Transcription
Hello, class. Welcome to the first video lecture for the Gospels, a course in which we're going to be looking at the history behind, the works in, the Gospels and then also the work of Christ and the theology that comes out of it. This particular lecture is gonna be looking at the background to the gospels. The New Testament did not just come out of a vacuum. It is the next piece of a continuum that began at the beginning of the Old Testament that proceeds throughout the entirety of the Old Testament and then follows into the Jewish inter testament period.
The background of the Old Testament includes the interaction of the Jewish people with the nations around them. Inaugurated with the time of Abraham being called by God, then going into Egypt, coming out of slavery from Egypt, going into Canaan and then struggling with their neighbors, whether it was the Egyptians or the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians. And then eventually, it led into the intertestament period where they dealt with the Greeks and the Romans. As a result of this, the New Testament scholar needs to be, familiar with the history, geography, the religions, culture, and sociology of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world. They also need to be aware of the theology and history of the found of the Old Testament as it was a foundation for the New Testament.
It would be good to know the events that take place within the New Testament context and the themes and subsequent theology that are taught within the New Testament if they want to understand the gospels. Now we're going to be looking at all of that throughout the course. We're gonna look at some of it today, and then each week, we're gonna be looking at a different video that will explain a slightly different piece of that. In this course on the gospels, we will take a brief study of the first three of these themes so that the message of the gospel makes sense to us today. Let's look first at the history, geography, religions, cultural context, and sociology of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean worlds in which we find the gospel, coming out of.
This course is not to maybe meant to be a full study of the background and history of the ancient Near East. However, it is necessary to know a little bit at least, so that we can understand the realities within the gospels. The history of the Bible is of the Jewish people that, takes place over about two thousand years in which we start off with the father Abraham and makes it all the way to the time of Christ. We deal with captivity. We deal with the struggle for independence, of constant warfare, of people who are righteous and people who are unrighteous, people that pursued after god and people who rebelled and walked away from God.
During this time, the temple was developed first as the tabernacle, as a place of worship. The law was given to the people as a way to interact with God. And then we also will need to know understand the languages and cultures, that start off with Hebrew, later on was infused and changed into the Aramaic language, and then eventually Greek becoming the predominant language of the region. The inter testament period is that period that is the time between the closing of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. It is sometimes referred to as the intertestable period by some folks, different things by different people.
Second temple period sometimes is how it's referred to by other folks. This course will touch on a little bit of the history and the examination of the history as it leads up to the New Testament specifically. We're not gonna be interested in all of the details, just the things that had impact on what's gonna influence the gospel in due time. It's important to note that during the inter testament period, Israel had been reduced down to one tribe for the most part, the tribe of Judah, and then some other tribes that were part of it. But for the most part, they were known as the tribe of Judah, and it was this tribe that was trying to, figure out their way with Yahweh who they had kind of abandoned, but God was continuing in his grace kept bringing them back into right relationship with him.
The primary source for events and historical developments, for Judah during this period, would be writers such as Josephus who wrote what's called the Jewish antiquities. He described himself once as a Pharisee that's now become a a general that fought against Rome, who was defeated by Rome and then became an historian to explain the events, that led to Palestine being taken over and eventually ruled by Rome. Other works are found in the Apocrypha or the pseudepigrapha. These are works that were written down by different authors during the same period. The Apocrypha is accepted by the Catholic church as part of the Bible.
Protestant churches normally don't, but it's a really good source for information about this period. It's where we're gonna get some of the information that we deal with in what we're covering today. The Jewish period, that ends with the time of the Old Testament really finds itself under the Persian rule. During that time, they have been sent into exile, captured by the Babylonians, taken off as exiles, and then the Persian king Cyrus allowed them to come back and live in their homeland, but they were still ruled by the Persian empire. During that time, the Jews under the Persian's rule experienced three important changes.
They shifted from a temple worship to a synagogue worship. They shifted from the written law more to an oral law or an oral tradition, and the language shifted from Hebrew to Aramaic. And these three factors become very important by the time of Christ because they're still the religious practices of the time of Christ for the most part. So, we don't so we see temple worship exists in the time of Christ, but synagogues are very important and that's where the average Jewish person, goes to worship God on a weekly basis. The oral law becomes very important so that when the Pharisees are speaking to Jesus, they speak about these oral commandments.
There's hundreds of them, that we don't see in the Old Testament, but now they appear during the time of Christ. And in in in terms of language, Aramaic is probably the language that Jesus himself spoke. The Persian rule lasted until about March when Alexander the Great conquered the region. And, when he did, he basically made the world, Hellenized, meaning it, now spoke Greek. It had Greek laws, Greek customs.
Even though all of the people didn't become Greek per se, they were heavily influenced and ruled by the Greek, population. There during this time, we saw an improvement in the standards of living for average people. An urbanization took place that people moved from the villages into the cities, and that Greek language became the main language spoken throughout the region. Now you have one language that can be speak spoken through many different cultures. Even in the land of Israel, Greek became an important language.
This allowed for there to be mass communication. News could travel more rapidly between the major cities. This is important for the timing of the coming of the gospel. Up to that point, when the prophet spoke in Hebrew, only the people of Israel could understand. When Jesus came and communicated, immediately his followers could communicate in Greek and that could be understood as far away as Spain, as far away as India.
