Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012
Vern Peterman · Apr 29, 2012
Bible Bkgds/Church History, No. 18
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926312406212

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're looking at Roman culture this week. Next week we will look at Jewish culture. The Roman culture is fascinating because it's obviously real relevant to the New Testament and gives us insight into much of the New Testament. In addition to that, however, it's a part of why Paul could write at the right time, God sent his son. because the Romans established a certainly not always pleasant but a uniform communication and government and as we'll see a large road system on which to carry the gospel. So anyway, I think it's fascinating. Let's take a look.

Rome was a small city when Alexander the Great spread his empire to the east. We talked last week about the Greek Empire established by Alexander the Great. And here's Alexander the Great looking to the Persian Empire and pushing to the east. At the same time, here is this threatening city of Rome that is now beginning to build an empire at the same time Alexander the Great is pushing to the east, the Romans are expanding in their area and actually ultimately kind of chasing Alexander's empire, at least the western part of it.

By 63 BC, Roman armies had taken Israel. They'd gone in there and taken control In a few decades, Herod the Great would be put in by the Romans. And we'll take a look at Herod the Great as we go along, as we have been. Here is the timeline. We've had the Persian Empire, which was the empire at the end of the Old Testament period. We've had the Greek empires established by Alexander the Great.

We call it the Hasmonean rulers. These are Jewish rulers. It was the Maccabees who were the military people that fought against the Greek empires. It was the Hasmonean rulers that were the political name of those who stood for about a century and were the leaders of the Jewish nation during that period of time.

So now we have at 63 BC the Roman Empire And they continued on for some centuries. And as a matter of fact, we in the Western Hemisphere have admired the Roman Empire, even up to our modern times. We talk about Julius Caesar, or Caesar. And what was the name of the German leader in the last century? The Kaiser, right? Named after Caesar, right? So we've got that. Essentially the Tsar was the Russian version of the same name.

So there has been a centuries-long admiration of the power and duration of the Roman Empire. Now, so here's the Roman Empire, obviously greatly impacting the New Testament, not just the Gospels, but on into the very end of the New Testament, all the way into the book of Revelation. Latin, and this is an interesting thing we talked about, Latin did not dominate the Roman Empire until the empire was beginning to disintegrate. And this is a curious thing, is that languages continued on for centuries after the empire that established the language had fallen apart. That was true of Assyria. They established Aramaic. You had the Persian empire that had language impacts into the New Testament. Here's Jesus talking to the thief on the cross. He says, today you'll be with me in paradise, a Persian word.

And then you have the Greek language, Koine, Common Greek, the New Testament Greek, continuing on until 300 AD as a common and prominent language, six centuries after Alexander the Great established it. And then once the Roman Empire began to fall apart, that is when Latin began to predominate. Isn't that interesting? So same thing here.

Here is, and you have this on your handout here, Christ was born during Augustus' rule of the Roman Empire. Augustus was a pivotal emperor because he reigned for a long period of time and was able to establish things and keep them in place. It was not uncommon for the emperors to change things from their predecessor, but for a long time he had been an emperor for decades before Christ was born and continued on as an emperor for a decade and a half, if not two decades after Christ was born. So he continued for a long time and was able to establish stability, even making a lot of laws about families and impacting the social background and the culture of the Roman Empire.

Here is Judea off in the corner, and here's another area we've talked about around Ephesus was where a lot of Jews were located, and then around Alexandria, and then finally off to the east in the Parthian Empire, there were still a lot of Jews in the area around Babylon. So you had those kind of four main concentrations of the Jews during the time of the Roman Empire.

Here's the Roman Empire from space, which is kind of an amazing thing to contemplate. Of course, the Romans never saw the empire from space, right? I would say that's very, very unlikely that they ever saw that. But it's interesting from our standpoint to think of it, here's an empire of such an extent that you can see it from space, and it is a significant area.

Here you have on this area, British Island, and those were part of the Roman Empire. The Romans first built roads up in southern England, and then during the time of Claudius, who is mentioned in the Book of Acts, he went there and established southern Britain as a part of the Roman Empire, which continued to be a part of the Roman Empire until about 420 AD. And why did they establish the roads?

They had military equipment to get there, and this is part of their machinery. They would get soldiers up on something like this with the wheels and then push it up against, say, a wall, and then the soldiers would be higher up, all en masse, and able to start climbing the wall, right? They would have soldiers prepared to fight and go along the roadways and boy they could march fast. They would have soldiers carrying the insignias of Rome, the standards of Rome.

