Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesDean
martureo, I am curious, does the books you've read or teachings you've learned indicate any reasoning behind the time frame? Like why was that period in time chosen? Why not the period where the Greeks were in power or a time before that?
My ancient history when it come to religion(s) is fairly weak.
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I suppose you mean the time period of the Incarnation (Christ)?
Because of prophecy. And why the prophecy? Well, you're going to ask God for that answer.
My personal opinion was because God forsaw a period of widespread apostasy. I'll try to make this short.
Man lives with God. Man sins. God casts men out of the Garden. God sends down the law, Israel starts following false gods, God sends a prophet to call people to repentence, people kill the prophet and God punishes them. The people repent and follow God alone. (Repeat X number of times.)
Then God says "really guys? have you not learned from the error of your fathers? I'll let other nations conquer you and put you into exile for X number of years". The people repent and God eventually restores the people back to Israel.
The people get back to Israel and instead of rebuilding Jerusalem's walls (torn down in the invasion) or the Temple, the people start living the good life. Building their houses bigger, rejoicing in their wealth, ignoring the poor. God sends a prophet and punishes the people for their sins. They eventually rebuild the temple.
A group of the religious leaders say "hey, let's make sure we adhere to the law as best we possibly can. We are NOT going to get exiled again." This group eventually became known as the Pharisees. They tried to make sure that they followed the very letter of the law to the nth degree.
(Funny bit about the Pharisees to let you know how serious they were.)
So rest on the Sabbath day was a pretty big law. No hunting, no doing work, no carrying a load across a property line. That type of stuff.
The Pharisees then figure that it is unlawful to swat a fly on the Sabbath. Why you say? Well, because if a man swats at a fly and misses, he will inevitably try again. And if he missed the second time he will inevitably try a third. The third time he is sinning because he's obviously hunting the fly and thus violating the Sabbath law of rest.
I am absolutely serious about that.
Anyway, the Pharisaical tradition gets more and more rules from the tradition of the learned leaders/thinkers. There are literally thousands of rules now on top of the original rules that God laid down. But there's a problem. No one is actually following the spirit of the Law. No one is thinking of why that law was put in place. They are trying to follow the letter of the law and find every loophole possible. Some pretty harsh legalism going on.
So in this period we have the Romans rule, a Jewish king in charge of Judea (who's only Jewish by blood), and the religious rulers following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. The poor are getting poorer, the rich getting richer and a great amount of spiritual apostasy because of the outward righteousness sought by following the Law.
God shows up as Jesus and starts living the perfect life, he is the perfect example of man both living righteously by the law and in communion (relationship) with God.
So, Jesus shows up and one thing He keeps mentioning is that the Pharisees were like the really nice white marble tombs you see in cemeteries sometimes. They were very pretty on the outside but full of filth and death on the inside. He again uses the image of someone foolishly washing the outside of a cup and ignoring the inside.
One also has to consider that since Rome was the power over the area at the time and there was relative peace within the empire it would be very very easy to spread the message of the coming of God all over the empire. Common language (koine Greek), no borders to worry about crossing, etc.
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While this was a 30,000 ft view of the situation and doesn't really go into the soteriological (salvation, how man sits with God) aspect of it all. It might give you a picture as to why this point in Jewish history was kind of the perfect place for the Incarnation to happen.