The Political and Religious Background to the Gospels

What is it about this setup that's bringing out the Intercomedian in various people here?

Or maybe that's natural, I'm not sure. I do have a couple of other things. Obviously, this is a new setup for you. I would like to hear your feedback on it, how you like it, or don't like it. One of the issues we had as speakers down in the auditorium, we started referring to the black hole, which is the big empty area right in front because everybody sits along the sides of the aisles or toward the back. One of the reasons we wanted to try this setup is to have more eye contact and so on with the speakers, more close proximity like this. So, I would like to hear your feedback on this. You don't have to shout it out right now. Just come and see me privately. Let me know what you think about it, if you like it or don't like it here. We set up about 110 chairs or so, and it looks like there's just a handful that are not occupied. So, this is good to see. A couple of other things, if you did not get your your harmony, please see Beth Bradford afterwards. She has a table set up there over kind of on that side at one of the round tables. Also, please be sure to put your name in it because there's about 100 others that look just like yours. So, we don't want to get that mixed up. Also, your assignment for the Bible classes starting next week are to read this, and there will be a test on it next week. Yes, this does bring out the Intercommedia, doesn't it?

One other question relative to this. How many of you have not been receiving the emails from me on Friday nights? Because I want to be sure and include everybody for that, especially as we get into these classes and so on. I'll probably be sending out from time to time some supplementary material and reading assignments and things like that. So, any of you who are not getting those that need to. Okay. Yeah, okay. Just see Connie about that, and she'll write down your name and get that. Make sure you're added to that email list there. And let's see, there's one other... Oh, yes, another item we've been thinking of starting a service projects group for service projects, both within the church and to the outside community. And I would like to have a meeting for people who would be interested in that. I think the only time to work that out is going to be during dinner. And I'm not sure how that's going to best work out. I'll tell you what, what we're planning to do is maybe set up a table back in that corner there for the meal. And those of you who would like to participate in that, just come back there. Go ahead and go through the food line and we'll meet back there and see what level of interest there is there regarding that. So please don't forget that like I will, and Connie, please remind me here.

One other advantage about this setup, I've noticed Connie is not going to go to sleep during the sermon today because she's only about five feet from the speaker there. So that's going to make it very, very difficult for her. So let's see, I think that's all that I wanted to cover briefly So let's go ahead and get started here. Before we get into the Bible classes starting next week in Denver and Loveland, we need to understand some of the background to help us understand those events in the Gospels as we read about them. And the purpose of these classes is to emphasize who Jesus Christ was and what his message was. But to understand some of the things that happened during his ministry and some of his actions, we need to understand the political and cultural and other aspects of the background of the Gospels to make those events, make the meaning and significance of them become clearer. So for that reason, I'm spending a few messages here laying some background for this. And the subject of today's message is the political and religious background of the Gospels. So that is what we'll focus on today because if we are to understand the Gospels, we do need to understand the context of the times in which these events took place.

So let's first take a look at the political world or the political background of Judea and Galilee, which was part of the larger Roman world of the Roman Empire. I'd like to start with a passage back in Galatians 4 and verses 4 and 5. And you might not have thought about this before, but it says, when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his Son, Jesus the Messiah, 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 what I'd like to focus in on is this phrase here, the fullness of the time.

And what does that mean? I'd like to give you a little different perspective on that today, because we've read over this, and I think this is true, that this is obviously applying to a number of the prophecies about the appearance of the Messiah and the timing of His coming. But there's another aspect of that too that ties in with the subject today, and that is how the influence and the power of the Roman Empire actually allowed the circumstances for Jesus Christ's birth, and the establishment of the early church, and the spread of Christianity during that time.

Consider, for example, what would have happened if, say, Jesus had been born a century earlier than when He was. What would have happened? What were the conditions like at that time?

Actually, during that period, the whole area of Judea and the Mediterranean region was in a great deal of turmoil during that time, because the Roman Empire was trying to consolidate its hold over Asia Minor and the Eastern Mediterranean region, and there was just constant turmoil and conflict in that area before that. So had Jesus been born there then during that time of great turmoil, it would not have been conducive or maybe not even possible for Him to begin His ministry and for the church to be established. Let's look at it a century later, a century after Christ's birth. What was going on then? Well, around that time, there was actually a period between two Jewish revolts, and the second revolt of 132 to 135 AD would have taken place, and it was just total devastation, total chaos throughout the area of Judea and what is called Palestine there, because the Jews revolted against Rome and ended up being defeated in a devastating way, and the Romans were so ticked off at the Jews at that point that, frankly, they demolished, absolutely leveled the city of Jerusalem a second time. It was leveled, of course, the first time in 70 AD, but they leveled it a second time and forbade any Jew from even setting foot in what had been Jerusalem on pain of death. So that's how chaotic the circumstances were in the century before and the century after Jesus Christ was born and conducted his ministry there. So what I'd like to propose to you is this fullness of the time was actually referring as well to the cultural time and the relative peace that existed that allowed Jesus Christ to begin his ministry and to proclaim the gospel and to establish his church and for it to begin growing and expanding during that time there. There's a term that I've used and referred to in Bible studies before, that term being Pax Romana, which means the peace of Rome. And that means that the Roman Empire established a certain amount of peace throughout all of the areas that it controlled there. And they enforced a level of peace and security and stability that simply had not existed before.

If you want an idea of what that area would have been like before that time, just think in your mind to Afghanistan or Iraq maybe 10 years ago, something like that. And what were conditions like in those areas? What are conditions like in Afghanistan? It's largely every person for himself, just total conflict, total chaos, devastation, blood, bloodshed, warfare, all of that sort of thing. And the Roman Empire, when it came along, was strong enough, powerful enough, to eliminate all of that and establish the peace of Rome as it's known to historians. Now, when the Roman Empire rose up in spite of its failings, one of the great blessings, you might say, that it brought to the world or benefits was the Pax Romana. And this lasted throughout much of the first century, with the exception of the Jewish Revolt that I referred to earlier that led to the destruction of Jerusalem. And this was, of course, the time of Jesus Christ's ministry and the establishment of the early church. But why was this important? In addition to peace and stability, what were some of the other benefits that the Roman Empire brought that allowed the church to flourish and to grow and to expand and forge Jesus Christ and the apostles to carry out the work that he gave them to do? Well, you might consider that there are dozens of references to robbers and thieves in the books of the New Testament, in the Gospels, the Book of Acts, and so on.