They would also have ships, whereas we have the Navy and the Air Force and the Army and different parts of the military. In the Roman Army, there was no distinction between those who did naval battle and those who were on land. They were the same force and no distinction. An example of that, Paul is taken by a Roman centurion who had been on land and they step onto a ship where, even though it's a civilian ship, the Roman centurion is in charge.

What he says is what they do. Here is the Roman equivalent of landmines. And so what they would do is they would dig these around their forts in any area of defense and offense significance And so if an attacking army is coming at them, instead of looking and seeing what's going on, guess what the attacking army has to do? Look down. That's bad. Because if they look down, what's going to happen? They're going to be aware of what's going on, because they have to be, and avoid dropping into the holes, but that means they're not watching what's going on in front of them. So the Romans would just simply have these pits dug in at various places where they knew an attacking army might come. Here are Roman coins. Large caches, large gatherings of Roman coins have been found, even in the last month. There was an amateur treasure hunter over in Britain that found a large cache of coins, very large, and he was just lucky, I suppose.

Here's another example. A number of instances, either jars like this full of coins, or another thing that they would do is bury them in the floor. Those have been found. This is a little bit more of a close-up here. This is the drachma, the typical daily wage. Here are Roman roads. You have this on your handout as well. The Roman roads are shown for 14 AD. That's at the end of the life of Augustus.

By the end of the Roman Empire, the Romans had hand-built, and I'm talking, you know, do it the hard way, hand-built enough roads to go two times around the earth. Okay, so are you ready to volunteer? No, not going to do that. Okay. Well, I can quite understand. It's a lot of hard work, but that's what they did.

And the reason that they did that and the Roman Empire established that as a major policy and approach is because then you could get your defensive equipment and your armies in there, no problem. And if you needed to move them, you could. When the Romans attacked Jerusalem in 70 AD and took it out. They brought in armies from as far away as Britain on Roman roads. Roman roads that had been built a long time before.

Here is their standard section and what they would do is they would dig down three feet. They would dig down three feet or go to bedrock, whichever came first. And then there was a layer of paving stones at the bottom, pebbles and gravel, and then large stones at the top. And then they would put drainage ditches on the side typically, although I've seen pictures of some of them with the drainage ditch built of stone in the middle. So that, you know, highway is divided, they would divide their highway by putting the drainage ditch in the middle in some locations. Yeah, Stan?

Was that done by slaves or was that actually a paid job? It was actually something that the Roman soldiers were required to do. They worked hard. If there was clearing of land, they would bring in people to do that for pay. Sometimes they would get groups of slaves to come in and clear the land, but the actual construction of the road was typically done by Roman soldiers as the prime workforce for accomplishing that. Interestingly enough, the hiring of somebody to clear the land is actually a word that the Apostle Paul used. the clearing of land by slaves or contractors, something that he actually talked about, for the preparation for the gospel.

Isn't that interesting? Okay, they had Roman engineers. This was the Romans' version of something like a level, and they would have multiple plumb bobs on this device. And they would go set out both the elevation and the course for the roadways. This is a Roman roadway. This particular one here is the one that goes from Rome. So when Paul landed on the coast there at Puccioli and went into Rome, this was the road that he took. Here's the Ignatian way, the one that goes across Greece and Macedonia and goes right through Philippi.

As a matter of fact, the Roman road was so good that 2,000 years later all they did was put paving on top of it just to smooth it out because the road was in great shape after 2,000 years. Now if Andreano would do that, then we would have good roads here too. So anyway, this is a key road running across Greece, portions of it still in existence, some of it not visible as stones but as paving because they said this is so good we can't do any better and we'll just put asphalt on top of it to smooth it out.

Now, right in here, if you look carefully, you see there's a groove in between the stones and there is a chariot wheel rut. Very interesting. The Romans, I was telling somebody earlier, the Roman writers, one of the Roman writers said, it's hard to tell what the Romans like best, eating or chariot racing. And apparently from this, the chariots won out.

Now, here's another one, and you do have this on your handout. Trade routes and great empires of the first century. And this gives us a larger context because the New Testament, in fact, though certainly impacted by the Roman Empire, was impacted by other empires as well. Here is the Silk Road, which actually began after the time of the Persians, or at the late end of the Persian Empire.

