Exploring the Gospels 4: The Political Background of the Gospels

So, we plan to, in upcoming sermons, do a deep dive into the Gospels, but before we get into that, we do need to understand some of the background to help us understand the events that we read about in the Gospels. And the purpose of these sermons we'll be covering is to emphasize who Jesus Christ was and what his message was.

I've already given two sermons on the identity of Jesus Christ there. And now we'll be covering in several sermons some of the background information that we need to do to understand before we get into the Gospels. And today we'll be talking about the political and religious background of the Gospels. If we are to understand the Gospels, we need to understand the context of the times in which those events took place. I would liken it as I did in the Friday night update last night. It's like walking into the middle of a movie.

And we need to understand the cast of characters there, and we need to understand some of the background if we are to get the most out of the story that is recorded there for us by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. When they wrote the Gospels, they didn't bother to tell us a lot of the background information. Actually, very little of the background information. So we're kind of walking into the middle of the story. So what we'll do is cover some of the background that they did not include there for us. So let's begin by by looking at the political background of the Gospels.

And we'll take a look at the political world of Judea and Galilee, where most of the events of the Gospels take place. And this was a part of the larger world that was the Roman Empire. And as kind of an introduction to this, I want to start off in a bit of an unusual place, something Paul wrote to the church in Galatia.

This is Galatians chapter 4, verses 4 and 5. And Paul writes here, But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons. And I want to focus in on one particular phrase that Paul uses here, when the fullness of the time had come. When the fullness of the time had come. What's he referring to there? Well, obviously he's talking about the time for prophecies of the birth and the coming of the Messiah to be fulfilled.

But I want to take a look at it in a bit of a broader context today. And that angle, the angle I want to talk about here as we begin, is the influence and the power of the Roman Empire at that time that actually allowed the gospel to be spread and for the church to be founded and to begin its work. Let's consider by way of background here, what conditions would have been like had Jesus been born, say, a century earlier than he was, or a century later if he had begun his ministry a century later than he did.

Because again, the focus Paul mentions here is when the fullness of the time had come. It's not talking about just the prophecies of the birth and coming of the Messiah, but conditions had to be right. We probably haven't given that a whole lot of thought, but conditions had to be right. And this is where the Roman Empire comes into play. Let's just ask a hypothetical question. What were conditions like 100 years before Jesus Christ appeared on the scene? Had he begun his ministry 100 years earlier, the area of Judea was in a great deal of turmoil because Rome was trying to consolidate its hold over the area of Asia Minor and the Eastern Mediterranean region there, Judea and Galilee and so on, and this whole region of the Eastern Mediterranean.

So had Jesus begun his ministry then, the church frankly could not have functioned because of all the turmoil that was associated with the Roman Empire taking over from from the Greek Empire that had collapsed. And again, other people are vying and fighting for control over over this area there. What about a hundred years later had Jesus tried to start his ministry, at that time what was going on? Well, actually a hundred years later, the Jews here in Judea and Galilee are in open revolt against Rome, and there is a disastrous war that is starting then from 132 to 135 AD, and it turned out to be catastrophic for the Jewish people.

Led to a second destruction of the city of Jerusalem and actually the exile of many of the Jewish people from that part of the world. So it would have been impossible for the church to have begun at that time because of all the chaos in the warfare that is taking place. It would have been impossible for an organized church to begin and for the gospel to have been effectively spread under those conditions.

How many of you have heard of this term before? Pox Romana. Pox Romana. Okay, quite a few, and I'm not talking about chicken pox or anything like that. Pox is the Roman word for peace or Latin for peace. Pox. P-X. And it means literally the peace of Rome, and it refers to the Roman Empire enforcing a level of peace and security and stability that had not existed before in that part of the world. To understand the alternative, let's consider the state of the Middle East today compared to what it was like under the rule of the Roman Empire.

What's going on in the Middle East today? You might be thinking of what's happening in Iraq and Syria, which have been plagued by warfare, going on for two decades now in the case of Iraq. You might think of Afghanistan, the level of chaos and confusion there, because without a strong government to maintain peace and order, it's every man for himself.

That's why there's such a tremendous refugee problem in the Middle East right now. People are trying to flee and avoid the fighting in there very few places they can go. Realistically, it's just utter chaos and bloodshed all over there. And that, unfortunately, has been the general pattern in that part of the world when there has not been a strong authority to maintain order.

There was the Arab Spring that swept through much of North Africa and the Middle East. There are a number of years ago that toppled some of these dictatorships, and the chaos has never subsided. There was also the American invasion to topple Saddam Hussein there in Iraq and so on, and it has just created a lot of chaos there.

And Western forces have maintained a certain level of stability there, but again, without a strong force there, it's just absolute chaos. There you might think of the spread of ISIS. What happened when these governments were overthrown? Well, ISIS. Well, and the American government started withdrawing from there. ISIS sprang up, one of the most bloodthirsty regimes in all of history.

Unfortunately, they've been been mostly squashed there, but that is that was pretty much the pattern in that part of the world before the Roman Empire came along. Again, pretty much every man for himself. And when the Roman Empire rose up in spite of its failings and flaws—and there were failings and flaws, no question about it—such things as slavery and abuse of force and power and so on. But one major benefit that it brought to that part of the world, the entire Mediterranean region, was the Pax Romana, a period of peace and stability that lasted through much of the first century there.

