Roman Empire

• attributes of Roman state
• strengths and weaknesses

71:1.13The suc­cess­ful Ro­man state was based on:

71:1.141. The fa­ther-fam­ily.

71:1.152. Agri­cul­ture and the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals.

71:1.163. Con­den­sa­tion of pop­u­la­tion—cities.

71:1.174. Pri­vate prop­erty and land.

71:1.185. Slav­ery—classes of cit­i­zen­ship.

71:1.196. Con­quest and re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of weak and back­ward peo­ples.

71:1.207. Def­i­nite ter­ri­tory with roads.

71:1.218. Per­sonal and strong rulers.

• reasons for decline; too rapid extension with internal degeneration

71:1.22The great weak­ness in Ro­man civ­i­liza­tion, and a fac­tor in the ul­ti­mate col­lapse of the em­pire, was the sup­posed lib­eral and ad­vanced pro­vi­sion for the eman­ci­pa­tion of the boy at twenty-one and the un­con­di­tional re­lease of the girl so that she was at lib­erty to marry a man of her own choos­ing or to go abroad in the land to be­come im­moral. The harm to so­ci­ety con­sisted not in these re­forms them­selves but rather in the sud­den and ex­ten­sive man­ner of their adop­tion. The col­lapse of Rome in­di­cates what may be ex­pected when a state un­der­goes too rapid ex­ten­sion as­so­ci­ated with in­ter­nal de­gen­er­a­tion.

• social situation › favored monogamous marriage

83:6.3The Chaldean tribes rec­og­nized the right of a wife to im­pose a pre­mar­i­tal pledge upon her spouse not to take a sec­ond wife or con­cu­bine; both the Greeks and the Ro­mans fa­vored monog­a­mous mar­riage. An­ces­tor wor­ship has al­ways fos­tered mo­nog­amy, as has the Chris­tian er­ror of re­gard­ing mar­riage as a sacra­ment. Even the el­e­va­tion of the stan­dard of liv­ing has con­sis­tently mil­i­tated against plu­ral wives. By the time of Mi­chael’s ad­vent on Uran­tia prac­ti­cally all of the civ­i­lized world had at­tained the level of the­o­ret­i­cal mo­nog­amy. But this pas­sive mo­nog­amy did not mean that man­kind had be­come ha­bit­u­ated to the prac­tice of real pair mar­riage.

• practice of throwing stone into air invoking Jupiter

85:1.3All an­cient clans and tribes had their sa­cred stones, and most mod­ern peo­ples man­i­fest a de­gree of ven­er­a­tion for cer­tain types of stones—their jew­els. A group of five stones was rev­er­enced in In­dia; in Greece it was a clus­ter of thirty; among the red men it was usu­ally a cir­cle of stones. The Ro­mans al­ways threw a stone into the air when in­vok­ing Jupiter. In In­dia even to this day a stone can be used as a wit­ness. In some re­gions a stone may be em­ployed as a tal­is­man of the law, and by its pres­tige an of­fender can be haled into court. But sim­ple mor­tals do not al­ways iden­tify De­ity with an ob­ject of rev­er­ent cer­e­mony. Such fe­tishes are many times mere sym­bols of the real ob­ject of wor­ship.

• social situation › half the year wasted on cult ceremonies

87:3.4Most tribes in­sti­tuted an all-souls’ feast at least once a year. The Ro­mans had twelve ghost feasts and ac­com­pa­ny­ing cer­e­monies each year. Half the days of the year were ded­i­cated to some sort of cer­e­mony as­so­ci­ated with these an­cient cults. One Ro­man em­peror tried to re­form these prac­tices by re­duc­ing the num­ber of feast days to 135 a year.

• practice of carrying water 3 times around corpse

87:6.12Wa­ter was re­garded as the best pro­tec­tion against ghosts. Holy wa­ter was su­pe­rior to all other forms, wa­ter in which the priests had washed their feet. Both fire and wa­ter were be­lieved to con­sti­tute im­pass­able bar­ri­ers to ghosts. The Ro­mans car­ried wa­ter three times around the corpse; in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury the body is sprin­kled with holy wa­ter, and hand wash­ing at the ceme­tery is still a Jew­ish rit­ual. Bap­tism was a fea­ture of the later wa­ter rit­ual; prim­i­tive bathing was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony. Only in re­cent times has bathing be­come a san­i­tary prac­tice.

• religion › political observance

98:3.1Hav­ing grown out of the ear­lier re­li­gious forms of wor­ship of the fam­ily gods into the tribal rev­er­ence for Mars, the god of war, it was nat­u­ral that the later re­li­gion of the Latins was more of a po­lit­i­cal ob­ser­vance than were the in­tel­lec­tual sys­tems of the Greeks and Brah­mans or the more spir­i­tual re­li­gions of sev­eral other peo­ples.