They actually had trade coming in from India and China. And the first major city that it came into in the Roman Empire was Antioch. Now, what significance does Antioch have in the New Testament? That's the place where believers were first called Christians, right? It's where the Apostle Paul spent some time and where Peter spent some time. Some records would say quite a bit of time. But you had the Silk Road in here.

You had the Kushan Empire. This is the Parthian Empire. It's a little hard to see because of the purple color. The Parthian Empire, the empire to the east. And then we have the Roman Empire. And again, right in here, Antioch was the first major city at the eastern end of the Roman Empire where the Silk Road trade came in from India and from China and the east.

Okay. Now, one of the things we've been showing here is the philosophy of empire. We've pointed out that Egypt had a philosophy of empire, Assyria and Babylon had similar philosophies of empire where they both were very cruel and they also relocated populations in order to, what they expected, to help maintain their own empire to avoid rebellions. That didn't work, but that's what they did.

Persia and then Greece is what we talked about last time. The Greek philosophy of empire was infused, essentially engineered, Greek language. Because Alexander the Great didn't just take Greek, there was a bunch of dialects. He actually fused it together and made decisions about how Greek was going to be spoken from this day forward.

And that's the Greek that is used in the New Testament. and so you have that and the Jews were encouraged to relocate to Alexandria and then later on to Asia around the area we say Asia that's Asia meaning Western Turkey and that was later on now Rome says we don't care what you do in your present culture we just want money and so we think of Rome as a military empire and they most certainly were that but they were also a taxation empire. They were really, really big on collecting taxes. They loved to collect taxes. There's just nothing better. And so that's what they focused on. Allow the present culture, you can do anything you want, but we want our money.

Now, so the Jews were given special exemption up until the time that Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. The Jews still continue to get some exemptions. Let me give you an example when I say exemptions. Here's a Jew. It's Friday afternoon and the military commander says it's time to move. What's the Jew inclined to do? I'm going to stay right here because in a few hours it will be the Sabbath. I'm not moving.

Right? That's a problem. Then the military commander says, here is your standard issue clothing. It has a mixture of fibers. What's going to happen? The Jew is going to say, I'm not wearing it, right? Next problem. It's time to hand out the food, the grub, right? What's the Jew going to do? I'm not eating that, right?

So they just said, look, we're just not going to deal with it. The Jews are not required to be in the army. And the only way they can be in the army is if they're willing to compromise on these things, which Jews were disinclined to do. So they gave them exemptions.

We'll talk about the destruction in 70 AD. Actually, we continue to talk about that in the main service. New Testament books where the Roman background is important. Of the Gospels, certainly there's some Roman background in all of them. The key one is Mark. Mark, which is 16 chapters, is written to the Roman mindset. The language is Roman. One other thing, Mark, more than any other Gospel writer, says immediately, because the Romans want to get things done and want to get things done on time. So Mark is written to a Roman mindset.

Acts certainly has a lot of things to do with Rome, especially as the Apostle Paul gets into areas that are Gentile, and as Paul heads to Rome, and as Paul deals with the Roman centurions, which he does more than once. In addition to that, obviously Romans is written to where? Yeah, to Rome, the very capital.

And you have Galatians. There's five major cities in southern Galatia. Two of them are Roman colonies. Ephesians is not a Roman colony. Ephesus is not a Roman colony, but there's a Roman governor there and 3,000 Roman soldiers are stationed there. So that gets the Roman point across, doesn't it? And one more, Philippians. Philippi was a Roman colony. Now the assignment to those in Roman colonies was, look, you're not in Rome, but we want you to think Rome, we want you to live Rome, we want you to eat Rome, we want you to be Roman to the core. All capital letters.

So the people in Philippi had this kind of mindset, and guess what? Paul uses a word for mindset in every single chapter more than once. Because that Roman mindset is exactly what they entrenched in the people in Philippi. And he says, I'll talk about the Roman mindset, only it's a heavenly mindset, and I will talk about heavenly citizenships, and citizenship in Rome is important, right?

Mark appears to have been written to a Roman audience. Acts records a number of interactions with Roman officials. By the way, Theophilus that Luke wrote to, both in the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts. Between the two, Luke, so far as we know, a Gentile, wrote over a quarter of the New Testament. Here is Dr. Luke. He's a medical doctor, right? Here is Dr. Luke And both books, Luke and Acts, are written to this fellow Theophilus. Not entirely proven or confirmed, but John Mock, who is an attorney who has looked at this, says he believes that Theophilus was a Roman legal official that Luke was making submittals to on behalf of Paul.

