23. The Long Silence

‘Living History’ Meditations No.23: The Long Silence

Mt 1:1 “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah^[b] the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

Lk 1:5 “In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah.”

An Unpromising Start? The start of the New Testament for the first-time reader is not, I suggest, seriously mind-grabbing; it’s just a long family tree. We’ll look at it in the next study but for now just note that Matthew’s lack-lustre beginning, is for a person arriving for the first time, not exciting, but it comes at the end of a not-exciting four-hundred period of silence from heaven, but as I said at the end of the previous study, history did not stand still. To catch the point I want to make, I’m afraid we’re going to have to have a look at a skeleton of the history that flowed on from where we have just left it yesterday.

Ongoing History: We left it in the hands of the powerful Persian empire under Artaxerxes  (464-423) having reminded ourselves that from Neh 2:1 we saw Nehemiah come to Jerusalem in 444/5BC, and after his arrival we’re only given a relatively short period of history pertaining to the Jews with him. So for the next four hundred years or so we’re in the hands of historians of the world.

• Round about 330BC the Persian Empire was overcome by the Greeks under Alexander the Great who brought Greek culture and language (known as the Hellenistic period which lasted for a little less than two hundred years). His kingdom was eventually divided among four of his generals.
• One of these, Ptolemy, was given the rule of Egypt and established himself as king and created a dynasty that lasted from 305BC to the Roman conquest of 30BC (the Egyptian Ptolemaic Empire) and they had control over the Jews.
• The generals are significant in that a number of Jews settled in Egypt and particularly in Alexandria and between 250 and 130BC a Greek translation of the Old Testament, which we now call the Septuagint, was produced to help those Jews living outside Jerusalem and beyond Canaan who were becoming more Greek orientated.
• About 198BC the Syrian Empire to the north gained control over the Jews and put pressure throughout their empire to spread the Greek culture, seeking to stop the Jews following their traditional ways of life and even turning the temple into a pagan shrine.
• A revolt occurred in Israel and eventually, Judas (Maccabeus) from a priestly family took control and independence was eventually gained. In 164BC the temple was cleansed, and the event became the annual celebration in December of Hanukkah, the ‘Feast of Lights’.
• The period of 164-63BC now tends to be referred to as the Hasmonean or Maccabean Period. (Hasmonean coming from the Hebrew name, Simon, one of the early Maccabean leaders). Nine rulers followed Judas Maccabeus, and as time passed, they became more dictatorial and corrupt. Internal strife led their leaders to ask the Roman general, Pompey, to come and restore order and thus Roman rule started in 63BC and continued until well into the next millennia.
• In 40BC the Romans appointed Herod the Great as king of Judea, and he died about 4BC. Thus the nation existed under the rule of Rome at the time of Jesus’ birth.

Why the Silence? So there it was, history rolling on and not a mention of God. Now we asked the question back in Study No.9, why the long silence when God appeared to be saying nothing to His people. The answer here may be found in the writings of evangelist Michael Green (now deceased) in ‘Evangelism in the Early Church’; here he points out that there were at least six reasons why that time was the very best for the Gospel to be spread throughout the Roman Empire. Other writers such as Rodney Stark and Tom Holland suggest similar things.

Waiting for Changes: If we can accept this, it is a reasonable assumption that the Lord was waiting for the changes taking place to ensure that ‘the world was ready’, that the ‘environment’ was just right for Jesus to come down and be part of the prepared Jewish community, to communicate God’s love into this historically prepared context where Jesus’ teaching would find open hearts in some who would become his followers and take the gospel on – the gospel of his death and resurrection and ascension for the salvation of mankind. The Jews of Nehemiah’s time may possibly have been ready, but the society of four hundred years later was so much better to receive him, both numerically, socially, politically and spiritually. Now we may be ready to step into the most amazing years of history – God in the flesh in the midst of his people.