On Saturday I went to Word Plus, a theology course that New Frontiers runs. It’s spread over 10 core modules which take up a day each, those days are spread over 2 years, and this was module number 7 on the New Testament. Word Plus has been really good, I’ve learnt an awful lot about a huge variety of subjects, some of which I’d never really considered, and some of which I thought I knew about (in most cases I was very wrong!). In studying the New Testament we looked briefly at the gap between the Old and New Testaments and what was going on during that time. We spent a fair bit of time thinking about the situation the Jews were in during the New Testament as well, a lot of things came up which I didn’t know, and had never really thought about.
I already knew that many of the Jews at the time would have been expecting a messiah to come and liberate them from their Roman oppressors and set up Israel as a mighty nation again. What didn’t really occur to me was just how bad a situation the Jews were in at the time, and how confusing and disappointing it would have been to be told that their messiah wasn’t actually there to liberate them at all, but rather to save their oppressors as well!
It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to be living under Roman rule, but to set the scene, when the Romans siezed control of Palestine in 63BC they lay siege to the temple area for three months, during which time they killed many priests whilst they were performing their daily duties and entered the Most Holy Place. There was a great deal of unrest during the Roman rule, which led to a number of uprisings, all of which resulted in the Romans killing a lot of Jews. This conflict was present for the duration of Jesus’ life, and in fact came to a head a few years after his death in 66AD when the Great Jewish Revolt began. As a result in 70AD the Romans layed siege to Jerusalem, and when they took it they destroyed the temple completely. During the siege over 100,000 Jews were killed, and nearly 100,000 more were taken to be Roman slaves.
It’s so easy to read the New Testament and imagine it to be a peaceful place where everyone was content with their situation, we throw our western lives into the Bible without even thinking about it! But when you realise just how serious the Roman occupation was to the Jews at the time, and how much tension there was between them, it throws a new light on so many of the events in the Gospels. I rather feel like I need to read all of it again with this new viewpoint and find out what I’ve been missing the whole time!