And so this one common language becomes a a key component to the gospel being able to spread rapidly after the time of Christ. The Greeks did not last forever. In fact, it was just a a short few years whenever their empire collapsed, but the different generals of the Greek empire took over different regions of the empire. And so the Ptolemies in Egypt ruled what would become Judah later on, for quite a long time, about a hundred and forty years up until up until about February BC. It was during this time that many Jews had moved to, Egypt, particularly Alexandria where there was a large center of Jewish, scholarship.
Rabbis lived there and they would teach, it became a center of learning. It's where the Old Testament was translated into Greek. It's called the Septuagint, and there's tradition why it's called that, it means 70. In Greek, they thought that there were 70 scholars that came together and they all translate from Hebrew into Greek and when they they compared notes, they realized they translate exactly the same way and they thought that God's hand was in the midst of all of that. For the most part, while the Egyptians rode over Palestine, it was a good time to be Jewish, but that didn't last forever.
There was a Seleucid Syrian Greeks that then took over, and they fought the Ptolemaic Greeks who lived in Egypt, and they conquered and took over. And so they were, based out of Syria, and they were not friends of the Jews and they began to do, difficult things for the Jews. Antiochus was one of the most famous ones. So we get the name Antioch. The city of Antioch is named after Antiochus, and he would persecute the Jews.
He would kill thousands of them. There was one battle in which he killed 40,000 Jewish people. He tried to influence the religion. He tried to make them worship pigs or sacrifice pigs. And when they resisted doing that, what happened was there was a big revolt, and that would become known as the Maccabean revolt.
As a result, they fought against their local Greek ruler who was called, Antiochus, and, they kicked them out of power. And so the Maccabean revolt led to what's called a Hasmonean dynasty. The Hasmoneans were the descendants of these people that fought against those Greeks and had a semi autonomous independent state for a season. Mattathias was a guy that led the revolt. He was an older general and that would not sacrifice a pig, and then when someone else who who was ordered to do so, tried to do so, he killed him, and then his sons rose up and led a rebellion.
And as a result, there became two camps of people, those who wanted to compromise with the secular authorities and those who felt like they should fight against those authorities. And as these two groups began to interplay with each other, they would eventually form the basis of what would become the Sadducees and the Pharisees. We'll see this later on. It was about this time when they were this independent state, they began to have pressure from the governments around them and they were worried. So one of their religious one of their rulers made a deal with Rome that if Rome would come and protect them, they would let Rome have some authority in the region.
And this deal ended up being a good deal for both. Rome got to exert its influence and began to fight against the Greeks in that region, and then, the Judeans felt like they were protected. Of course, it doesn't last forever because Rome eventually says, well, we want you too. And so they conquered them. Once they got invited to come in there, they conquered and took over the, the land of Palestine.
But an important thing happened during that time when Rome took over, they declared Judaism a religio licita, which means it was a legal religion. And Rome did not always do this wherever they went. When they conquered peoples, they made them worship the Roman gods. But in this context, because the Jewish people had helped the Romans fight against the Greeks, they recognized Judaism as its own legal religion, which would have very important basis later on for the spread of Christianity. One of the rulers of the land of Israel at this time that consolidated all of Palestinian power together was a guy named Herod.
He was not a good guy. He was a terrible guy. He was related to the Jews, but he wasn't really Jewish himself. He tried to pass himself off as Jewish. He built the new temple to make, people think that he was favorable toward the religion, that he was really most favorable to himself.
He didn't even protect his own family. He was so afraid of other people taking his power that one person once said it was better to be a pig of Herod than it was to be a son of Herod. In Greek, the word pig is is is and then the name for son is And so it's a play on the words there. He was saying it's better to be his pig because he's Jewish. He won't sacrifice a pig, but he would be willing to sacrifice his son if he's afraid that his son's gonna take his power away from him.
And so he ruled for thirty three years. He was the ruler that was in power at the time that Jesus was born. And he was this cruel guy that no one really liked, but they were afraid of, and he was able to build the little nation state that semi autonomous region into more powerful kingdom even as Rome got more and more control over the region. Once he did die, his sons fought over it and they split the land up and so they became different capitals in different regions. There are seven reasons that the Roman Empire ruling over Palestine was really good for the later spread of Christianity.
The first was that this Greek language became the main language for the whole region, Greek as the lingua franca, if you will. The second is what's called Pax Romana. We're gonna explain that in a second. The third is the advanced transportation and communication that took place at this period. The fourth reason that Roman rule was good good for the spread of Christianity is that there was a cosmopolitan spirit that developed within the Roman Empire.
The fifth reason was that there was a cross culturalism that was established during this season. The sixth was the religio lechita, which I explained a moment ago. I'm gonna explain again in a moment. And the seventh was the Roman justice a system of justice, of rule and order. One of the things Rome did not like was, lack of order, and so this becomes very important.
Let's look at these seven things a little bit more in detail. Greek as the lingua franca or Greek as the main language of the region. For the first time in history, a large region, many different nations and cultures spoke one common language. And even though it was the Romans that ruled, they had taken over from the Greeks and so Greek became the main language of the entire region. It was widely spoken throughout the Roman Empire and it allows the early Christian message to be communicated effectively across different regions, different languages, different peoples in a way that it never could have before.