What does that tell you about the environment of that day? Well, it tells us several things. You might remember the parable of the Good Samaritan. What's the setting of that? It's along the road between Jericho and Jerusalem, a road that's maybe 12-15 miles as a crow flies, maybe 18 miles or so by foot there. And if you remember the story, the individual is set on by robbers and thieves, and he's mugged and beaten up and left half dead by the side of the road there. And Jesus was describing very real conditions of his day and age, the time of the Gospels there. You might remember who was crucified alongside Jesus when he was put to death. Who was on either side of him?

Two robbers. Two robbers. Again, this is describing real conditions of that day and age.

The Apostle Paul, when he recounts the troubles and difficulties that he went through, one of the things that he cited as one of the perils that he constantly faced was robbers. Robbers. So these things indicate the level of crime when Judea was an occupied country, occupied by the Roman forces there.

Imagine how bad things would have been had the Romans not been there to enforce a level of peace and stability. So this just gives you... you just see these hints scattered throughout the Gospel, the Book of Acts, and the writings of the New Testament that give us clues about the conditions in that time. So again, without the peace of Rome, without the Roman forces there, conditions would have been much worse.

It might have been just entirely too dangerous for people to travel there. So even though robbers were a problem under the Roman rule, the conditions were much better than they would have been otherwise. But there were other factors in which the Roman Empire played a role that allowed the Gospel to be spread and the Church to be started as well. One of those factors was transportation. I have here a photograph of an interstate highway, part of our interstate highway system here. And there were at least two modes of transportation that made great strides during the period of the Roman Empire.

And one was the Roman road system. You've probably heard about the Roman roads. I've mentioned that referred to it in several Bible studies before. And just as the U.S. Internet Highway System was established to allow the quick and efficient movement of commerce and military forces across the Empire, the same thing was true of the Roman Empire as well. As a matter of fact, you can travel in various places of the Middle East.

This is a photograph from the Roman city of Ephesus in what is today Turkey. And you can actually see to this day the chariot ruts in their literal chariot ruts worn in the grooves of the main street there in the city of Ephesus there. So a number of these Roman roads still exist in various areas. This is another city up in Asia Minor in Turkey where one of the Roman roads still exists to that day.

Frankly, I see some of these roads and the potholes in our streets, and the Romans did a much better job. How many of our roads are still going to be in this kind of good a shape 2,000 years later? But building roads was actually a major job of the Roman military when they were not fighting. If they weren't at war, if it was peacetime, they put the soldiers to work. They didn't have them sit around the barracks or just go through regular training and so on like we do our military.

They used them as a construction force, a very efficient, a very effective construction force. That is one reason why the ancient Roman world was filled with this network of very good, very well-constructed roads there. This road system allowed people to travel relatively safely and quickly throughout the empire. That's why we see in various areas throughout the Gospels, you read about Jesus and his disciples being in one place.

In the next paragraph, they're somewhere else in another town that's 20 miles away. Well, how did that happen? Well, it's very simple. They just walked along some of these Roman roads to the next town down the street or the next town beyond that and so on. So they were making use of this Roman transportation system that had been established in that area. Galilee being a fairly wealthy, productive region for agriculture and fishing from the lake and so on, as well as a major trade route from from the areas of Babylon and Damascus and so on off to the east and to the north.

And the major road ran down through Galilee, just not far from the Sea of Galilee, and then on down the Mediterranean coast and over to Egypt. So there was a lot of commerce, a lot of trade, a lot of transportation that passed through that area as well. There was another area that was affected greatly by the Roman empires, and that was sea transportation along the Mediterranean.

And Paul, for instance, you read through his epistles in the book of Acts, and you find that he is regularly catching rides on ships that are going from one port to another. For instance, from Corinth to Ephesus or some of these other cities, or down to Jerusalem from Ephesus and so on. He's traveling by ship, and this tells us that the shipping commerce was regular enough and reliable enough that Paul knew that he could reliably catch a ride to be, for instance, at Jerusalem for some of the upcoming holy days or something like that. So this was another great benefit of the Roman Empire as well. Also, before the Roman Empire existed, and one of the great challenges the Romans faced in the Mediterranean region was pirates. Pirates. There was a huge problem with piracy, and one of the first jobs of the Roman navy was to come in and clear out the Mediterranean of pirates. And that, in turn, allowed so much flourishing of the commerce there in the Eastern Mediterranean and allowed for Paul and the other apostles to be able to travel reliably throughout the Mediterranean region like that as well. There's another factor at work that also ties in with the Roman Empire, and that's frankly a major reason why we have the New Testament today.

And that was the Roman mail system. It was their mail system here, and this allowed people in one place to send letters, communications to peoples in other parts of the Roman Empire with a an expectation that, yes, they would be delivered there. It may take some time, obviously, traveling by boat or horseback or wagon or whatever. We don't know a whole lot about it or how it worked, but we do know from Paul's writings that obviously he was able to write letters from Asia Minor and send them across the sea to Corinth. He was able to write letters from Rome back to Greece back to Asia Minor and so on like this with the the knowledge that those letters would be delivered. Sometimes he did use private couriers, church members who were traveling from one location to the other, but clearly also used the mail system as well. Another important factor in the Roman Empire that allowed the gospel to be spread was the Greek language. Greek was common throughout the Roman Empire because the Roman Empire basically inherited the the empire of Alexander the Great and the Greco-Macedonian Empire there. The Roman Empire had many languages that were spoken throughout the empire. There was Latin, of course, the language of Rome. There was Aramaic of the Middle East, Hebrew, there in Judea, many other languages throughout the first couple of chapters and acts where it talks about the establishment of the church. You find people there from about a dozen different languages and regions there, all speaking different languages. The miracle of the Day of Pentecost was they could hear what the apostles were saying in their own language there.

But Greek, however, was the lingua franca of the day. It was just as English as the common language of commerce, of business, and economics. People around the world can have business meetings with people from any number of different countries, and they're nearly all going to be speaking in English there because it's the international language of business and commerce. And Greek was the equivalent of that during the Roman Empire. Wherever you went in the Roman Empire, you could expect to find people who could speak Greek. That doesn't mean that everybody spoke it, but at least if you had a gathering of five or ten people or whatever, odds are there would be at least a few people who understood it and were able to communicate in the Greek language there.

