Uncovering the Historical Background of the New Testament

Introduction

Coming to relish the background of the New Testament is somewhat like adding an essential garnish to a favorite food, producing a more memorable meal. On the other hand, we students and teachers who work at understanding scripture can find deep satisfaction in the plain meaning of one passage after another. Without knowing any New Testament background, many know the joy of discovering a new comprehension of a passage, such as the two disciples experienced when they walked with the resurrected Christ toward Emmaus as he “expounded” the meaning “in all the scriptures,” leaving the two almost breathless and saying to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us?” (Luke 24:27, 32). Although the New Testament can stand on its own, we find greater comprehension when we understand the world of the New Testament authors, including the noble intentions behind their writing.

The New Testament writers lived in elements of three societal systems: Judean, Hellenistic, and Roman. Books written under Judean influence include the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, John, and the Epistles of James and Jude. Other works were composed in distant Roman provinces in totally different surroundings, including the Gospel of Luke, the book of Acts, and Paul’s letters. In addition, because Rome ruled the entire Mediterranean region, clear Roman influences pepper the entire New Testament. Thus knowing context can change the flavors we encounter as we seek a more memorable experience with the New Testament.

Text and Context 
John F. Hall

The necessary starting point for deriving meaning, understanding, and inspiration from the New Testament is obviously a perusal of the text itself. If the text is an accurate translation from the original Greek, the language in which the New Testament was composed, the reader can reasonably accrue rewarding information. However, comprehension can increase manyfold if the text is understood in its proper context. The literal Latin meaning of “context” is “with the text”; in other words, the sense of this term points to information that must be known in order to understand the text. Said another way, the world of the author, personal considerations about the author, and the intent of the author in writing are essential determining factors in comprehending the meaning of any given text. Such considerations increase in importance proportionately to the time between when the text is written and the time it is read. Accordingly, an essential prerequisite for modern readers to better apprehend the significance of ancient texts is additional knowledge about the New Testament’s context—an ancient world very different in attitude and circumstance from the modern world in which we live.

Understanding the intersecting ancient cultures, particularly the Hellenization of Judea and the political dominance of Rome, will enable readers to find more from the New Testament. It is especially valuable to understand Roman culture, government, and law because the Greek-speaking provinces in the eastern half of its empire, as well as the province of Judea, belonged to Rome. The following treatments present information about Judean, Hellenistic Greek, and Roman culture and history that clarify the context of the New Testament.

The Jewish Context of the New Testament 
Eric D. Huntsman

The effects of the Babylonian exile and the unrealized hope of a glorious national restoration under the Davidic dynasty after the return were two factors that greatly influenced the religious and political contexts of New Testament writings. After earlier interference in the kingdom of Judah, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC and deported many of its nobility, priesthood, and artisans. Those that returned to the old territory of Judah, soon after Cyrus conquered Babylon c. 538/537 BC, brought with them a renewed devotion to the Mosaic law that transformed Judaism. This change was accelerated with the efforts of Nehemiah and Ezra and produced a transitional religion different from both Ancient Israel, known in most of the Old Testament, and rabbinic Judaism, known from the Mishnah and other later sources. The temple was rebuilt c. 516 BC, but the Second Temple Period that followed (515 BC–AD 70) failed to realize a truly legitimate restoration of an anointed king, resulting in messianic expectations and an eschatology that was in many ways more appropriate for the Second rather than the First Coming of Jesus Christ.

Religious Developments

Rather than leading to a loss of national identity and religion, the Babylonian captivity led to deeper attachment to the law of Moses as the means of separating the people of Yahweh from the “nations,” or Gentiles, around them. Without the temple and its attendant sacrifices and rituals, the law and the writings of the prophets became a greater focus of attention, and the national disaster of 587 BC was increasingly seen as punishment for earlier unfaithfulness to God, a point stressed by both the Deuteronomic and Chronicler’s histories.

The return to Judah was accomplished in stages, with groups migrating under the leadership of Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Cyrus commissioned Sheshbazzar, a “prince of Judah” (Ezra 1:8), perhaps the same as Shenazar, who was of Davidic descent (1 Chr. 3:18), to return to Jerusalem in 538 BC with the temple vessels and lay the foundations of a new temple (Ezra 1:8–11; 5:14–17).¹ Rather than finding their ancestral homeland empty, the returning exiles, or ʿam haggôlâ, “people of the exile,” found the countryside and villages of Judah still inhabited by the ʿam hāʾ āretz, “people of the land,” whom the Babylonians had left in the land with each deportation. The ʿam haggôlâ succeeded in reimposing themselves over this majority, dominating it socially and economically, and, perhaps more importantly, insisting upon its new religious practices and devotion to the law.² This returning aristocracy that saw itself as the true Judeans may have constituted the socioeconomic and religious-political group known as hoi Iudaioi, or “the Jews” in the Gospel of John. They were a leadership and landowning class somehow apart from the peasantry and urban crowds that generally received Jesus and “heard him gladly” when he silenced their leaders (Mark 12:37), and they included some well-to-do followers of Jesus, such as Lazarus and his sisters.³