The Romans valued peace and stability so much that they erected a temple in the heart of Rome, and it was called the Temple of Peace. The Temple of Peace. And here's a reconstruction of a number of fragments of this temple here to give us an idea of what this looked like, this beautiful shrine here. I want to show you a close-up from one of the panels there on this shrine, this structure. And notice the symbolism that is here. You have this woman sitting in the center of the panel, and this is the Roman goddess Pox.

P-A-X. Peace. The goddess of peace here. And notice what's going on. She has these these two little babies sitting in her lap. She's got flowers and crops that are blooming and blossoming around her, representing peace. Down here below her feet, you have an oxen continually laying in the grass and chewing his cud. And she peacefully grazing here. To her right over here is a goddess sitting on a sea serpent, indicating that even the seas, the oceans, are at peace.

We'll talk about the significance of that in just a little bit here. Not sure of the symbolism of this goddess and the swan over here, but this is part of—it's kind of a millennial setting there, where the world is at peace. Because Rome has put down the rebellions and the unrest and the warfare and all of this sort of thing.

So this was the the Roman ideal in the first century there at the time of Jesus Christ's ministry and the early years of the church. Now why was this important? Well, think back through your mind here. Consider that there are literally a dozen or more references to robbers and thieves in the books of the New Testament. That tells you something about the environment of that day. The many references to robbers and thieves.

You might remember one example, the parable of the Good Samaritan, where this man is journeying up on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. And it was a very well-traveled road in that day. It'd be like a fairly major highway here. And what happens to the man? He's set upon by thieves who bug him, who rob him, who beat him up, and leave him for dead right there by the side of the road.

And Jesus's audience could identify with that because they knew that's what life was like at that time. He was describing very real conditions of his day. I've been to the area along that road a couple of times, and actually if you know where to look, the Romans actually built a small fortress there along that road to help protect it from thieves and robbers, protect the travelers there in that area.

So this is very real. You might remember also when Jesus is crucified, two men are crucified with him on either side. And what are they referred to? They're referred to as robbers in the Gospels. The Apostle Paul writes about the troubles and travails that he encountered during his ministry, and one of them that he mentioned was robbers.

Robbers. So we see these mentions here in Paul's writing throughout the Gospels there. So these things indicate how bad things were in that part of the world when it was occupied territory, occupied by the Romans. So if it was that bad when the Romans were there, imagine how bad it would have been had the Romans not been there to enforce again a level of peace. So the the Pax Romana, which was enforced by force there, established a level of peace and stability that had not existed. And it created a window of time during which the gospel could be spread and the early church could be established.

So even though robbers were a problem, under the Roman rule, conditions were much better than they had been in that part of the world before. But there were there were other factors in addition to this in which Rome had a hand in allowing the gospel to be spread and the church to get started. There were some other factors at work that were instituted or a part of the Roman Empire that allowed the church to be to be started in that part of the world that did not exist before that time. Well, yes, there were.

Transportation was a big factor, a very big factor. There were at least two modes of transportation that made huge steps forward under the Roman rule. And one of those was the Roman road system. Where did we get the idea for our interstate highway system? Actually, we copied it from the Germans who, during the 1930s, leading up to World War II, established what was called the Autobahn. Any of you traveled on the Autobahn before?

Okay, handful of you have. There, Italy has something something very similar there. Where did they get the idea? They got the idea from the Romans, the Roman road system. And I want to ask your age, but those of you who remember back in the early 1960s when the Interstate Highway system was funded and authorized by Congress, one of the explicit purposes for its establishment was to be able to move military forces back and forth across the country.

We don't even think about that these days. But in the early 60s, during the Cold War, that was a very major factor there, that the United States Armed Forces would be able to move their military forces back and forth across the country, east, west, north, south, in rapid time to defend the country. And the Romans did created their road system in part for the very same reasons there, to be able to move their armies, their legions back and forth to areas of the Roman Empire that were threatened during that period.

So the Romans established a major system of good roads throughout their empire for the same reason. And the Romans are smarter than we are when the Roman Empire, when the Roman legions weren't fighting. They were doing construction projects such as building roads like this. Part of the every Roman legionnaires military equipment was a pick and shovel there for using for construction projects there.

For building bridges, building aqueducts, building infrastructure, building roads, dams, things like that. Again, they were smarter than we are in utilization of their manpower. And this Roman road system allowed people to travel relatively safely and quickly throughout the Roman Empire. And this happens to be the main street through the city of emphasis. This is a photo I took there several years ago. And you can actually see, I guess they didn't have to deal with potholes then, but they did have to deal with wagon wheel ruts in the roads, which you can see here.

They're from the wagons traveling up and down during the streets there. Incidentally, a number of the Roman cities had laws where you couldn't run your wagon through the city during the daylight because there's so many pedestrians there. So they had laws that the wagons are only allowed to travel the roads at night when everybody else is in bed asleep there. So pretty smart. They had a number of very good laws. Let's take a look. Here's another Roman road. This is at the city of Heropolis. And this is one of the cities mentioned in Paul's letter to the Colossians. Heropolis is not far from Colossae and Laodicea. As a matter of fact, you can see those two cities from the city of Heropolis there.

