When Jesus began his ministry, he announced, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." What were the existing kingdoms like? The Roman Empire? The Jewish kingdom?
Donald Kraybill, in his book The Upside-Down Kingdom, gives us a sociological analysis of the political, religious and economic conditions of New Testament times in Palestine. Chapter two describes the political situation.
First, a brief history. Alexander the Great conquered Palestine in 332 BC introducing Greek language and culture. His successors ruled Palestine for over 100 years. In 198 BC, Syria captured the Jewish kingdom and a madman devastated Palestine.
In 63 BC, Rome conquered Palestine. Herod the Great ran the show. He built the magnificent temple, but soon after its full completion, it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Herod taxed the people ruthlessly, but he did allow the Jews religious freedom as long as they obeyed Rome.
The Zealots could not tolerate the Roman occupation of their sacred land so they led a violent resistance movement just before and during Jesus' time. Dagger men engaged in a "slit and run" tactic. "Palestine was in a state of boiling revolution."
Next, from politics to religion. Or more accurately, the reign of a Jewish religio-politico-economic elite. Church and state were not separate in Jewish society. This was an highly institutionalized religion built around a magnificent temple:
The temple treasury, functioning as a huge national bank, contained the tithes and offerings required of Jews throughout the world and held title to a considerable amount of property. The temple was no small business. It was an elaborate operation which generated the major source of revenue for the city of Jerusalem.
Closely tied to the temple was the Jewish Sanhedrin:
This great [70 member] council had complete judicial and administrative authority in religious and civil matters.
A further comment on the nature of the Jewish kingdom which Jesus often confronted:
The political, social, and religious affairs of all Judea and international Judism were oriented toward the great temple in Jerusalem. Synagogues in each village throughout the countryside faced the holy temple. The temple's influence permeated the hinterland through the network of 18,000 priests and Levites whose social and religious status was tied to the temple operation. The frequent pilgrimages and trips for sacrifice cemented even the ordinary Jewish peasant into the temple's mystique.
The Sadducees were conservative in terms of religious doctrine, but rich and powerful politically and economically. They dominated the Sanhedrin. Jesus found this system oppressive so again and again he directly confronted this corrupt perversion of God's will.
What about the economic situation? Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee. "Poor peasant farmers are pushed off the land by ruthless creditors. . . . the masses are suffering under a system of excessive taxation."
While Jerusalem was the home of much wealth, the masses (90 percent were "people of the land") were dirt poor or near poverty. Galilee was full of these "scum of the earth" people. The common people despised not only the Roman occupiers but also the pious rich Jewish elite. Galilee was a rich land (agriculture and fish) full of poor people. Landlords and landless poor:
Within a few decades, small and middle-sized plots of land had disappeared, whereas the properties owned by the temple and the [Roman] imperial crown grew beyond proportion. . .. At the core of poverty was a system of double taxation [Jewish and Roman]; from forty to seventy percent of the peasants annual income.
Fraud and force, very rich and very poor, few middle class; not a just society. Kraybill summarizes the situation:
A close scrutiny of Jesus' mission shows that his new way undercut the leverage of the three major social institutions of his day: political force, established religion, and conventional economics.
As often happens, these three institutional structures were closely interwoven together. The rich aristocracy of chief priests and Sadducees in Jerusalem owned large estates in Galilee which crushed small peasant farmers. They controlled the mighty Jewish supreme court---the Sanhedrin. This body, in turn, controlled the temple ritual and religious regulations. It was this same upper crust of Jerusalem which was in cahoots with the Romans. They wanted the Romans to stay so their property and plush living would be protected from the rebellious countryside bandits. . . . It was this Jerusalem crowd that shouted, "Crucify him, crucify him," for they perceived the new way of Jesus to be more dangerous---more upsetting in its totality---than the threat of the rebel leader Barabbas who led a revolt in the city. . . . But a new teaching, a new way of living which overturned the political, religious, and economic tables was too dangerous to the plush security and luxury of the Jerusalem elite.
Into the midst of these terrible conditions, Jesus announced, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor [most of the hearers were poor], . . . to release the oppressed [most of his hearers were likely oppressed], and to incarnate Jubilee/Sabbath Year justice for the poor [designed to break patterns of poverty and oppression.]"
Haiti and Galilee have a lot in common: a small rich elite oppressing the poor masses.
This is the first of three blogs on the Kingdom of God. The next blog will be titled Isaiah's Definition of the Kingdom; the third blog will be about a possible creedal statement of the kingdom of God.
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