And that is why the New Testament was written and preserved in the Greek language. As well, it was the commonly understood language of the day in the Roman Empire. And had there not been an equivalent of that, not been a universal language, think of all the difficulties that would have posed for the early church and for the disciples of Jesus Christ to spread the message, because if they could not communicate reliably in other languages, that would have presented huge difficulties for the spread of the gospel and the spread of the church as well.

So what we see from these examples is the Roman Empire created a stability that didn't exist before. It created a climate in which the gospel could be spread and that the church could grow throughout the Roman Empire. It had a common language that most people could understand.

And it is in this atmosphere that the church was able to start and grow and flourish in that time. And also, it's the atmosphere in which the Gospels and the books of the New Testament were written and distributed there. Another factor is that Rome was also quite tolerant toward other religions.

When the Romans conquered an area, and of course the Empire was quite enormous, they encompassed a lot of regions and peoples who had their own unique religions.

The policy of the Romans was fairly enlightened for empires of that day.

And that is, so long as there was peace, so long as the religion did not pose a problem, to the Romans they allowed that religion to continue. It's because of this policy that Christianity was also able to grow and flourish. The Romans also did not view Christianity as a new religion. New religions were forbidden there because that was a source of instability if you started a new religion. But existing religions could continue as long as they did not upset things, did not cause any problems for the Roman rulers there. So that's why that also tells us that in the early years of the church there, the church itself was indistinguishable from Judaism that was practiced in that day because the church kept the same laws, kept the holy days, cleans and clean and unclean meats, all the same things, the Sabbath and so on. They did not change. So therefore, to the Romans, it was just the same thing as the Judaism that had been allowed to continue in that area for quite some time. There was no change there. So this also was a very important factor that allowed Jesus to do his work and that work of the apostles and the establishment and spread of the church. So with that background, let's get into a little more specifics here. And that is about the Roman emperors. Oh, let's see. Yeah, this was just to illustrate how accommodating the Romans were toward other religions. Some of you may recognize the Egyptian god Anubis here. It's the jackal-headed god that you see in tomb paintings and so on. And this statue was actually uncovered in Rome. And notice that this Egyptian god is wearing a perfect Roman toga there, which I just love that illustration, statue from the Vatican Museum there. But this exemplifies how accommodating the Romans were toward other gods. As a matter of fact, in Rome, they've dug up statues of gods from from Babylon, from Persia, from the Middle East, from Egypt. Even as far away as India, they actually adopted some of the Indian gods. As I've said before, the Romans never met a god they didn't like. So they just accommodated all kinds of religions there and incorporated it into their empire. And also that same tolerance applied to the early church as well there. Now, that would, of course, later change under the persecutions of Nero and Diocletian and and others like that. But in the beginning, it was a factor that allowed the church to be established and spread. So I was talking a little bit about Roman emperors who reigned during the period of the Gospels. The first one is Augustus. Sometimes referred to as Augustus Caesar or Sigurzer Augustus. He reigned from 27 BC to AD 14 when he passed away. Augustus was also known to historians as Octavius or Octavian. Those were the names he went by before he became the emperor. He was the great nephew and heir of the famous Roman ruler Julius Caesar. He was the grand nephew and the adopted son of Julius Caesar. It was Caesar Augustus who called for the census or the registration that we read about in Luke 2, which is where Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem to be registered there. Why were they registered? Well, frankly, it's called referred to as registration or census. Basically, the Romans needed a means to tax people, and that was the underlying purpose behind it there. They wanted to make sure they get their share of tax money there. It's not stated in the Gospels, but that's what a number of commentators say. Augustus was also a firm believer in the power of the imperial state of Rome. That's why he conducted this census as well.

He's considered to be the first of the Roman emperors with so much power that he was actually over the Roman Senate there. It didn't look that way on paper, but in effect, that is the way it worked there. Augustus was a wise ruler, a very good ruler, as near as we can tell from history. He wasn't a tyrant like a lot of the later Roman emperors, like Nero, Caligula, individuals like that. Now, one thing that he did that affected also the culture in the area of Judea in the Middle East, where the church was established, was an idea he picked up from Alexander the Great, who lived and ruled over that area several centuries earlier. When you get to the Epistles of Paul, in particular, you read epistles that were written to certain cities like Philippi, like Ephesus, Colossae, places like that. The way some of these cities were established and grew and were administered is because of a policy that Augustus again copied from Alexander the Great before him. What they did is, as the enlistment period would run out or as a military officer would prepare to, excuse me here, get ahead of myself, he as an officer would retire from the military. Alexander before him and Caesar Augustus would offer the retiring officers incentives to settle in a particular city or location. Typically, this would be giving them a land grant, the proverbial 40 acres and a mule, something like that, to settle in a particular area. What this did is it helped establish and spread Roman culture like the Alexander did with Greek culture before him. So this would solidify those towns by having the military officers and military soldiers retire in these cities. It would spread Roman culture and Roman values and Roman civilization throughout these areas. So this is why we see so much of the Greco-Roman cultural influence in the Gospels as well. Yes, there was the underlying Jewish influence in culture and the pagan culture existing alongside it as well. But this is also one factor, a major factor, in why there was so much of a Roman and Greek influence in those areas as well that we see referred to in the Gospels. That's where that came from there. So when Paul, for instance, would write his letters to the Christians in places like Ephesus and Philippi and Colossae and so on like that, a lot of these were colonies where the local administration was retired or former Roman military officers. And they were the ones who knew how to get the job done. They had the construction experience. They had the administrative experience. So this also helped help things run smoothly during that period, in addition to having the the active Roman military in those parts of the world. So now we come to the second of the Caesars, an individual by the name of Tiberius.