• religion › mostly observances of forms, vows, and taboos

98:3.2In the great mono­the­is­tic re­nais­sance of Mel­chiz­e­dek’s gospel dur­ing the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ, too few of the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies pen­e­trated Italy, and those who did were un­able to over­come the in­flu­ence of the rapidly spread­ing Etr­uscan priest­hood with its new galaxy of gods and tem­ples, all of which be­came or­ga­nized into the Ro­man state re­li­gion. This re­li­gion of the Latin tribes was not triv­ial and ve­nal like that of the Greeks, nei­ther was it aus­tere and tyran­ni­cal like that of the He­brews; it con­sisted for the most part in the ob­ser­vance of mere forms, vows, and taboos.

• religion › took over Greek culture, religion

98:3.3Ro­man re­li­gion was greatly in­flu­enced by ex­ten­sive cul­tural im­por­ta­tions from Greece. Even­tu­ally most of the Olympian gods were trans­planted and in­cor­po­rated into the Latin pan­theon. The Greeks long wor­shiped the fire of the fam­ily hearth—Hes­tia was the vir­gin god­dess of the hearth; Vesta was the Ro­man god­dess of the home. Zeus be­came Jupiter; Aphrodite, Venus; and so on down through the many Olympian de­i­ties.

98:3.4The re­li­gious ini­ti­a­tion of Ro­man youths was the oc­ca­sion of their solemn con­se­cra­tion to the ser­vice of the state. Oaths and ad­mis­sions to cit­i­zen­ship were in re­al­ity re­li­gious cer­e­monies. The Latin peo­ples main­tained tem­ples, al­tars, and shrines and, in a cri­sis, would con­sult the or­a­cles. They pre­served the bones of heroes and later on those of the Chris­tian saints.

98:3.5This for­mal and un­emo­tional form of pseu­dore­li­gious pa­tri­o­tism was doomed to col­lapse, even as the highly in­tel­lec­tual and artis­tic wor­ship of the Greeks had gone down be­fore the fer­vid and deeply emo­tional wor­ship of the mys­tery cults. The great­est of these dev­as­tat­ing cults was the mys­tery re­li­gion of the Mother of God sect, which had its head­quar­ters, in those days, on the ex­act site of the pres­ent church of St. Pe­ter’s in Rome.

• religion › conquered by cults and god concepts of Egypt, Greece, and the Levant

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.

• religion › emperor worship

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.

98:3.9The last stand of the dwin­dling band of Salem be­liev­ers was made by an earnest group of preach­ers, the Cyn­ics, who ex­horted the Ro­mans to aban­don their wild and sense­less re­li­gious rit­u­als and re­turn to a form of wor­ship em­body­ing Mel­chiz­e­dek’s gospel as it had been mod­i­fied and con­tam­i­nated through con­tact with the phi­los­o­phy of the Greeks. But the peo­ple at large re­jected the Cyn­ics; they pre­ferred to plunge into the rit­u­als of the mys­ter­ies, which not only of­fered hopes of per­sonal sal­va­tion but also grat­i­fied the de­sire for di­ver­sion, ex­cite­ment, and en­ter­tain­ment.

• religion › triad gods

104:0.3As a con­se­quence of these nat­u­ral as­so­ci­a­tions in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the triad made its ap­pear­ance in re­li­gion, and this long be­fore the Par­a­dise Trin­ity of De­i­ties, or even any of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, had been re­vealed to man­kind. Later on, the Per­sians, Hin­dus, Greeks, Egyp­tians, Baby­lo­ni­ans, Ro­mans, and Scan­di­na­vians all had triad gods, but these were still not true trin­i­ties. Triad de­i­ties all had a nat­u­ral ori­gin and have ap­peared at one time or an­other among most of the in­tel­li­gent peo­ples of Uran­tia. Some­times the con­cept of an evo­lu­tion­ary triad has be­come mixed with that of a re­vealed Trin­ity; in these in­stances it is of­ten im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish one from the other.