Okay, several of the churches had strong Roman cultural influences, even aside from these. Corinth, for example, it doesn't come out prominently, was in fact a Roman colony. And there were others. Antioch was a Roman colony. Since the Roman Empire was an economic system, its philosophy of empire was to require payment, the tax system was basic to Rome's rule.

It's like, you know, we're a military organization here, and the main reason we're a military organization is to collect taxes. That's their biggie. That's the main thing. Here is a receipt for taxes on pigs. This is one of three pages of the receipt from 11 to 16 AD, about in that time frame. And so that would have been about the time that Christ, or shortly after the time that Christ would have come to the temple as a child and his parents lost track of him. So this is very relevant to the tax on pigs. Are Jews allowed to eat pigs?

No. Hmm. Curious. Okay. The tax collection in each political region was done privately by the winning bidder. Here's what would happen. They would have bidders, private bidders, say, from this area, I can get this much money. And the one who said, I'll get the most money for Rome won the bid. And then whatever they took on top of that was theirs to keep.

So the idea, Rome wanted to maximize their tax intake from all the different regions. And one of the ways they would do that is by having a regular census. So this explains why Joseph and Mary were required to go and be a part of the census, right? We have all kinds of census documents early in the Roman Empire. Because of that, they need to know how many people have we got here that we can tax. The bidder promising the highest tax in the region got the contract and kept whatever else he wanted. And even no matter how much extra he charged, it was all enforced by a Roman soldier.

So somebody said, well, I don't want to pay that. Okay, you're dead. Do you like a sword between your ribs? Of course not. It didn't matter how much they griped, they had to pay it. Here's an import tax receipt from Memphis, Egypt. That's great, I got a receipt. I'm real happy.

The first mention and impact of the Roman tax system comes when Mary and Joseph are required to go to Bethlehem for a census to determine tax levels. That's why they have them do the census, is how much can we tax you? How many people do you have and what do they do? How much can we tax you?

There's a census declaration from 91 AD, so the Apostle John was still alive when this was made, from Pythurus, son of Horus, a resident of the village of Bacchaeus, there belongs to me in the village three-quarters of a house in which I dwell." So that's the declaration on that census declaration. Roman taxes are... Yeah.

How can you own three-quarters of a house? Well, it's interesting. What he probably had was three-quarters of an ownership with somebody else having a one-quarter interest in the house. And that might be the case, let's say, if you have, you know, say two brothers who own, you know, property and it isn't split 50-50, but it's in fact, this one has a quarter interest and the other has three quarter interest, something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Like it'd be, the incident would be extremely oppressive and almost criminal. Yeah. It seems like it'd go that direction. Yes. Probably did. Yeah. Do you think there was any influence on the decision to figure out how much to tax people based on pushback or would there be any political...

Well, here's what's interesting is the rabbis, of course the law of Moses says you will not lie, right? But the rabbis said the Roman tax system is so heinous that you are allowed to lie to get out of Roman taxes. So if you could and could get away with it, the rabbis said that was okay to lie to a Roman tax official. But you look at it, what are the people who are bidding going to do? They're going to say, I'm going to give this much to Rome, and then I'm going to keep extra for myself.

And I'm sure there was a certain amount of, okay, I'm going to get lied to, but I'm going to keep taxing people anyway. Yeah, Stan? But like Greg was saying, I would imagine that the tax collector to get favor from grown soldiers may have given a little bit of cutback. Oh, I wouldn't be surprised at all. You look at it, just huge graft and corruption. payoff, just really bad, really bad. And the assumption among the Jews was these tax collectors are guilty until proven innocent. That was their assumption. I mean, flat out. No question about it. Yeah, Craig? It gives greater understanding to the Zacchaeus story. Yeah, the Zacchaeus story is frankly shocking for Jesus to say, you know, this guy is righteous. It's like, what? You know? Yes, Pat?

If you were to move out of that area that you were being taxed in, did you have to have a change of address? You know, what's interesting is the typical way that they did it was you go back to your home country And then they would keep track of where, you know, where did you go from there? Of course, you'd have to register, right?

You know, I'm Joseph, and I have Mary with me, and we have a son, you know, Jesus, and we live in Nazareth, you know. And so there was some figuring for different places, but the way they kept track of, you know, who is this guy and where are you, is where are you from? Where's your family from? And you got to go there. Well, what they would do is say, you've got to go here, that's the only way we can keep track of people. You've got to go back to where your family's from, but we're also going to figure out where you abide from all these records and use that as the basis for, here's how much we're going to expect out of this area.