The Pax Romana or Pax Romana refers to a long period of relative peace, that facilitated safe travel and the exchange of ideas and became crucial for the spread of Christianity. Even though the Romans were cruel, in fact, because they were so cruel, people were afraid to fight. And so what had been history of wars between nations became a time of peace. And so even though they were afraid of the Romans, there was enough peace that now trade could happen, people could travel, and relative security. The third thing I mentioned a moment ago was the advanced transportation and communication, that was established.
Before this time, most people never left their homeland because you just really couldn't. Now because of the trade that was taking place, because of the Roman roads that were established, throughout the region, and because of all this travel, the the armies would go from place to place. The Roman Empire's well developed road network and efficient communication system of mail and and communication from city to city enabled Christian missionaries later to travel extensively and disseminate their teachings widely in a way that could have never happened before. During this, time, there was a cosmopolitan spirit. Up until this time, if you lived in a city, you spoke the language of that city, you worked with the gods of that city, and you pretty much function like people in that city.
When Rome took over, they moved peoples around, and so as a result, many cities had people from many different places that spoke different languages and were open to new ideas. This diverse and cosmopolitan nature of the Roman, cities created melting pots of culture and ideas where the Christian message could resonate with various groups. Cross culturalism was another aspect of it that's related to that one. The Roman Empire's integration of different cultures, created a curiosity and an openness to how other people would be viewed, and this allowed Christianity to cross cultural boundaries more easily, appealing to more different people. As I said earlier, the religio, litjita, was this idea that the the Jewish lang religion was a legal religion, and for a while, early Christianity shared the same status.
It was seen as a part or a a form of Judaism. Eventually, there would be a split between Judaism and Christianity, but not until after Christianity had established a foothold throughout the Roman Empire. And so under Roman law, due to this connection connections with Judaism, people could be a Christian. Now there would occasionally later be persecution against Christians, but they were normally localized. It wouldn't be until a long time later that there were empire wide persecutions that took place when it was finally decided that Christianity was against the Roman interests, and as a result there would be this, persecution that happened to Christians.
But for the time being, there was a legal protection and a freedom to worship as a Christian that would not have happened at any other time. The seventh thing that I said that was beneficial coming out of this Roman rule was the Roman system of justice or rule and order. The Roman legal system allowed for there to be stability. Its emphasis over rule and order provided a framework that Christians could appeal to legal procedures and have their cases heard, when they were brought up against trial. For example, Paul, when he was taken to trial, he appealed to Caesar, based on his Roman citizenship.
Now this was good in several ways. He couldn't just be killed immediately by the Jewish people, so that was good. But also, it gave him a forum to share the gospel with more people. He shared with his cap doors, he shared when he was on trial, and as a result, the gospel message got passed out to even more and more people at a a wide hearing. Other factors that led to the development of the gospels were, religious factors.
Let's talk about some religions just a little bit. Obviously, the religion that impacted the most the telling of the gospel is the religion of Judaism. It's the most direct influence on the New Testament and on the gospels completely because it's coming out of the Old Testament faith. The Old Testament serves as the basis for the Old Testament religion, but as we have seen when the temple was destroyed, the Jewish people were taken into exile. They began to practice a Judaism that was a little bit different.
Eventually, when the temple was rebuilt and some attempt to reinstitute the former ways and centralize the worship did not completely have its full impact. People now had a different way of doing things and so they began to worship in their synagogues. Synagogues were established anywhere there were 10 adult men of Jewish background that could come together to worship. And the focus was that they could walk within a Sabbath day's walk. And so they would put synagogues not just in each city, but in each district of each city.
And so as a result, there became these house movements of Judaism and then people would still go to the temple. That would be where religious leaders would go, but it was seen as the official religion whereas the synagogue was a place where the informal religion took place. And so you have a kind of double system that was operating in that you had temple worship, but a localized Jewish religion apart from the temple in the synagogue. In addition, they became places where their competing parties could vie for their influences. So now you had in the home, you didn't have the watchful eye of the temple, you had local leaders that could compete and say, hey, you need to follow this way or that way.
You could be a Sadducee or a Pharisee or a Asim. And, as a result, people began to influence people to think slightly differently, And so different forms of Judaism started to develop. In effect, this two parallel system developed, with one of them based around the Torah or the law and the other based around the Mishnah or the oral law. The Mishnah comprised of two separate works of, being equal rulings that are sometimes referred to as the halakah, or the, the other one being the Haggadah. And so people began to disseminate, okay, there is the official law, the Torah, that I need to follow, but I'm also going to follow this other way.
And that's gonna be very influential when it comes time to Christianity because it's known as the way. It was another of these ways, an understanding of the, oral tradition that's in the same formula that many of the Jewish religions had been developing at that same time. The Pharisees were one group that opposed, the kingly and priestly powers of the leaders that compromised with Rome, and before them the Assyrian Greeks. These were the separatists, is where they probably got their name from, and they grew out of Hasidim, which were the holy ones. They they were people who were in conflict with the Sadducees.
The Sadducees were probably the descendants of Zadok who per who performed, sought after righteousness here on earth. The Pharisees remained anti Roman, very staunchly anti Roman, but they also opposed violence as getting, rid of Rome. The Pharisees believed in the immortal soul, bodily resurrection, future rewards of heaven or punishment in hell according to one's deeds. Pharisees believed in angels and demons. They believed in the resurrection of the body, and they also believe in the combination of predestination and free will, what they referred to specifically as moral responsibility.