• religion › tolerant of all religions

121:1.1Je­sus did not come to this world dur­ing an age of spir­i­tual deca­dence; at the time of his birth Uran­tia was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing such a re­vival of spir­i­tual think­ing and re­li­gious liv­ing as it had not known in all its pre­vi­ous post-Adamic his­tory nor has ex­pe­ri­enced in any era since. When Mi­chael in­car­nated on Uran­tia, the world pre­sented the most fa­vor­able con­di­tion for the Cre­ator Son’s be­stowal that had ever pre­vi­ously pre­vailed or has since ob­tained. In the cen­turies just prior to these times Greek cul­ture and the Greek lan­guage had spread over Oc­ci­dent and near Ori­ent, and the Jews, be­ing a Lev­an­tine race, in na­ture part Oc­ci­den­tal and part Ori­en­tal, were em­i­nently fit­ted to uti­lize such cul­tural and lin­guis­tic set­tings for the ef­fec­tive spread of a new re­li­gion to both East and West. These most fa­vor­able cir­cum­stances were fur­ther en­hanced by the tol­er­ant po­lit­i­cal rule of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean world by the Ro­mans.

• religion › tolerant of all religions

121:1.3Noth­ing like the civ­i­liza­tion of the times of Je­sus has been seen in the Oc­ci­dent be­fore or since those days. Eu­ro­pean civ­i­liza­tion was uni­fied and co-or­di­nated un­der an ex­traor­di­nary three­fold in­flu­ence:

• foreign policy › wars with Parthia

121:1.9The first strug­gles be­tween the ex­pand­ing Ro­man and Parthian states had been con­cluded in the then re­cent past, leav­ing Syria in the hands of the Ro­mans. In the times of Je­sus, Pales­tine and Syria were en­joy­ing a pe­riod of pros­per­ity, rel­a­tive peace, and ex­ten­sive com­mer­cial in­ter­course with the lands to both the East and the West.

• social situation › Jews scattered throughout

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.

• foreign policy › objectives in Levant
• Jews revolt against R.E. suicidal

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.

• social situation › 5 social strata in times of Jesus

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:

• social situation › half population were slaves; majority inferiors

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.

• social situation › 5 social strata in times of Jesus
• social situation › no widespread social problems

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.

• Jews revolt against R.E. suicidal

128:5.3The spokes­men for this com­mit­tee ex­plained to Je­sus that Alexan­dria was des­tined to be­come the head­quar­ters of Jew­ish cul­ture for the en­tire world; that the Hel­lenis­tic trend of Jew­ish af­fairs had vir­tu­ally out­dis­tanced the Baby­lo­nian school of thought. They re­minded Je­sus of the omi­nous rum­blings of re­bel­lion in Je­ru­sa­lem and through­out Pales­tine and as­sured him that any up­ris­ing of the Pales­tinian Jews would be equiv­a­lent to na­tional sui­cide, that the iron hand of Rome would crush the re­bel­lion in three months, and that Je­ru­sa­lem would be de­stroyed and the tem­ple de­mol­ished, that not one stone would be left upon an­other.

• religion › political observance

130:3.5Un­der Je­sus’ di­rec­tion Ga­nid made a col­lec­tion of the teach­ings of all those re­li­gions of the world which rec­og­nized a Uni­ver­sal De­ity, even though they might also give more or less rec­og­ni­tion to sub­or­di­nate de­i­ties. Af­ter much dis­cus­sion Je­sus and Ga­nid de­cided that the Ro­mans had no real God in their re­li­gion, that their re­li­gion was hardly more than em­peror wor­ship. The Greeks, they con­cluded, had a phi­los­o­phy but hardly a re­li­gion with a per­sonal God. The mys­tery cults they dis­carded be­cause of the con­fu­sion of their mul­ti­plic­ity, and be­cause their var­ied con­cepts of De­ity seemed to be de­rived from other and older re­li­gions.

• included all of southern Europe, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, northwest Africa

132:0.3At this time the Ro­man Em­pire in­cluded all of south­ern Eu­rope, Asia Mi­nor, Syria, Egypt, and north­west Africa; and its in­hab­i­tants em­braced the cit­i­zens of ev­ery coun­try of the East­ern Hemi­sphere. His de­sire to study and min­gle with this cos­mopoli­tan ag­gre­ga­tion of Uran­tia mor­tals was the chief rea­son why Je­sus con­sented to make this jour­ney.

• social situation › lax divorce practices

140:8.14The fam­ily oc­cu­pied the very cen­ter of Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life—here and here­after. He based his teach­ings about God on the fam­ily, while he sought to cor­rect the Jew­ish ten­dency to over­honor an­ces­tors. He ex­alted fam­ily life as the high­est hu­man duty but made it plain that fam­ily re­la­tion­ships must not in­ter­fere with re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that the fam­ily is a tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tion; that it does not sur­vive death. Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to give up his fam­ily when the fam­ily ran counter to the Fa­ther’s will. He taught the new and larger broth­er­hood of man—the sons of God. In Je­sus’ time di­vorce prac­tices were lax in Pales­tine and through­out the Ro­man Em­pire. He re­peat­edly re­fused to lay down laws re­gard­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, but many of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers had strong opin­ions on di­vorce and did not hes­i­tate to at­trib­ute them to him. All of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers held to these more strin­gent and ad­vanced ideas about di­vorce ex­cept John Mark.

