gentiles

• court of gentiles in Jerusalem temple

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.”

121:3.1Al­though 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.

• Jews › morally superior to g.

121:4.1The gen­tiles were, from a moral stand­point, some­what in­fe­rior to the Jews, but there was pres­ent in the hearts of the no­bler gen­tiles abun­dant soil of nat­u­ral good­ness and po­ten­tial hu­man af­fec­tion in which it was pos­si­ble for the seed of Chris­tian­ity to sprout and bring forth an abun­dant har­vest of moral char­ac­ter and spir­i­tual achieve­ment. The gen­tile world was then dom­i­nated by four great philoso­phies, all more or less de­rived from the ear­lier Pla­ton­ism of the Greeks. These schools of phi­los­o­phy were:

121:5.1Through­out pre­ced­ing ages re­li­gion had chiefly been an af­fair of the tribe or na­tion; it had not of­ten been a mat­ter of con­cern to the in­di­vid­ual. Gods were tribal or na­tional, not per­sonal. Such re­li­gious sys­tems af­forded lit­tle sat­is­fac­tion for the in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual long­ings of the av­er­age per­son.

121:5.2In the times of Je­sus the re­li­gions of the Oc­ci­dent in­cluded:

121:5.31. The pa­gan cults. These were a com­bi­na­tion of Hel­lenic and Latin mythol­ogy, pa­tri­o­tism, and tra­di­tion.

121:5.42. Em­peror wor­ship. This de­ifi­ca­tion of man as the sym­bol of the state was very se­ri­ously re­sented by the Jews and the early Chris­tians and led di­rectly to the bit­ter per­se­cu­tions of both churches by the Ro­man gov­ern­ment.

121:5.53. As­trol­ogy. This pseudo sci­ence of Baby­lon de­vel­oped into a re­li­gion through­out the Greco-Ro­man Em­pire. Even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury man has not been fully de­liv­ered from this su­per­sti­tious be­lief.

121:5.64. The mys­tery re­li­gions. Upon such a spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry world a flood of mys­tery cults had bro­ken, new and strange re­li­gions from the Lev­ant, which had en­am­ored the com­mon peo­ple and had prom­ised them in­di­vid­ual sal­va­tion. These re­li­gions rapidly be­came the ac­cepted be­lief of the lower classes of the Greco-Ro­man world. And they did much to pre­pare the way for the rapid spread of the vastly su­pe­rior Chris­tian teach­ings, which pre­sented a ma­jes­tic con­cept of De­ity, as­so­ci­ated with an in­trigu­ing the­ol­ogy for the in­tel­li­gent and a pro­found prof­fer of sal­va­tion for all, in­clud­ing the ig­no­rant but spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry av­er­age man of those days.

121:5.7The mys­tery re­li­gions spelled the end of na­tional be­liefs and re­sulted in the birth of the nu­mer­ous per­sonal cults. The mys­ter­ies were many but were all char­ac­ter­ized by:

121:5.81. Some myth­i­cal leg­end, a mys­tery—whence their name. As a rule this mys­tery per­tained to the story of some god’s life and death and re­turn to life, as il­lus­trated by the teach­ings of Mith­ra­ism, which, for a time, were con­tem­po­rary with, and a com­peti­tor of, Paul’s ris­ing cult of Chris­tian­ity.

121:5.92. The mys­ter­ies were non­na­tional and in­ter­ra­cial. They were per­sonal and fra­ter­nal, giv­ing rise to re­li­gious broth­er­hoods and nu­mer­ous sec­tar­ian so­ci­eties.

121:5.103. They were, in their ser­vices, char­ac­ter­ized by elab­o­rate cer­e­monies of ini­ti­a­tion and im­pres­sive sacra­ments of wor­ship. Their se­cret rites and rit­u­als were some­times grue­some and re­volt­ing.

121:5.114. But no mat­ter what the na­ture of their cer­e­monies or the de­gree of their ex­cesses, these mys­ter­ies in­vari­ably prom­ised their devo­tees sal­va­tion, “de­liv­er­ance from evil, sur­vival af­ter death, and en­dur­ing life in bliss­ful realms be­yond this world of sor­row and slav­ery.”