So we see the teachings of the Pharisees become the foundation for the teachings of Christianity. In fact, it also becomes the foundation for modern day Judaism. When Judaism was destroyed by the Roman Empire in seventy AD when the temple was destroyed, excuse me, Judaism morphed into different versions. But the one that survived the longest and becomes what we refer to as rabbinic Judaism probably as that which came from the Pharisees. They were the party against the Sadducees, so let's look at them for a moment.
The Sadducees were accommodationists, meaning they were willing to compromise and support the low the the secular rulers as long as they could have influence and power. The Sadducees are usually a group of people composed of the aristocracy, so they were important. They were the well-to-do elite, they were from priestly families. Like I said a moment ago, they probably come from the families of this, the Zadokites or the the followers of Zadok. They were very wealthy and then mass tremendous amount of wealth, especially around Jerusalem.
The Pharisees were more prominent outside of Jerusalem. The Sadducees were more prominent inside of Jerusalem. Even though both had influences in and out of the city, they were more concentrated, urban wise as far as the Sadducees go. They became very attached to the temple. They weren't big proponents of the synagogues in the same ways that the Pharisees were.
The Sadducees really validated temple worship, and they only accepted the Pentateuch as God's word. They did not accept the writings or the prophets as God's word, only the first five books of the Bible. They strongly emphasized the freedom of human will and living as God's people in life. And so they didn't really see predestination as important, they just believed in living according to how, individual free will wanted to live. They did not believe in immortality of the soul.
They for therefore, they did not believe in the resurrection of the body. They did not believe in angels or demons. They did not protest Roman occupation of Israel because they thought if this is the only life we have, why would we cause a protest and then be killed and then we're done? So that's why they were accommodationists. They didn't believe there was an afterlife.
They simply sought out the benefit of life here and, as a result, they were seeking out the benefit for the average Jewish person in temporal means here on earth. There were other parties that existed besides the Pharisees and Sadducees. However, there were also the Essenes. The Essenes are a little bit more enigmatic, meaning they are we don't 100% know everything about them. They do not appear in all of the New Testament except for maybe John the Baptist was related to them in some way.
There's some characteristics that John does that we think might be similar to the Essenes. We know from history that they had a presence in by the shores of Galilee, excuse me, by the shores of the Dead Sea, in one quarter of Jerusalem, the city itself, and then other major cities throughout the region. They, like the Pharisees, might also have been the descendants of the Hasidim, those who believe you should be holy and separate away from the secular government. And so the Pharisees and the Essenes might have had some things in common. The Essenes were focused on the apocalypse.
They very much believed in the resurrection of the body and the end times. In fact, that was most of their focus was the end times. They believed that Jerusalem and the temple had become hopelessly corrupt. So whereas the Pharisees sought to reform the temple, the, Essenes were ready to destroy it because they felt like there's no reforming it. And so they were opposed to all of those who taught the law, especially the Sadducees, but also the Pharisees and saw them as hypocrites and worthless.
They believe that the current age was so bad that all that could be hoped for is that, the end would be, would come and destroy everything. They withdrew from society oftentimes as a result living in communes way out in the desert or on top of the mountains, and they began in a a very, very intense devotion to the law, trusting that God was about to intervene supernaturally in the world's affairs and bring armies from heaven to establish his kingdom, here on earth. Their their dedication to the law and to the teachings of the of the prophets led to the collection of many manuals of discipline. So they kept a lot of works, written down because they believe they should be reading those every single day. They created an organization of hymns, prayers, Psalms, liturgical tests, calendars, Old Testament, scriptures such as the prophets, Old Testament commentaries, apocalyptic literature, and all of this data they saved in caves.
And eventually, they were discovered and came to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls because of where they were found. And so if we didn't have the Essenes, we wouldn't have some of this oldest biblical literature. So we're kind of grateful that they hid out in the caves because they was able to preserve so much of the literature as a result. Now these are the three major sects of Judaism that existed right before the time of Christ and during the time of Christ, but there were other religious influences that were happening at the time. Of course, there were religions that were coming out of the ancient Near East.
There were religions that were coming from the Greeks and from the Romans. The Hellenistic religions and that word Hellenistic comes from the Greek word Helen, which is what they identified as their own country. So Hellenistic meaning those that were influenced by Greece. Some of them were Greek, some of them were not, but they had an influence from Greek culture and Greek mythology. The most common was obviously the traditional Greek mythology.
It hit its peak around the fourth century before Christ, but began to lessen after that as it became influenced by other religions including Judaism. But there are still temples throughout the region to in operation to Zeus or Hera, the king and queen of Olympus, to Hermes, his messenger, to Apollo, the sun god, to Poseidon, the sea god, Aphrodite, Artemis. And there were many more temples throughout the region. Some of them existed from antiquity at that point, and so people just kept worshiping there because they had always done that. But there's still new ones being built also because they the religion still had some power.
But even by the time of Christ, the Greek mythology started to lose its influence. People are starting to question why would there be so many different gods. They liked the concept of one god. They thought that was probably accurate. And so there were, the scientific world people more scientific study began to doubt the stories associated with those ancient gods because they seem like they were chaotic.
