Wednesday Bible Study: We interrupt your regular Christmas holiday...

 

 

I was down to the last (and what I presume will be two-part) section of our Psalm 119 series when I saw it was going to hit the Christmas/New Years cycle.  Rather than try to fight my way through it then, I decided to take a break to focus on Christmas.  Besides, the last word has a complication you won't believe! I recently listened to a John McArthur sermon called, "The Ugly Side of Christmas", which set me down this path...

Some say Jesus was born at the perfect time and place for Christianity.  The coming of Alexander the Great had made Greek a common language across most of what we call "the known world".  The coming of Rome brought a common culture, better roads that lead all over, technical progress that is still being unravelled by archaeologists even into this past MONTH.  And the Pax Romana, a peace that the area hadn't known since the days of Solomon almost a thousand years before.  So yeah, conditions were ripe... 

But "Ripe" as we think of it from crops, requires not only sunshine, but dirt and rain.  And both were to be had in abundance.

First, the political situation.  Sure, there was NOW the Pax Romana, but not so long ago.... The Hasmoneans, which two apochryphal books in the Catholic Bible call the days of the Maccabees, were the last of Israel's independence for almost another 1,900 years.  And despite the heroice of Judas and his brothers, the Hasmonean rule was a corrupt one of buying offices, civil war, and the ever present dynamic of the Hellenistic (Greek) overlordship being inexorably pushed out by Rome.  In fact, Hasmonean corruption led to Hasmonean weakness, Greek weakness led to the whole area having been conquered by the Parthians (think Persia), and the Parthians being driven out (with Roman help, natch) by Herod the Great.

Herod was from what the OT called Edom, the Greeks called Idumea, and and a pagan area the Hasmoneans had forced to become Jewish converts.  Not that this was a huge issue to Herod's family, because like I said with the Hasmoneans, religious leadership was another lever to political power that could be bought or sold.  And Herod himself was half-Hasmonean; in fact, he himself fought a civil war with a Hasmonean sister-in-law to secure the throne Rome gave him.  And it WAS a gift from Rome; in return for his help against Antony and Cleopatra, Augustus named him "King of the Jews".

For his part, he tried to be a good king for the Jews.  His many building projects, many using the Roman concrete innovation that is still making news this past week, including rebuilding and expanding the Second Temple.  It had been desecrated many times by the Greeks (notably Antiochus Ephiphanes, who touched off the Maccabean rebellion), and just as many times (without the ballyhoo) by the Hasmoneans.  So when Herod rebuilt and refurbished it (the current "Western Wall" being an outer part of it), it became known as Herod's Temple, despite not being finished till well after his death- and just before Christ's.  He defended his people well, saw to their needs- including during a celebrated famine- and gave them plenty of work.  But...

He started his reign by executing over half of the Jewish Sanhedrin- the 70-member religious council. He ignored the recommendations on Temple restoration from the Pharissees, the religious elite of the day.  He levvied what sources call "Hasmonean" tax systems on the people of Judea and Galilee to pay for it all- that on top of Roman taxes, which could work their way up to 60%.  That on top of the Temple tax and tithes.  And that on top of the sometimes-forced labor to BUILD all this stuff.

Plus, Herod had his own army- heavily packed with mercenaries from around the Roman world; and a secret service that pried into every facet of life.  And the amorality his family brought was legend- among his six wifes were a cousin and a niece, and by the time he began suffering with the wasting disease that would kill him, he had killed off possible successors to a point that it was a serious worry who would succeed him.

All of this I already knew, but I am working my way to a part I DIDN'T know before.  Mary and Joseph as you know, lived in a town called Nazareth- a place so looked-down on, one of Jesus's disciple candidates said, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?"  It was tiny- at best, a population of 400.  economically connected to the nearby city of Sephoris, which Herod had built into a garrison for his (and Rome's) army.  Likely Joseph commuted there for carpentry work.  It was north of Jerusalem, in "Galilee of the Gentiles", and bawdy enough that the Pharissees were able to spread the rumor that Jesus was the illegitimate child of a mercenary named Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera.  The part I didn't know was that Joseph likely had been a farmer unable to make it; most people who found work in the cities were failed farmers, and carpentry was considered not a noble profession, but one of last resort, a step or two above being a shepherd.  Thus Jesus was to be born into a poor, over-taxed family ( whose taxes were about to be  raised pending the results of the census that drove them to Bethlehem).  They were the family of a failed farmer in a necessary but looked down-on profession dependant on a city that was basically a glorified backwater army camp.

Yes, Roman roads were good; the road from Nazareth was not.  Herod had eliminated much of the banditry that used to be common on the main roads, yes- but they were far from a main road.  Yes, there was a common language, but that just meant that Joseph could understand, "No room," in at least 2 different tongues.

A few days ago in my Bible reading, a verse stuck with me from the Book of Ezra, at a point when they exiles returning from Babylon had just finished the rebuilding of the Temple foundation ( this would be the Second Temple which Herod would renovate).

Ezr 3:11  And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the LORD, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.” And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. 

Ezr 3:12  But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, 

Ezr 3:13  so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away. 

And it struck me then that this is today's Church- a foundation nowhere near as good as when we started, and those who weep for the creeping secularism in it can't be heard for those who are joyful that so many poisons have been mixed in.  And it strikes me that this was the state of God's people then, as well.  Every good that would help the Gospel spread later was an evil that burdened the people right then.  And just as our Church has spent 500 years since Martin Luther called out the corruption of modern day Pharissees, it had been almost 500 years since the last prophet had spoken to Israel.

And it strikes me too, that in a season so defined by light for us, the theme should really have been the darkness it was relieving...

Isa 9:1  Drink this first. Act quickly, O land of Zabulon, land of Nephthalim, and the rest inhabiting the sea-coast, and the land beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. 

Isa 9:2  O people walking in darkness, behold a great light: ye that dwell in the region and shadow of death, a light shall shine upon you.