Part 4 - Setting the Stage

[This is Part 4 of a series.  Links to the previous parts can be found below]

http://rakestrawjeff.blogspot.com/2017/05/part-1-preface.html?m=1

http://rakestrawjeff.blogspot.com/2017/05/part-2-introduction.html?m=1

http://rakestrawjeff.blogspot.com/2017/05/in-beginning.html?m=1

 

The world that Jesus of Nazareth was born into was created over millions of years and was influenced by a wide variety of cultures and civilizations.  Since this is a personal journey it is important to recognize that although my story does not officially start until the 1800’s our journey, and that of Pope Francis, necessarily goes through Jerusalem and Rome and Athens.

 

The history of what is known as western civilization has to begin with a discussion of the Greeks.  In school we were taught about Troy, and Sparta, and Athens.  Popular culture still glorifies the stories of Troy and Thermopylae and Alexander.  We cannot review all of the effects of Ancient Greek society on my journey but we must talk about a few things.

 

If you recall the conflicts between the Spartans and the Athenians, we must note that the people of Athens had formed a democracy.  They were philosophers and writers.  The people of Sparta were born to be warriors.  In Sparta boys were taken at a young age and began training to be a warrior for Sparta.  It was egalitarian in that everyone was required to undergo the same training, but your life was devoting to serving Sparta as a warrior.  The democracy in Athens was also egalitarian, although in a much different way.

 

Athens built a great society and introduced ideas that shaped the rest of world history.  The works of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle would become instrumental in shaping not just the world but my personal journey.  Because our discussion involves Pope Francis and his ideas on libertarian philosophy, we are obliged to stop and acknowledge that those libertarian ideas largely originated with the Greek philosophers in Athens.

 

When Xerxes invaded Greece he was ultimately repelled but he brought back Greek ideas to Persia, and the Persians would be among those to incorporate these philosophies into their culture. When Alexander conquered much of the known world he went as far as India and the ideas of Aristotle were mixed with those of Buddha, and the ideas of Buddha were likewise brought back to Greece.  By the time Jesus was born the Romans would have adopted Greek philosophy and made it part of their own Republic.

 

We will have to return to the Greeks and their philosophy but for now I want to stop and consider Athens and Sparta once again.  There is an Athenian and a Spartan outlook on life.  The Spartans were some of the greatest warriors ever to live, trained from a young age and dedicated to the state.  The Athenians were softer, more devoted to intellectual pursuits and more individualistic and democratic.  In the end, the Spartans defeated the Athenians and made them take down the long walls that defended Athens.

 

As we move forward I would ask you to consider whether your philosophy is more Spartan or Athenian?  This will depend on the issue at hand, and may change based on circumstances; sometimes history requires one response and sometimes it requires another.

We cannot discuss the dawn of Christianity without discussing the Romans.  The Roman Republic had ended in 27 BC after existing for 500 years.  The stories of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Cleopatra have been made a part of our modern culture.  Growing up I remember movies where these Romans and Egyptians and Jews from ancient times were invariably white people who looked like me and spoke English with British accents.  So, for that matter, did all of the Greeks.  Jesus and Mary and Moses and Abraham were all depicted as white Anglo-Saxons who spoke perfect English as well.

 

This was not an attempt to re-write history so that we would think everyone in the ancient world looked and spoke like us; it was simply the reality that the actors telling these stories, like the audience they were telling the stories to, were living two thousand years after the fact and they related the stories in the language of the time.  Nevertheless I have to be aware that my perspective is invariably colored by the way in which the stories have been presented.

 

Upon the death of Julius Caesar, Octavius became Caesar Augustus and first Emperor of the Roman Empire.  At the time of the birth of Jesus the Jews in Judea were under the rule of Caesar Augustus under the client king Herod the Great.  The first temple of Solomon had been destroyed by the Babylonians 600 years earlier but then reconstruction began under Cyrus the Great.  After the conquest by Alexander, Judea was under Ptolemaic rule for a time until Syria took control and outlawed Judaism again around 170 BCE.  The Romans then took control again around 70 BCE, and handed the Temple back to the Jews under Herod the Great.

