The Times of Michael’s Bestowal

121:2.1The Jews were a part of the older Semitic race, which also in­cluded the Baby­lo­ni­ans, the Phoeni­cians, and the more re­cent en­e­mies of Rome, the Carthagini­ans. Dur­ing the fore part of the first cen­tury af­ter Christ, the Jews were the most in­flu­en­tial group of the Semitic peo­ples, and they hap­pened to oc­cupy a pe­cu­liarly strate­gic ge­o­graphic po­si­tion in the world as it was at that time ruled and or­ga­nized for trade.

121:2.2Many of the great high­ways join­ing the na­tions of an­tiq­uity passed through Pales­tine, which thus be­came the meet­ing place, or cross­roads, of three con­ti­nents. The travel, trade, and armies of Baby­lo­nia, As­syria, Egypt, Syria, Greece, Parthia, and Rome suc­ces­sively swept over Pales­tine. From time im­memo­rial, many car­a­van routes from the Ori­ent passed through some part of this re­gion to the few good sea­ports of the east­ern end of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, whence ships car­ried their car­goes to all the mar­itime Oc­ci­dent. And more than half of this car­a­van traf­fic passed through or near the lit­tle town of Naz­a­reth in Gal­i­lee.

121:2.3Al­though Pales­tine was the home of Jew­ish re­li­gious cul­ture and the birth­place of Chris­tian­ity, the Jews were abroad in the world, dwell­ing in many na­tions and trad­ing in ev­ery prov­ince of the Ro­man and Parthian states.

121:2.4Greece pro­vided a lan­guage and a cul­ture, Rome built the roads and uni­fied an em­pire, but the dis­per­sion of the Jews, with their more than two hun­dred syn­a­gogues and well-or­ga­nized re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered hither and yon through­out the Ro­man world, pro­vided the cul­tural cen­ters in which the new gospel of the king­dom of heaven found ini­tial re­cep­tion, and from which it sub­se­quently spread to the ut­ter­most parts of the world.

121:2.5Each Jew­ish syn­a­gogue tol­er­ated a fringe of gen­tile be­liev­ers, “de­vout” or “God-fear­ing” men, and it was among this fringe of pros­e­lytes that Paul made the bulk of his early con­verts to Chris­tian­ity. Even the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem pos­sessed its or­nate court of the gen­tiles. There was very close con­nec­tion be­tween the cul­ture, com­merce, and wor­ship of Je­ru­sa­lem and An­ti­och. In An­ti­och Paul’s dis­ci­ples were first called “Chris­tians.”

121:2.6The cen­tral­iza­tion of the Jew­ish tem­ple wor­ship at Je­ru­sa­lem con­sti­tuted alike the se­cret of the sur­vival of their mono­the­ism and the prom­ise of the nur­ture and send­ing forth to the world of a new and en­larged con­cept of that one God of all na­tions and Fa­ther of all mor­tals. The tem­ple ser­vice at Je­ru­sa­lem rep­re­sented the sur­vival of a re­li­gious cul­tural con­cept in the face of the down­fall of a suc­ces­sion of gen­tile na­tional over­lords and racial per­se­cu­tors.

121:2.7The Jew­ish peo­ple of this time, al­though un­der Ro­man su­zer­ainty, en­joyed a con­sid­er­able de­gree of self-gov­ern­ment and, re­mem­ber­ing the then only re­cent heroic ex­ploits of de­liv­er­ance ex­e­cuted by Ju­das Mac­cabee and his im­me­di­ate suc­ces­sors, were vi­brant with the ex­pec­ta­tion of the im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance of a still greater de­liv­erer, the long-ex­pected Mes­siah.

121:2.8The se­cret of the sur­vival of Pales­tine, the king­dom of the Jews, as a semi-in­de­pen­dent state was wrapped up in the for­eign pol­icy of the Ro­man gov­ern­ment, which de­sired to main­tain con­trol of the Pales­tinian high­way of travel be­tween Syria and Egypt as well as the west­ern ter­mi­nals of the car­a­van routes be­tween the Ori­ent and the Oc­ci­dent. Rome did not wish any power to arise in the Lev­ant which might curb her fu­ture ex­pan­sion in these re­gions. The pol­icy of in­trigue which had for its ob­ject the pit­ting of Se­leu­cid Syria and Ptole­maic Egypt against each other ne­ces­si­tated fos­ter­ing Pales­tine as a sep­a­rate and in­de­pen­dent state. Ro­man pol­icy, the de­gen­er­a­tion of Egypt, and the pro­gres­sive weak­en­ing of the Se­leu­cids be­fore the ris­ing power of Parthia, ex­plain why it was that for sev­eral gen­er­a­tions a small and un­pow­er­ful group of Jews was able to main­tain its in­de­pen­dence against both Se­leu­ci­dae to the north and Ptolemies to the south. This for­tu­itous lib­erty and in­de­pen­dence of the po­lit­i­cal rule of sur­round­ing and more pow­er­ful peo­ples the Jews at­tributed to the fact that they were the “cho­sen peo­ple,” to the di­rect in­ter­po­si­tion of Yah­weh. Such an at­ti­tude of racial su­pe­ri­or­ity made it all the harder for them to en­dure Ro­man su­zer­ainty when it fi­nally fell upon their land. But even in that sad hour the Jews re­fused to learn that their world mis­sion was spir­i­tual, not po­lit­i­cal.

121:2.9The Jews were un­usu­ally ap­pre­hen­sive and sus­pi­cious dur­ing the times of Je­sus be­cause they were then ruled by an out­sider, Herod the Idumean, who had seized the over­lord­ship of Judea by clev­erly in­gra­ti­at­ing him­self with the Ro­man rulers. And though Herod pro­fessed loy­alty to the He­brew cer­e­mo­nial ob­ser­vances, he pro­ceeded to build tem­ples for many strange gods.

121:2.10The friendly re­la­tions of Herod with the Ro­man rulers made the world safe for Jew­ish travel and thus opened the way for in­creased Jew­ish pen­e­tra­tion even of dis­tant por­tions of the Ro­man Em­pire and of for­eign treaty na­tions with the new gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Herod’s reign also con­tributed much to­ward the fur­ther blend­ing of He­brew and Hel­lenis­tic philoso­phies.

121:2.11Herod built the har­bor of Cae­sarea, which fur­ther aided in mak­ing Pales­tine the cross­roads of the civ­i­lized world. He died in 4 B.C., and his son Herod An­tipas gov­erned Gal­i­lee and Perea dur­ing Je­sus’ youth and min­istry to A.D. 39. An­tipas, like his fa­ther, was a great builder. He re­built many of the cities of Gal­i­lee, in­clud­ing the im­por­tant trade cen­ter of Sep­pho­ris.

121:2.12The Galileans were not re­garded with full fa­vor by the Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious lead­ers and rab­bini­cal teach­ers. Gal­i­lee was more gen­tile than Jew­ish when Je­sus was born.