Another group, with whom the returning exiles had even more difficult relations, was the Samaritans of the Ephraim hill country to the north of Jerusalem and Judea. The Samaritans were largely people of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh who were not deported with their leadership at the time of the Assyrian destruction of Israel in 721 BC. In this respect, they were analogous to the ʿam hāʾ āretz of Judah, but whereas Ezra and Nehemiah were largely able to reverse the effects of intermarriage between Jews and other local peoples, the mixing of the residual Israelite population to the north with Assyrian colonists had occurred too long ago. Exile had forced the ʿam haggôlâ to maintain their racial and religious identity by strict separation from Gentiles, and after their return to the blackened remains of Jerusalem, they refused to interact with their Samaritan cousins. Samaritan authorities opposed the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple, and Nehemiah drove a high priest’s grandson out of his city as a “Samaritan sympathizer.”⁴

The efforts of Nehemiah and especially Ezra to reform the restored community reflect the new emphases on the law brought back with the exiles. The postexilic books of the Old Testament—Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—are largely concerned with the kinds of problems addressed by these two reformers: building and maintaining the temple, avoiding intermarriage with foreigners, paying tithes, observing the Sabbath, and strictly following the law of Moses. Second Temple Judaism learned these lessons well, and establishment of “temple and Torah” were the two primary “accomplishments of the returned exiles.” One can see in Matthew how these practices came to occupy, if not preoccupy, the Jewish community at the time of Christ.⁵

Another result of the reforming activities that is particularly ascribed to Ezra was the movement toward establishing an early canon of the Hebrew Bible. The efforts of “Ezra the scribe” (Neh. 8:1) to preserve and teach from these accepted writings eventually replaced the authority of the prophet and the tradition of the teaching priest with Ezra’s edited texts and the practice of interpreting them by a new class of scribes. In this manner, Ezra became one of the founding figures of rabbinic Judaism.⁶ The Hebrew Bible that took shape after the exile under Ezra’s influence consisted of the Pentateuch and the former Prophets, and in its later, final form, it included the Torah (the Law, as found in the books of the Pentateuch), Nevi’im (the Prophets, both early and later), and Kethuvim (the Writings).

Because of the lack of prophetic or other generally recognized authority in the Intertestamental Period, these developments actually led to the rise of sectarianism in Judaism. While all major Jewish groups after the exile and through the time of the New Testament accepted the temple and the Torah, they differed in their view of scripture and in their acceptance of practices begun during the captivity and developed through reformation efforts, such as those of Ezra. While the origins of some of the later Jewish parties known in the New Testament arose partially as a result of political factors (see below), differences about the boundaries of the scriptural canon and certain religious practices divided major groups like the Sadducees and Pharisees. Our understanding of the actual beliefs and practices of the Sadducees may well be distorted by the lack of Sadducean sources, but it is clear that they accepted only the Torah as contained in the Pentateuch, whereas the Pharisees espoused an oral as well as a written law. This distinction led to major disagreements between the two groups over issues of ritual purity, since one of the major purposes of the oral law was to avoid breaking the rules of the written law through the addition of extraneous regulations. In addition, the Pharisees accepted the Prophets and the Writings as scriptural, whereas the Sadducees did not.⁷

During Christ’s ministry, he observed the law, respected the temple, and sought to deepen his followers’ understanding of the teachings of the prophets, albeit without rigid devotion to the outward form that developed in the Second Temple Period. Subsequent leaders of the Church after Jesus’ Ascension continued to reflect their Jewish background. Peter assumed the law and its practices and limited the teaching of the gospel to the Jews until directed otherwise by vision (Acts 10). Even then, he seems to have maintained some connection with the worldview and practices of his upbringing (Gal. 2:11–14). Jesus’ brother was known as “James the Just” because of a reputation for righteousness and his observation of the law. Due to his status as leader of the Church in Jerusalem, James represented many Jewish Christians. Although the Savior had taught in his forty-day ministry that the law had been fulfilled, as he taught the Nephites in 3 Nephi 9:17–20, at least some of the Jerusalem Saints continued to use the temple as a place of prayer, and James told Paul that many Jews believed in Jesus but were still “zealous of the law,” perhaps for continuing cultural reasons (Acts 21:20). Even Paul, who taught against the necessity of continuing to be zealous in obeying the law of Moses, was influenced in much of his teaching and thinking by Jewish religious and scriptural thought.⁸

Political Developments

For all the apparent successes of Second Temple Judaism in its religious “reform,” it failed in the political realm to restore a legitimate national monarchy. Zerubbabel, perhaps Sheshbazzar’s nephew and a more direct heir to the throne of Judah, seems to have replaced Sheshbazzar as the agent or governor of the Persian king, and it was under his direction that the temple was at last completed. Despite both of their connections with the House of David, the monarchy was not restored. Popular expectation of such, in fact, may have resulted in their dismissal and disappearance from the historical record,⁹ perhaps because of popular anticipation that Zerubbabel would assume the throne of David and become a true māšîach—a “messiah” or “anointed king.” Nehemiah, who was not a Davidide, appears next as tirshatha or “governor.” Although the details of administration in the Persian period are obscure, no other royal scion seems to have been appointed.