So there were no doubt some early church members who walked on this very road that's been excavated there in the city of Heropolis here. So there are many places in the Gospels and also where in the Book of Acts where we see Jesus Christ and the apostles walking along these Roman roads and Paul doing the same thing. Incidentally, as a side note, they're nearly always traveling in groups.

Jesus is traveling. We think of him traveling with his disciples, which is true most of the time. Probably not just a dozen apostles or disciples, but probably in groups of 15, 20, maybe 30 at a time there. And Paul, when he's traveling too, he nearly always has some traveling companions.

It's not just for companionship, but also they travel that way for safety, again because of the robbers there. So it's not talked about, but that's why they're traveling in groups a lot of the time. We see another mode of transportation that's mentioned prominently in the book of Acts, and that is by ship. Paul is regularly catching rides on cargo ships from one place to the next as he travels spreading the gospel.

This illustration is a mosaic of a ship from the Roman port of Ostia, which was the main port for the city of Rome. Rome wasn't a port city. It's actually located about 20 or 30 miles inland from the Mediterranean, and cargoes would be brought to the port of Ostia, and then would be taken either by boat or by carts, wagons, and so on up to the city of Rome.

So this is actually a shipping shop about half the stage of half the size of this stage here at the port there where people would arrange for their cargoes to be shipped or they would book passage on on ships traveling around the Mediterranean. So this also was a major benefit of the Pax Romana. Before and after this time, the Mediterranean Sea was filled with pirates.

And you literally took your life in your hands when you tried sailing on the Mediterranean. Because before the Roman Empire took over the Mediterranean, incidentally the Romans, they didn't call the Mediterranean Sea Mediterranean, they called it Mare Nostrum.

Mare Nostrum, which is Latin for our sea. Why did they call it our sea? Well, because the Roman Empire surrounded the entire Mediterranean, so it was theirs. They viewed it as theirs, and it was by conquest here. So pirates were a huge problem before the Roman Empire established the Pax Romana around there. One of the most famous figures in history, Julius Caesar, when he was a young man in his teens or early 20s, was actually kidnapped by pirates. And Julius Caesar, he was kind of the Donald Trump of his day, because he told the pirates that the ransom you're asking isn't enough.

I'm worth more than that. So you need to ask for a higher ransom. Literally, true story. So eventually the ransom was paid, and when he was leaving there, he told the pirates, just so you know, I'm going to come back here, and I'm going to kill every one of you for what you've done in kidnapping me. And he did. He went back to Rome, and he raised a navy, and he came back, and he wiped out the pirates.

And he didn't stop there. The Romans built a navy. They weren't a big powerful naval force before that time. They raised a navy, and they went around, and they cleaned out the pirates throughout the Mediterranean. And thus, the Mediterranean becomes Marinusstrum, our sea, our sea there. So this was significant because it was only then that travel and commerce became truly safe in the Mediterranean there. And there was a great deal of commercial activity of ships traveling all over this area. You read through the Book of Acts, and you find Paul often traveling by ship, by commercial ships there.

He ends up being shipwrecked on the island of Malta here later on on his final trip to Rome. Not on his final trip, but the last one recorded in the Book of Acts here. But you do see Paul being up here in Greece and Macedonia and so on, and traveling back and forth to Asia Minor and over to Judea here, traveling on commercial cargo ships. Because now, at last, that kind of commerce and travel was safe for people to do. So Paul is utilizing that greatly to spread the gospel.

It just wasn't possible before, again, you literally took your your life in your own hands to try that because of the pirates earlier there. So this was very, very important. And Paul knew it was so reliable that you find reference in the Book of Acts and in his writings to him planning to be in a certain place at a particular time, or to be down in Jerusalem for the holy days and things like that, because he knew he could have access to reliable transportation there through the cargo ships that are sailing. There's another factor at work as well in the Roman Empire, in the Pax Romana, and it is actually a major reason why we have the New Testament today.

And that was the Roman mail system. The Roman mail system here. And that allowed people to reliably send mail, letters, communications from one place to another place in the Roman Empire. We don't know much about it because there's very little historical that survives describing that. Actually, probably knows much about it from the New Testament as anything else. But what we do see is that Paul is sending letters from one church area to another back and forth, Corinth and Rome and Ephesus and places like this, and sometimes by personal messengers, often by personal messengers there, that again, traveling by the same type of ships that Paul is traveling on there.

But he clearly used letters to communicate regularly with specific churches or areas of churches or specific individuals. And it is because of that that we have a New Testament today. The letters that are preserved for us in the New Testament. In some cases, Paul sent letters all the way from Rome to people like Timothy or to churches over in Asia Minor, hundreds, hundreds of miles away.

So again, a major factor in the spread of the Gospel and the growth of the early church there through these things. And another area I want to talk about is a universal language at that time, which was Greek. Greek was common throughout the Roman Empire. We might assume that it would have been Latin because that was spoken in Rome. But it wasn't the universal language like English today.

