Luke in the Land: Walking With Jesus in His First-Century WorldНамуна

Have you ever thought about the timing of Jesus’s birth into the world? Every Christmas season we celebrate His birth, the beautiful story told in Matthew 1–2 and Luke 2—when the living God took on flesh and broke into human history, changing it forever. What was the world Jesus was born into like, and what can we learn about Him from both the timing and the context of His incarnational arrival?

The Bible tells an ongoing story about the people of Israel and the people, groups, and nations they interacted with. The Israelites were often subjected to foreign rule and oppression—empires that came and went, taking everything they could along the way. The list goes something like this: Egypt (Ex.), Assyria (2 Kings 17), Babylon (Dan.), Persia (Esth., Neh.), Greece (Intertestamental Period), and Rome (New Testament).

Within these difficult stories of harsh domination by cruel pharaohs, kings, and caesars, there are stories of light in the darkness, hope in the midst of despair, and of salvation and deliverance. These biblical stories teach us to look for light in our own darkness, to reach for hope in our own despair, and to courageously cry out for salvation and deliverance in our own lives.

The overarching narrative of the Bible is localized among those who are on the bottom of society’s hierarchies and structures. Jesus, the King of kings, came all the way to the lowest circle of humanity, found the lost, the sick, and the marginalized, and prioritized them.

No “king” had ever done this in human history.

Between the Old Testament and New Testament, there was a time period called the Intertestamental Period. It covered approximately four hundred years between Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, and Matthew, the first book of the New Testament. Significant changes impacted the whole world during this time. Those changes came when the Greeks, through Alexander the Great, emerged as the ruling superpower in the earth. Koine or “common” Greek became the lingua franca, and Greek culture (Hellenism) was systematically spread through the kingdoms conquered by the Greeks. Alexander wanted the whole world to be Greek, and he was well on his way to achieving his goals when he died in his early thirties.8

As we move closer to the world at the time of Jesus’s birth, we come to a very important date during the Intertestamental Period, one that set the stage for the context of the Gospels in the New Testament. In 63 BC a Roman general named Pompey conquered Judea and Jerusalem, like others who had come before him. He laid siege to Jerusalem and eventually broke into the city. Twelve thousand Jewish people died in Jerusalem that day.

But Pompey took it one step further. Ancient Jewish historian Josephus reported that Pompey entered the temple, even entered as far as the Holy of Holies— something the high priest of Israel did only once a year on the Day of Atonement.9

Pompey looked around but did not touch the temple furnishings or treasures. His disregard for temple order and sacredness was the ultimate sacrilege for the Jewish people. His actions served as a sign of what life under Roman rule would look like for years to come, as the Roman Empire exerted its dominance from 63 BC, through the New Testament era, and beyond. The Jewish people likely recognized Rome as the new enemy.

Julius Caesar, another formidable Roman general and statesman, defeated Pompey in 48 BC, and declared himself as the dictator of Rome for life.10 Before he was famously assassinated in 44 BC, he was deified as a god. Later, as Rome transitioned from a republic to an empire in 27 BC, Caesar’s adopted son, Gaius Octavian, secured sole rulership as the first true emperor, or Caesar, of the Roman Empire. The Senate conferred the name “Augustus” or “revered one” on him and he was known as Caesar Augustus.11

Believed to have divine origins, Augustus was identified by the Latin phrase divi filius, or “son of god.”12 It was this Caesar who was enthroned in imperial Rome when Jesus, the true Son of God, was birthed in lowly Bethlehem. These names and events start to bring the timing of Jesus’s earthly arrival into focus. When man became a god, God became a man.

Caesar Augustus ruthlessly squashed civil wars within the empire and inaugurated the Pax Romana—“Roman peace.” This “peace” lasted for approximately two hundred years and permeated the environment into which Jesus was born. Unlike the peace associated with Hebrew shalom— lovely, calm, and universally beneficial peace—this Roman peace held more oppressive connotations. This was a “peace” maintained at all costs by the heavy hand of Rome. It benefited those on top and in power at the expense of those below and on the margins of society.13

While Caesar Augustus ruled the Roman Empire and the world, Herod the Great was installed as a local king in Judea—the king of the Jews. As a personal friend of the famed couple Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt, Herod governed at the time of Jesus’s birth. However, he served as more of a puppet king, installed by the Romans to keep the peace in the seemingly insignificant Judean outpost.14

Herod was a paranoid, murderous ruler. He built magnificent structures, and even cities like Caesarea Maritima, to appease the Romans above him while he was mistrusted and even hated by his Jewish subjects. Herod had no fewer than three of his own sons killed, as well as his most beloved wife, Mariamne, a Hasmonean princess. Caesar Augustus was thought to have said of Herod that it was “safer to be Herod’s pig (hus) than his son (huios).”15 Knowing this, we are not surprised at the Massacre of the Innocents, an incident recorded in Matthew 2:16-18, when Herod ordered all boys aged two and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem to be murdered.

Whenever I think about the world Jesus was born into, I think about the familiar Christmas carol, “O Holy Night.” The lyrics speak to the first Christmas as well as to ours, two thousand years later. “Long lay the world in sin and error pining. Til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.”16

Endnotes:

8. “Detailed Intertestamental Timeline with Notes on Judaism,” BibleHistory.com, accessed March 22, 2024, https://bible-history.com/resource/timeline-with-notes-on-judaism-400-165-bc.

9. Kieren Johns, “The Roman-Jewish Wars: Jewish Resistance vs Roman Might,” The Collector, December 20, 2023, https://www.thecollector.com/roman-jewish-wars-history/.

10. “Battle of Pharsalus summary,” Encyclopedia Britannica, April 29, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/summary/Battle-of-Pharsalus.

11. M. Grant, “Augustus,” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 13, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Augustus-Roman-emperor.

12. “Son of God,” New World Encyclopedia, February 23, 2023, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Son_of_God.

13. “Pax Romana,” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 23, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/event/Pax-Romana.

14. S. Henry Perowne, “Herod,” Encyclopedia Britannica, March 12, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Herod-king-of-Judaea.

15. Don Stewart, “Who Were the Herods?,” Blue Letter Bible, June 9, 2020, https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/the-world-into-which-jesus-came/06-who-were-the-herods.cfm.

16. Placide Cappeau, “O holy night the stars are brightly shining,” trans. John S. Dwight (1847).