In the Hebrew Bible, those who were designated as chosen and favored by God through anointing included kings, high priests, and, at least in the case of Elisha, prophets. In a sense, each of these anointed figures could be considered a “messiah” whose role was to help save Israel.¹⁰ Whereas a Christian and Restoration understanding of the role of the Messiah allows us to see that such “messiahs” simply prefigured Jesus Christ, the ultimate Prophet, Priest, and King, the vicissitudes of the history of Judah and Israel after David led to an increasingly narrow messianic view that focused solely on the political salvation and prosperity of Israel. Accordingly, Israel saw the birth of Hezekiah—one of the rare, relatively righteous kings of Judah during whose reign the Lord miraculously saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians—as the fulfillment of the messianic prophecy of Isaiah (Isa. 7:14; 36:1–37; 38).¹¹ They failed to realize that this salvation was a type of greater salvation that would come through another Son of David, the true Immanuel (Matt. 1:22–23). Likewise, the meteoric rise of Judah and its temporary restoration of the Davidic borders of Israel under King Josiah was seen as a fulfillment of messianic hopes, once again focusing Jewish expectations on a political fulfillment of messianic prophecies. Josiah’s untimely death at Megiddo was difficult for the chroniclers and scribes to explain, forcing them to interpret Josiah’s death as a vicarious act on behalf of sinful Judah,¹² although this interpretation, too, failed to see it as only a type of the far greater vicarious sacrifice of the true Messiah.

With the dismissal of Zerubbabel and the disappointment of national expectations regarding the House of David, messianic expectations appear to have focused on the figure of the high priest, beginning with the high priest Joshua, who is conspicuous alongside Zerubbabel in Zechariah 1–6.¹³ This quasimessianic status of the high priest, in the absence of a legitimate king, allowed the high priest in the postexilic period to take on the guise of the leader of the nation as well as of the temple ceremonial life. Thus the Persian province of Yehud effectively became a small temple state like others throughout the satrapy of Syria,¹⁴ initiating a long history of collaboration between high priests and the Persian imperial power and, subsequently, the rule of the Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Romans that followed.

The shifting political tides of international politicos endangered the precarious autonomy that the Jews maintained under the administration of their high priests. After the brief rule of Alexander the Great (336–323 BC), who conquered Syria and Judea in 332 BC and, according to legend,¹⁵ had allowed the high priest to continue and even expand his political power, Jerusalem and its environs lay on the border between Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria. This position caused rival groups within the priestly hierarchy to champion one Hellenistic dynasty against the other. The Ptolemies held Palestine securely from 301 to 219 BC, but after that, the Seleucid monarch Antiochus III the Great (223–187 BC) began to wrest control of southern Syria and Palestine, with Jerusalem finally coming under Seleucid control in 198 BC. A pro-Seleucid faction gained control of the high priesthood and began, apparently without any Seleucid encouragement at first, a policy of Hellenization.¹⁶ This undercut the status of the high priest among conservatives as the leader of the Jewish community, particularly under the extreme Hellenizers Jason and Menelaus, high priests with Greek names and attitudes. Jason, the last high priest of the legitimate Zadokite family, and Menelaus, who as a Benjamite was not likely from a priestly family, repeatedly tried to outbid each other by bribing the Seleucid king for the high priesthood; they subsequently fought civil wars against each other from 170 to 167 BC.¹⁷

Hence the ground for great change was already laid when Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BC) initiated a policy of extreme Hellenization in 167 BC that led to the famous revolt of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family and his sons. The miraculous success of his son Judas Maccabaeus eventually led to a series of half steps whereby the temple was cleansed and rededicated in 164 BC, autonomy was restored, and independence was eventually achieved. A Jerusalem assembly confirmed Judas’s brother Simon as hereditary high priest in 140 BC, and the military successes of his son John Hyrcanus (161–143/2 BC) extended the borders of the new state effectively to its old Davidic extent. Extensive areas such as Idumea, the home of Herod’s family, were forcibly converted to Judaism, and Galilee was colonized by Jews, explaining how the family of Mary and perhaps Joseph ended up in Nazareth. To many it seemed the glories of David and Solomon were being revived, leading one of the sons of John Hyrcanus, either Aristobolus (104–103 BC) or Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BC), to adopt the title of “king” as well as high priest.¹⁸