They seem like they weren't good explanations for why the world operated that it did. The gods within the Greek myths had limitations that confused people. Why would a god not be able to do things he wanted or act in a precocious way? The Roman conquest of the Greek world began to cause Greek citizens to to question the power of their gods, if the Romans were able to defeat them. And many of the Roman gods were equal to the Greek gods or very similar, but some of them were not the same.
The cosmopolitan nature of the Roman world and urbanization that took place brought together many people that thought differently and this influenced the Greeks. They began to hear competing belief systems that that were in direct, contradiction to their own faith. And so as they listen to these other systems, they started thinking, well, maybe they're right. The rise of the imperial cult became very prominent, and the imperial cult was the religion of the Romans that thought that the emperor was either a representative of God on earth or in some cases they thought he was God here on earth, Very similar to what the Egyptians once upon a time might have thought. And so this rise of the imperial cult called the worship of the emperor to overshadow Greek gods.
Greek philosophy also wasn't supportive of Greek mythology for the most part. It was trying to understand the world from an intellectual perspective, not a spiritual one, and it was seen as more appealing than the traditional Greek myths in due time. So all these factors began to lessen the influence of the Greek world and made the Greek world more open to new ideas. Yet, the emotional attachment remained very strong in many cases and with certain gods held in the Greek culture. There may have been particular important places in the rural areas where these rituals not only helped them to understand their religion, but it became cultural aspects where people proclaim to themselves not just the religion, but their identity.
And so you have, say, the oracles of Delphi where they would go and they would try to hear from God, and and this became part of the culture of the people of Delphi. These oracles promised to be able to pass wisdom from other people to those that provide healing or words from the divine. And so as a result, the the religions of the Greek world, they persisted for a long time even as things like Christianity or Judaism came. And some of their influences began to influence even these new religions that were coming on, and you start seeing some syncretism that took place even between, say, Judaism or the Egyptian religions or the Greek religions. And so even though the Greek religion was starting to decline, it was still pretty strong.
Let's talk about some of the philosophies that were from the Greek world that influenced, in a great way a lot of the the way of thinking that we see in the New Testament and we see in the gospel particularly. Much of the philosophical thought of the first century has some relationship with platonic dualism that had existed from a couple of centuries before. Plato was an important philosopher and what he taught had a big influence in platonic thought and later neoplatonic thought. The material word world was viewed as a shadow or of that which was unseen, the unseen spiritual world. This dualism existed so that true reality was it was an immaterial reality.
The things that you can't see are the true reality. What you do see is an imitation of it, if you will. And that in the philosophical perspective, salvation was an escape from the, real unworld unreal world of matter. So this world that we see isn't real, and we wanna escape it and go to the real world of the spirit, by means of knowledge, and of the highest good of the supreme mind. And so that's Greek philosophy.
Right? They thought that sin consisted of ignorance and the goal was to attain greater knowledge. This becomes important because we're gonna see in a little bit called mystery religions, but before we get that, let's look at some more philosophies. Specifically, let's start with stoicism that had a huge influence on the world of the gospels. Stoicism is based on materialism, based on the point that all that exists is matter, except that all matter is infused with what the founders called, his name was Zeno, called the world soul, or he referred to as reason or used the word logos or logos.
The idea is that this world soul infused all things living and inanimate, And that moral choices depended heavily on remaining true to one's consciousness that was still attached to this logos. And that the highest good within the long term was intense suffering. So the more you suffered, the more knowledge you receive and the more understanding you got and the longer term benefit you got. Stoicism seems to have been the most popular of the Greek Roman, philosophies during the time of early Christianity. In it, one must concentrate on cultivating, inward virtues and distance oneself from accumulation of external possessions.
Now, why would this become popular during that time? Well, there was a lot of suffering. And so if you want to try to understand the suffering around you, one way to understand is to say it's helping you become more like God, more like the divine. You're gonna get rid of the material world because of the suffering you're experiencing in it. So in effect, stoicism saw God being in all of creation.
It was an extreme form of the imminence of God and that that suffering led you to that God. And so you can see how this becomes a little bit of a precursor for Christianity and there's some similar thought in it now. There's a lot of differences as well. And of course, we'll get to that through the period of this course. At the same time, stoicism was the most prominent, philosophy.
Epicureanism was also a very important philosophy. Epicureism is a philosophy that basically saw that, the world is material, is based on that materialism, but that the universe is made up of these tiny invisible particles, that, are all of similar substance, if you will, that, has now influenced the world that's made up of them. In this belief system, the key to life was to maximize pleasure, but minimize pain. So it's the opposite of stoicism. You maximize pleasure, minimize pain so that the material world that was made of all these invisible particles, could align itself in the proper way.
In this belief system, the key was to maximize this pleasure, not in the same way as hedonism. You're not seeking after the worldly pleasures, but the idea of contentment, being content with what you have, maximizing pleasure as a long term peace of mind of happiness, of not, immediately having to indulge the body's appetites. So it's a little different than hedonism that you might think of that you're trying to seek after the pleasures of of eating a lot of food or having sex or or whatever the joys of the world that that they would support. Theirs is that no be content with what you have. Cynicism developed about this same time and with it was a philosophy that evolved of out of, stoicism that the supreme virtue was simple unconventional life that rejected all popular pursuits of comfort, affluence, and social prestige in which you question everything that you think is good.