You know, if you travel just about anywhere in the world, you will find people who can speak English. Or at least they think they speak English. If you know what I mean, if you travel, you know that. You're running to people who think they speak English, but not quite. But Greek was a universal language then. And you could travel just about anywhere in the Roman Empire and find people who understood Greek there. And that was inherited from the Greek Empire of Alexander the Great. Many languages were spoken in the Roman Empire. You find that reflected in Acts 2 and the miracle of speaking in tongues there on Pentecost because you have people from Babylon, from Egypt, from North Africa, from Macedonia, from Greece, from Italy, from all over the Roman Empire. And they're speaking different languages there, so God performs a miracle to allow the speaking in tongues as well as hearing in different languages there. But it didn't matter where you went in the Roman Empire. You could basically find people who spoke or could understand Greek. This particular illustration is a—if you haven't figured it out yet—it's for somebody who is Jewish. You see the very prominent menorah on here and a shofar and a palm branch, which are very typical Jewish symbols. This is actually a tombstone inscription for a Jewish woman. But it's not in Hebrew or Aramaic. The inscription is clearly in Greek. And this is actually from the fourth century there. So there was still speaking Greek at that time, even among the Jews. So it was because Greek was the common language that the New Testament was written and preserved in Greek. It was the commonly understood language of the time. This particular illustration here is a part of Paul's epistle to the Romans.

And this particular document dates to about roughly 200 AD. And it's written in Greek.

As Paul originally wrote in Greek, or those who took Paul's dictation wrote in Greek.

And I want you to look at that carefully and see if you notice something about this.

See if something jumps out at you. Where's the punctuation?

Where's the capitalization? There is none because those did not come in for another couple of centuries later.

For that matter, where the word breaks? You don't even see any word breaks in there in the Greek of that time.

Which is something that gives Bible translators fits at times. Because if you just got a bunch of words strung together, where does one word end? The next one begins. Sometimes that's a matter of interpretation. Now, I think translators have got it down quite well now. But this is why, one of the reasons why translating the Bible can be such a challenge at times. This is just the reality. Early Hebrew was the same way. They didn't have word breaks or capitalization or punctuation. Those didn't come along until centuries later here. But my main point in mentioning this is had there not been a universal language and use in the Roman Empire, it would have been much more difficult to spread the gospel.

So the common use of the Greek language is a reason why we have the books of the New Testament today.

So to kind of sum up here what we've covered so far, the Roman Empire created a stability that had not existed before. It created a climate in which the gospel could be spread and in which the church could grow throughout the Roman Empire. And it had a common language that most people understood. And it was in this atmosphere that the gospels and the rest of the New Testament books were written and the gospel was allowed to be spread. Let's talk about another area here that also ties in with that. And that is the Roman view toward other religions. Rome was quite tolerant in general toward other religions. Why is that? Well, the Roman Empire was built by conquest. So when they would go in and they would conquer another area, say let's use Egypt as an example or Greece, the Egyptians and the Greeks already had their own pantheons of gods and goddesses there. So the Romans, again, because they highly valued peace and stability, they allowed the inhabitants to continue practicing their religion so long as things were peaceful there. And sometimes the Romans even incorporated some of those gods and goddesses into their own worship practices.

As I put it, the Romans never met a god they didn't like. So they just adopted dozens, hundreds of different gods and goddesses. As an example of this, this is one of my favorite all-time historical photos. This is from the Vatican Museum. And if you've been there, it's kind of in a side room that isn't marked that well, but it's one of the most fascinating rooms. How many of you are familiar with the Egyptian jackal-headed god Anubis?

Anubis. Okay, see some of you still remember that from school. Some of you are still in school.

How many of you had to memorize all these gods and goddesses when you were in grade school?

Do they still do that in school? Jupiter, Minerva, and Zeus, and all of this.

We had to memorize those when I was in school. But Anubis was the jackal-headed god of the Egyptians here. And the reason I love this photo so much is because it illustrates the syncretism of how the Romans incorporated the other gods into their culture and religious practices and beliefs. Because you have this Egyptian god complete with this sun disk up here between the upright ears, which is a very typical depiction of gods associated with gods in the Egyptian pantheon.

Incidentally, that's the origin of the halos around the early paintings of saints and so on. It's from the Egyptian solar disk there. But notice how the Egyptian god is dressed. He's dressed in a perfect Roman toga. A perfect Roman toga there. So here's another closer up view of that. So this was found in the villa of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who was enamored with Egyptian culture. He was so enamored that his villa, he built a scale model of Egypt, complete with the Nile River and the pyramids and various temples and so on. And in that villa, there were many other statues of Egyptian gods and goddesses found there. He just loved all things Egyptian there. And a number of prominent Romans did that. If you ever travel around Rome, this stunned me the first time I saw them were driving down the road in our tour bus. And suddenly I see this huge Egyptian pyramid over there. It's not far off the main road, and it's about 50 feet high. Huge, perfect Egyptian pyramid. And I'm thinking it's a modern structure. It's been built because it's so nicely preserved. It was actually the tomb of a prominent Roman wealthy man who was so enamored with Egypt that he built his own tomb, copying the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs there about 2,000 years ago. So this is how I use these illustrations to show how the Romans viewed and accepted other gods and goddesses there. And in Rome they found a number of statues of Egyptian gods, not to mention Greek gods and Persian gods and even gods from as far away as India that were incorporated into Roman culture. And this tolerant attitude toward other religions allowed the Jews in the land of Israel, after it was conquered, to continue their worship there and the worship at the Jerusalem temple without change during the lifetime of Jesus in the early church.

And it also allowed Christianity to spread because Christianity was initially viewed as simply another branch of Judaism. In the Roman culture, the view of the Roman government, new religions were not allowed because that was a destabilizing force to establish a new religion.