Tiberius Caesar. He reigned from AD 14 to 37, succeeding Augustus Caesar there. And you can tell from these dates that he was the emperor during the time of Jesus Christ's ministry there as well. Tiberius was the adopted son and stepson of Augustus. He was an older man when Augustus died and he came to power. He was 56 years old when he began to rule. So he was an older man during the period of Jesus Christ's ministry. So again, these are the two rulers that we'll be dealing with when we get to the period of the Gospels. Then Judea, below the Roman emperors, was another layer of administration there, or another level of rulers who were known as the Herodians. And the Herodians were the family of Herod, specifically Herod the Great, who reigned in that part of the world as king of the Jews from 37 BC to 3 BC when he passed away.

Ask you a question. What was a famous structure that is referred to in the New Testament many times that was built by King Herod? Anybody. Very famous structure. Temple. Temple. Yes, obviously the temple. Yes, Herod, one of his names that's been given to him through history, is the Great Builder. And indeed he was. We'll see some evidence of this in just a few minutes here.

So he was a Great Builder. But let's talk first about a few other aspects of this man's life. He was 22 years old when he began to rule. He received the favor of both Augustus, Caesar, as well as Mark Antony. Familiar figure, if you've read William Shakespeare, had to memorize parts of that back in high school, as I did. Octavian and Antony were leaders in Rome, who eventually became enemies as they vied for control of the Roman Empire. But because Herod managed to suck up sufficiently to both of them, frankly, he was able to stay in their good graces and be the king of the Jews during that period. Now when the wise men came to Jerusalem and told Herod that a new king of the Jews had been born, what happened? What was Herod's reaction? Obviously he was not pleased to hear that, because he'd been told by the Romans that he is the king of the Jews, and to hear that there was a new king of the Jews who had been born did not make Herod happy.

So as a result of that, what did he do? And all of the male babies under the age of two in the city of Bethlehem slaughtered, because Herod was also a paranoid. He was not a very nice human being at all. With Herod the Great, there was a lot of intrigue going on continually behind the scenes.

If you have a copy of Josephus and can wade through that, you may want to read that and read about some of the intrigue and so on that would put a lot of our soap operas to shame these days. I mean, if you wanted to do a long-running TV miniseries, you could do one on the life in times of Herod the Great there, and all the political intrigue and infighting and so on. It's really quite a story. Herod the Great was an Edomite or an Idomian. Edomite, Idomian, same thing. You'll find both terms used historically. By birth, he was not Jewish.

The Idomians had converted to Judaism at one point, but the Jews did not like or respect King Herod for a number of reasons. One was because he turned the high priesthood into a political appointment. According to the Bible, the instructions God gave, how was the high priest to be chosen? It was a hereditary office. Herod ignored that and appointed his own high priests, setting a pattern that would be very destructive.

Josephus gives us quite a bit of detail about how that played out and about the problems that created. That also helps explain some of the antagonism between the high priests and the priesthood and Jesus Christ during his ministry there. You may remember him coming in and cleansing the temple twice, once at the beginning of his ministry, once at the end of his ministry.

That was because the priesthood had become very corrupted. It had become a political process. Men bribed their way, or in some cases literally bought their way, into becoming high priests during that period there. There were periods when, let's see, I think I looked this up several years ago, and over about a 20 to 30 year period there during the first century, there was an average of something like a new high priest every year and a half or something like that.

So it had become a very disgusting situation once Herod set this pattern of doing away with God's instructions for how the high priest was to be chosen. One of the things that he did is he appointed an individual by the name of Aristobulus as high priest. You don't need to write this down or whatever. But he made him the high priest, and Aristobulus actually became more popular than Herod. He actually was apparently quite a good man, and the people came to like him more than Herod. Herod became quite jealous of Aristobulus. So Herod put on a banquet at which Aristobulus was to be the guest of honor. At that banquet, he had Aristobulus drowned, murdered at his own banquet in his honor. It's kind of an individual here at the Great Woz.

There are many other similar type incidents like that. Herod had several different wives. His favorite wife was a woman by the name of Mariame, as you'll see it in Greek. It's Mariam in Hebrew.

He was insanely jealous of his wife, Mariam. When he left on a journey, he left orders that if he did not return, it was to be a fairly dangerous journey. He left orders that if he did not return, that Mariame was to be killed. Because if he couldn't have her, nobody was going to have her.

Mariam, Mariame, his wife, found out about that while he was gone. When he came back, there's a little friction there, to put it bluntly. She was not a happy camper over the way this had transpired. She accused Herod of murdering her grandfather, who had been also fairly high up in the politics of the area. This was true. Herod had, indeed, had her grandfather put to death. As a result of this and other accusations, Herod had his wife imprisoned and eventually executed as well. As a result of this and other factors, Herod, some of the other factors, apparently he had venereal disease, which also probably tells you a little bit about the character of the man. He apparently literally went insane over a period of time there. This might explain some of the things we read about him in the Gospels, such as his murder of the infants there in Bethlehem. Another thing that he did, I've referred to this in a sermon several months ago, on his deathbed, he knew he did not have long to live. He ordered that all of the Jewish leaders of Judea be rounded up and brought to a stadium near his palace, and that he had them all locked in the stadium with orders that when he died, all of the Jewish leadership was to be put to death. Because he wanted people to mourn at his passing. He knew they wouldn't mourn for him, so therefore he was going to have hundreds of Jewish leaders executed so that, yes, the land would mourn at his passing. It tells you something about the ego and the perverted thinking and warped mind of this individual. Having settled that, Herod was not all totally bad. There were some good things about his reign. There, he did a tremendous amount in terms of his what? Oh, yes, okay, all right, yes. My wife is, my spell checker, fact checker, is correcting me here. Thank you, Caddy. Yeah, I should mention that actually that did not happen. After he did die, cooler, wiser heads prevailed and the Jewish leaders were released. So that did not happen, but it does show you the character and thinking of the man that that was his final orders as to what was to happen once he passed away. Herod did do some good things. I mentioned earlier he was known as the great builder. What are some of the things that he did? As we mentioned earlier, he built a temple in Jerusalem, magnificent, magnificent edifice. It was one of the wonders of the ancient world, constructed on a gigantic platform. Some of you know, have seen it there. It's about the size of 30 football fields, the huge platform on which the temple sits there.

He transformed Jerusalem. Excuse me, I'm getting a bit out of sync with my slides.