The original faithfulness of the Hasmonean family to the temple and the Torah earned them a certain legitimacy that they otherwise lacked since their family, although priestly, was not of the official Zadokite branch. Similarly, their military and diplomatic successes seemed to justify the usurpation of the title of “king,” even though they were in no way descended from David. Despite these inconsistencies, the fact that the Hasmoneans had delivered the Jews from religious and political oppression helped create a false messianic expectation that would outlast their own dynasty and give revolutionary movements in Judaism for the next two centuries certain messianic connections.¹⁹ Consequently, when Jesus began to criticize the corrupt religious establishment of his day and tend to the temporal needs of people with his feeding of the five thousand, he retreated from the ʿam hāʾ āretz who flocked to him because he perceived that “they would come and take him by force, to make him a king” (John 6:15). This expectation and the hope that he would deliver them from the Roman occupation may also have lain at the root of the people’s enthusiastic reception of him as “son of David” upon his triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:1–11; Mark 11:1–11; Luke 19:29–40; John 12:14–19).

The legitimacy of the Hasmoneans, however, was questioned from the beginning, and their rule resulted in serious divisions that persisted into New Testament times. Simon’s appointment in 143 BC as high priest and ethnarch, or civil ruler, was qualified by the statement that he held his position “pending the advent of a genuine prophet” (1 Macc. 14:40) who could authoritatively recognize him as the Lord’s anointed.²⁰ Although many saw messianic overtones in the activities of the early Hasmoneans, they were not universally accepted as such within the Jewish community. The Qumran covenanters, usually identified with the group Josephus called the Essenes, rejected the Jerusalem priesthood as illegitimate and broke from the Hasmoneans after suffering from the actions of a “wicked priest,” probably Judas Maccabeus’s brother Jonathan.²¹ Withdrawing from Jewish society, the Qumran community awaited both a genuine anointed king, or a messiah from the House of David, and a legitimate high priest, or priestly messiah.²²

The Pharisees also had their origins in an anti-Hasmonean movement, disputing the right of John Hyrcanus to rule and contesting later Hasmonean claims to the title of king.²³ The Psalms of Solomon, a pseudepigraphal document of the first century BC associated with the position of the Pharisees, views the Hasmoneans as usurpers to the Davidic throne and serves as a model of Pharisaic messianic expectations.²⁴ Unlike the Qumran community, the Pharisees did not withdraw from political life but instead attempted to reform. When the Hasmonean queen, Salome Alexandra, came to power (76 BC), she allowed the Pharisees a substantial measure of influence at court, a circumstance that persisted into the era of Roman rule at the time of Jesus.²⁵

Such harmony was not the case between Jews and Samaritans. Hasmoneans created and deepened further division when John Hyrcanus, the second-century Hasmonean leader, destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim in 128 BC, permanently poisoning relations between the two groups.²⁶ However, the Sadducees cooperated with the Hasmoneans early on and continued the proven aristocratic policy of collaborating with whatever governing power was in control throughout the New Testament period until the Jewish revolt of AD 66–70 also saw the destruction of the temple and their power base.²⁷

Lastly, a more obscure group in the New Testament emerged with the advent of Herod the Great. Apparently a purely political group, the Herodians, as the New Testament calls them, consisted of royal retainers and landowners who felt that Herod’s sons, and perhaps a reconstitution of Herod’s kingdom, provided the best hope of maintaining both limited Jewish autonomy and their own social and economic status under the Romans. In this regard, they seem to have set aside any messianic expectation and were purely political realists.²⁸

The Hellenistic Context of the New Testament 
Cecilia M. Peek

Setting the Hellenistic Table

After the conquest of Tyre by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, Palestine, previously a part of the Persian Empire, came under the sway of the Macedonian king. Following the death of Alexander in 323 BC, the region was fought over by two of the Hellenistic dynasties that succeeded him: the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria. The Ptolemies generally dominated Palestine for the first century after Alexander’s death, but through the military campaigns of Antiochus III from 223 to 200 BC, the Syrian Seleucids successfully gained control of the area. This control continued until the Hasmonean revolt in the 160s BC.²⁹ Palestine then remained a territory subject to the political control of one or another Greco-Macedonian ruler for more than one hundred and fifty years. Throughout this period, not only the Jews resident in Judea but also the Jews of the Diaspora—those great numbers of Jews who had been spread by Persian rulers throughout Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt—interacted with new Greek rulers. They came into close contact with the Greek language, Greek education, and the arts in urban centers like Alexandria, Antioch, and Ephesus.³⁰ Indeed, by the early third century BC, Jews had become an important minority in Egypt, especially prominent in Alexandria, where the Jewish scriptures were being translated into Greek for the thousands of Jews now speaking Greek as their primary language.³¹ In the wake of Alexander’s conquests and under the shifting reigns of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, Greek cities spread across parts of Palestine well within the reach of Judea,³² and Jews of that region likewise experienced frequent and persistent contacts through government, trade, and travel with the people and culture of the ruling Hellenistic regimes. The impact of those contacts came to pervade many aspects of life in Jewish Palestine.

