment as King of the Jews through each change of regime because of his ruthless ability to keep the Jews in relatively docile subjection to his controlled heartlessness.

Herod's Temple…

In an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Jewish populace, Herod began an extensive reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, as well as building huge forts and palaces, an artificial harbor at Caesarea Maritima, and whole cities throughout Judea. But with the Temple he undertook to make one of the major wonders of his world. He rebuilt the existing meandering streets on a paved grid and created a moat-ringed palace featuring picturesque water gardens. He added an amphitheater and a hippodrome. The jewel in the crown, the spiritual, economic and social center of Judea and an icon to Jews throughout the region, was the Temple. Herod aimed to rival Solomon, biblical builder of the Jews' first great house of worship, which had been razed by the Babylonians 570 years earlier.

Tradition forbade the temple's enlargement beyond Solomon's original dimensions. But Herod added a 35-acre platform — "the greatest ever heard of", wrote Josephus — on which the Temple would sit. The Western Wall where Jews pray today is a small slice of the platform's sixteen-foot thick western side. Some of the stones are thirty feet long and weigh up to fifty tons. As Herod built out over the adjacent valleys, the mountain on which the compound sat gradually disappeared. The great stone featured in the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim shrine that now occupies Herod's immense pedestal, is probably the mountain's peak.

At the time the Temple Mount had seven entrances, and most experts think the remains of an expansive, carved-stone stairway on the south side, perpendicular to the Roman street, was once the main entry for pilgrims. At the foot of the stairs have been excavated the ruins of a series of baths, for ritual purification, and small shops, some of which have hitches for animals.

Jerusalem was one of the largest cities between Alexandria and Damascus with a permanent population of some 80,000. During Passover, Succoth and Shavuoth, the great festivals during which Jews were obligated to make sacrifices at the Temple, between 100,000 and 250,000 visitors (historians' estimates differ) would stream down the long city thoroughfare.

The pilgrims shared the road with ox teams hauling huge slabs of limestone. The city was a huge, ongoing building project. The sound of construction mixed with the bleats and bellows of sacrificial animals for sale in streetside shops.

Temple worship revolved around sacrifice: a lamb for Passover, a bull for Yom Kippur, two doves — "the poor woman's sacrifice" — to celebrate a child's birth. Before buying an animal, visitors needed to change their Roman denarii (the dollar of the day) for shekels, or Temple coins that had no portraits on them and so did not violate the Jewish prohibition of graven images. Herod and the ruling High Priest apparently permitted the moneychangers onto the Temple platform.

The grand stairway was a meeting place with beggars and visitors both Jew and Gentile from all over the known world. Scholars were teaching, and would-be prophets preaching. Southern steps led into a tunnel under an administrative building and out again amid a series of courtyards. The outermost was open to curious Gentiles. The inner enclosures were for Jews only, a sign warning in Greek that any non-Jew passing farther "is answerable himself for his ensuing death".

Temple sacrifice…

Next came the Court of Women, followed by the Court of Israelites, the Court of the Priests and, above all the massive sacrificial altar. The Temple's innermost shrine featured the holy room that the Bible said had been occupied by the Ark of the Covenant in Solomon's Temple. It loomed eighty feet high, a glistening tower.

Within the Temple was the meeting place of the Sanhedrin, the Great Council of Elders of Israel. Originally selected by the High Priest from the priestly aristocracy; in Roman times a rising number of Pharisees and some professional Scribes were appointed. They claimed supreme power over all Jews everywhere, but King Herod and the Roman authorities acknowledged only their jurisdiction in violations of Jewish law by Judean Jews. Permitted to pass sentence of death for religious offences, they could not execute without approval from the civil powers.

There were thousands of priests, attendants, temple guards and servants, working in shifts. The sacrificial platform was a slaughterhouse with smoky pyres, the bellows of terrified beasts, sluices of blood, and an unavoidable abattoir stench.

Pilgrimages were family affairs, traveling together and camping overnight in the hills around the city. Although parts of the sacrifices were burned for the Lord or consumed by the priests, others were cooked and shared with the pilgrims. The cities material needs drew caravans from Samaria, Syria, Egypt, Nabatea, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia.

A building full of Roman soldiers loomed over the Temple courtyards like a watchtower over a prison. The Antonia fort, named for Mark Antony, housed two to three thousand troops. As Jesus and his fellow Jews performed their most sacred rites, they were never beyond surveillance.

One of Herod's ten wives Mariamne was a descendant of the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty and people hoped that one of her two sons would inherit the throne, although she had been executed for adultery in 29 BCE. But fearing an attempt to overthrow him, Herod had her sons murdered in 7 BCE, and his oldest son, Antipater, by his first wife, Doris, was executed five days before Herod's own death. Augustus joked that he would rather be Herod's pig than his son. In Greek, the principal language of the Empire, the words for pig (hys) and son (hyios) sound alike.

Revolts…

Herod managed to keep a lid on anti-Roman sentiment for most of his reign. But starting with his fatal illness in 4 BCE and continuing over the careers of several less effective successors a series of bloodily suppressed revolts erupted.

When Herod died, the kingdom was divided between his three sons from a Samaritan wife. Archelaus, who ruled Judaea, Samaria and Idumea with his capital at Jerusalem, was judged a failure by the Romans after ten years of continuous opposition and riots against him and he was replaced by an imperial procurator, or governor in 6 CE.

