let's continue our discussion of jewish history with uh three lectures three short lectures that
are going to look specifically at the birth of christianity this is obviously an incredibly
important moment in world history although if you asked most jews in the first century they probably
would not have noted the appearance of this movement which would ultimately change the world
because it simply faded into the background of so many other things that were going on at that
time let's begin first with a discussion of the political background so as you will recall from
the previous lecture herod dies in the year four before the common era the romans are not thrilled
with the idea of giving his descendants that is those who survived his multiple murderous rages
the title of king so his eldest surviving son one archelaus was given the diminished title
ethnic which means essentially ruler of the people but not having nearly as much power as king per se
the real power would be vested in roman authorities now archelaus was given the most
important section of the territory you can see in this map here he was given judea itself which
is more towards the south and idaho the region conquered under the uh hashman and then also
samaria his mother was actually sumerian and up until the galileo the galilee region
this was the highest status region of the entire area it was a mixed population of jews
and non-jews primarily samaritans his younger brother herod antipas was given the much more
jewish galilee region and the perea which is on the eastern bank of the jordan river and another
younger brother herod philip was given the region that was more recently conquered in what would be
today syria and jordan his uh herod's sister salome was given the region on the coast which
included yamnya which is in hebrew tradition known as yavna very important place later on in the
first century and also a little bit of territory on the jordan river valley so that's basically
how the territory was divided up it didn't last long however because archelaus was regarded as
an unusually cruel and incompetent administrator and due to a significant amount of local pressure
the romans decided to simply remove him from rule and he was exiled to the new settlement of vienne
which is in the south of france on the rhone river it's actually you know not too bad if
you get exiled to south of france but this was not definitely an ideal place for a jew to go
he is nevertheless the first name jew in france in the year six before the common era and the romans
put in place uh roman administrators who were called at first prefects and then later called
procurators and even when we would have a jewish king a little bit later in the first century
it was really the prefect or the pro-puritor who would be the person in charge and really having
significant power two of the most important of these figures were pontius pilate who's extremely
important of course during the story of jesus's life and death and gaseous floris who is very
important in terms of understanding the background of the revolt that would erupt in the year 66.
now in terms of the jewish kings there were two of them it was they were both named
agrippa also known as agrippas the first one herod agrippa the first reigned from the year 41 to 44
and the reason why his kingship was reinstated had less to do with politics in judea but more
to do with politics in rome he was favored by incoming emperors and as a result he was given
some territory back it's a lot of interesting things to say about him as an individual but i'd
just like to focus on two things for our purposes today first of all he appears negatively in the
christian scriptures which we're going to talk about more in the the next lecture
in the book of acts chapter 12 in particular this is the agrippa that uh actually does very badly
vis-a-vis james and also peter however in the talmudic tradition he appears with some frequency
as a sadly heroic figure and this seems to have a significant amount of historical support
he seems to have been sort of a divided character he was raised as a roman
and with roman sensibilities that is not so much in tune with the much more religious sensibilities
of the population in jerusalem and especially not the rural countryside he would have been much more
comfortable in the roman enclaves of caesarea for example however he did establish significant
connections with the pharisaic community and in many ways attempted to you know at least
feign some kind of support for jewish ideals the the talmud describes an unusual passage in which
he is is invited to read from the torah and he comes across a passage that essentially describes
how he as an idimayan because he is the grandson of herod the man would be invalidated from being
the high priest in his eyes filled with tears and the uh the rabbis and pres who are present say
you are our brother agrippas you are our brother and for this incidentally they were criticized
because it was a sort of an obsequious thing to say at the time nevertheless fascinating figure
will take us too far off to discuss him now his son as marcus julius agrippa the second
also called king but not of judea he was actually given territories that were primarily not jewish
in the region of syria that i showed you earlier he actually was a much more slavish imitator
of roman norms than his father he actually backed the roman side in the roman jewish war and had
very little to do with the actual governance of judea proper this remarkable piece of artwork
from vasily sorikov is actually inspired by a passage in the book of acts chapters
25 and 26 in which paul about whom we'll have a lot more to say in the next couple of lectures
was called to appear before agrippa ii you can see him here on the left and also the procurator
porquios festus i actually like that name porcius that sounds pretty uh ironic or maybe perfect for
a roman procurator and agrippa the second sister berenice with whom there are all kinds of nasty
rumors as well and uh it's a fascinating passage in the book of acts in which paul
is called to explain himself and say something about christianity and agrippa the second here
comes across as a somewhat ambivalent character um not entirely convinced that uh the way the
christians are being treated is correct at any rate that's a very quick look at the prefix and
and the brief-lived kings of the region in the first century now the prefix and procreators
had to deal with a lot of difficulties with this population that culminated of course in the great
revolt of the year 66 extended for about six or seven years there were however previous revolts
there was a significant revolt in the year six that seems to have been connected with a census