Yes, here's a model of the temple that he constructed there in Jerusalem. He made Jerusalem truly a world-class city through his construction projects. You can see here part of the temple platform here. This rises 70 feet above the ground. This is the level of the temple, and 70 feet there down to the main street. And, of course, the temple overseeing it in one of his military fortifications, Fortra Santonia, that's also referred to in the Book of Acts. I mentioned there this is a model of that in Jerusalem there. He also constructed a huge palace for himself. This is a model of the palace right up next to the city wall here in Jerusalem, overlooking the wealthy upper side of the city. And again, the temple and the temple complex and the fortress and Todia back here, named for Mark Antony, one of his patrons earlier there.

So again, a lot of huge construction projects. One of his most famous was the city of Caesarea Maritima, or Caesarea by the Sea, as it would be translated today. Built it totally from scratch along the sea coast there. We were able to visit this just during the feast tour in Israel a few weeks ago. How did he do this? Herod pioneered the use of hydraulic concrete, which is concrete that sets underwater. Now those of you guys who've put in fence posts or poured footings for a deck or something like that can appreciate what that is involved. He didn't do it just for a deck or fence posts or something like that. He did it for an entire city, a port that went out into the Mediterranean region, a Mediterranean Sea, where nothing had existed before. If you go there today, you can actually see underwater some of the remains of the huge concrete piers that he poured. This is an aerial photo of what the city of Caesarea Maritima looks like today. A huge, beautiful place. You can see this theater right here. It seats 20,000, 30,000 people, something like that. Here's a hippodrome right on the coast, which is where they had the chariot races.

The Roman Empire version of NASCAR during its day right there on the coast. And again, this is the harbor there. Also had various other temples. There's some temple ruins you can see scattered around here. Here it had his own palace right here that went out. As you can see, the remains of his swimming pool right there. He actually had a freshwater swimming pool with water piped in from 10, 20 miles away from the mountains there to supply the city. And a huge palace, incidentally. This is where the Apostle Paul was apparently imprisoned under the rule of the Roman governor's Felix Infestus, as it's referred to in the Book of Acts. It was apparently right here during this period at this very location here. Here's an artist's conception of his palace out overlooking the Mediterranean Sea there as well. Some other things he did. He rebuilt the capital of the ancient Israelite kingdom of Samaria. This is what the ruins look like today. These are part of the columns going up there alongside the main street. He renamed it Sebastian. There, another area that he developed was Jericho. He built a huge winter palace down there. He didn't want to spend his cold winter days up in Jerusalem, and it could be down in the balmy tropical climate area of Jericho. He built a huge, huge palace facility down there. Masada. Many of you are probably familiar with the story of Masada. This is out in the Derserid area with a Dead Sea back in the background there.

A huge ship-shaped butte or mesa there level on top. You can see part of the fortifications around it, the walls around the outside, the storehouses. It was said that he stored enough food and equipment there to equip and feed 10,000 men for 10 years there. And when this was excavated back in the 60s, archaeologists came in. They actually found unopened jars of foods that were sealed with, let's see, I think it was clay and wax, if I remember correctly, with materials like dates and so on in there. And they were actually edible 2,000 years later there. The archaeologist could actually eat them there. This was his palace here, a three-tiered palace. About a thousand foot drop down. He liked the views, chose spectacular views for his palaces. He would build it built out on the edge because that's where the cool breezes would come in in the afternoons there in the desert. So really quite a remarkable builder. Those of you familiar with the story of Masada, you can see a little bit of the Roman ramp here where they were able to capture, well, not capture Masada. They ultimately took it. That's another whole story in itself there. But this was one of his major fortifications that he developed here. Let's see another one near, yeah, here's a close-up of the three-tiered palace. You can actually still see some of the columns and so on. And some visitors. You can see the size of the people up there. It gives you some idea of the scale. And then here is warehouses back there in the background there. So really an amazing, amazing place. We've never been there. Most of the tours that go to Israel will take you there for good reason. It's an amazing, amazing place. Another area that most people probably are not familiar with is called the Herodium, named after himself. This is near Bethlehem today. And see this mountain back here in the background? About half of the height of that is artificial. He actually shaved off a nearby mountain of about the same size and built a mountain there in which he put a palace. It's about ten stories high. There's an artist's conception of that there as well. This is where his tomb was finally discovered just three or four years ago, something like that. Archaeologists have been searching for it for literally decades, and they finally discovered it in the hill side of this man-made mountain here. Again, quite an egotistical builder there.

He also built several other fortresses and palaces and so on. We don't have time to go into right now. Now, why did he build so many of these palaces and so many fortresses like that, particularly out in desert areas like around Jericho or Herodium like we just saw or Masada? Why did he do that? Well, again, it was because he was paranoid. He knew what kind of ruler he was. He knew how ruthless he was, and he thought that others who would try to overthrow him would be just as ruthless. So because of that, he basically built some kind of palace or fortress within about a good day's drive, a good day's travel, or a good horseback's day's travel from anywhere within his kingdom. So he would always, if things started getting a little too hot politically, if someone threatened him or challenged his power, he would always have a place of refuge or safety to flee to within a day's travel there. And also many of them were in the desert areas so that if need be, he could flee back to his homeland of Ida Mia down here to the south of Judea in the desert area there.

Incidentally, here are some of the locations. Let's see Jericho that we mentioned. Masada right here.

Makiras, another one of his fortress palaces over in what is today modern-day Jordan. That's where John the Baptist was beheaded and so on. So he, and of course in Jerusalem as well, he had that Caesarea that we talked about is up here on the coast. So it gives you some idea of the, he basically ruled over this entire area, which is roughly the size of David and Solomon's kingdom before he passed away. Again, Herod was so paranoid that he had his favorite wife, Mary Omni, killed, had several of his sons murdered as well. Caesar Augustus, we talked about earlier, who was, who reigned his emperor alongside Herod, or above Herod, said a famous quote about him, I would rather be one of Herod's pigs than his sons because he knew that in Herod's household the pigs took a greater chance of survival than his own sons did. It's how bloodthirsty a man Herod was. So Herod died at about 3 BC, as best we can tell, and after that his kingdom was divided up among various members of his family. No one family member inherited the kingdom there, so at any one time, as we read through the Gospels, there might be several members of the Herodian family ruling over different areas of what had been Herod's kingdom, his empire there. We'll go through a few of these briefly. One of these was an individual by the name of Archalaeus. He ruled from 3 BC to 6 AD, basically over the area, this area here, of Judea. Here you see it reflected by the color key up here. He was not a major factor as far as the Gospels are concerned, in part because his reign was fairly short. He is mentioned in Matthew 2 and verse 22, and we'll turn there. This is when Joseph and Mary and Jesus have fled to Egypt to escape Herod the Great, slaughtering the babies in Bethlehem. So Herod passes away, and then after that is the context for Matthew 2 and verse 22. 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. So Joseph did not return to Bethlehem. He went way up in the far north of the area and settled in Galilee, specifically in Nazareth. So we can tell from this that obviously Archalaeus was not a very nice character. Probably had a lot of the characteristics of his father.

