WALKING IN THE SANDALS OF A FIRST-CENTURY JEW

David M. Hoffeditz

In God's Own Words

God is not a man ... that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? (Num.23:19)

He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:44-45)

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. (Heb. 1:1-2)

It is your first week as an American exchange student in Cairo, Egypt. After watching a late-night American film with your new roommates, one of the students turns and asks you, "What distinctive facets have contributed to your American culture?" Besides the obvious answers of apple pie, Disney World, baseball, country music, and McDonald's, I suspect you would mention key events in our history, such as the Civil War and Pearl Harbor. You would probably also refer to important dates, such as 1776, 1812, and 9/11, and significant people in American history, such as George Washington, Betsy Ross, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr.

If you have found yourself in this kind of situation, then you know how difficult it is to have others really understand you — whether you are from America or from another country — if they do not know your stories. Yet, how often do Christians today enter into the New Testament world with no knowledge of the stories of first-century Jews? If we are really going to comprehend the New Testament, we must have some knowledge of its historical, social, and religious background. Our nine New Testament writers did not pen these twenty-seven books in a vacuum; rather they addressed real issues, real people, and real needs of their day.

If we were to sit down and have a conversation with a Palestinian Jew of the first century and ask her what has shaped the Jewish people, we would hear five major stories covering nearly seven hundred years. Four hundred of those years bridge the time period between the two major divisions of the Bible and are referred to as the intertestamental period. As we engage in this dialogue, we need to be careful not to become distracted by names, places, and dates, but rather we need to observe how these various facts assist in our understanding of the historical situation of the New Testament authors and of those living after the time of Jesus who would have received these books and letters.

The Story of Destruction and Exile: The Assyrians and the Babylonians

The first important story we would hear from our first-century Jewish friend focuses upon events occurring approximately seven hundred years before Christ and picks up near the end of the Old Testament—the time of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. These two major opponents from the ancient Near East were responsible for the demise of Israel, which by this point in history had been divided into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. The Assyrians invaded and conquered Israel, the northern kingdom, in 722 B.C. Many of the Jewish inhabitants were taken captive or relocated to other countries.

While attempts were made, the Assyrians were unsuccessful in overtaking Judah, the southern kingdom. Eventually, Judah fell when the Babylonians invaded and conquered them. The Babylonians deported the Jews in 605 (2 Kings 24:1-5; Dan. 1:1-6), 597 (2 Kings 24:6-16), and in 586 B.C. (2 Kings 25:1-21). These deportations resulted in the scattering (referred to as the Diaspora) of Jews throughout the Babylonian Empire into foreign lands. These exiles forced the Jewish people to leave the land that was promised to their father Abraham and settle in lands they had never visited, in lands inhabited by peoples of different languages and cultures.

If the destruction of their homes and the slaughter of family members and friends were not enough, the unthinkable transpired in 586 B.C. The Jews witnessed the razing of their holy city, Jerusalem, and the building that adorned her, the temple built by Solomon. Tragedy often shapes a people group, and this incident was no exception. The loss of the Promised Land and the destruction of the Jewish temple had an enormous effect upon the Jewish psyche since these were two important pieces to their identity.

The only item left that helped to define a Jew was the Law. The renewed importance of the Law can be seen in the establishment of gathering houses, or synagogues, for the reading of the Law and for prayer. The death of formal idolatry among the Jews, which was the main cause of the exile, was one of the few bright spots in this dismal period.

God utilized these events to draw his people to himself as they waited for him to fulfill the promises he made to the patriarchs. This story of the exile and the end of the Davidic kingdom helped form the identity of the Jewish people to whom the New Testament authors wrote. When Jesus announced that the "kingdom of God was near," it certainly would have rekindled the hope of the restoration of the physical Davidic kingdom, not a spiritual one.

The Story of Return and Restoration: The Persians

Daniel 5 begins recording the second story that is essential for understanding those living during the time of Jesus. Here we read of the Persian king, Cyrus II, who surprisingly overtook the great city of Babylon and her king, Belshazzar, in 539 B.C. Unlike the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire was more tolerant, allowing 42,360 Jews to return to Jerusalem. According to Ezra 1–4, an altar was set up in 537 B.C., and approximately twenty years later the temple, while far from the glorious Solomonic temple, was...