Determining the precise degree and nature of the impact of Hellenistic culture on Jewish society remains notoriously difficult and too great for the scope of this discussion. Ancient evidence does, however, confirm that penetration and influence were present and significant.³³ Jewish sources themselves acknowledge the Jewish assimilation and imitation of some Greek cultural models.³⁴ And this influence is still demonstrably present in Palestine at the time of Jesus and in the composition of New Testament texts.³⁵ The world in which the books of the New Testament were composed and published was a world overseen by Roman government officials but still bearing the marks of the Hellenistic culture that had ruled that world for almost two hundred years. In view of this, one must ask how the Hellenistic background and context affected the thought and behavior of New Testament authors and actors. It is impossible to answer such questions fully in this setting, but we will look to two areas as exempla of the types of influences at work in the text.

The Language of the Authors

Since the New Testament survives as written words, we will first consider the linguistic role Hellenistic culture may have played. The conquests of Alexander the Great and the establishment of the Hellenistic kingdoms following his death resulted in the spread of the Koine Greek dialect as the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean world. Koine represented an amalgamation of major Greek dialects, with simplified grammar and a pronounced connection to the Attic dialect.³⁶ This conflation of dialects made Koine potentially accessible to native speakers of Greek from a wide range of locations. Similarly, the simplified grammar made the language easier for foreigners to learn.

These are critical considerations when the administration of the territories ruled by the Hellenistic kings depended upon a consistent bureaucratic language, one that could be used and understood at multiple levels of political management. While the native languages of subject lands were being used at the most local level, Koine Greek was indisputably the language of administration at the interface between the official representatives of native populations and the official representatives of the ruling monarch throughout the Hellenistic age.³⁷ To issue laws and enforce them, to promote commerce and make it secure, to make pleas and voice complaints, in short, to successfully negotiate the relationship between subjects and rulers, Koine Greek was the chosen language for clear communication. An underreported example is that of Jesus standing before Pilate. In none of the Gospels or other reminiscences do we come upon a memory of an interpreter standing between them. Evidently, Jesus knew Greek, as did the educated Pilate.

This has implications for our understanding of the New Testament, both for its composition and for its dissemination. In terms of the scriptural heritage and training of New Testament writers, the Jewish scriptures in which some were fluent seem to have been the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament known as the Septuagint (LXX). According to the so-called Letter of Aristeas, King Ptolemy II of Egypt (283–246 BC) ordered the creation of a Greek version of the Jewish scriptures because, among other things, he wanted to do a favor for the freed Jewish slaves in Egypt as well as for the Jews of the Diaspora more broadly.³⁸ As Mussies points out, this “makes sense only if it reflects a reality in which many if not most Jews outside Palestine could not (or could not sufficiently) read and understand the Hebrew Torah, but spoke and were well versed in Greek.”³⁹ While one cannot confidently extrapolate from Aristeas’s assertion that the Jews of the Diaspora (inside and outside of Egypt) were universally better qualified to read Greek than Hebrew in the era of Ptolemy II, it does seem to have been a developing pattern—one established by the lifetime of Jesus. Certainly, several New Testament authors were intimately familiar with the Greek text of the LXX.⁴⁰

Paul’s “basic Bible” was the LXX, and when he reminds Timothy of the scriptures Timothy has known from his youth, he seems to be referring to the LXX: “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:14–15).⁴¹

Moreover, Luke’s citations of Old Testament passages regularly and explicitly recall the language of the LXX. In Jesus’ birth narrative, Luke employs formulaic descriptions drawn from passages in Genesis (37:11, “his father observed the saying”) and Daniel (4:28, “there came a voice from heaven”).⁴² Likewise, in Luke’s description of the first sermon of Jesus’ public ministry, given in the synagogue at Nazareth, he includes a citation of a Jubilee text from Isaiah 61:1–2 and 58:6 that is “so close to [the language] of the LXX that it seems to depend on it and not on an independent translation either from the Hebrew or from a Targum.”⁴³

Even Matthew, for whom evidence exists that he knew Aramaic or Hebrew or both, demonstrates influence from the LXX, as shown by some of his quotations of Old Testament prophecies. For example, Matthew 4:14–16 includes a citation of Isaiah 9:1–2, which indicates that he drew on the LXX version of the Isaiah passage.⁴⁴

Textual evidence for use of the LXX is also found in Hebrews, 1 Peter, and the Epistle of James.⁴⁵ For those authors who did make confident use of the available Greek translation of Hebrew scripture, we may assume that some of the subtleties of Greek grammar and rhetoric mediated their relationship to and understanding of their Jewish faith.