Another individual was Philip the Tetrarch, as he's called in the Gospels. He ruled from 3 BC, again Herod's death, to 34 AD, shortly after the death of Jesus Christ. He ruled over the northeastern area. Let's see. Look at my map. Yes, this area up here. Kind of out of the way, this was not an area that Jesus and the apostles traveled to much, so he's not mentioned or talked about very much. One of the noble things he did was to found this city of Caesarea Philippi.

Again, Philip the Tetrarch, being a very humble man, he named the city after himself and his good buddy Caesar as well. So a lot of sucking up in those days to the powers that be.

Another member of the Herodian family that's mentioned in the Gospels is Herod Antipas, sometimes called Herod Antipater, 3 BC to 39 AD, again, overlapped the ministry and life of Jesus Christ. He was responsible for Galilee. Let's look at the map. He's responsible for this area here, which included Galilee, the Sea of Galilee, and this area down in here, known as Peria. So he was empowered during Jesus Christ's reign as well. He's referred to in Luke 13 and 32, and we get some idea, indication of his character here, where Jesus Christ says, Go tell that fox, referring to this Herod. Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected, referring to his death and resurrection there.

So again, probably not that reputable an individual being connoted as or described as being a sly and cunning like a fox. Herod Antipas was not very well respected by the Jews. One thing that he did was to build the city of Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee. Here's an aerial photo of the Sea of Galilee, and here's the modern city of Tiberius along the coast, and the ancient city just on the other side of this little hill here. But he built it on top of an ancient cemetery, which to the Jews, and according to the biblical instructions, you were not allowed to do that because you could not come into contact with a dead body. So he could not get Jews to settle there. So he had to open up the city and encourage non-Jews to come and settle there in the city of Tiberius. Now Tiberius is only maybe by boat four or five miles by foot, seven, eight miles from Capernaum. Capernaum was the center of Jesus Christ's ministry. Tiberius around that period was probably 20,000-30,000 population, yet not once, not a single time, as it mentioned in the Gospels, that Jesus Christ ever went there. Why? Well, two things. Again, one, it was a city that was considered unclean by the practicing Jews of that day because it would have been built on a cemetery. Another factor is Herod, Herod that we're talking about here, Herod Antipas, was living there. That was his headquarters. What had Herod Antipas did that may have given Jesus a reason not to ever come near Herod Antipas? Well, for one thing, he had had John the Baptist executed. Beheaded, he was that Herod. So Jesus knew what he could do to an innocent man, John the Baptist. So is Jesus going to go and walk into his town? Probably not.

So those are two factors why Jesus probably did not ever visit the biggest city there in Galilee during his day there. Again, that's not mentioned in the Gospels, but you understand some of this historical background, and he can put the pieces together and understand why Jesus did or did not do some of the things that he did. He knew that Herod had beheaded John, and he knew that that fate could happen to him if he crossed Herod as well.

This is also the Herod that's mentioned near the end of Jesus Christ's ministry. Excuse me, did I include that? No, I didn't. Apparently, I skipped over this passage in my PowerPoint here.

Luke 23 in verse 7, you might write that down, which refers as part of Jesus Christ's trials and proceedings and so on. Pilate sends Jesus to Herod when he finds out that Jesus is a Galilean. This is the same Herod Antipas that we're talking about here. He was in Jerusalem for the Passover feast, the Days of Unleavened Bread. Again, that's Luke 23 in verses 7 through 12. Now we'll move from the political background and get into the religious background a bit here.

There are several major religious groups that we'll discuss, those being the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Essenes, and also two political groups we'll call them. Those are the zealots and the Herodians. We've already discussed the Herodians a bit. Those were the people who basically supported the family of Herod, the political powers that be, and the opposite of the Herodians were the zealots here. We'll talk about them in just a few minutes here.

Now the group we're probably most familiar with, because we've read it in the Bible many, many times, is the Pharisees. They were the largest and most influential of the different sects or parties of Judaism in the New Testament period. The word Pharisee comes from a Hebrew word parash, meaning to separate.

So they would call themselves the separated ones, separating because they were righteous and everybody else was evil as they saw it. They began to have influence about 135 BC, so they were very well established by the time we get into the Gospels. They've been around for more than a hundred years by that period. Their approach to the law, which we see reflected in the Gospels, was very technical, very detail-oriented, very letter of the law.

In every way, they looked at every small precept of the law and extrapolated from that. So their approach was to build a fence around the law so that you could not possibly break the law.

And again, we see that reflected many times in the Gospels, and we'll cover some of that as we go through it. They did not even want to be close to committing evil or breaking God's law in any way. Another important factor is they considered the oral law, as it came to be known later, as just as binding as the written law.

Now, what was the oral law? It was basically the traditions of their leaders, of their rabbis and so on. And they gave equal weight to the oral law, as to the written law given to Moses there.

You won't find the term oral law in the Gospels. What you will find, though, it's the same thing. It later came to be known the oral law. In the Gospels, it's called the traditions of the elders. And that will be an important term to write down. And remember, the traditions of the elders there. And again, they gave this equal weight to God's law that He had given in writing. It's called the oral law because it's distinct from the written law.

It was the oral law that was passed down orally there. And of course, this led to considerable conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees. You might remember Matthew 23 in particular, where Jesus repeatedly says, Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, and so on, because they equated their traditions equal to, or in some cases more important than, the actual law of God, which led to them actually breaking the law of God so they could keep their traditions there.

There were differences in beliefs between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees, for example, believed in the existence of angels and spirits, which the Sadducees did not. The Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the body. The Sadducees did not.