So cynicism is a harsher reality of stoicism except for rather than pursuing suffering, you pursue questioning and analyzing things. Skepticism is somewhat similar to cynicism, but it can challenged the idea that absolute truth could be known. Skeptics did not deny God because this would be their own inconsistent with their own belief that you could know anything, so they can't say there's no God, but they just would simply suspend judgment of any truth. And instead, they would practice, put into practice, peace and gentleness, kindness, the freedom from disturbance, and they just sought to understand the world as best as they could in harmony with, their world. Those are the Greek religions that began to influence the scene at the time of the Gospels.
And then we start seeing this mixture of religions and of worldviews that are, we refer to oftentimes as mysterious the mystery religions. Philosophy remained the the belief system of the elite, but the people, they weren't so interested in skepticism or stoicism. They wanted something more tangible that they could just put their trust in, you know. This couple with the reality of the traditional great myths that were going on the decline opened the door for the rise of this new religion within the Roman Empire. And they're simply referred to as mystery religions because there's different forms of them.
This term refers to a wide variety of secret societies or organizations, that usually are not related to each other, but they have similar features between one another that can be commonly observed. They almost all believed in an afterlife and believe that the main goal was to pursue after eternal life. They typically believe in some form of a union with the gods, of equality of all human beings, a transformation from the of the individual in this world into the next life, and that there's some mystery or some mysterious ritualistic act that can help you attain that. And so as a result of the these things, their goal was to experience something divine, in this life that could lead to the next life. Not just know, but they wanted to experience it.
And so the mystery religions in some ways also set the stage for the coming of Christ. Magic became an important, we're gonna call it a religion or a belief system at this time. It was the idea that you can manipulate the divine or the god or the gods into doing what you want through incantations, spells, formulas, or various rituals, out of more coercion than out of petition. So you could coerce the god to do what you wanted if you knew what the trick was. And the idea of magic was that you could manifest what you wanted to happen, because you got enough belief, and, and so that was kind of the idea of magic.
Another religion that developed at this time was gnosticism That was placed that was also based on what we talked about a moment ago, the platonic dualism of matter and spirit. Although, gnostics argued that everything within this world is inherently evil and the purpose is to escape the material. Only the spirit world was good. In fact, they only thought it could be potentially good. They thought it was evil too in some ways, but it was potentially good.
Everything in the physical world was evil. They could be either hedonists or aesthetics, either way, aesthetics, in which they thought they should obtain the the immaterial world through pleasure or through pain. Salvation for the gnostic required the soul to eventually escape the body. Being liberated, they thought each human being had a divine spark within them. If they could be liberated, they would then be able to be part of the immaterial, and they could hopefully find some good in the next world.
The the liberation often came through a form of knowledge, and that's where in the Greek word, the world the Greek language, the word gnosis means knowledge, and that's where we get the word gnostic. They thought they could get this special knowledge that can liberate them from the material world. It's not normally knowledge you get from education. It's knowledge that comes out of experience and usually secret experience at that, and it specifically is revelatory. It's a revelation that comes from the divine himself.
And so people thought if they could have some revelation from the divine, that would give them the ability to escape the flesh and go into the spirit. This knowledge involved a person understanding their own divine origin, including the state of slavery they found themselves in when they were born and hope for the possible redemption in the future. In Gnosticism, the original God of the universe is remote and unknowable. He does not direct or create the heavens or the earth. Instead, he made them through emanations to and created some absolute, abstract virtues and then just let them be.
And these virtues referred to as eons joined together to, with a remote god and form the fullness of the godhead, the deity. So these eons that existed are out there just apart from God, emanated from God, creating things. And one of those Aeons rebelled against God's design and created the material world. And so by nature, this material world became evil. Another Aeon had also been sent to redeem the world and they referred to this as Sophia, because that means wise or wisdom in the Greek language and they believe Sophia is a savior.
Now some gnostics thought Sophia was a culprit that was in cahoots with Aeon that created the material world, and so the ultimate goal for them was to redeem the world from both chaos and Sophia. And so you can see that gnosticism was a confusing sect. It was a mixture of different religions that had this mysterious knowledge, and they were the biggest of all the mystery religions. About the time of the Roman Empire, emperor worship had become one of the most popular forms of worship, particularly because if you practice that, the Roman officials see you doing it and you get rewarded. That was part of it.
It's also that the Roman Empire is in power and if you worship the person in power, they could do good for you. They they like that. You feed their sense of worth. The first emperor to be deified was Julius Caesar. After his death, he was acclaimed as the divine by his adopted son Augustus.
Most emperors after that time were deified after their death by the next emperor. They would basically proclaim them to have been a god. Nero was the first emperor to to enforce himself as a god and enforce worship of him as a god during his own lifetime. But this is only at the very end of his life, at the end of his reign when he was already probably going mad at that point. And he only did it sporadically.
He didn't always make people worship him, but sometimes he did. So he was kind of losing it a little bit, but he was setting the stage for future emperors to call on worship. Domitian in the mid nineties sought to establish the widespread practice of worship of him, during his time, but that was only lived for a short period because most people didn't wanna do that. Even the Romans who supported the emperor thought that was too much. He was the one to use the phrase lord and god, dominoes and deus for himself and that Christians would not say that, and that's when they were being persecuted.
