The Times of Michael’s Bestowal

121:3.1Al­though the so­cial and eco­nomic con­di­tion of the Ro­man state was not of the high­est or­der, the wide­spread do­mes­tic peace and pros­per­ity was pro­pi­tious for the be­stowal of Mi­chael. In the first cen­tury af­ter Christ the so­ci­ety of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean world con­sisted of five well-de­fined strata:

121:3.21. The aris­toc­racy. The up­per classes with money and of­fi­cial power, the priv­i­leged and rul­ing groups.

121:3.32. The busi­ness groups. The mer­chant princes and the bankers, the traders—the big im­porters and ex­porters—the in­ter­na­tional mer­chants.

121:3.43. The small mid­dle class. Al­though this group was in­deed small, it was very in­flu­en­tial and pro­vided the moral back­bone of the early Chris­tian church, which en­cour­aged these groups to con­tinue in their var­i­ous crafts and trades. Among the Jews many of the Phar­isees be­longed to this class of trades­men.

121:3.54. The free pro­le­tariat. This group had lit­tle or no so­cial stand­ing. Though proud of their free­dom, they were placed at great dis­ad­van­tage be­cause they were forced to com­pete with slave la­bor. The up­per classes re­garded them dis­dain­fully, al­low­ing that they were use­less ex­cept for “breed­ing pur­poses.”

121:3.65. The slaves. Half the pop­u­la­tion of the Ro­man state were slaves; many were su­pe­rior in­di­vid­u­als and quickly made their way up among the free pro­le­tariat and even among the trades­men. The ma­jor­ity were ei­ther mediocre or very in­fe­rior.

121:3.7Slav­ery, even of su­pe­rior peo­ples, was a fea­ture of Ro­man mil­i­tary con­quest. The power of the mas­ter over his slave was un­qual­i­fied. The early Chris­tian church was largely com­posed of the lower classes and these slaves.

121:3.8Su­pe­rior slaves of­ten re­ceived wages and by sav­ing their earn­ings were able to pur­chase their free­dom. Many such eman­ci­pated slaves rose to high po­si­tions in state, church, and the busi­ness world. And it was just such pos­si­bil­i­ties that made the early Chris­tian church so tol­er­ant of this mod­i­fied form of slav­ery.

121:3.9There was no wide­spread so­cial prob­lem in the Ro­man Em­pire in the first cen­tury af­ter Christ. The ma­jor por­tion of the pop­u­lace re­garded them­selves as be­long­ing in that group into which they chanced to be born. There was al­ways the open door through which tal­ented and able in­di­vid­u­als could as­cend from the lower to the higher strata of Ro­man so­ci­ety, but the peo­ple were gen­er­ally con­tent with their so­cial rank. They were not class con­scious, nei­ther did they look upon these class dis­tinc­tions as be­ing un­just or wrong. Chris­tian­ity was in no sense an eco­nomic move­ment hav­ing for its pur­pose the ame­lio­ra­tion of the mis­eries of the de­pressed classes.

121:3.10Al­though woman en­joyed more free­dom through­out the Ro­man Em­pire than in her re­stricted po­si­tion in Pales­tine, the fam­ily de­vo­tion and nat­u­ral af­fec­tion of the Jews far tran­scended that of the gen­tile world.