• foreign policy › destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies

170:2.25But he could not es­cape the use of the king­dom idea. It was more than fifty years later, not un­til af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem by the Ro­man armies, that this con­cept of the king­dom be­gan to change into the cult of eter­nal life as its so­cial and in­sti­tu­tional as­pects were taken over by the rapidly ex­pand­ing and crys­tal­liz­ing Chris­tian church.

• foreign policy › destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies

172:3.10Je­sus was light­hearted and cheer­ful as they moved along un­til he came to the brow of Oli­vet, where the city and the tem­ple tow­ers came into full view; there the Mas­ter stopped the pro­ces­sion, and a great si­lence came upon all as they be­held him weep­ing. Look­ing down upon the vast mul­ti­tude com­ing forth from the city to greet him, the Mas­ter, with much emo­tion and with tear­ful voice, said: “O Je­ru­sa­lem, if you had only known, even you, at least in this your day, the things which be­long to your peace, and which you could so freely have had! But now are these glo­ries about to be hid from your eyes. You are about to re­ject the Son of Peace and turn your backs upon the gospel of sal­va­tion. The days will soon come upon you wherein your en­e­mies will cast a trench around about you and lay siege to you on ev­ery side; they shall ut­terly de­stroy you, in­so­much that not one stone shall be left upon an­other. And all this shall be­fall you be­cause you knew not the time of your di­vine vis­i­ta­tion. You are about to re­ject the gift of God, and all men will re­ject you.”

• foreign policy › destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies

176:0.1This Tues­day af­ter­noon, as Je­sus and the apos­tles passed out of the tem­ple on their way to the Geth­sem­ane camp, Mat­thew, call­ing at­ten­tion to the tem­ple con­struc­tion, said: “Mas­ter, ob­serve what man­ner of build­ings these are. See the mas­sive stones and the beau­ti­ful adorn­ment; can it be that these build­ings are to be de­stroyed?” As they went on to­ward Oli­vet, Je­sus said: “You see these stones and this mas­sive tem­ple; ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you: In the days soon to come there shall not be left one stone upon an­other. They shall all be thrown down.” These re­marks de­pict­ing the de­struc­tion of the sa­cred tem­ple aroused the cu­rios­ity of the apos­tles as they walked along be­hind the Mas­ter; they could con­ceive of no event short of the end of the world which would oc­ca­sion the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple.

176:1.1In an­swer­ing Na­than­iel’s ques­tion, Je­sus said: “Yes, I will tell you about the times when this peo­ple shall have filled up the cup of their in­iq­uity; when jus­tice shall swiftly de­scend upon this city of our fa­thers. I am about to leave you; I go to the Fa­ther. Af­ter I leave you, take heed that no man de­ceive you, for many will come as de­liv­er­ers and will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and ru­mors of wars, be not trou­bled, for though all these things will hap­pen, the end of Je­ru­sa­lem is not yet at hand. You should not be per­turbed by famines or earth­quakes; nei­ther should you be con­cerned when you are de­liv­ered up to the civil au­thor­i­ties and are per­se­cuted for the sake of the gospel. You will be thrown out of the syn­a­gogue and put in prison for my sake, and some of you will be killed. When you are brought up be­fore gov­er­nors and rulers, it shall be for a tes­ti­mony of your faith and to show your stead­fast­ness in the gospel of the king­dom. And when you stand be­fore judges, be not anx­ious be­fore­hand as to what you should say, for the spirit will teach you in that very hour what you should an­swer your ad­ver­saries. In these days of tra­vail, even your own kins­folk, un­der the lead­er­ship of those who have re­jected the Son of Man, will de­liver you up to prison and death. For a time you may be hated by all men for my sake, but even in these per­se­cu­tions I will not for­sake you; my spirit will not desert you. Be pa­tient! doubt not that this gospel of the king­dom will tri­umph over all en­e­mies and, even­tu­ally, be pro­claimed to all na­tions.”

