Rome

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• Rome

130:0.3Af­ter their stay in Rome they went over­land to Tar­en­tum, where they set sail for Athens in Greece, stop­ping at Nicopo­lis and Corinth. From Athens they went to Eph­esus by way of Troas. From Eph­esus they sailed for Cyprus, putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent con­sid­er­able time vis­it­ing and rest­ing on Cyprus and then sailed for An­ti­och in Syria. From An­ti­och they jour­neyed south to Sidon and then went over to Da­mas­cus. From there they trav­eled by car­a­van to Mes­o­po­ta­mia, pass­ing through Thap­sacus and Larissa. They spent some time in Baby­lon, vis­ited Ur and other places, and then went to Susa. From Susa they jour­neyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ga­nid em­barked for In­dia.

• Claudus preached in

130:8.1The first stop on the way to Italy was at the is­land of Malta. Here Je­sus had a long talk with a down­hearted and dis­cour­aged young man named Claudus. This fel­low had con­tem­plated tak­ing his life, but when he had fin­ished talk­ing with the scribe of Da­mas­cus, he said: “I will face life like a man; I am through play­ing the cow­ard. I will go back to my peo­ple and be­gin all over again.” Shortly he be­came an en­thu­si­as­tic preacher of the Cyn­ics, and still later on he joined hands with Pe­ter in pro­claim­ing Chris­tian­ity in Rome and Naples, and af­ter the death of Pe­ter he went on to Spain preach­ing the gospel. But he never knew that the man who in­spired him in Malta was the Je­sus whom he sub­se­quently pro­claimed the world’s De­liv­erer.

• city of 2 million

132:0.2While at Rome, Ga­nid had reg­u­lar hours for study and for vis­it­ing places of in­ter­est about the city. His fa­ther had much busi­ness to trans­act, and de­sir­ing that his son grow up to be­come a wor­thy suc­ces­sor in the man­age­ment of his vast com­mer­cial in­ter­ests, he thought the time had come to in­tro­duce the boy to the busi­ness world. There were many cit­i­zens of In­dia in Rome, and of­ten one of Gonod’s own em­ploy­ees would ac­com­pany him as in­ter­preter so that Je­sus would have whole days to him­self; this gave him time in which to be­come thor­oughly ac­quainted with this city of two mil­lion in­hab­i­tants. He was fre­quently to be found in the fo­rum, the cen­ter of po­lit­i­cal, le­gal, and busi­ness life. He of­ten went up to the Capi­tolium and pon­dered the bond­age of ig­no­rance in which these Ro­mans were held as he be­held this mag­nif­i­cent tem­ple ded­i­cated to Jupiter, Juno, and Min­erva. He also spent much time on Pala­tine hill, where were lo­cated the em­peror’s res­i­dence, the tem­ple of Apollo, and the Greek and Latin li­braries.

• largest and most cosmopolitan city of world

132:4.1Je­sus did not de­vote all his leisure while in Rome to this work of prepar­ing men and women to be­come fu­ture dis­ci­ples in the on­com­ing king­dom. He spent much time gain­ing an in­ti­mate knowl­edge of all races and classes of men who lived in this, the largest and most cos­mopoli­tan city of the world. In each of these nu­mer­ous hu­man con­tacts Je­sus had a dou­ble pur­pose: He de­sired to learn their re­ac­tions to the life they were liv­ing in the flesh, and he was also minded to say or do some­thing to make that life richer and more worth while. His re­li­gious teach­ings dur­ing these weeks were no dif­fer­ent than those which char­ac­ter­ized his later life as teacher of the twelve and preacher to the mul­ti­tudes.

• only Zebedee knew of Jesus’ trip to

134:1.2At the end of his Med­i­ter­ra­nean jour­ney Je­sus had re­ceived suf­fi­cient money to meet his liv­ing ex­penses al­most up to the time of the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. But aside from Zeb­e­dee of Ca­per­naum and the peo­ple whom he met on this ex­traor­di­nary trip, the world never knew that he made this jour­ney. His fam­ily al­ways be­lieved that he spent this time in study at Alexan­dria. Je­sus never con­firmed these be­liefs, nei­ther did he make open de­nial of such mis­un­der­stand­ings.

• son of Titus of Capernaum was martyred in

146:5.2When this no­ble­man had lo­cated Je­sus in Cana, he be­sought him to hurry over to Ca­per­naum and heal his af­flicted son. While the apos­tles stood by in breath­less ex­pectancy, Je­sus, look­ing at the fa­ther of the sick boy, said: “How long shall I bear with you? The power of God is in your midst, but ex­cept you see signs and be­hold won­ders, you refuse to be­lieve.” But the no­ble­man pleaded with Je­sus, say­ing: “My Lord, I do be­lieve, but come ere my child per­ishes, for when I left him he was even then at the point of death.” And when Je­sus had bowed his head a mo­ment in silent med­i­ta­tion, he sud­denly spoke, “Re­turn to your home; your son will live.” Ti­tus be­lieved the word of Je­sus and has­tened back to Ca­per­naum. And as he was re­turn­ing, his ser­vants came out to meet him, say­ing, “Re­joice, for your son is im­proved—he lives.” Then Ti­tus in­quired of them at what hour the boy be­gan to mend, and when the ser­vants an­swered “yes­ter­day about the sev­enth hour the fever left him,” the fa­ther re­called that it was about that hour when Je­sus had said, “Your son will live.” And Ti­tus hence­forth be­lieved with a whole heart, and all his fam­ily also be­lieved. This son be­came a mighty min­is­ter of the king­dom and later yielded up his life with those who suf­fered in Rome. Though the en­tire house­hold of Ti­tus, their friends, and even the apos­tles re­garded this episode as a mir­a­cle, it was not. At least this was not a mir­a­cle of cur­ing phys­i­cal dis­ease. It was merely a case of pre­knowl­edge con­cern­ing the course of nat­u­ral law, just such knowl­edge as Je­sus fre­quently re­sorted to sub­se­quent to his bap­tism.

• Rome

194:4.13And then broke out the new and re­lent­less per­se­cu­tions by the Jews, so that the ac­tive teach­ers of the new re­li­gion about Je­sus, which sub­se­quently at An­ti­och was called Chris­tian­ity, went forth to the ends of the em­pire pro­claim­ing Je­sus. In car­ry­ing this mes­sage, be­fore the time of Paul the lead­er­ship was in Greek hands; and these first mis­sion­ar­ies, as also the later ones, fol­lowed the path of Alexan­der’s march of for­mer days, go­ing by way of Gaza and Tyre to An­ti­och and then over Asia Mi­nor to Mace­do­nia, then on to Rome and to the ut­ter­most parts of the em­pire.