121:5.12But do not make the mis­take of con­fus­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus with the mys­ter­ies. The pop­u­lar­ity of the mys­ter­ies re­veals man’s quest for sur­vival, thus por­tray­ing a real hunger and thirst for per­sonal re­li­gion and in­di­vid­ual righ­teous­ness. Al­though the mys­ter­ies failed ad­e­quately to sat­isfy this long­ing, they did pre­pare the way for the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Je­sus, who truly brought to this world the bread of life and the wa­ter thereof.

121:5.13Paul, in an ef­fort to uti­lize the wide­spread ad­her­ence to the bet­ter types of the mys­tery re­li­gions, made cer­tain adap­ta­tions of the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to ren­der them more ac­cept­able to a larger num­ber of prospec­tive con­verts. But even Paul’s com­pro­mise of Je­sus’ teach­ings (Chris­tian­ity) was su­pe­rior to the best in the mys­ter­ies in that:

121:5.141. Paul taught a moral re­demp­tion, an eth­i­cal sal­va­tion. Chris­tian­ity pointed to a new life and pro­claimed a new ideal. Paul for­sook magic rites and cer­e­mo­nial en­chant­ments.

121:5.152. Chris­tian­ity pre­sented a re­li­gion which grap­pled with fi­nal so­lu­tions of the hu­man prob­lem, for it not only of­fered sal­va­tion from sor­row and even from death, but it also prom­ised de­liv­er­ance from sin fol­lowed by the en­dow­ment of a righ­teous char­ac­ter of eter­nal sur­vival qual­i­ties.

121:5.163. The mys­ter­ies were built upon myths. Chris­tian­ity, as Paul preached it, was founded upon a his­toric fact: the be­stowal of Mi­chael, the Son of God, upon man­kind.

• Jews › morally superior to g.

121:5.17Moral­ity among the gen­tiles was not nec­es­sar­ily re­lated to ei­ther phi­los­o­phy or re­li­gion. Out­side of Pales­tine it not al­ways oc­curred to peo­ple that a priest of re­li­gion was sup­posed to lead a moral life. Jew­ish re­li­gion and sub­se­quently the teach­ings of Je­sus and later the evolv­ing Chris­tian­ity of Paul were the first Eu­ro­pean re­li­gions to lay one hand upon morals and the other upon ethics, in­sist­ing that re­li­gion­ists pay some at­ten­tion to both.

121:5.18Into such a gen­er­a­tion of men, dom­i­nated by such in­com­plete sys­tems of phi­los­o­phy and per­plexed by such com­plex cults of re­li­gion, Je­sus was born in Pales­tine. And to this same gen­er­a­tion he sub­se­quently gave his gospel of per­sonal re­li­gion—son­ship with God.

• Jews › looked upon g. with contempt

121:7.1By the times of Je­sus the Jews had ar­rived at a set­tled con­cept of their ori­gin, his­tory, and des­tiny. They had built up a rigid wall of sep­a­ra­tion be­tween them­selves and the gen­tile world; they looked upon all gen­tile ways with ut­ter con­tempt. They wor­shiped the let­ter of the law and in­dulged a form of self-righ­teous­ness based upon the false pride of de­scent. They had formed pre­con­ceived no­tions re­gard­ing the prom­ised Mes­siah, and most of these ex­pec­ta­tions en­vis­aged a Mes­siah who would come as a part of their na­tional and racial his­tory. To the He­brews of those days Jew­ish the­ol­ogy was ir­re­vo­ca­bly set­tled, for­ever fixed.

• Jews › mingled more freely with g. in Galilee

123:5.7Naz­a­reth was a car­a­van way sta­tion and cross­roads of travel and largely gen­tile in pop­u­la­tion; at the same time it was widely known as a cen­ter of lib­eral in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Jew­ish tra­di­tional law. In Gal­i­lee the Jews min­gled more freely with the gen­tiles than was their prac­tice in Judea. And of all the cities of Gal­i­lee, the Jews of Naz­a­reth were most lib­eral in their in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the so­cial re­stric­tions based on the fears of con­tam­i­na­tion as a re­sult of con­tact with the gen­tiles. And these con­di­tions gave rise to the com­mon say­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem, “Can any good thing come out of Naz­a­reth?”