176:1.2Je­sus paused while he looked down upon the city. The Mas­ter re­al­ized that the re­jec­tion of the spir­i­tual con­cept of the Mes­siah, the de­ter­mi­na­tion to cling per­sis­tently and blindly to the ma­te­rial mis­sion of the ex­pected de­liv­erer, would pres­ently bring the Jews in di­rect con­flict with the pow­er­ful Ro­man armies, and that such a con­test could only re­sult in the fi­nal and com­plete over­throw of the Jew­ish na­tion. When his peo­ple re­jected his spir­i­tual be­stowal and re­fused to re­ceive the light of heaven as it so mer­ci­fully shone upon them, they thereby sealed their doom as an in­de­pen­dent peo­ple with a spe­cial spir­i­tual mis­sion on earth. Even the Jew­ish lead­ers sub­se­quently rec­og­nized that it was this sec­u­lar idea of the Mes­siah which di­rectly led to the tur­bu­lence which even­tu­ally brought about their de­struc­tion.

176:1.3Since Je­ru­sa­lem was to be­come the cra­dle of the early gospel move­ment, Je­sus did not want its teach­ers and preach­ers to per­ish in the ter­ri­ble over­throw of the Jew­ish peo­ple in con­nec­tion with the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem; where­fore did he give these in­struc­tions to his fol­low­ers. Je­sus was much con­cerned lest some of his dis­ci­ples be­come in­volved in these soon-com­ing re­volts and so per­ish in the down­fall of Je­ru­sa­lem.

176:1.4Then An­drew in­quired: “But, Mas­ter, if the Holy City and the tem­ple are to be de­stroyed, and if you are not here to di­rect us, when should we for­sake Je­ru­sa­lem?” Said Je­sus: “You may re­main in the city af­ter I have gone, even through these times of tra­vail and bit­ter per­se­cu­tion, but when you fi­nally see Je­ru­sa­lem be­ing en­com­passed by the Ro­man armies af­ter the re­volt of the false proph­ets, then will you know that her des­o­la­tion is at hand; then must you flee to the moun­tains. Let none who are in the city and around about tarry to save aught, nei­ther let those who are out­side dare to en­ter therein. There will be great tribu­la­tion, for these will be the days of gen­tile vengeance. And af­ter you have de­serted the city, this dis­obe­di­ent peo­ple will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led cap­tive into all na­tions; and so shall Je­ru­sa­lem be trod­den down by the gen­tiles. In the mean­time, I warn you, be not de­ceived. If any man comes to you, say­ing, ‘Be­hold, here is the De­liv­erer,’ or ‘Be­hold, there is he,’ be­lieve it not, for many false teach­ers will arise and many will be led astray; but you should not be de­ceived, for I have told you all this be­fore­hand.”

176:1.5The apos­tles sat in si­lence in the moon­light for a con­sid­er­able time while these as­tound­ing pre­dic­tions of the Mas­ter sank into their be­wil­dered minds. And it was in con­for­mity with this very warn­ing that prac­ti­cally the en­tire group of be­liev­ers and dis­ci­ples fled from Je­ru­sa­lem upon the first ap­pear­ance of the Ro­man troops, find­ing a safe shel­ter in Pella to the north.

176:1.6Even af­ter this ex­plicit warn­ing, many of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers in­ter­preted these pre­dic­tions as re­fer­ring to the changes which would ob­vi­ously oc­cur in Je­ru­sa­lem when the reap­pear­ing of the Mes­siah would re­sult in the es­tab­lish­ment of the New Je­ru­sa­lem and in the en­large­ment of the city to be­come the world’s cap­i­tal. In their minds these Jews were de­ter­mined to con­nect the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple with the “end of the world.” They be­lieved this New Je­ru­sa­lem would fill all Pales­tine; that the end of the world would be fol­lowed by the im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance of the “new heav­ens and the new earth.” And so it was not strange that Pe­ter should say: “Mas­ter, we know that all things will pass away when the new heav­ens and the new earth ap­pear, but how shall we know when you will re­turn to bring all this about?”

176:1.7When Je­sus heard this, he was thought­ful for some time and then said: “You ever err since you al­ways try to at­tach the new teach­ing to the old; you are de­ter­mined to mis­un­der­stand all my teach­ing; you in­sist on in­ter­pret­ing the gospel in ac­cor­dance with your es­tab­lished be­liefs. Nev­er­the­less, I will try to en­lighten you.”

• foreign policy › Judea was the most difficult province to govern; error to have sent Pilate

185:1.2Pi­late did not love the Jews, and this deep-seated ha­tred early be­gan to man­i­fest it­self. Of all the Ro­man prov­inces, none was more dif­fi­cult to gov­ern than Judea. Pi­late never re­ally un­der­stood the prob­lems in­volved in the man­age­ment of the Jews and, there­fore, very early in his ex­pe­ri­ence as gov­er­nor, made a se­ries of al­most fa­tal and well-nigh sui­ci­dal blun­ders. And it was these blun­ders that gave the Jews such power over him. When they wanted to in­flu­ence his de­ci­sions, all they had to do was to threaten an up­ris­ing, and Pi­late would speed­ily ca­pit­u­late. And this ap­par­ent vac­il­la­tion, or lack of moral cour­age, of the procu­ra­tor was chiefly due to the mem­ory of a num­ber of con­tro­ver­sies he had had with the Jews and be­cause in each in­stance they had worsted him. The Jews knew that Pi­late was afraid of them, that he feared for his po­si­tion be­fore Tiberius, and they em­ployed this knowl­edge to the great dis­ad­van­tage of the gov­er­nor on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions.