It was a little crazy, wasn't it? How'd they do this without computers? I don't know. So Matthew here, his job before being called to be a disciple was to collect taxes. It was called customs duties. What they would do is they'd have a table that would be at a primary trading point, and as you passed by that, they'd say, well, look, you've got six sheep and we have this much of a charge for six sheep. And we have tax tables. I mean, they would have, like if you built the fence, you get taxed on your fence. So there was property taxes, there was customs taxes.

Boy, they taxed everything as much as they could. Yes, Stan? So the question is, did we pick up that tax system? Oh boy. That's basically what we do today, property tax, animal tax. Yeah, well we've got taxes for everything. And of course we have taxes for things that they never dreamed of. Taxes on your phone service.

The Romans were good at it. We've probably gotten a little bit better. I was going to ask you earlier, did the English naval system follow the Roman one? I mean, I assume that the Roman naval system basically lost power when the nation was going down. Yes. Okay, was the next naval power the English imperial fleet? Well, essentially, of course, you're talking centuries later.

But, you know, I mean, there were even, you know, there was naval power before the British came to their power among the Muslims. Yeah, so the Muslims had a great deal of naval power. In fact, we took those on, that's where we fought the Barbary pirates. They were Muslim, right?

Okay, next, here's a Customs House receipt. Here is a fellow, He paid two drachmas, drachmas a day's wages, so two days wages for exporting two pack donkeys. You know, to give you an example. So he gave it a date here. And then here's Roman taxes in the New Testament. Tax collectors and sinners, as it was a standard phrase used throughout the New Testament, sometimes just tax collectors was good enough to say, these guys are the worst of the worst. I mean, they're just certified awful. And that's why they were so awful, that's why the rabbis said even though you were not to bear false witness, and bearing false witness is potentially a death penalty, the Romans were so awful and guaranteed guilty that you could go ahead and lie to them.

So, here's Zacchaeus, which I think Craig had pointed out to us. Zacchaeus, 19 and 1 through 10, records the amazing salvation of Zacchaeus, the wealthy, and he wasn't just a tax collector, he was a chief tax collector. He was a supervisor of tax collectors. And given that he was a Jew held a high position for collecting taxes for the despised Romans, right? This is very remarkable.

And what he says, it was it was not advised by the Jewish rabbis that you give away more than 20% of your assets. He says right off the top, I will give away 50%. which was more like some sort of an unreasonable offer that royalty would make in those days. I'll give up to half my kingdom. He not only did that, but he says, if I have cheated anybody, and he said the if in a Greek form that means yes and I have. If I've cheated anybody, I'll pay back four times, and that's the amount of remuneration, compensation, for sheep theft, for stealing sheep in the law. So I'll give up half of what I have and on top of that I'll pay back four times what I've taken illegally.

When Jesus was asked by the Pharisees and the Herodians if it was proper to pay taxes to Caesar, he asked to see a denarius coin. their possession of the coin showed that they were under the Gentiles because the coin was not a Jewish coin, was it? No, it was not. It showed they were under the Gentiles and of course this is where Jesus asked them to produce it. You show me the coin and that's a declaration that you've got Gentile coins and therefore under the Gentiles and therefore you're telling me that you are disobedient according to Deuteronomy 28. Right? When you hand me the coin, and it's not a Jewish coin, that's what you're telling me.

You're declaring that you're disobedient to the law. It had a graven image forbidden by the Mosaic Law. On the front and the back, a pagan image. And they were carrying it around, and then asking Jesus what's legal. Oh, come on. Give me a break. Caesar claimed divinity on that very coin. That very coin had it. Here is the Denarius coin, and both the images and the lettering were pagan wording and symbols.

Now, in Matthew 5.41 is an example.

Jesus says, and this is the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him too. So a Roman soldier could force anyone else to carry, under law, to carry his military equipment for one mile. And Jesus told the Israelites to carry the soldier's equipment for another mile beyond what was required by Roman law. Go the extra mile.

Under the same set of rules, Simon of Cyrene was also forced to carry Jesus' cross piece. Although many of the pictures and movies show Jesus and then Simon of Cyrene carrying a whole cross, it is likely, at least if not just possible, that what he was carrying was the cross piece. There's a horizontal piece called a petibulum. and that that piece would have been what he was forced to carry.

