What Were the Challenges of Living in Palestine in Jesus’ Time?
What were the challenges of living in Palestine in Jesus’ time?
Most of the people in the Bible lived in or around a land that was called Palestine in Jesus' time, and which is now part of the modern state of Israel. Rome was a city-state then (Rome is now the capital of Italy), ruling large tracts of land around the Mediterranean Sea, including Palestine. Situated between Egypt, Syria and Arabia, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region has a long, violent and noisy history as crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics.
When Jesus was around, times were very hard for the people of Israel. There was the Roman occupation, which means that there were foreign soldiers in control of the country. They stole, raped, and terrorized the people. The rulers were Roman appointed which meant that they did not get justice because the rulers didn't care about their people or country. Taxes were very high and the collectors were brutal about collecting it.
Life under the Roman occupation meant that everything but religion was controlled by foreign people. This shows that they didn't understand their culture or religious obligations. Romans worshiped many gods and the Jewish God was just another one to add to the list which was very long. Caesar was even a god! This created a lot of conflict in the country.
If you didn't care about religion (and there were many who didn't) you could get along with the Romans. For those people, religion merely meant that the religious people made trouble for the "law abiding" folks who were interested in accommodating the Romans. These people wanted to "get ahead" with the current government and they cooperated with them to get where they wanted to be. People were high priests, but they were political appointees. This is like having your preacher be appointed by the government. He was in it for the status, not the religion.
High priests were appointed, not anointed by God. They served for a short time, then were
Most of the people in the Bible lived in or around a land that was called Palestine in Jesus' time, and which is now part of the modern state of Israel. Rome was a city-state then (Rome is now the capital of Italy), ruling large tracts of land around the Mediterranean Sea, including Palestine. Situated between Egypt, Syria and Arabia, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region has a long, violent and noisy history as crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics.
When Jesus was around, times were very hard for the people of Israel. There was the Roman occupation, which means that there were foreign soldiers in control of the country. They stole, raped, and terrorized the people. The rulers were Roman appointed which meant that they did not get justice because the rulers didn't care about their people or country. Taxes were very high and the collectors were brutal about collecting it.
Life under the Roman occupation meant that everything but religion was controlled by foreign people. This shows that they didn't understand their culture or religious obligations. Romans worshiped many gods and the Jewish God was just another one to add to the list which was very long. Caesar was even a god! This created a lot of conflict in the country.
If you didn't care about religion (and there were many who didn't) you could get along with the Romans. For those people, religion merely meant that the religious people made trouble for the "law abiding" folks who were interested in accommodating the Romans. These people wanted to "get ahead" with the current government and they cooperated with them to get where they wanted to be. People were high priests, but they were political appointees. This is like having your preacher be appointed by the government. He was in it for the status, not the religion.
High priests were appointed, not anointed by God. They served for a short time, then were