But existing religions were kind of grandfathered in and accepted. So Judaism was an accepted religion. So it was called a licit religion, a legal religion as compared to an illicit or illegal religion. New religions were illegal, but existing ones were allowed in. And that tells us a couple of things. Well, it tells us for one thing, the Romans just viewed Christianity as an outgrowth of Judaism. After all, why shouldn't it be viewed that way? Because Jews are worshiping one god, Christians are worshiping the same god, Jews are worshiping on Saturdays, the Christians are worshiping on Saturdays, the Jews are keeping the Holy Days of the Bible, the Christians are keeping the Holy Days, the Jews aren't eating pig and other things like that, the Christians aren't eating pig. So as far as the Roman government was concerned, they were indistinguishable. It's just a slightly different branch of Judaism there. So as a result of that, Christianity was legal and was allowed to spread there because the Romans didn't see any difference between the two. And this is very important to the formation and the growth of Christianity there. Now later, that would change, because what changed is the Roman emperors began to consider themselves gods themselves, and they actually built temples to various emperors like Trajan and Augustus and others like this.

And then the Roman empire started requiring sacrifices to the emperors as gods.

And of course, the Christians could not do that in good conscience, and that led to a tremendous amount of persecution in the latter part of the first century. But initially, it wasn't an issue there, so Christianity could grow and flourish. Now let's talk a little bit about Roman rulers here. There are two of them who reigned during the period of the Gospels. The first of them was Caesar Augustus, depicted here. He reigned from 27 BC to AD 14. He is also known to historians as Octavius, or Octavian, which was his given name. How did he become emperor? Well, he was the great nephew of Julius Caesar. He wasn't the son of Caesar, but he was the adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar and became emperor there. He is the Caesar Augustus mentioned in Luke 2, where he orders a census or registration of all the citizens in the empire here. And this is why Joseph and Mary leave and go down to Bethlehem, because Joseph was from the area of Bethlehem. And Augustus was a firm believer in the imperial state in Rome. And before he came along, there were different ideas. There was conflict going back and forth as to how Rome should be governed, how powerful it should be, and so on. But he became considered by historians as the first of the Roman emperors. Not Julius Caesar, oddly enough. We tend to think Julius Caesar was the first emperor, but he wasn't. It was his son and heir, adopted son and heir, Augustus Caesar. And he amassed so much power that he was actually over the Roman Senate, which was supposed to be the ultimate body there. Caesar Augustus was actually a very good ruler, quite a wise ruler. He wasn't a tyrant like many other later emperors would become, where the power went to their heads. He wasn't outright crazy or insane like Caligula, who was so bad he was assassinated by his own bodyguards. He wasn't crazy like Nero in persecuting the Christians.

So he adopted a lot of wise policies there. One of the things that he did that affected this part of the world was an idea that he actually picked up from Alexander the Great here, and who did this several centuries earlier. When you get to the Epistles of Paul, you read these epistles that are written to cities like Philippi or Ephesus or Colossae and so on, these Greco-Roman cities here that are mentioned. And how were those cities founded? Alexander had policy that when a soldier reached the end of his enlistment period, and in the case of the Romans it was 20 to 30 years enlistment when you signed up for the army, you had served 20 or 30 years, and then when you got out you would be given typically some land and a pension or a set amount of money there to start your new life. So Alexander started this originally and when soldiers would muster out of his army, they would found these cities. And sometimes the government would tell them, you know, it'd be if you settle in this particular area, we'll give you a cash bonus or things like that. So this is how a lot of the cities that we read about in the New Testament were founded there. And this worked out very well because when these military men retired and received this land and so on, to found a city you had men who again were capable in construction from the skills they'd learned from serving in the army. They knew how to build roads, and you had to build aqueducts, and you had to build bridges, and you had to build defensive walls and fortresses and towers, and all of this. And you also had officers who sent turians who would muster out, and they were good administrators. They'd been used to commanding men and so on here. So this was great in founding cities because you had people who are capable administrators and engineers, and who had all the great skills needed for founding and running a city here. So this was very important. It was also a way of establishing Roman culture and values throughout the Roman world, just as Alexander had done when he had taken over that part of the world from the Persian Empire when he defeated Darius there. And these are some of the reasons this is part of the background. Again, it's not spelled out in the gospels or Paul's letters here, but this is why the Greek and Roman influence is so strong in that part of the world here. Although the underlying culture in the Holy Land was predominantly Jewish from the Jews who were still there or had moved back to that area from exile, or pagan, part of the underlying culture was pagan too, which we see a number of times. So this is kind of a lot of the background for why we see a number of these things there in the background in the gospels and in Paul's letters. There's another Roman emperor who's also reigning during part of the time of Christ's ministry, and that is Tiberius. He became ruler on Octavian's death in AD 14, and he reigned until AD 37.

He was the stepson and adopted son of Augustus. A little different story with him. He was 56 years old when he began to reign, compared to Augustus, who was much, much younger. Tiberius becomes emperor when he's quite an older man, and he's older throughout the period of Christ's ministry there.

In fact, he was more or less a bitter and resentful old man who frankly did not want the job of emperor.