Nonetheless, there were a set of Roman laws that allowed the soldiers to enforce people carrying things for them, doing things for them, and this was a part of that law. So asking or demanding that Simon of Cyrene carry the cross was not some bizarre thing, it was just part of the legal system. And the Roman soldiers could do that. They could force people to carry crosses, carry equipment, etc. And Rome's cruelest punishment reserved for the worst of the criminals, the worst of the worst, in the lowest levels of society, was handed down to Jesus Christ.

For the sake of pictures and decency, what's typically shown in our movies and in our artwork is Jesus there with some kind of a loincloth. That wasn't standard. Because the idea was to make somebody so shameful and disgusting that it was like a billboard that said, don't mess with Rome. That was the intent. don't mess with Rome or you will undergo this horrific shame and horrific pain and a ghastly death in which you will not bleed to death but you will essentially suffocate was the typical death cause.

Staros and the related family of words was considered such foul language that the Roman officials were allowed to use alternate language in replacement of saying he will be crucified. So can you imagine the Apostle Paul writing, I have been crucified with Christ as foul language. Language so severe that in polite society you don't say that word. We preach Christ and Christ crucified. Abuse before crucifixion was both unlimited and common. In other words, there were no laws restricting the soldiers or anybody else from abusing the person who had been sentenced to crucifixion.

Whatever you wanted to do was just fine. Once the person had been sentenced, There were no limits. There was nothing saying, well, you can't do this or you can't do that. You could do whatever foul thing you wanted, whatever cruel thing you wanted to this person who had been sentenced, and there was no limitation on the behavior. The condemned person was typically stripped of clothing, naked. Nailing was variable. Anything that hung the criminal upon the cross to die was allowed.

As a matter of fact, it's real interesting. The one most substantial evidence we have here is Yehohanan. It's found in Jerusalem in 1968. So of the whole Roman Empire, the most substantial physical evidence we have of crucifixion is this one from the first century in Jerusalem.

Yes, Pat? It was less common, but it was done. The preferred punishment was burning? Pardon? How else were they executed? Were they stoned or burned? The stoning was a Jewish practice and the burning was done with the bodies afterwards. But crucifixion, for the worst of the worst, that was standard treatment.

Far more often from anything we have with men than women. But women were crucified. Yes. And again, we always think of the SS and the German Empire as horrific because they didn't have any consideration for human life. But when you look at this, you're talking about the Roman army. Not a whole lot of difference there. No, you're quite correct. Good observation. This is cruel. This is profoundly cruel. And the idea was, Jesus and those who were crucified with him were either killed or found to be dead early. But the typical thing was this would take days.

The reason I brought that up is because I read an article that nails that they ran through the heel bones and when they crucified them, they were very valuable. So it's unusual that they actually show this nail there because supposedly they pulled them out and continued to use them. Yeah, this was preserved uniquely because the nail was put right through the bone. In other words, here's the Roman soldier driving it in and putting it through the bone. That was not common because, you're right, they would like to reuse the nails if possible. since the nails are essentially handmade by a blacksmith, right?

So this was uncommon, but that was the reason it resulted in some preservation, as opposed to just going into flesh and then peeling the body off and getting rid of it. Since blood loss was typically minimal, death could take days. Unclaimed bodies were simply dumped in a refuse area, and the place where they dumped them around Jerusalem is what Jesus called Gehenna, the place they kept as a refuse area. They just dumped the bodies. It was constantly burning and constant stench.

Which New Testament cities were Roman colonies? So we have Antioch, The city in Antioch, and that's one of those cases where it was also called Antioch, we gave it the particular designation because it was in a different area. It's like here in the United States, you know, we refer to Denver as, you know, our capital. The reality is there's over a half dozen cities and towns throughout the United States called Denver. And to get really confusing, we even have a place called California, Maryland. Anyway.

Lystra and Corinth and Philippi, those are the ones specifically mentioned that are Roman colonies. Sidion Antioch and Lystra were in Galatia. Those are the two out of the five major cities in Galatia that were Roman colonies. Only Philippi is actually named as a Roman colony in the New Testament in Acts 16. Dr. Luke mentions it as a colony. The others were colonies, but aren't called out as that in the New Testament. It's valuable to know, however, because frequently you find indications of Roman cultural influence in these areas when you read the Book of Acts or the letters to these places. This, of course, is the letter to the Galatians with two Roman colonies. And so because of that, Paul would use Roman cultural terminology. Here's the Roman Empire from space that we showed before. We're going to look at just the right half of that. Here are the five cities that were Roman colonies that are mentioned in the New Testament, spread throughout basically the northeastern portion of the Mediterranean. The first Gentile converts were the House of Cornelius, a Roman centurion.

