Augustus

136:2.8(Je­sus was al­most thirty-one and one-half years old when he was bap­tized. While Luke says that Je­sus was bap­tized in the fif­teenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cae­sar, which would be A.D. 29 since Au­gus­tus died in A.D. 14, it should be re­called that Tiberius was co­em­peror with Au­gus­tus for two and one-half years be­fore the death of Au­gus­tus, hav­ing had coins struck in his honor in Oc­to­ber, A.D. 11. The fif­teenth year of his ac­tual rule was, there­fore, this very year of A.D. 26, that of Je­sus’ bap­tism. And this was also the year that Pon­tius Pi­late be­gan his rule as gov­er­nor of Judea.)

122:7.1In the month of March, 8 B.C. (the month Joseph and Mary were mar­ried), Cae­sar Au­gus­tus de­creed that all in­hab­i­tants of the Ro­man Em­pire should be num­bered, that a cen­sus should be made which could be used for ef­fect­ing bet­ter tax­a­tion. The Jews had al­ways been greatly prej­u­diced against any at­tempt to “num­ber the peo­ple,” and this, in con­nec­tion with the se­ri­ous do­mes­tic dif­fi­cul­ties of Herod, King of Judea, had con­spired to cause the post­pone­ment of the tak­ing of this cen­sus in the Jew­ish king­dom for one year. Through­out all the Ro­man Em­pire this cen­sus was reg­is­tered in the year 8 B.C., ex­cept in the Pales­tinian king­dom of Herod, where it was taken in 7 B.C., one year later.

133:2.5They spent sev­eral days at Nicopo­lis, the city which Au­gus­tus had founded some fifty years be­fore as the “city of vic­tory” in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the bat­tle of Ac­tium, this site be­ing the land whereon he camped with his army be­fore the bat­tle. They lodged in the home of one Jer­amy, a Greek pros­e­lyte of the Jew­ish faith, whom they had met on ship­board. The Apos­tle Paul spent all win­ter with the son of Jer­amy in the same house in the course of his third mis­sion­ary jour­ney. From Nicopo­lis they sailed on the same boat for Corinth, the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man prov­ince of Achaia.

130:2.1Je­sus and his friends tar­ried in Cae­sarea be­yond the time ex­pected be­cause one of the huge steer­ing pad­dles of the ves­sel on which they in­tended to em­bark was dis­cov­ered to be in dan­ger of cleav­ing. The cap­tain de­cided to re­main in port while a new one was be­ing made. There was a short­age of skilled wood­work­ers for this task, so Je­sus vol­un­teered to as­sist. Dur­ing the evenings Je­sus and his friends strolled about on the beau­ti­ful wall which served as a prom­e­nade around the port. Ga­nid greatly en­joyed Je­sus’ ex­pla­na­tion of the wa­ter sys­tem of the city and the tech­nique whereby the tides were uti­lized to flush the city’s streets and sew­ers. This youth of In­dia was much im­pressed with the tem­ple of Au­gus­tus, sit­u­ated upon an el­e­va­tion and sur­mounted by a colos­sal statue of the Ro­man em­peror. The sec­ond af­ter­noon of their stay the three of them at­tended a per­for­mance in the enor­mous am­phithe­ater which could seat twenty thou­sand per­sons, and that night they went to a Greek play at the the­ater. These were the first ex­hi­bi­tions of this sort Ga­nid had ever wit­nessed, and he asked Je­sus many ques­tions about them. On the morn­ing of the third day they paid a for­mal visit to the gov­er­nor’s palace, for Cae­sarea was the cap­i­tal of Pales­tine and the res­i­dence of the Ro­man procu­ra­tor.

98:3.6The emerg­ing Ro­man state con­quered po­lit­i­cally but was in turn con­quered by the cults, rit­u­als, mys­ter­ies, and god con­cepts of Egypt, Greece, and the Lev­ant. These im­ported cults con­tin­ued to flour­ish through­out the Ro­man state up to the time of Au­gus­tus, who, purely for po­lit­i­cal and civic rea­sons, made a heroic and some­what suc­cess­ful ef­fort to de­stroy the mys­ter­ies and re­vive the older po­lit­i­cal re­li­gion.

98:3.7One of the priests of the state re­li­gion told Au­gus­tus of the ear­lier at­tempts of the Salem teach­ers to spread the doc­trine of one God, a fi­nal De­ity pre­sid­ing over all super­nat­u­ral be­ings; and this idea took such a firm hold on the em­peror that he built many tem­ples, stocked them well with beau­ti­ful im­ages, re­or­ga­nized the state priest­hood, re-es­tab­lished the state re­li­gion, ap­pointed him­self act­ing high priest of all, and as em­peror did not hes­i­tate to pro­claim him­self the su­preme god.

98:3.8This new re­li­gion of Au­gus­tus wor­ship flour­ished and was ob­served through­out the em­pire dur­ing his life­time ex­cept in Pales­tine, the home of the Jews. And this era of the hu­man gods con­tin­ued un­til the of­fi­cial Ro­man cult had a ros­ter of more than two-score self-el­e­vated hu­man de­i­ties, all claim­ing mirac­u­lous births and other super­hu­man at­tri­butes.