During much of his reign, he more or less retired to a palace on an island on the island of Capri, which some of you may have heard about. He actually visited that and walked around the ruins of his palace there in Capri. He basically retired there and let others run the empire because he did not want to be the emperor there. These are the two emperors who were in place during the background of the Gospels here. Let's see how we're doing on time. Continuing below the emperor, there are various other kings, rulers, governors, procurators, administrators throughout different areas of the Roman Empire. One of these was Herod the Great, notorious from the Gospels here. He reigned from about 37 BC until the year 34 BC, somewhere along in there. Historians debate the end of his reign, the death of his reign there. Herod was known as the Great Builder. Herod had a lot of Roman background. He was very familiar with Roman engineering, so he was a great builder.

We find his most grand building project mentioned a number of times in the Gospels, and that is the temple in Jerusalem, one of the great wonders of the ancient world. It would have been one of the wonders of the ancient world, but that list was compiled before Herod built the temple here. So even today you can visit Jerusalem and see the massive platform that he erected to create a level area on top of this mountain ridge where the temple could be constructed. This platform is about 36 acres, so it's quite huge. Here's a model of what it would have looked like there in the first century. This huge platform built on this mountain ridge to level it out and create a place where the temple could be built. This view is here from the Mount of Olives looking out at that. As near as archaeologists can tell, the dome of the rock here sits right on the spot of where Herod's temple would have been. To give you some idea of the scale of this, the temple itself is about 15 stories high. You know, as big as some of the skyscrapers we see down in downtown Denver here. So just a massive, massive building project. Let's talk a little bit more about Herod's background here. He was 22 years old when he began to reign, and he received the favor of both Caesar Augustus, whom we mentioned earlier, as well as Mark Antony. And if you know anything about Roman history, Mark Antony and Caesar Augustus initially started out as allies after the death of Julius Caesar, but then they both coveted control and power. So eventually that relationship devolved into a civil war between the two, which was won by Caesar Augustus. And Antony and Cleopatra, if you remember the story, committed suicide there once their armies and navies were defeated there.

So because Herod the Great had been friends with both of them, he received favor from both Octavian and Antony and was set in the position of king of the Jews under the Romans.

So when the wise men, when we get to the story there, came to come to Jerusalem and tell Herod that a new king of the Jews has been born, Herod was not pleased to hear that. He'd already been told by the Romans that he is the king of the Jews, and he's not going to surrender that power and wealth that comes with us. So Herod was quite a paranoid individual there, believed that others were out to get him, and in some cases they were. Herod was an Ida Man from the area of, well, we would call it an Edomite. Edom or Ida Mia are the areas down to the south of the kingdom of Judea, down here from ancient times. So he is not Jewish, but he does become king of the Jews. Part of the reason for that is kind of a long and involved story, but his father had been forcibly converted to Judaism before that. So Herod is nominally a Jew, but he does a lot of things to please all faiths, as we'll see in just a few minutes here.

The Jews resented him. They did not like him for a number of reasons here. One, because he was an Edomite or Ida Man. Another thing was that he turned the high priesthood into a political appointment. The high priesthood is supposed to be hereditary, passed along through the descendants of Aaron, a brother of Moses here. So only a descendant of Aaron was to be the high priest.

But Herod, one of the first things he does was to name his own high priest.

And this didn't actually originate with Herod. It originated several decades before that.

But he appointed, one of his first appointments was to appoint a man named Aristobulus as high priest. And Josephus goes into quite a bit of detail about this. And I mention this because it's an insight into Herod's character here. He appoints a young man named Aristobulus, who was a very charismatic young man here. And he is appointed high priest. And because he's young and charismatic, he actually starts becoming more popular than Herod. So Herod arranges to have a banquet in Aristobulus's honor down at Herod's winter palace down at Jericho with Aristobulus as the guest of honor. And it turned out quite tragic there because Aristobulus managed to drown in a pool of water that was three feet deep. Completely accidentally. But I say that in jest because you might think of Jeffrey Epstein there. But anyway, this kind of thing is going on in the background throughout the period of Herod's reign here. And it helps us understand some of the conflict there because he has this system of buying and selling the office of high priest there. And we'll talk about this more when we get into the Gospels, but basically the priesthood becomes a very corrupted institution because they are literally buying and selling the office of high priest here. And this plays into the story when Jesus cleanses the temple, casts out the over turns the tables of the money changers and makes a whip and drives out the animals that are being sold there and so on. It ties in with this corruption of the priesthood there.

And this leads to a great deal of conflict between the Jewish religious establishment there in Jerusalem and they end up plotting and conspiring to kill Jesus as well here. So this is part of the background. The murder of Aristobulus was one of only many murders carried out by Herod the Great. Herod had a number of wives. His most beloved wife was a lady named Mary Amne or Mariam, named after Mariam, the sister of Aaron and Moses there.

Herod was insanely jealous of her. On one of his journeys he left orders that if he didn't return alive that his wife was to be put to death. Because if he couldn't have her, nobody could.

So this jealousy and paranoia crops up again and again in the life of Herod there.

Mary Amne was not his only wife. He had a number of different wives and ministries.

