New Testament Background
To understand the New Testament,
then, we must know about three different worlds: the Christian world, the
Jewish world, and the Roman world. In all of the New Testament writings,
these three worlds overlap.
THE ROMAN WORLD
The world of the New Testament can be
a strange place for the uninitiated. People beat their breasts (Luke 18:13;
23:48), tear their clothing (Mark 14:63), speak in tongues (Acts 2:4–13; 1 Cor. 14), and wash one another’s feet (John 13:3–15).
Some people wear phylacteries, which Jesus thinks should be narrow, not broad
(Matt. 23:5). When people eat, they don’t sit at a table; they lie on the floor (John 13:23, 25). When
they want to elect an important leader, they don’t take a vote; they cast lots (Acts 1:26).
This world is often a harsh one by our standards. When a woman wants to make a request of a man, she kneels in the dirt and waits for him to call on her (Matt. 20:20); when a man defaults on a debt, his wife and children are sold into slavery (Matt. 18:25). It is a brutal world, one in which thieves can be nailed naked to wooden poles and hung up in public where people can watch them slowly die (Mark 15:27). It is a world in which some people think that a woman who commits adultery should be hauled out into the street and pelted with rocks until she is dead (John 8:2–5).
It is also a world filled with surprising tenderness and dignity. People speak freely and affectionately of how deeply they love one another (Phil. 1:3–8; 4:1). Families are valued, friendships are treasured, and hospitality to strangers can almost be taken for granted. It is a world where faith, hope, and love are primary values (1 Cor. 13:13) and where the retention or attainment of honor trumps all other goals in life. This is also a world with a finely tuned moral compass, with some widely accepted notions of what constitutes virtue and what constitutes vice (see, e.g., Rom. 1:29–31; 13:13; 1 Cor. 5:10–11; 6:9–10; 2 Cor. 6:6–7; Gal. 5:19–23).
All the books of the New Testament were written by people whom we would call Christians, so in order to understand them, we have to know a few things about what these Christians believed: what they valued, what they feared, how they lived. But, to be a bit more specific, all the books of the New Testament were written by Roman Christians—that is, Christians who lived in the Roman Empire. Furthermore, even though all these books were written by Christians, not all were written about Christians. Jesus, John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, and many other celebrated New Testament personalities were not Christians, but Jews. To be more specific, they were Roman Jews—that is, Jews who lived in the Roman Empire.
Roman Rule during the Christian Era
Jesus was born during the reign of
the first great Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE), and he conducted his ministry during the reign of the
next emperor, Tiberius (14–37 CE). Rome is a long way from
Jerusalem, but the emperor’s presence was always felt.
Later, as Christianity moved out into the world around the Mediterranean Sea, the new faith came to the attention of the emperors in ways that invited direct engagement. For example, the Roman historian Suetonius reports that the emperor Claudius expelled Jews from Rome around 49 CE due to a disturbance over someone known as “Chrestus” (probably a mangled reference to Christ). Claudius’s successor, Nero, violently persecuted Christians, murdering them in sadistic ways that generally repulsed the Roman public.
For Jesus and his followers in Palestine, however, the local Roman rulers had more immediate relevance than the emperors in faraway Rome. When the Romans conquered a country, they typically set up a king, governor, or some other ruler in the land, but they also tried to preserve some institutions of native rule. Thus, according to the New Testament, a council of Jewish leaders, the Sanhedrin, had authority in Jerusalem in some matters (Mark 14:55–64; Acts 5:21–40), but the Roman authorities always had the final say (cf. John 18:31). Some knowledge of these Roman authorities is important for understanding the New Testament, so here we look briefly at some of these rulers.
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