Not only do a number of the New Testament writers demonstrate knowledge of the Greek translation of Jewish scripture, but also the writings of the New Testament books came down to us in Koine Greek. Although most of the authors were born in Judea, it is widely assumed that a number of the texts were original Greek compositions.⁴⁶ The choice of language has important implications. In the case of original Greek composition, it indicates that the writers had sufficient facility in Greek for such an undertaking. Paul, for example, exhibits a marked familiarity with basic Hellenistic rhetorical training in his epistolary style.⁴⁷ Of the four Evangelists, Luke has the best control of Greek. In his Gospel, specifically in his infancy narrative, he consciously imitates the style of the Septuagint.⁴⁸ His writing style in Acts, meanwhile, demonstrates an awareness of the “rhetorical conventions of Greek historians and some knowledge of Greek literature and thought.”⁴⁹ Although numerous other examples from New Testament texts could be put forward,⁵⁰ for the purposes of this abbreviated discussion, it is sufficient to note that the surviving texts of the New Testament provide evidence of the writers’ (or scribes’) control of Koine and, in some cases, of advanced Greek rhetorical education. The choice of the Greek language has a further implication: it suggests that the authors of the New Testament books intended and anticipated a widespread dissemination of their texts throughout the Greek-speaking world of the eastern Mediterranean.

Hellenistic Philosophies

A second area where scholars believe they see evidence of Hellenistic influence on the New Testament is in philosophy. The influences are said to range from Plato to Zeno and to influence writers as diverse as John and Paul.⁵¹

For example, Plato’s conception of the world of forms and the insubstantial imitation of it to be found in this world and in the lives of humans likely shaped John’s description of Jesus as the one “who has come from above to offer true realities.”⁵² This does not mean that John was adopting a Platonic viewpoint, but he may have been familiar with Platonic terminology. He conveyed the notion that Jesus comes as the representative figure of a higher reality and, in his coming, reveals that higher reality to men and women and invites them to participate in it.

Epicureanism, a philosophical tradition stemming from Epicurus (342–270 BC) and developed in the Hellenistic Age, indirectly influenced New Testament thought. Epicurus sought to free people from fear and superstition, leaving no need for religion, and he believed that death was final: there was no resurrection from the dead.⁵³ Epicureans were among Paul’s listeners in Athens (Acts 17:18, 32), “and when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.” For this Christian truth was, according to Paul, “unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:23). With Epicureans in his audience, Paul may have framed his speech in part to respond to their possible objections.

Stoic philosophy, founded by Zeno of Citium, was “deeply religious and thoroughly moral.”⁵⁴ According to the Stoic, the universe was guided by a divine reason or purpose (logos), which should likewise guide men’s lives through the application of moral values and the conquest of the self.⁵⁵ Here again scholars see important points of contact: the Stoic terms that center on the supreme logos, which they say is the same as Zeus, are very like the terms John brings forward to portray Jesus as the word (logos) from the beginning: “Thou, O Zeus, art praised above all gods: many are thy names and thine is all power forever. The beginning of the world was from thee: and with law thou rulest over all things. . . . Nor is anything done upon the earth apart from thee.”⁵⁶ Here, as elsewhere, John is not equating Jesus to any Stoic notion of divinity, but drawing on descriptive language that may resonate with a Stoic audience and establish Jesus as the supreme governing power.

Paul was addressing Stoics, along with the Epicureans, in Acts 17, and he seems to be “echoing Stoic formulas.”⁵⁷ When he says, “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, . . . seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:24–26), he recalls both the language of the Stoic hymn to Zeus cited above and Zeno’s conception of the world community (oikumene) of which all men are fellow citizens. Paul’s observation that “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28) is an apparent quote from Epimenides’s Cretica. His reminder to the Athenians that their own poets have said “For we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28) repeats a view expressed in Aratus’s Phaenomina. Elsewhere in Paul’s writings, he seems to be reforming traditional Stoic and Epicurean maxims.⁵⁸

Even the influence of Cynic philosophers may be found in the texts of the New Testament. Cynics famously engaged in so-called “diatribes,” a method of discourse involving rhetorical questions, paradoxes, and other features. Paul’s letters are said to demonstrate features of the Cynic diatribe, and Jesus himself is sometimes characterized as a Cynic preacher.⁵⁹

None of this is to suggest that Christian thought expressed in the New Testament merely developed out of existing Hellenistic philosophies. However, certain early Christian writers were familiar with and conversant in the idiom of their Hellenized milieu, and they successfully employed that idiom in their missionary labors and in their writings to communicate Christ to diverse audiences. Paul knew the possibilities suggested by the Greek-speaking world. He traveled far and wide throughout it, bringing the message of Christ to the Jews of the Diaspora and to the Gentiles among whom they lived. Indeed, one may conclude that the multicultural communities and the use of Koine that resulted from Alexander’s conquests made widespread dissemination of the living and written gospel message possible.