And Mary Amne came to a bad end because she accused Herod of murdering her grandfather, which is true. Herod had ordered him murdered. And as a result of this accusation, Herod actually had her locked up and put in prison and eventually executed there. And as a result of this and possibly other factors, including venereal disease, he apparently went insane over a period of time. And this might explain some of the things we read about him in the Gospel, such as killing the baby boys during Bethlehem. But as evil as Herod was, he wasn't completely bad. Like the Romans, there was relative peace during his reign, in part because he had built up the military there in that part of the world and constructed fortifications there to protect his empire and so on. He also did a lot of public works construction. And his building programs contribute a lot to the economy of that area, provided a lot of jobs, and the economy was good and stable during the ministry of Jesus Christ. Some of the projects, like we mentioned earlier, were the construction of the temple there at Jerusalem. Again, enormous, beautiful, beautiful structure there, plated with gold on the inside and gold decorations around it. He also built Jerusalem into a world-class city at that time with formidable defenses, with the staggering temple complex here. And he also built a large palace for himself. Here's a model of that, this area, this whole area right here. If you go to Jerusalem today, it's near what's called the Citadel. One of these towers still is left standing there, so it's just right outside that area there. He also built several other major cities. One was Caesarea Maritima. This is an aerial view of it. Quite a staggering accomplishment because that area, Judea and Galilee, did not have a port there to serve the economy there. So Herod came up with the idea of building an entire port city from scratch.

And the way he did it is he built a harbor from scratch out into the Mediterranean Sea. And he pioneered the use of what's called hydraulic concrete. And to this day we still don't know exactly how he did it. He came up with a formula for concrete that would set underwater Now think about that. A concrete that sets underwater. So that's how he built this harbor by building these huge wooden forms and filling them with this concrete mixture formula. And then lowering the forms down into the water to create this breakwater in a tremendous harbor.

And you can still see remains of it, the different colors here to this day. He also here at Caesarea Maritima built his own palace over here on a promontory sticking out into the Mediterranean Sea. Beautiful hippodrome here for racing horses right on the coast.

Big Roman temple here. A beautiful theater over here that has been reconstructed. And they have concerts to this day looking out over the Mediterranean.

Here's another view of part of his palace sticking out here into the Mediterranean. So built a number of beautiful cities. He also built a huge aqueduct because there was no freshwater source there. So he built an aqueduct to bring water in from mountains and hills miles away to provide fresh running water for the city there. So quite an amazing individual. He also rebuilt the ancient Israelite capital of Samaria, which had been destroyed by the Assyrians. And here are some of the remains of that city here. And of course he built temples there too. He built a number of temples to the Roman emperors to keep them happy. And of course no city would be complete without its own theater there to entertain the populace there. So these are some of the ruins from Samaria. He also built a large palace down in Jericho, kind of the Palm Springs of its day there. These are some of the pools, swimming pools there. It was probably in one of these pools that the unfortunate high priest, Aristobulus, was drowned there at that banquet that we talked about earlier. Here it again was also paranoid. So he built a series of desert fortresses like Masada.

Here's a view of Masada from the bottom. You really can't tell much about it. It's this huge mesa out overlooking the Dead Sea. And on top of it, way up here, he built a series of storehouses there that was said to contain enough food to supply 10,000 men for 10 years. Think about that. 10,000 men for 10 years. That is why it was considered virtually impregnable there. And this was, of course, the famous last holdout of the Jews in the Jewish rebellion after the destruction of Jerusalem. Here's a view. He also built a beautiful palace there, three levels. Incidentally, here the storehouses from the last view right here. So he built this three-level palace here, which is just magnificent. He was really into views. He loved spectacular views. You're probably familiar with the story of Masada, but this is where it all took place. This was built and fortified by here at the Great. He built another desert fortress palace at Herodium here. If you look at it, you'd almost swear that was a volcano.

But it's not. This is a fortress palace. And what happened is there were two adjoining hills, and he literally took one of the hills and moved it and piled it on top of the other.

When Jesus tells his disciples that if you have enough faith, you can move mountains, or say to this mountain, be moved. And it will. When Herod tells his disciples this in Jerusalem, they can look down to the south about six or seven miles and see where a man moved a mountain.

Literally moved a mountain. Jesus is probably referring to this palace. You can go to Jerusalem, and if you look, you'll again see this volcanic-like structure, volcano-like structure, down near Bethlehem. And that's what it is. So this is part of another of his palaces down here. He also loved pools. So here's a pool down there with a little man-made island in the middle of it. That's where he would have conferences, because he's paranoid. He doesn't want anybody to sneak up and overhear his conversation. So he builds an island in the middle of a pool. So nobody's going to sneak up and overhear his conversations there. So very, very shrewd man. Here's what the top of that looks like. This man-made thing that looks like a volcano. He built within it a 10-story palace, complete with different towers and fortifications and so on. Here's a view into the middle of it. So it had courtyards and gardens and bedrooms and banquet halls and all kinds of things in there. So quite a remarkable place. On the other side of the Dead Sea, he built something similar called Makiras. Here's the Dead Sea. This is looking over into Israel. So this is on the Jordanian side.

Built quite an elaborate, again, palace-fortress complex up here. Josephus tells us—the Gospels don't, but Josephus tells us—this is where John the Baptizer was imprisoned and executed, if you remember the story about that that took place at this particular fortress palace here.