• foreign policy › Judea was the most difficult province to govern; error to have sent Pilate

185:1.9A wor­thy Ro­man gov­er­nor who had not be­come dis­ad­van­ta­geously in­volved with the rulers of the Jews would never have per­mit­ted these blood­thirsty re­li­gious fa­nat­ics to bring about the death of a man whom he him­self had de­clared to be in­no­cent of their false charges and with­out fault. Rome made a great blun­der, a far-reach­ing er­ror in earthly af­fairs, when she sent the sec­ond-rate Pi­late to gov­ern Pales­tine. Tiberius had bet­ter have sent to the Jews the best provin­cial ad­min­is­tra­tor in the em­pire.

• demanded loyalty
• social situation › Romans contrasted with Greeks and Jews

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

• religion › receptive to Christian teachings
• religion › spiritually unsatisfied in times of Jesus

195:0.2Al­though the tra­di­tion-bound and priest-rid­den He­brews, as a peo­ple, re­fused to ac­cept ei­ther Je­sus’ gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man or Pe­ter’s and Paul’s procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion and as­cen­sion of Christ (sub­se­quent Chris­tian­ity), the rest of the Ro­man Em­pire was found to be re­cep­tive to the evolv­ing Chris­tian teach­ings. West­ern civ­i­liza­tion was at this time in­tel­lec­tual, war weary, and thor­oughly skep­ti­cal of all ex­ist­ing re­li­gions and uni­verse philoso­phies. The peo­ples of the West­ern world, the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Greek cul­ture, had a revered tra­di­tion of a great past. They could con­tem­plate the in­her­i­tance of great ac­com­plish­ments in phi­los­o­phy, art, lit­er­a­ture, and po­lit­i­cal prog­ress. But with all these achieve­ments they had no soul-sat­is­fy­ing re­li­gion. Their spir­i­tual long­ings re­mained un­sat­is­fied.

• religion › fought Christianity at first

195:1.5At the time Paul stood up in Athens preach­ing “Christ and Him Cru­ci­fied,” the Greeks were spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry; they were in­quir­ing, in­ter­ested, and ac­tu­ally look­ing for spir­i­tual truth. Never for­get that at first the Ro­mans fought Chris­tian­ity, while the Greeks em­braced it, and that it was the Greeks who lit­er­ally forced the Ro­mans sub­se­quently to ac­cept this new re­li­gion, as then mod­i­fied, as a part of Greek cul­ture.

• political genius for empire administration

195:1.8The Hel­lenis­tic Em­pire, as such, could not en­dure. Its cul­tural sway con­tin­ued on, but it en­dured only af­ter se­cur­ing from the West the Ro­man po­lit­i­cal ge­nius for em­pire ad­min­is­tra­tion and af­ter ob­tain­ing from the East a re­li­gion whose one God pos­sessed em­pire dig­nity.

195:2.1The Ro­mans bod­ily took over Greek cul­ture, putting rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment in the place of gov­ern­ment by lot. And pres­ently this change fa­vored Chris­tian­ity in that Rome brought into the whole West­ern world a new tol­er­ance for strange lan­guages, peo­ples, and even re­li­gions.

• religion › tolerant of all religions

195:2.2Much of the early per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians in Rome was due solely to their un­for­tu­nate use of the term “king­dom” in their preach­ing. The Ro­mans were tol­er­ant of any and all re­li­gions but very re­sent­ful of any­thing that sa­vored of po­lit­i­cal ri­valry. And so, when these early per­se­cu­tions, due so largely to mis­un­der­stand­ing, died out, the field for re­li­gious pro­pa­ganda was wide open. The Ro­man was in­ter­ested in po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion; he cared lit­tle for ei­ther art or re­li­gion, but he was un­usu­ally tol­er­ant of both.

• religion › political observance

195:2.3Ori­en­tal law was stern and ar­bi­trary; Greek law was fluid and artis­tic; Ro­man law was dig­ni­fied and re­spect-breed­ing. Ro­man ed­u­ca­tion bred an un­heard-of and stolid loy­alty. The early Ro­mans were po­lit­i­cally de­voted and sub­limely con­se­crated in­di­vid­u­als. They were hon­est, zeal­ous, and ded­i­cated to their ide­als, but with­out a re­li­gion wor­thy of the name. Small won­der that their Greek teach­ers were able to per­suade them to ac­cept Paul’s Chris­tian­ity.