However, even though they had a number of things right, they had things wrong, as Jesus Christ did on a number of occasions, corrected them for paying attention to things such as tithing of the tiniest seeds that were so small you could barely even see them. They would count them out meticulously to pick out everyone in ten, as opposed to just dividing it up as a whole. And Jesus said, in doing so, they ignored the weightier matters of the law, such as justice and mercy and faith.

So their own meticulousness and technical approach to the law led them to actually breaking the law and ignoring the things that Jesus Christ said were actually more important.

Let us share with you a humorous way that people used. Actually, the Pharisees themselves defined the Pharisees this way, according to some sources. You don't need to write this down. This is just for a bit of a humorous illustration, the different types of Pharisees. One was called the shoulder Pharisee, and he was a Pharisee who paraded his good deeds around other men, like a badge on his shoulder. The second was called the wait a little Pharisee. He would ask someone to wait for him while he went off and performed a good deed. So he would be sure to have a witness that he had performed this good deed. Another one was called the bruised Pharisee. He was called the bruised Pharisee because he was continually walking into walls, because whenever a woman passed by, to avoid lusting after, he would close his eyes and walk into walls. He was called a bruised Pharisee. Another one was called the humpbacked Pharisee. This is similar to the bruised Pharisee, because rather than shutting his eyes or closing his eyes, he would continually walk around like this, so as not to see another woman there and possibly lust after him. So he was called the humpbacked Pharisee from looking down at the ground all the time. Another group was called the ever reckoning Pharisee, and these were the ones who kept a scorecard as to their good deeds and their bad deeds, so that they would always know that they were on the right side with God. So they were the scorekeepers, you might say. But there were also two types of Pharisees who were viewed as the good Pharisees. One was the God-fearing Pharisee, and this was a Pharisee who, like Job, revered and respected and obeyed God. But he obeyed God out of fear, obeyed God out of fear because he was afraid of being punished. And the last was the highest, most respected category of Pharisee at all, and that was the God-loving Pharisee. And this was the Pharisee who obeyed God because he loved God. And that's what they all strived to be there. He was one who obeyed God because he loved him, like Abraham was an example that they looked up to.

The Pharisees were, again, a very influential group in the Gospels. Not all of them were hypocrites and spiritually blind, as Jesus called them. There were some who were very genialy and inobeying God from the heart and obeying his law in a right and balanced way the way God intended, who were some notable Pharisees of the Bible. Well, one of them was Nicodemus, the man who came to Jesus Christ by night. And they had the discussion about born again, being born of the Spirit and so on. He was a Pharisee who earnestly sought to do. He was a secret follower of Jesus the Messiah. Another one was Joseph of Arimathea, the individual who took Jesus Christ's body after he was crucified and buried it in his own family tomb. Another one, this might surprise you a bit, the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul was a Pharisee. I'd like to insert a scripture here, Acts 23, verse 6. This is in one of his periods when he's in trouble for his preaching. It says, When Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees he cried out in the council, apparently the Sanhedrin, Man and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead, I am being judged. Why does he throw this in about the hope and resurrection of the dead? Again, because the Pharisees did believe in it, and the Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection. So, rather than take the heat off himself, he gets them fighting against each other over whether he's really a resurrection of the dead. But notice what he says here. He says, I am a Pharisee, not I was a Pharisee. He says, I am a Pharisee. So, Paul clearly still considered himself a Pharisee. And indeed, there were many Pharisees who were called and converted by God and became a part of the early church there.

Out of all of the sects of Judaism that we talked about here, Phariseeism alone survived.

It's the only aspect of Judaism that survived from that period. As a matter of fact, if you go to the Western Wall today, you'll see some survivals of Phariseeism there. As I did three weeks ago, three Fridays ago, I see some of the same things there, like the black side curls on this individual there. If you've ever seen videos, you'll see them bobbing and praying like this at the Western Wall. You see a lot of ritual hand-washing. If you go into some of the restrooms near the Western Wall, you'll see a picture there with two handles on it. And you think, why are you drinking like this? What's the point here? And what they do is they fill the picture with water. They grab one handle with the unclean hand, because both hands are unclean, and they pour water and clean that hand. And then they use the clean hand to refill the picture and wash the unclean hand. This is part of the ritual washing that we even see referred to in the Gospels, this type of thing that still exists to this day. And you can see it yourself there at the Western Wall. These are the same people. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago in announcements in Denver Springs. I don't remember which. The person who came up to me at the Western Wall about 20 minutes before sundown, Friday night, three weeks ago, and told me to stop taking pictures. And that was part of their adding and building a fence around the wall. Here it is in their view, sundown, the Sabbath, actually began 30 minutes before sundown. So they're building a fence around the Sabbath, keeping a body for breaking it. And also they objected to me taking pictures because in my digital camera, by clicking the shutter, I was causing an electrical current to run through the camera, which is kindling a fire on the Sabbath in their view. So again, this is the nitpicky rules and regulations that Jesus Christ said made the Sabbath a burden. And he was very critical of the people in that day for that type of building fences around God's law and making the Sabbath a burden instead of the delight that he intended it to be. So again, that tradition is still very much alive and well. And again, this is the only thread or aspect of the Jewish groups that we read about in the Gospels that continues to this day. The next group that we'll talk about here is the Sadducees. According to tradition, they derive their name from Zadok, who was the high priest during the period of David and Solomon. And that's where they get their name from. Zadokese became Sadducees. You can see the relation there in language, Sadokese and Sadducees there.

So as far as how some of these groups really began, we don't have a lot of historical information about that, including the Sadducees and the Pharisees. It's just difficult to pin down.

Some of these groups may have actually originally been several different groups that merged together or split off from others. We just don't know. But regardless, the Sadducees were generally the priests and came from the sons of Zadok, who were the priests. They were closely associated with the temple. And of course, Jesus Christ had his run-ins during his ministry with those overseeing the temple, again casting out the money changers. These were people who would have been given that franchise to exchange money or to sell animals for offerings there at the temple.