So he was the one that really led to the first wholesale persecution of Christians because he he wanted them to call him Lord and God and they would not do that. They felt like that was blasphemous. Let's pause for a moment and change direction just a little bit. You've seen some of the background. I'm gonna let you have a chance to think through all of that and start to absorb just some of it.
You know, we've looked at the history a little bit of the period in between the Old Testament and New Testament. We've looked at some of the philosophies and religions that influenced the time of the gospel. Now, let's switch directions a little bit and look at the theology and history found in the Old Testament as it influenced the development of the Gospels. The Old Testament taught the sovereignty of God, that God is in charge of all things. Probably early in the history in the history of Israel, the view was that God was our God and he led us and took care of us.
But pretty quickly, the Israelites began to understand that God was sovereign over the whole world and the whole universe. And as a result, he was in charge of the history itself. They began to identify themselves as God's chosen people, selected first by Abraham and then again through Moses as they came out of Egypt and into the promised land, not because of their own merit, but because of god's selection of them as a people. The history of the Old Testament and then and the, itself began to develop this community of this chosen people, and their relationship to each other and their relationship to god becomes extremely important. The idea that they they were chosen not just to be an exclusive group of people, but they were chosen to be holy and to represent god's holiness to themselves and to the nations around them.
This idea began to develop the sense of both God's judgment. If you weren't holy, you're gonna be judged by God. And then because they realized they couldn't always be holy, they began to depend on God's mercy. And so the Old Testament is a story, is the development of these people who were once not a people now become god's people, who now are the epitome of god's holiness and separateness, who then evoke god's judgment and ultimately evoke god's mercy. And that becomes the foundation for what's gonna become the work of Christ.
He's gonna embody all of that. The sovereignty of God, God's in charge. The Jewish people are God's chosen people, but not just chosen to be selected out of all the nations, to be but to be a community that can be a voice to the nations, to share the gospel to all nations, to require holiness that would then evoke God's judgment and mercy. And so Jesus comes right in the midst of all of that and his message and the message around the Messiah is gonna be one that God's gonna form a new people, a new people that's gonna be holy as God is holy, that's gonna bring judgment and mercy of God on earth. In exploring the New Testament, it is crucial to understand the theological historical foundations laid in the Old Testament, which deeply influenced New Testament thought, particularly in the gospels as we see it.
Because the Old Testament is the backdrop of the life of Jesus and, of course, later on for the early church. Let's look at these things I just talked about a little bit more detail. Among the sovereignty of God, which is a key central theme to the Old Testament, as I said just a moment ago, we see a creation narrative in which God, creates not out of chaos, but god creates with purpose all things. The old testament begins with god as the creator, establishing his sovereignty, over all things, his sovereign rule over all creation and setting an understanding that, that the world is under God's control even if it is corrupt. An important aspect that we saw in the holiness of God's people is the Exodus.
God's sovereignty is, demonstrated through the Exodus where he delivers Israel from slavery among the Egyptians through some mighty acts. And then we also see the prophets, the prophets, emphasizing that God is in control of history leading to the destruction of Israel, the captivity of the Jewish people, and the reestablishment of them in the promised land. All of this demonstrates God's sovereignty over, historical events and the people who live in the world at that time. This concept of divine sovereignty is crucial for understanding the New Testament's portrayal of God's plan of salvation through Christ, which is seen as the culmination of God's sovereign purposes. Let me say that again.
The application of God's sovereignty in the Old Testament is crucial for understanding the New Testament's portrayal of God's plan of salvation through Christ, which is seen as the culmination of God's sovereign purposes. Now let's see how the the chosen people we talked about a moment ago moment ago influences the understanding in the New Testament of who God is with work. The idea of Israel as God's chosen people is the is the foundation of the Old Testament based first of all in the Abrahamic covenant. The election of Abraham in Genesis 12 marks the beginning of God's special relationship with Israel, promising to make his descendants a great nation. The Mosaic covenant at Sinai formalizes the relationship between God's people and the law which defines Israel's identity as a nation set apart for God.
And the prophets remind Israel of their chosen status, calling them back to faithfulness and warning them of the consequences of covenant unfaithfulness. Let's look at how that applies to what's going to happen in the Gospels. This election is reinterpreted in the Gospels, particularly in the writings that come after the Gospels where the concept of the chosen people is expanded to include the Gentiles through their faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus didn't just come for the Jewish people, he came for all people. Let's look at the concept of community that shows up in the Old Testament and how it has a significant theological theme that intertwines with the concept of the chosen people that are gonna be new based on the work of Christ.
The Old Testament came during a time of tribal societies where people live according to whatever language they spoke or in the region where their ancestors lived. The Old Testament presents Israel as a tribal society bound together by this common ancestry and the covenant that God established as the people of God through the law and the community. The law given at Sinai provides the framework for a communal life, not just for each individual tribe, but the entire nation state of Israel, emphasizing justice, worship, and social responsibility. The experience of exile and the hope of restoration of, that comes out of the the return from exile highlights the importance of the community of Israel, now the Jewish people, as their identity is closely tied to the land in which they live and their relationship with each other and with God. The New Testament emerges as a new community bound not by ethnicity but by faith in Christ.