• social situation › Romans were great, governed themselves; lawyers by nature and training

195:2.4And these Ro­mans were a great peo­ple. They could gov­ern the Oc­ci­dent be­cause they did gov­ern them­selves. Such un­par­al­leled hon­esty, de­vo­tion, and stal­wart self-con­trol was ideal soil for the re­cep­tion and growth of Chris­tian­ity.

• religion › took over Greek culture, religion

195:2.5It was easy for these Greco-Ro­mans to be­come just as spir­i­tu­ally de­voted to an in­sti­tu­tional church as they were po­lit­i­cally de­voted to the state. The Ro­mans fought the church only when they feared it as a com­peti­tor of the state. Rome, hav­ing lit­tle na­tional phi­los­o­phy or na­tive cul­ture, took over Greek cul­ture for its own and boldly adopted Christ as its moral phi­los­o­phy. Chris­tian­ity be­came the moral cul­ture of Rome but hardly its re­li­gion in the sense of be­ing the in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence in spir­i­tual growth of those who em­braced the new re­li­gion in such a whole­sale man­ner. True, in­deed, many in­di­vid­u­als did pen­e­trate be­neath the sur­face of all this state re­li­gion and found for the nour­ish­ment of their souls the real val­ues of the hid­den mean­ings held within the la­tent truths of Hel­le­nized and pa­ganized Chris­tian­ity.

195:2.6The Stoic and his sturdy ap­peal to “na­ture and con­science” had only the bet­ter pre­pared all Rome to re­ceive Christ, at least in an in­tel­lec­tual sense. The Ro­man was by na­ture and train­ing a lawyer; he revered even the laws of na­ture. And now, in Chris­tian­ity, he dis­cerned in the laws of na­ture the laws of God. A peo­ple that could pro­duce Ci­cero and Vergil were ripe for Paul’s Hel­le­nized Chris­tian­ity.

195:2.7And so did these Ro­man­ized Greeks force both Jews and Chris­tians to phi­los­o­phize their re­li­gion, to co-or­di­nate its ideas and sys­tem­atize its ide­als, to adapt re­li­gious prac­tices to the ex­ist­ing cur­rent of life. And all this was enor­mously helped by trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek and by the later record­ing of the New Tes­ta­ment in the Greek tongue.

195:2.8The Greeks, in con­trast with the Jews and many other peo­ples, had long pro­vi­sion­ally be­lieved in im­mor­tal­ity, some sort of sur­vival af­ter death, and since this was the very heart of Je­sus’ teach­ing, it was cer­tain that Chris­tian­ity would make a strong ap­peal to them.

195:2.9A suc­ces­sion of Greek-cul­tural and Ro­man-po­lit­i­cal vic­to­ries had con­sol­i­dated the Med­i­ter­ra­nean lands into one em­pire, with one lan­guage and one cul­ture, and had made the West­ern world ready for one God. Ju­daism pro­vided this God, but Ju­daism was not ac­cept­able as a re­li­gion to these Ro­man­ized Greeks. Philo helped some to mit­i­gate their ob­jec­tions, but Chris­tian­ity re­vealed to them an even bet­ter con­cept of one God, and they em­braced it read­ily.

• religion › spiritually unsatisfied in times of Jesus

195:3.1Af­ter the con­sol­i­da­tion of Ro­man po­lit­i­cal rule and af­ter the dis­sem­i­na­tion of Chris­tian­ity, the Chris­tians found them­selves with one God, a great re­li­gious con­cept, but with­out em­pire. The Greco-Ro­mans found them­selves with a great em­pire but with­out a God to serve as the suit­able re­li­gious con­cept for em­pire wor­ship and spir­i­tual uni­fi­ca­tion. The Chris­tians ac­cepted the em­pire; the em­pire adopted Chris­tian­ity. The Ro­man pro­vided a unity of po­lit­i­cal rule; the Greek, a unity of cul­ture and learn­ing; Chris­tian­ity, a unity of re­li­gious thought and prac­tice.

• foreign policy › overcame nationalism by imperial universalism

195:3.2Rome over­came the tra­di­tion of na­tion­al­ism by im­pe­rial uni­ver­sal­ism and for the first time in his­tory made it pos­si­ble for dif­fer­ent races and na­tions at least nom­i­nally to ac­cept one re­li­gion.