Why did Herod build so many of these fortress palaces? Well, again, because he's paranoid there. So he builds all of these places scattered around his kingdom so that if he felt he were threatened, he could basically be less than a day's march or a day's ride from one of these fortress palaces. And many of these were concentrated in the southern part of his kingdom, this area around here. So if need be, he could flee down to the area of Edom, where his relatives and his people were from here. So he was so paranoid. Again, he had his favorite wife killed, had several of his sons murdered because he viewed them as threats to his power.

Caesar Augustus is said to have said of Herod, I'd rather be one of Herod's pigs than his sons, because he figured the pig had less chance of being murdered than his own sons did. So this tells us something about Herod. And as Herod was on his deathbed, he ordered that—I think it was 300 prominent members of basically every prominent Jewish family in his kingdom be rounded up and put in the hippodrome down in Jericho near his palace—be locked in there with orders that upon his death all of these prominent Jewish people would be murdered. And the reason for that is he knew people wouldn't mourn when he died, but he was determined that there would be mourning in the land. So he ordered all of these innocent men to be killed. Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed, and his orders were not carried out after he died. But again, this just shows the egomaniac part of his character and the paranoia there. So he died in about 3 BC, and after that his kingdom was divided up among various members of his sons, his family, who were responsible for different portions of his empire there. No single son inherited all of Herod's empire.

So at any one time during the background of the Gospels, there are several different people reigning over different parts of the territory. And this is reflected in the harmony of the Gospels on the map on the back of that. So you have one son reigning over this area down here, another one reigning up in this area, another one reigning up here. The first one of these, we'll talk about briefly, was Archalaeus. He assumes reign after Herod's death. He reigns for a very short time because he was so evil, so corrupt, that the Romans stepped in and removed him from office. And this is how the area of Judea, of Jerusalem, came under direct reign of the Romans. This is why there's a Roman governor there, Pontius Pilate.

Pontius Pilate was about the sixth governor who's appointed there, but later there's Felix and Festus mentioned in the book of Acts. But originally it was one of Herod's sons. And this is mentioned in Matthew 2 and verse 22, kind of mentioned in passing when Joseph and Mary have gone down to Egypt and their Herod dies and they're going to go back to the land of Israel.

But they don't return to Bethlehem. They bypass that and go to Nazareth. And Matthew tells us, but when he, Joseph, heard that Archalaeus was reigning over Judea instead of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee and instead he goes up north to Nazareth. But why? Well, he was afraid because of the reputation of Archalaeus. He is such a brutal and harsh ruler. He is said to have inherited all of his father's vices and none of his virtues. So he had all of Herod's bad qualities and none of his good ones there. So the Romans removed him after a short period of time.

Another of the rulers who shows up in the Gospels is Philip, the tetrarch. He reigns again from Herod's death to 34 A.D. a few years after Jesus is executed. And he rules over the northeastern area of his father's kingdom, basically up in this area off the map here. He was not a bad leader, not terribly good, but not terribly bad either. He had more respect than some of his brothers there. He builds the city of Caesarea Philippi, which is mentioned in the Gospels. Again, his name is Philip. He names it after himself and Caesar, Caesarea Philippi, there. Another member of the Herodian family who is mentioned in the Gospels is Herod Antipas, who reigned from 3 B.C. to 39 A.D. He is responsible for reigning in Galilee up here, and also the area of Perea over here on the eastern side of the Jordan River.

He is referred to in Luke 13, verse 32, where Jesus Christ says, Go tell that fox, referring to Herod Antipas, Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. And Jesus calls him that fox because this is not a complimentary term, it's because he's sly and cunning and sneaky here.

He was not well respected by the Jews for various reasons, just his nature had a lot in common with his father. One thing that he did is he built the city of Tiberius, here, named after the Roman emperor Tiberius that we talked about just a minute ago. But he built it on top of a graveyard, of a cemetery, so believing Jews thought that made the city unclean, so your religious Jews would not go to Tiberius. And this may be one reason why Jesus is never mentioned as visiting Tiberius there. Tiberius is on the Sea of Galilee, which we see here. Incidentally, it's only a few miles from Capernaum. Capernaum would have been on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee right up here. Looking at it on a map, here's Tiberius, and here's Capernaum. Probably no more than about four or five miles apart.

But Jesus is never recorded as visiting the biggest city in that area. Why is that?

Well, again, possibly because the city is viewed as unclean, because it's built on a graveyard there. But there's probably another reason, too, and that is because Herod, who is living there, is the man who put John the Baptizer to death. And Jesus may think if he put John to death, he may do the same thing to me before my time as well. So I think that's part of what's playing out in there as well. You can read about that in Mark 6, verses 14 through 29. We'll take the time to go through there. This is also the Herod mention at the time of Jesus' trials. There in Luke 23 verse 7, Pilate sends Jesus to this Herod Antipas before he was crucified. Luke 23 verse 7 says, As soon as he, Pilate, knew that he, Jesus, belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, because he's from northern Galilee there, Sea of Galilee, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time, for the Passover feast there. So I'll tell you what, I've still got quite a bit of time more to cover, but we're going to break it off there and pick it up next time and talk about the religious background. Who are some of the characters that we run into? Who are the Pharisees? Who are the Sadducees? What is their background? What is their origin? Who are the Essenes? How do they tie in with the Dead Sea Scrolls? And so on. Why is there so much hostility between these different groups and Jesus? What is it that leads into that? So we will break it off there then, and pick it up next week, continuing on with the story.