Drawing on the Old Testament's emphasis of communal identity in a way that is reinterpreted because of the work of Jesus. Let's look at holiness. Holiness is a central attribute of God in the Old Testament and a requirement for his people. Holiness, according to God is a defining characteristic of his people. It is a defining characteristic of God.
When he first met with Moses, for example, at the burning bush, he tells him take off your sandals because you're entering into holy ground. When he gives his vision to Isaiah in Isaiah chapter six, Isaiah is stunned because God is so holy that he feels like he's dirty and God has to cleanse him by the burning of the coal from his lips on his lips. God is holy and yet god is calling his people into holiness. Israel is called to be holy as god is holy, a theme found in Leviticus chapter 19 verse two and repeated in Deuteronomy chapter seven verse six. It's a emphasis of the Levitical laws and the Deuteronomy Deuteronomy, the Deuteronomic code.
God expects his people to be holy like he is holy. And when they're not holy, they have to go through ritual purity. The numerous laws concerning purity and sacrifice underline the importance of God's holiness in Israel and their relationship with him. The Old Testament now let's look at the application of this for what we're gonna see in the gospels. The Old Testament understood the Old Testament understanding of holiness informs the New Testament's call for believers to live holy lives set apart for God.
As a result, any sin is gonna separate people from God. Therefore, there needs to be some sort of ritual purity that takes place to establish holiness of God's people and reestablishes the relationship between God and his people, setting the stage for the work of Christ on Calvary. Now let's look at that last theme, judgment and mercy. The tension between judgment and mercy is a recurring theme in the Old Testament. Events like the flood or the Exodus illustrates God's judgment on sin, but also his mercy toward those who he found favor in his eyes.
God judged all of the world that saved Noah. God judged Egypt that saved Israelites. God judges and yet provides mercy on seemingly who he wants based on his own intendance his own his own tendency. The prophetic the prophets often balance the warnings of impending judgment from God with promises of mercy and restoration. If you look at Isaiah or Micah or Ezekiel, the first half of their books talk about God's judgment for the lack of holiness.
The second part of their their books talk about God's gonna provide mercy because he has promised that he would do so. God's judgment and mercy are often seen as expressions of his covenantal faithfulness, ensuring that his promises to Israel are ultimately fulfilled. The most important of this is probably found in Jeremiah 31 verses 31 through 34, in which he talks about that he's going to establish this new covenant with his people. This balance is echoed in the New Testament where God's judgment on sin and mercy is found most prominently in the person of Jesus Christ's atoning work on the cross. The work of the Old Testament is establishing the understanding of what Christ is gonna do at Calvary.
This is extremely important. Finally, we turn to the concept of grace And there's two terms that I'm going to use that might be new to you. It's called covenantal nomism and variegated nomism. These are the understanding that there's the law. Nomism means the worship of law through the law, that the the ritualistic law of the Old Testament.
This term, the covenantal nomism, is the term that describes the belief that, god's covenant established by god's grace is maintained by adherence to the law. In other words, if you live in accordance with the law, you're gonna receive God's grace. It reflects the Old Testament understanding that Israel's relationship with God is based on his covenant grace, but faithfulness to the law is required to remain in the covenant. Variegated nonism is a little different. It's developed later on by scholars to suggest that, yes, there is an understanding of the law and that you need to live in accordance to the law, but grace is the most important aspect of salvation in god.
Some people emphasize the strict adherence to the law, but that others allow for a nuanced understanding of relationship with god that even though we don't live according to the law %, god's grace is sufficient to overcome our sins. Recognizing God's grace is is the most important aspect of maintaining the covenant relationship. And so not adhering to the law maintains a relationship, but recognizing God's ability to defeat sin maintains the relationship. And so these two concepts, covenantal nomism and variegated nomism, have a big influence on the coming work of Christ. If we are dependent on adhering to the law, as we see in the Old Testament, all of us are doomed, the apostle Paul will later later say.
If we depend on a relationship with God that took care of the law on our behalf, then we have hope. And, of course, that's gonna be the ultimate message of Jesus in the New Testament. These concepts are crucial for interpreting the gospels, especially the discussions of law and grace that we see in them, where there's a tension between legalism and grace as major themes. The Old Testament provides the theological and historical foundation for the New Testament. The historical events that take place in the times of Greeks and Rome, the Assyrians and the Persians, all the nations around Israel influence the culture that shows up by the time of Christ.
Understanding these themes in this history, God's sovereignty, the chosen people, the communities that make up Palestine, holiness, judgment, mercy, the interplay of law and grace deepens the grasp of the New Testament message that we are we find in the gospels. The work of Christ does not come out of a void. It comes with all this theological and historical background background. And so understanding these themes, are important to understanding how the message of Mark or how the message of Luke is read by those who are listening to it. And we're gonna hear some of these names again.
You're gonna hear about Pharisees or Roman rule or different things like this. And hopefully, you'll be able to remember some of these details as it comes up. These are not the things most people think about when think of the gospels, but these are the things that people in the gospels understood even if we don't understand them today. As we move forward in our study, we will see how these old testament concepts are reinterpreted and fulfilled in the life and teachings of Jesus and the early church.