• no Latin word for unselfishness

195:3.3Chris­tian­ity came into fa­vor in Rome at a time when there was great con­tention be­tween the vig­or­ous teach­ings of the Sto­ics and the sal­va­tion promises of the mys­tery cults. Chris­tian­ity came with re­fresh­ing com­fort and lib­er­at­ing power to a spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry peo­ple whose lan­guage had no word for “un­selfish­ness.”

• social situation › conditions in 2nd century A.D.

195:3.7The sec­ond cen­tury af­ter Christ was the best time in all the world’s his­tory for a good re­li­gion to make prog­ress in the West­ern world. Dur­ing the first cen­tury Chris­tian­ity had pre­pared it­self, by strug­gle and com­pro­mise, to take root and rapidly spread. Chris­tian­ity adopted the em­peror; later, he adopted Chris­tian­ity. This was a great age for the spread of a new re­li­gion. There was re­li­gious lib­erty; travel was uni­ver­sal and thought was un­tram­meled.

• reasons for decline; too rapid extension with internal degeneration

195:3.8The spir­i­tual im­pe­tus of nom­i­nally ac­cept­ing Hel­le­nized Chris­tian­ity came to Rome too late to pre­vent the well-started moral de­cline or to com­pen­sate for the al­ready well-es­tab­lished and in­creas­ing racial de­te­ri­o­ra­tion. This new re­li­gion was a cul­tural ne­ces­sity for im­pe­rial Rome, and it is ex­ceed­ingly un­for­tu­nate that it did not be­come a means of spir­i­tual sal­va­tion in a larger sense.

195:3.9Even a good re­li­gion could not save a great em­pire from the sure re­sults of lack of in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of gov­ern­ment, from over­much pa­ter­nal­ism, over­tax­a­tion and gross col­lec­tion abuses, un­bal­anced trade with the Lev­ant which drained away the gold, amuse­ment mad­ness, Ro­man stan­dard­iza­tion, the degra­da­tion of woman, slav­ery and race deca­dence, phys­i­cal plagues, and a state church which be­came in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized nearly to the point of spir­i­tual bar­ren­ness.

195:3.10Con­di­tions, how­ever, were not so bad at Alexan­dria. The early schools con­tin­ued to hold much of Je­sus’ teach­ings free from com­pro­mise. Pan­taenus taught Clement and then went on to fol­low Na­than­iel in pro­claim­ing Christ in In­dia. While some of the ide­als of Je­sus were sac­ri­ficed in the build­ing of Chris­tian­ity, it should in all fair­ness be re­corded that, by the end of the sec­ond cen­tury, prac­ti­cally all the great minds of the Greco-Ro­man world had be­come Chris­tian. The tri­umph was ap­proach­ing com­ple­tion.

195:3.11And this Ro­man Em­pire lasted suf­fi­ciently long to in­sure the sur­vival of Chris­tian­ity even af­ter the em­pire col­lapsed. But we have of­ten con­jec­tured what would have hap­pened in Rome and in the world if it had been the gospel of the king­dom which had been ac­cepted in the place of Greek Chris­tian­ity.

• religion › Christians conquered R.E. in 300 years

195:6.9The ma­te­ri­al­is­tic so­ci­ol­o­gist of to­day sur­veys a com­mu­nity, makes a re­port thereon, and leaves the peo­ple as he found them. Nine­teen hun­dred years ago, un­learned Galileans sur­veyed Je­sus giv­ing his life as a spir­i­tual con­tri­bu­tion to man’s in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence and then went out and turned the whole Ro­man Em­pire up­side down.

• religion › Christians conquered R.E. in 300 years

195:10.18Chris­tian­ity is an ex­tem­po­rized re­li­gion, and there­fore must it op­er­ate in low gear. High-gear spir­i­tual per­for­mances must await the new rev­e­la­tion and the more gen­eral ac­cep­tance of the real re­li­gion of Je­sus. But Chris­tian­ity is a mighty re­li­gion, see­ing that the com­mon­place dis­ci­ples of a cru­ci­fied car­pen­ter set in mo­tion those teach­ings which con­quered the Ro­man world in three hun­dred years and then went on to tri­umph over the bar­bar­ians who over­threw Rome. This same Chris­tian­ity con­quered—ab­sorbed and ex­alted—the whole stream of He­brew the­ol­ogy and Greek phi­los­o­phy. And then, when this Chris­tian re­li­gion be­came co­matose for more than a thou­sand years as a re­sult of an over­dose of mys­ter­ies and pa­gan­ism, it res­ur­rected it­self and vir­tu­ally re­con­quered the whole West­ern world. Chris­tian­ity con­tains enough of Je­sus’ teach­ings to im­mor­tal­ize it.