Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [130]
• 1 Esdras
This book retells some of the books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and includes a parable derived from the Zoroastrian religion of Persia about the “strongest thing in the world,” which proves to be Truth.
• 2 Esdras
With both Jewish and Christian aspects, this book discusses the resurrection of the dead and the coming of the Messiah.
• Prayer of Manasseh
In this brief book, the most notorious king of Judah, Manasseh, is depicted offering a prayer of penitence in which he asks for God’s forgiveness for all the evil he did as king.
• Psalm 151
A psalm said by some to have been composed by David after he defeated Goliath, though other commentators dispute this conclusion.
With the close of Hebrew scriptures, there is a looming presence over the Mediterranean world. It is the dawn of the age of Rome’s empire, and everything that happens in the time of Jesus and the early years of Christianity must be viewed against the backdrop of Rome’s power. The world into which Jesus was born was a world utterly dominated by the Romans.
Originally a group of villages, Rome developed into a city and slowly gained dominance over all of Italy. In 264 BCE, Rome and the North African city of Carthage confronted each other for control of the Mediterranean in the Punic Wars, a series of battles that lasted until 146 BCE. Founded by the Phoenicians on the north coast of Africa, Carthage was the leading power in the western Mediterranean. Despite the victory of the famed Hannibal, the North African general who marched those elephants across the Alps to surprise Rome with an attack from the north, Rome completed its conquest of Carthage in 146 BCE. Carthage was leveled and Rome controlled the western Mediterranean.
During the next century, Rome also secured complete control over the eastern Mediterranean. By the time of the great general Pompey (106-48 BCE), Judea had been reduced to a client state of the Romans, and Pompey captured Jerusalem in 60 BCE. A chaotic period of civil war followed in Rome but was concluded when Julius Caesar took control of Rome in 49 BCE.
In 44 BCE, Caesar was assassinated and replaced by a ruling triumvirate including Marc Antony and Julius Caesar’s great nephew Octavian. Their partnership also ended in a civil war between the forces of Octavian and Marc Antony, with Octavian emerging victorious after the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE.
Soon after, Octavian proclaimed himself the emperor Augustus. Beginning with Augustus, Rome achieved its world empire with its highly disciplined army, diplomatic skills, and the policy of granting Roman citizenship to all those under its control.
In Judea—the Roman name for Judah—an ambitious soldier named Herod was able to play the Romans against one another before Augustus consolidated his power. Born about 73 BCE, Herod was appointed military governor and became a Roman citizen in 47 BCE. In 41, Herod was made a “tetrarch,” or ruler, of one of the five Roman provinces in the area. Herod went to Rome in 40 BCE and Mark Antony made him King of Judea, giving him sole power in the area, secured with the help of a Roman army. But Herod saw which way the wind was blowing and shifted allegiances to Octavian, who defeated Antony. Herod was rewarded when he was confirmed king by the emperor Augustus.
Seen as a cruel puppet of the pagan Romans, Herod was detested for the most part at home. Though he rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple on a scale that surpassed that of Solomon’s Temple, Herod was feared and hated, the tyrannical head of a “police state.” Herod died at age sixty-nine in the year 4 BCE, and the last years of Herod’s rule provide the immediate backdrop for one of the most significant stories in history, a story so familiar to Christians,