Subsequent disturbances were brutally suppressed by Roman troops under the Syrian supreme commander Quintillius Varus. Judaea thus became subject to Roman taxation and Sulpicius Quirinius, the new legate of Syria, ordered the first Census of the Jews in 6 CE; almost certainly the one mentioned in Luke's Nativity story, though most scholars believe Jesus to have been born between 6 and 4 BCE, ten to twelve years before, so this misplaced real event, the Census, cannot have any real connection with Jesus' nativity, and there is no record, either Jewish or Roman, of an earlier census.

For Jerusalem visualize Baghdad under what many perceive in the early 21st century as domination by an American Empire, a humiliating occupation of the very country the Chosen People were exiled to half a millennium before Jesus' time. Some historians have made an explicit comparison between America at the start of the third millennium and Rome at the start of the first. Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld called Iraq "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9BCE sent his legions into Germany and lost them."

Herod the Great

It is possible that the author of Luke in a Gentile milieu, half a century after Jesus' death, may not have differentiated Herod the Great from his son Herod Antipas. The supposed dates, details which at first seem to authenticate what the Gospel writer expounds, when examined, just confuse the issue, and make one question the veracity of much else that the Gospel writer asserts.

Herod Antipas ruled Galilee and the territory of Peraea, across the Jordan from Judaea, a corridor between Samaria and the Arab state of Nabatea, and his brother Philip ruled Batanea, Auranitis, Trachonitis and part of Iturea, the whole of the northern part generally known as Nazara of Galilee. Following Archelaus' demotion, Herod Antipas and Philip continued to rule their territories, but under closer supervision from the Roman legate.

In Rome itself the religion of the Jews and the Egyptian worship of Isis were gaining so many converts that Augustus' successor, his stepson Tiberius, tried to check the spread of the alien sects. He compelled the Egyptians to burn their ritual vestments and paraphernalia. The younger Jews he shipped out to rigorous climes on military service, while all other Jews, and all who observed Jewish rites, were ordered out of the city of Rome, threatened with permanent enslavement if they disobeyed.

Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas…

Appointed by Tiberius, Pontius Pilate came to Judaea in 26 CE full of arrogance and self-importance, with none of the finesse of a career diplomat, determined to serve the emperor by standing no nonsense from the Jews. Behind him doubtless stood the ambitious and anti-Semitic Lucius Aelius Sejanus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, who at the time virtually ruled the empire in the name of Tiberius. The emperor had retired to private pleasures on the island of Capri, said by gossips to be scandalous, though most of his contemporaries regarded him as honorable.

During the ten years of Pilate's administration, he managed to outrage Jewish religious sentiments in every possible way; his rule characterized by corruption, violence, robberies and many executions without trial.

Pilate confirmed the high priesthood of Caiaphas, a Sadducee who had been in office since the year 18 CE, presumably because of his ability to serve Roman interests. He was not only High Priest; he was the leading civil servant of the pragmatic, docile and cooperative Jewish administration.

Shortly after his arrival Pilate sent Roman troops into Jerusalem bearing effigy-adorned legionary standards, causing a massive demonstration by the offended populace. No doubt surprised at the vehemence of the protest, Pilate conceded and thereafter when Roman soldiery entered Jerusalem they left their standards behind. However, when Pilate confiscated treasure from the Temple to pay for the construction of a new aqueduct, again there were protest demonstrations and attacks on Pilate's workmen. The governor retaliated by interspersing his soldiers, dressed in plain clothes, among the demonstrators. The warriors drew their previously concealed weapons and set about them. More than a thousand Jews were slaughtered.

The Jewish aristocracy was in an ambivalent position. Regular sacrifices were offered in the Temple for the Emperor. Pilate and the Jewish authorities each depended on moderation in the other. The Jews had control over their own religious and civil affairs only as long as they did not resist Roman rule. It was well known that in Rome, "liberty" in the slogans of the strong, meant freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak. Galilean prophets such as Jesus were automatically labeled troublemakers.

ARTICLE NAVIGATION: You are presently looking at Part 1.2
PREVIOUS
INTRO | PART 1.1 | PART 1.2 | PART 1.3 | PART 1.4 | PART 1.5 | PART 1.6
PART 2.1 | PART 2.2 | PART 2.3 | PART 2.4 | PART 4.0
PART 5.1 | PART 5.2 | PART 5.3 | PART 5.4 | PART 5.5 | PART 6.2 | PART 6.3 | PART 7.1
PART 31.1 | PART 31.2 | PART 31.3 | PART 31.4
Acknowledgements | Bibliography

PHOTO CREDITS: The image of the Rising Sun used in the headline and footer graphics graphics was taken by Ines Mad. Linz, Austria and sourced through stock.xchng.
Clicking on the other images will take your to the original source of the image.

Tom Lee is an Australian, now semi-retired in Phoenix, Arizona, who has had an illustrious international career as an actor, writer, and broadcast commentator. He does not claim to be a professional theologian, nor an historian, but he undertook this study because, like many of the people who are attracted to what we're doing here at Catholica Australia, he was simply inquisitive about the history of Christianity and trying to better understand what he had been brought up to believe. In a sense, his book is a one-man journey seeking to better understand who Jesus was and what his own faith was about.

What are your thoughts on this commentary? You can contribute to the discussion in our forum.

©2008 Tom Lee (Star Concepts LLC) 15633 N. 17* Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85023-3409

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