Caesarea, where he was located, is one that's been fairly well excavated and mapped. There's the amphitheater, and at the amphitheater they found a stone with the inscription regarding Pontius Pilate. Interesting, huh? Here is an aerial view of Caesarea.

This is where Paul the Apostle was kept for two years and before he went off to Rome. From there, from Caesarea we see right now, and by the way they've located the prison where he was kept, he said, I appeal to Rome. And so from there he went to Rome and that was found in the last chapters of the Book of Acts.

Citizenship in a city or people was a long-standing pattern in ancient times. We have a custom where citizenship is a national thing. In ancient times, and I'm talking about even in the times of Moses and whatnot, all the way into the New Testament era, it was citizenship in a city, right? Citizenship in a city was what you wanted. And so into the Roman Empire, it was citizenship in Rome. In the Roman Empire, that citizenship took on special significance because of law specific to Rome.

You could not have a Roman citizen be beaten. And Paul You know, mentions that as he's about to be beaten in Jerusalem, he says, oh, do you beat Roman citizens? And the guy goes, ah! Because guess what happens if you beat a Roman citizen? Could be the death penalty. So, there were certain protections, and that was valuable. There was a family of Greek words surrounding citizenship and evidences of citizenship that were characteristic of Greek and then Roman culture.

Philippians 1.27, our translation says, just simply conduct yourselves. But the word is politeouomai, which means conduct yourselves as citizens. So he used a word with the, and why would he use it with the Philippians? They were a Roman colony. They know what conduct yourselves as citizens means. They've had it beat into their head since they were tiny.

The only thing is he's talking about citizenship, not as citizens of Rome, but citizens of heaven. That is chapter 3 verse 20. Finally, in chapter 4 verse 3, so three times in one book, He talks about the Book of Life. The Book of Life in ancient times was the list of living non-criminal citizens. Living non-criminal citizens were listed in the Book of Life. So guess what? If your name is in the Book of Life and that's recorded in heaven, what does that say about you? It says you have a heavenly citizenship and you're not counted guilty of any crimes. Why? It's because Christ took those upon himself.

It was unusual, but it was doable. Of course, one of the questions you'd ask is, how did Paul get that Roman citizenship? That's not something that is certain, but here is a possibility that some scholars have speculated on, and I think there's some substance to it. There was a time when Paul's father, who would have been a tent maker too, right? The tradition is you carry on the occupation of your father. There was a time when Paul's father had a particular opportunity to provide tents for the Roman army en masse, and one of his deals in doing so may have been, I want this much money and I also want Roman citizenship for me and my sons.

And so he could hand it down and so Paul was very likely born in that case a Roman citizen. Otherwise it would have been difficult for him to get. So the reality is it was doable, it was possible, it was not common. It was typically assumed... No, it wasn't, and that's why Paul would at certain moments just openly proclaim, I'm a Roman citizen, and I appeal to Caesar, which only a Roman citizen could do.

So he would openly do so, and openly proclaim it, and that was to his advantage at certain points. Here is from 145 AD, so this is about 50 years after the death of the Apostle John, and from Alexandria, that's a place where a lot of Jews went, right? This is what this, it's funny, this was a piece of wood with wax on it, beeswax, and they would write in the wax, and that was an official document.

What they did, he says, records as a Roman citizen, my son, Lucius, And he goes on there, the Apostle Paul may have gotten his Roman citizenship in a similar way, born into it because of a deal that his dad made. Generally, Roman citizenship was gotten in other ways, but Paul as a Jew would have been exceptional to have had a Roman citizenship. Most people would assume that a Jew would not have Roman citizenship. But Paul apparently did to the point where he multiple times made use of that citizenship.

Here is a book of life kind of document where they have different names and as you will see in the New Testament reference to the possibility of names crossed out, this document has some names crossed out. Here's Romans 6.23 written to Christians and I call it expanded and explained here.

For the wages of the sin, and that's in the Greek, the wages of the sin nature pays death. It's translated, is death, but actually the verb isn't there. The wages the sin nature pays, death. But the gift that God freely gives, eternal life. There's no verb in either place, and I use our translations, I just insert that for smooth English. But it's more like there's a colon there and then boom. With a dramatic pause, this is what's cool. Wages is upsonia.