jewish culture frowns on taking censuses and indeed for counting people for any reason
uh so much so that when uh you know a synagogue will convene a quorum for prayer a so-called
mignon in hebrew and you'll need 10 adult males in a traditional orthodox minion you
will never count them by numbers because they're considered inappropriate to count by numbers
you will you know recite a verse that has ten words in it or a blessing that has ten words in it
and uh count people as you say the words that way you'll know if you have ten or not
but there was a revolt in the year six over one of these sentences there are reasons when a census of
course should be taken and there are many several mentioned in the torah but again outside of
our sphere of responsibility for today's lecture there was also a significant revolt in the year 40
when caligula then emperor shown here decided that he a little bit like antiochus iv who we
talked about a few lectures ago decided to defile the temple courtyard by erecting a monument to
himself which would be completely out of keeping with jewish sensibilities and jews were getting
very very upset about this and in fact even roman authorities were saying you know caligula
maybe this isn't such a great idea they're kind of trying to slow walk his erection of a monument to
himself luckily for the region he was assassinated and this put an end to this rather strange attempt
to put a monument to caligula in the temple but we definitely are dealing with a population that
is suspicious of roman activity and definitely distrustful of romans and ready to revolt over it
uh the romans in particular as we discussed under herod the great
about 50 odd years ago they've set up a base in cesarea where it's much more immutable to roman
sensibilities and it is primarily from caesarea that most of the roman administrative degrees
are promulgated one of the most significant of these procreators i mentioned earlier was pontius
pilate here's actually a fascinating stone that was discovered a while ago
that actually mentions his name is in the second line here pilatus is what it shows there one last
thing that's really crucial to understand about this period is that it is a period of phenomenal
messianic ferment we already spoke about the qumran community and the dead sea scrolls
you got a sense of what some of these strange populations perhaps essenes may have uh you know
been like and what what this would have said about the larger society but what about specifically
the messianic movement associated with early christianity so we know for example that josephus
who is our go-to source for the first century he wrote a magnificent work called the jewish war
which we described again in previous lectures talked a little bit about who josephus was as well
and another major work called the jewish antiquities which is huge and he had a lot to
say about internal politics in the first century he describes for example a messianic movement led
by a so-called egyptian prophet probably a jew from egypt rather than an ethnically egyptian
individual who actually got together troops of followers to meet him on the mount of olives
and there his messianic movement was crushed this is probably in the 40s but what does he say about
jesus so we have a passage in josephus's writings which is called the testimonium flavianum flaviano
meaning from flavian the dynasty of emperors that adopted josephus his name was formerly
flavius josephus so hence the the name flaviano and this is a really bizarre and much argued
about passage here's here's a translation of it i'm just reading the first part about this time
there lived jesus a wise man if indeed one ought to call him a man somewhat bizarre thing for a jew
like josephus to write the idea of a human being possessing the qualities or attributes of god in
a identical sense meaning that this is a god man be very unusual for a judas say and still remain
within the parameters of judaism uh of the first century especially towards the end of it when
we'll talk about how there was a more of a split between church and synagogue and this was made
absolutely clear for the synagogue community that it was totally fair bolton um and there's
some description on and then this passage he was the messiah like wow that is like the end of the
story i mean in jewish thought a messiah the word in hebrew is mashiach it's translated into greek
as christos it means essentially the anointed one right like pouring oil on the head of this one
being chosen to lead the jews we see that passage for example in the book of samuel
where the prophet samuel anoints saul this is the term christos messiah now
many scholars have doubted for hundreds of years that this particular paragraph was actually
written by josephus in recent decades there's been some revision of that saying well maybe
josephus wrote something that was later edited by an enthusiastic christian
copyist because some elements of it seem to be you know acceptable for a greek writing jew of the
first century to write but others just seem so far out of line such as this phrase he was the messiah
i mean if if he was the messiah and jewish thought history stops at that point right he's a king
he takes over the population and creates jewish independence both spiritually and politically and
that obviously didn't happen it would be strange for josephus to write that and so on and so forth
so many have opined it seems like the balance of scholarly opinion is that this particular passage
is not really josephus's writings the first time it appears in a corroborating quotation
is in the work of eusebius a church historian from the late 3rd early 4th century and so
most scholars assume that this particular passage was somehow inserted between josephus's death at
the end of the first century and the time that eusebius saw it a couple hundred years later but
at any rate what i can say in this context is that we don't have any other cooperating
information outside of christian sources that gives a sense of what jews at that time actually
thought about the early christian movement we will have some discussion that appears later
towards the end of the first century and certainly going into the third century we'll talk in a
couple of lectures about how the talmud describes the separation of church and synagogue and how the
synagogue looks backward upon the events that became so important for the emerging christian
movement but at the time they did not really make a ripple in the few jewish sources that
we have generate a lot more to say about this uh let us continue with the next lecture when we look
specifically at jesus within the larger context of his jewish audience thank you very much for
watching