Rome and the World of the New Testament 
John F. Hall

Roman government in 31 BC came under the control of a single individual, Octavian Caesar, grandnephew of Julius Caesar. Four years later, the Roman senate rewarded him with the title Augustus Caesar for successfully leading Rome through the government transition from republic to empire. Historians suggest that perhaps the most important consequence of this revolution was the establishment of an era of peace and prosperity within the borders of the empire, known as the pax Augusta or pax Romana. One wrote, “Protected by well-trained and exercised legions along the frontiers, pax romana, or the Roman peace, guaranteed that prosperity prevailed within. Travel and communication were facilitated by Roman roads, which connected well-developed urban centers with infrastructures maintained by an efficient government. . . . Christianity developed and expanded under these conditions. Roman government, law, society, religion, and custom influenced the inhabitants of those large portions of Europe, Asia, and Africa over which Rome exercised dominion.”⁶⁰ It was in this setting of the Roman Empire that Christianity was born, the books of the New Testament were written, and Christianity was spread under the protection of Roman law and government.

During the seven centuries that preceded the age of Augustus, Rome had successfully unified Italy, brought the western Mediterranean under its control with the defeat of the Phoenician empire of Carthage, and expanded eastward, acquiring the territories of the Hellenistic Greek successor kingdoms of Alexander.⁶¹ It was Augustus himself who incorporated the last of these kingdoms, Ptolemaic Egypt, into Rome’s empire with the defeat of Cleopatra and his former colleague Antony. Out of this long process came two government innovations constituting the historical background that, if understood, explains adequately the world of the New Testament.

The first of these is the notion that citizenship, with full or partial privileges of Roman law, could be extended to other places and to persons not born in Rome. Never before had any people granted equal privilege under the law to anyone not born in their particular polity. An immigrant might live in a city for fifty years but never be included in the rights held by the native born. The Romans changed this; they were a people who esteemed the law and valued the protection it afforded. Thus they were willing to reward others with grants of citizenship.

Roman law originated as the rulings and practices of those who acted as officials of both state and religion. Because it derived from the gods, Roman law could extend to all nations as the ius gentium (law of nations), which required the guarantee of fair treatment for all men, though Roman citizens exercised higher privileges and received greater prerogatives under that law. However, because Rome had developed into a city when separate peoples merged to become Romans, an innovative concept took form that citizenship was not limited to children born to Roman citizens, but could be extended to whole cities that Rome annexed in Italy, or could be granted even to individuals who by their acts and services merited Roman privileges.⁶²

By the time of Christ, most free residents of Italy, many leading citizens of cities in western provinces in Gaul and Spain, and a very small number of provincials from the eastern portion of the empire had received citizenship. Notably in this eastern region—namely, in the city of Tarsus—someone in Paul’s immediate family had received citizenship and passed its rights to him. In Judea, citizenship among local residents was very rare.⁶³ In the cities of the provinces, Roman law pertained to Roman citizens, but local law pertained to local residents. The laws of those subject to noncitizens were recognized by Rome and allowed to be practiced among such local peoples as ius gentium. The Sanhedrin derived their right to apply the provisions of the law of Moses to the populace of Judea from this Roman legal doctrine of local law for local residents under the concept of ius gentium.⁶⁴ The Roman system of provincial administration developed out of this principle of law.

With its initial acquisition of the Carthaginian holdings in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, Rome organized those regions outside of Italy into separate administrative areas known as provinces. The pattern continued as Rome acquired great expanses of territory and organized many provinces. Only in the eastern reaches of the empire, where local dynasts ruled as client kings loyal to Rome, was administrative practice different.

The most important provinces were governed by former chief officials of Rome, called consuls or praetors. These officials had their authority extended for a period of several years upon the completion of their terms of office in order to govern a province. Other senators or those of equestrian rank governed the less important provinces. The governor was sometimes accompanied by a state financial officer known as the quaestor and by personal friends who might serve as informal advisors.

The number of troops assigned to a province might be, as in the case of Judea, as small as a cohort (six hundred men) or two, the number of soldiers that formed an honor guard for Roman officials. However, in the frontier provinces along the Rhine and Danube, many thousands of highly trained legionary soldiers were necessary to prevent barbarian incursion. In the eastern provinces, only Syria—situated directly counter to the Parthian kingdom that filled the territory held today by Iraq and Iran—possessed a significant force of legions (ideally, a legion consisted of six thousand men). Sometimes three, sometimes four legions were stationed in Syria under the command of its high-ranking proconsular governor.⁶⁵ By contrast, during its era under direct Roman administration, Judea’s governor was a comparatively unimportant equestrian prefect or procurator, with only a ceremonial guard to command.⁶⁶ Moreover, while the Roman administrator of Judea was “in some fashion subject to the much-higher-ranking governor of Syria, within Judea he nevertheless exercised full civil and criminal jurisdictional powers.”⁶⁷

However, a Roman governor seldom exercised his power in relation to provincials themselves. Rather, his sphere of interest embraced the Roman citizens who might reside in a province. The problems and concerns of locals were delegated to local officials. Just as ius gentium allowed the exercise of local law by the provincials and their officials, local officials similarly undertook administration on behalf of local populations. This was a cardinal principle of Roman provincial administration since the organization of the first province and was applied throughout the whole empire, east and west.