And the gift is charisma. All soldiers were of course paid a regular wage. That was typical of the Roman soldiers. But when a new emperor came to power, he typically gave the soldiers a free gift, a charisma. So when Christ comes to power, he gives a free gift, eternal life.

Isn't that interesting? So this is, and guess what, this is written to the church in Rome, right, where they would understand this cultural feature. This is frequently misunderstood as some kind of a salvation verse, but in fact this is written to Christians, Christians in Rome, and Paul uses the terminology there where a free gift, a free gift is typically given when a new emperor comes into power. And this new emperor is Christ himself.

And the free gift is eternal life. Pastor Byrne, I had a question on the word freely. What word is that, freely? That ultimately is charisma. It is gratis. There is no expectation of return. It comes from the word charis, which means grace. So the emphasis is double, that it's a free gift that he gives freely? Yeah, in other words, he is not charging anything for this or expecting anything in return.

Here is Ephesians 1, 4-6, just as he, and this is right after the verse that says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, It says, Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him, in love He predestined us to adoption as sons. This word here means son position. So it's a statement of position, right? It's a statement of position. If there ever was a statement of our position in Christ, this is it.

And here's Ephesus with a Roman governor and 3,000 Roman soldiers. He also wrote about this adoption of sons twice in Romans 8 and then in Galatians 4-5. Every place has substantial Roman influence. Those are the only places that he used that adoption of sons term where there was substantial Roman influence. By Roman law, the adopted son had position better than a natural-born son.

A full heir, irreversible, the adopted son was legally severed from any prior sonship. So previously, as an unbeliever, you were sons of disobedience. That's Ephesians 1.2, right? But now, you're completely severed for that.

You're sons of God. Children of the Lord. Adoption of sons was a new process originated in Roman law in order for Roman Empire to be assured of having an heir to the throne. So when the people at the church in Rome, when the people at the church at Ephesus, when the people in Galatia saw this, we have the adoption of sons, they were saying, whoa, stop.

Let me soak that up. This is mind boggling. I get to be forgiven of everything I've ever done completely, and any debts that I have ever had are erased. This has to be approved at the highest levels, and the Roman Empire is approved by the Roman Senate. At the highest levels, it is testified by seven witnesses, and it gives me from that day forward a position that is unimaginably potent and completely free of any debt and guilt.

It was the perfect term, but Paul only used it with those churches that had Roman influence. He didn't use it otherwise. Almost like he knew what he was doing, right? Both Augustus Caesar and Tiberius Caesar, the following Caesar, were emperors who received the adoption of sons. In fact, during the New Testament times, five of the emperors had adoption of sons. And so the people reading this, knowing that, wow, this is incredibly potent, when they would read that, I imagine they just said, whoa, stop reading. I got to soak this up. This is phenomenal. This is amazing stuff.

In the classic movie Ben-Hur, based on the novel by Lew Wallace, what you find is Here is Judah Ben-Hur, the Jewish slave, rescues Roman general Quintus Arius and then he ends up doing the famous chariot races, which by the way was very dangerous and actually a person died in that. But the grateful Roman general later adopted Judah Ben-Hur as his son. in the novel, and in fact the novel was based on historical precedent.

So Harry went from being locked in chains and a slave and being down in the underbelly of the ship and working himself to death to having unrivaled wealth, power, and influence because of the adoption of sons. The adopted son lost all rights in his old family and gained more rights than a fully legitimate son in his new family and could not be displaced by a son even born afterwards. He became an heir to his new father's estate even if other sons were born later. The old life of the adopted son was completely wiped out.

Here's an example of a debt note that was scratched out. That was how they would cancel out the debt note. He was entering a new life, completely new life, as if he was a new person. Criminal record, gone. If you had any criminal record or any debts, all of them, no matter the number or the magnitude, were wiped out. The son who was adopted was literally and absolutely the son of his new father. This is amazing stuff. When the people who read that So we have the adoption of sons.

It was like, whoa. Let me think about that for a minute. This is really cool stuff. Let's pray. We're soon going to have noses pressed against the glass, I can tell. So let's pray and call it good. Because you're lacking the main part of the handout, I'll make sure that gets posted up on the internet site and we'll have them available for you next week. Okay? Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you as we look at these things, not only fascinating and interesting, but more than that, it reveals how awesome is the position that we have simply by faith in you. And it's by your grace that we have these things freely given entirely out of your grace. And we give you thanks for that. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.