Of course, the Sadducees would have been given a kickback or a commission off that money-changing sale of animals. But it had become a very corrupt institution. That's why Jesus had so many conflicts with them. As a part of their beliefs, one big thing that distinguished them from the Pharisees that, in addition to the other things I mentioned, is they believed that only the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, were inspired by God. The others were nice reading but not directly inspired by God. They again also denied the existence of the resurrection and of angels and the spirit world. Because of their beliefs, they were also much more open to Greek ideas and Pharisees. This is one reason why the Pharisees and Sadducees clashed a lot as well. They were more in tune with the Greek philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, people like that. Politically, the Sadducees were opportunists. They took advantage of every political opportunity that they could. As a result, the Sadducees would ally themselves with whoever happened to be in power or whoever could give them something that would benefit them. They really did not seem to have core values being rooted in God's law like the Pharisees, but would just go with whichever the wind blew at a given time. We really don't hear anything about them after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, as depicted here in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. With the temple destroyed and because their identity was so tied up in the temple, they just simply had no reason for continuing. The Pharisees, on the other hand, continued to survive to this day because their focus is more on the law rather than on the temple itself. The next group we'll talk about briefly here are the Essenes. What are they famous for? Anybody know? What are they notable for in terms of, yes, Dead Sea Scrolls? Yes, this was a very isolationist community lived out in the desert near the Dead Sea. There go the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had a community there, a commune, you might say. And the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered near this commune in caves like these and the cliffs around there. And they apparently, as near as we can tell from history, split off from Jerusalem. They viewed the priesthood in Jerusalem as being corrupt, which indeed it was. Again, the conflicts between Jesus and the priesthood. So viewing the priesthood and the temple as a hopeless lost cause, they moved out into the desert to purify themselves. They went a few steps beyond the Pharisees in that regard. Some of their weird ideas, they believed in celibacy, did not believe in marriage, so they had to attract people by going out and recruiting others to come into the commune. It must have been a pretty big tough sell during that day. But that's what Josephus records, that they did not believe in marriage. He has other details about their beliefs that we won't have time to go into.

They were quite unbalanced because of this, and the Essene community disappeared when the Romans came through in that area in the Jewish Revolt from 67 to 70 AD. As a matter of fact, they have dated the destruction of the Essene community there to that specific period, the community was burned down, destroyed, later devastated by earthquakes after it had already been abandoned. Actually, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls only learned this recently.

In the closest cave to that community, one of the jars had actually been broken open, and the scrolls slashed, cut in pieces with a sharp object. What was the point of that? Well, they theorized actually a Roman soldier came in there and did that, and actually hacked the scrolls with his sword out of anger at the Essenes there. The last group of people that we'll only see one more point before I leave that, you'll read in some commentaries that John the Baptist may have been an Essene. Don't believe that. About the only thing they had in common was baptism and both living in the desert. John, part of his ministry, was conducted maybe 10-12 miles north of here where he was baptizing and apparently where Jesus was baptized as well.

But again, the Essenes believed in some weird ideas like celibacy and not being married and things like that. The last group that we'll talk about here is the Zealots. They were more of a political group, although in their politics they were so firm in that you might say that they were a religious group as well. They were the fanatical nationalists, you might say. You might think of some of the militia groups here in the American West up in Montana or Idaho. People are very rabidly anti-government, refused to pay taxes, refused to get driver's licenses, things like that. This was the kind of group that the Zealots were. One of the things that they did, one of the things they're infamous for, incidentally here's a picture of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I got ahead of myself.

One of the things they're infamous for was instigating the revolt that led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Here's a carving from the Arch of Titus in Rome showing the plunder of the Temple, the menorah and some of the trumpets and so on being carried away when the Romans plundered the Temple there. The Zealots were behind that. The revolt that led to this started out in Galilee St. Mary where Jesus Christ had his ministry and eventually spread to Jerusalem and led to the destruction of the city. I'd like to turn to a couple of scriptures here. One is Luke 6 in verse 15 where it has the naming of the 12 apostles. It lists them as Matthew and Thomas, James, the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot. Simon called the Zealot. Another passage, Acts 1 in verse 13 again listing the 12 apostles. And when they had entered, they went up into the upper room where they were staying and then it lists the men, the 12 apostles, Peter, James, actually 11 by this point, Peter, James, John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James. So here we see that one of Jesus Christ's followers was Simon the Zealot. He was from this particular group. That's not to say this is exactly what he believed when he was Christ's disciple. I hope not, but he had to lead some interesting conversations, let's say, around the campground because the zealots were known for carrying a dagger underneath their cloak. And if they had the opportunity, they would pull it out and do in somebody who was a Roman or viewed as a collaborator with the Romans.

Their agenda was to overthrow the Roman rule over Judea and to re-establish a Jewish state there, to re-establish a new kingdom of David, as they would have termed it there. If you've ever watched the movie Masada, you have the group of Jews there. They're going around raiding settlements, plundering, attacking the Romans in guerrilla warfare. These are the zealots. This is the group, and this is the group that held out there in Masada for so long until the Romans finally came and surrounded them, and they ended up committing mass suicide rather than live a life of slavery in the hands of the Romans there. So again, consider that one of Jesus Christ's own disciples was an individual who is called the zealot. The zealot there, Simon the zealot. So he would have been one of these individuals earlier in his life who supported killing Romans, stabbing them, stabbing collaborators. Who was another of Jesus's disciples? Matthew. Matthew Levi. What was his job?

He's a tax collector. For who? For the Romans. You have to wonder some of the conversations that went around around the campfires, in fact, between Simon the zealot, who believes in murdering collaborators with the Romans, and Matthew Levi, who's a tax collector for the Romans.

Again, that's something not spilled out in the Gospels, but you go through and read and understand the background. And, yeah, he really gives you some different perspectives on some of the things that might have taken place there. Again, the Gospels don't talk about that, but had to create some interesting dynamics to have both of them walking around, living with each other 24 hours a day for several years there as they traveled around Galilee. So that is all we have time for today. I hope it's been interesting to help you with this background here. We'll go into one other aspect of background material next week before we get into the Gospels themselves, and that is the background of the four Gospels themselves. By that I mean, why do we have four Gospels? Why don't we have just one? Who were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Why did they write their Gospels? Why are there differences in their accounts? Who did they write their Gospels to? Why are some of the things recounted or explained to different ways in those? So those are some of the things we'll be talking about next week in our Bible class in Denver and down in the Springs.