 

Herod began a massive rebuilding of the Temple, one of the largest construction projects of the time.  This construction of the Temple required heavy taxes. Under Caesar Augustus the Romans had finally transitioned from Republic to Empire, although that transition had actually been underway for a very long time.  Client kings like Herod would collect taxes and send them to Rome, which provided the Romans the means to upgrade and expand Roman society.  As Herod collected taxes to send to Caesar as well as to rebuild the Temple the resentment of tax collectors grew.

 

Augustus died while Jesus was a teenager and was succeeded by Tiberius, who would rule until 37 CE, shortly after the death of Jesus, when he would be succeeded by Caligula.  Herod the Great died in 4 BCE, which is also the date given for the birth of Jesus.  Judea became a Roman province 10 years later in 6 CE, and a census was ordered for the purpose of determining taxation.

 

After the death of Herod the Great, his son Herod Antipas ruled Judea until his death sometime after the death of Jesus.  Herod Antipas was the one who presided over the death of Jesus, and also the beheading of John the Baptist.

 Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus was not a quiet comfortable society but rather a place and time of turmoil and change.  The Jews of the time had separated into three basic schools of thought; there were the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Essenes.  

 

The Sadducees included the elites, which would be the priests and aristocrats.  They had pretty liberal views in terms of accepting the Hellenistic ideas of the Greeks.  They believed in the written word, and a strict interpretation of it.  They rejected the oral law and focused on rituals and the temple.  They also rejected the idea of an afterlife as no such afterlife is mentioned in the Torah.

 

The Pharisees believed in the oral tradition that would eventually become the Talmud.  They believed in an afterlife and the coming of a messiah.  The Pharisees did not care for Hellenistic ideas and preferred local rabbis and synagogues to priests and temples.  The Pharisees would form the basis for Rabbinic Judaism that would emerge from the second destruction of the temple and become the Judaism we know today.

 

The Essenes were a third group which had emerged out of distaste for the squabbling among the other two.  The Essenes moved into the desert and lived monastic lives with strict observance of dietary laws and a commitment to celibacy. The Essenes rejected the notion of free will, while the Sadducees embraced it.  The Pharisees believed in free will but that God knew all of human destiny.  The Essenes lived communal lives and embraced poverty and celibacy.  They performed ritual cleansing with water.

 

All of the Jews of this time shared the belief in monotheism; the belief that God is one absolute and indivisible being who is the creator all existence.  Early human history has plenty of examples of polytheism, including the Greeks and Romans.  The Jews had long ago rejected the notion of other gods and so their antipathy toward attempts to Hellenize their culture included their staunch belief in monotheism.

 

It was into this chaotic world that Jesus of Nazareth was born.  The importance of this one life on the course of history cannot be overstated, whether you are a Christian or Jew or a Chinese nationalist or Native American of the seventeenth century.  For Francis and I this is a pivotal moment in our history but it is a pivotal moment in the history of the world in general, and one cannot understand the effect Jesus had without understanding the forces at play in the world he was born into.

 

To understand how I came to look at the world the way I do I will require an understanding of the Athenians and Spartans and the ideas of Aristotle.  It will require an understanding of the lessons of the Roman Republic and the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.  And it will require an understanding of the covenant between God and Abraham, and how that influenced the life and times and ideas of Jesus of Nazareth.

 

Having set the stage for that story, we will now look at the Dawn of Christianity and the life and legacy of the man who would so profoundly change the history of the world.  If you are an atheist or Buddhist or if you have no real interest in religion you still would be wise to understand the Dawn of Christianity and the effect it had on the rest of human history.  Regardless of what your journey looks like, it has been affected by the momentous events that occurred 2000 years ago in the Mediterranean basin. 

 

Up next: The Dawn of Christianity.