In the first century AD, subject to the emperor’s maius imperium, or greater authority to countermand the authority of governors, the provincial governor was supreme in his province in all spheres administrative, military, or judicial. However, since the governor was accompanied by a small personal staff, his direct involvement in the day-to-day running of provincial life was very limited. In fact, he usually interposed himself only in matters that involved Roman citizens. Otherwise, the affairs of the cities and towns of provinces and the local populace were directed by local officials to whom the business of government fell. . . . As long as protection was provided for the interests of Rome and any of her citizens who may have had dealings or involvements in the province, little attention was typically apportioned to issues of provincial towns and cities.⁶⁸

A Roman governor’s interest in the affairs of a province ensured continued loyalty to Rome, continued timely collection of taxes, and continued unrestricted exercise of rights for Roman citizens. If these interests or Roman control of the province were threatened, the action of a Roman governor was swift and decisive as he interposed himself in provincial matters. Otherwise,

Roman policy had long adhered to the perspective that local governance was the most convenient provided the status quo be maintained, including the preservation of law and order, the collection of assessed revenues, and the support of Roman foreign policy with the supply of troops when required. Rome’s major concerns for the provinces were to maintain a peace in which Roman trade and commerce could be conducted and Romans could come and go in safety. Taxes were collected to support the framework of government, including the army as guardians of internal security and providers of protection from the threats of foreign powers or barbaric enemies without the empire.⁶⁹

The consistency of Roman policies and practices of government throughout all the provinces of its empire provides a cultural context within which New Testament events can be properly understood. Whether events in Judea during the lifetime of the Savior; the activities of Apostles such as Peter and Paul associated with the initial spread of the “good news” of Christianity; or the late-dated actions and teachings of John, the lone surviving apostolic witness, all happened under the same Roman law and the same principles of Roman provincial administration. While many of these events transpired in the several provinces of Asia Minor, in Greece, or in Syria, especially important are Judea and Galilee as the settings of Christ’s ministry.

A crucial caveat to correctly understand the historical context of the New Testament is to guard against imaginings of modern popular culture, as expressed in certain historical novels, films, or stage productions, that ignore history and portray Roman involvement where there was none or that offer sensationalist interpretations contrary to the record of legal evidence, historical writing, and the New Testament text itself. It is important to recognize that events before the advent of direct Roman rule, AD 6 in Judea and AD 44 in Galilee,⁷⁰ cannot have directly involved Roman administrators or troops. Similarly, in order to correctly understand the events chronicled in the Gospel of John or in Acts where Jewish leaders are held responsible for acting against the Savior and his followers, one must first understand that local officials, whether Herodian rulers or the Sanhedrin, maintained militia and paramilitary law enforcement troops, administered local law, and exercised jurisdiction over local residents who did not possess Roman citizenship.⁷¹ In these, as in other situations, the text must be read in terms of historical context to establish accurate meaning.

The Roman applications of dual legal practices also explain why these same leaders of the Jews were able to stone Stephen under provisions of local law but were prevented by Roman soldiers from doing the same to Paul (see Acts 22:24–29). The local leaders administered the local law for provincials, and the Roman governors or courts administered Roman law for Roman citizens. Additionally, in the first century, Roman law served as a protector not only of the Roman citizen Paul but also of other Christians of Jewish origin outside of Judea. These Christian converts were often the object of persecution from strict Jews who considered them to be apostates from Judaism, and, like Stephen, they were liable to death by stoning. Outside of Judea, where local Jewish leaders administered law for provincials, Jewish prosecutors were required to pursue their attacks on Christians in the courts of other provinces, where other local laws prevailed over Roman law.

It is abundantly clear from Acts that in the first century the persecutors of Christians were not Romans but Jews, the former brethren of so many Christians converted from Judaism. Who does not recall the many times Paul’s successful proselyting of local Jewish congregations resulted in angry synagogue leaders demanding action against Paul from town administrators? While it cannot be denied that Paul’s status as a natural-born Roman citizen furnished the Apostle great protection, it is also clear that even the non-citizen was accorded certain legal rights under Rome’s concept of ius gentium.⁷²

Because of Roman law, religious tolerance existed throughout the empire in the first century. Indeed, the Romans had been especially tolerant of Jewish religion. Julius Caesar himself “promulgated laws to protect the religious freedom of Jews throughout the empire, extending to the Jews an unprecedented grant of special privileges,”⁷³ including recognition as a legal religion, exemption from military service, and certain tax exemptions.⁷⁴ First- and second-century Christian writings “seem not to indict Rome for killing Christians, but correspond with Roman second-century documents that reveal Rome as something of a protector of Christians.”⁷⁵

The world of Rome, clearly delineated along specific administrative guidelines that applied in all the provinces of its empire and founded on the dual principle of Roman law and ius gentium, provided an environment conducive to the spread of Christianity in the first century. Accordingly, all legal and governmental proceedings noted in the New Testament must be examined and interpreted in the context of Roman policies.