The Cities That Built the Bible

by Dr. Robert Cargill

  So why does Luke 2:4 state that Mary and Joseph returned to their ancestral home instead of being counted in “their own town of Nazareth” (2:39)? Because Luke depicts Jesus and his family as living in Nazareth (not in Bethleḥem, as in Matthew), Luke likely employed the census as a device to bring Mary to Bethleḥem temporarily to satisfy the tradition that Jesus was born in Bethleḥem, while still allowing him to remain Jesus “of Nazareth.”

  Second, and even more problematic, is the timing of the census of Publius Sulpicius Quirinius according to Luke’s Gospel. Indeed, the legate governor of Syria, Quirinius, did hold a census in order to get a count of the population of the Roman provinces of Syria and Judea for tax purposes, but according to Josephus this census took place in 6 or 7 CE,14 after the exile of Herod the Great’s inept son, Archelaus, who had been appointed ethnarch of Judea following the death of Herod. The problem with the timing of Luke’s description of Quirinius’s census is that Luke depicts it as taking place during the reign of King Herod the Great (1:5) who died in 4 BCE,15 making Luke’s chronology out of sync by over a decade and therefore impossible.16

  Of course, once Mary and Joseph get to Bethleḥem, Mary gives birth: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger (Gk. φάτνῃ, phatnē), because there was no place for them in the inn” (2:7).17 Once baby Jesus had been visited by shepherds (as opposed to the Magi mentioned in Matt. 2:1), had been circumcised to fulfill the requirements of the Jewish law, and received blessings from Simeon (2:25–35) and Anna (2:36–38), Luke says that Jesus and his family “returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth” (2:39).

  The differences between Matthew’s and Luke’s birth narratives are therefore striking. According to Matthew, Jesus was born in a house in Bethleḥem where Joseph and Mary lived; according to Luke, Jesus was laid in a manger while temporarily in Bethleḥem. Matthew depicts Jesus as being visited by Magi, while Luke says lowly shepherds visited Jesus. Furthermore, Luke makes no mention of Herod’s infanticide or of the angel’s warning to flee with Jesus and Mary to Egypt in order to avoid it (Matt. 2:13). Instead, Luke has Mary and Joseph remain in Bethleḥem for forty days and then return directly to Nazareth, mentioning nothing of Matthew’s lengthy flight to Egypt.18

  So what do we do with these two separate traditions? For one, we must recognize that there were, in fact, many traditions about Jesus’s birth.19 Although the details of the two accounts that we have in the Bible may not match, it’s important to know why both Gospels wanted to include Jesus’s link to Bethleḥem. The Davidic kings of Israel were from David’s hometown of Bethleḥem, and if Jesus was the Messiah and king of the Jews, the story of his birth in Bethleḥem needed to be told—even if he was Jesus of Nazareth.

  Bethleḥem is a fascinating city, full of history, culture, and beauty. Though it doesn’t hold the early historical significance that many faithful people think it does, it is still very much worth visiting.

  The different accounts of Jesus’s birth in Bethleḥem are designed to appeal to different audiences. The author of Matthew wants his readers to see Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, as the promised son of David, and as the new royal king and lawgiver, who came out of Egypt like Moses and who entertains wealthy Magi from the east. The author of Luke, on the other hand, wants his readers to view Jesus as a poor child from Nazareth, born in a manger in a temporary residence and visited by lowly shepherds, who would then go on to preach a message of hope to the poor.

  The Gospels are not meant to be harmonized! Bethleḥem demonstrates as much. Rather, the Gospels are different perspectives from different authors for different audiences that reflect different traditions concerning Jesus’s life. Luke’s depiction of lowly shepherds visiting Jesus as a child resonated with the poor and marginalized, while Matthew’s account of wise men from far away coming to pay tribute to the new king of the Jews resonated with those steeped in Jewish tradition. Bethleḥem of Judea tied Jesus to the line of David and fulfilled what many believed to be a prophecy (or a combination of prophecies) that claimed the “anointed ones” were to be from Bethleḥem. And this is how a small Judean agricultural city with no archaeological evidence to support any claim to Jesus’s birth came to play such an important role in building the Bible.

  CHAPTER 11

  Rome

  Rome may very well be the most important city in the history of the world. The Roman Empire’s conquest of the eastern Mediterranean made Roman Palestine the setting of the birth of Christianity, which in turn influenced the entire Western world. Rome obviously plays an important role in the crucifixion of Jesus. But Rome also gave us Paul’s Letter to the Romans—arguably Paul’s most important summary of the gospel—and helped decide which books would ultimately comprise the Bible we know today. Thus, Rome is perhaps, more than any other city, responsible for building the Bible.

  ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME

  “All roads lead to Rome.” Nowhere is this truer than with the creation of the Bible. This is why every summer, when I take students to Israel to dig, we stop over in Rome. Rome not only destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple, but it also adopted Christianity as its state religion and is responsible for the actual formation of the Christian Bible. The history of Rome is intimately entangled with the history of Judaism, Christianity, and the Bible. This is because all roads truly lead to Rome.

  I once led Roslyn on a scavenger hunt, of sorts, through the Roman Forum to prove this very point.

  “It’s over here somewhere,” I yelled to Roslyn through the bone-chilling Roman winter wind.

  The Foro Romano, or Roman Forum, was the center of Roman public life, hosting several monuments and temples honoring Roman emperors and deities.

  “What is? There are a million different things in here, and they’re all old and broken . . . like you,” Roslyn rightly observed. She was very cold, wearing two jackets, and wondering why I was dragging her through the mud in the Roman Forum on New Year’s Eve. We had a party to prep for, food to eat, wine to drink, Iron & Wine to listen to, and friends to meet, yet I was hauling her through ancient buildings to look at old carved pieces of rock.

  “It’s over here somewhere, but no one is sure exactly where,” I replied, confidently waving her over to me.

  “What are you looking for?” Roslyn asked curiously.

  “All roads lead to Rome,” I replied, “but where in Rome?”

  “The Grom gelato shop?” Roslyn responded hopefully.

  I shook my head.

  “Dolce and Gabbana?” she tried again, this time with a smile.

  “No,” I replied. “All roads led to the Milliarium Aureum— the Golden Milestone—the huge golden pillar that served as the reference point for all Roman milestones throughout the Roman Empire. It was the physical point at which all roads leading to Rome intersected. It probably once stood over here by the Temple of Saturn.”1

  “Where is it?” Roslyn asked. “I wouldn’t expect a huge golden pillar to still be lying around in the open . . . in Rome . . . in the cold,” she continued. “I’d expect someone would have taken it, melted it down, and spent it . . . on a nice bottle of New Year’s Eve wine,” she quipped. Hard to miss that hint.

  Roslyn was right (as she usually is, as she constantly reminds me). The Golden Milestone is lost to time. But like so many other lost objects in Rome, the Golden Milestone symbolizes what the Arch of Titus also commemorates: that the history of Rome is inextricably intertwined with the history of Judaism, Christianity, and the formation of the Bible. So in order to complete our journey, we must explore Rome’s impact on the building of the Bible.

  Latin inscription on a milestone near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem dating from 72–79 CE in the Roman period. The inscription mentions both the Roman emperor Vespasian and his son Titus, who destroyed the Temple. Image courtesy Israel Museum.

  ROMULUS AND REMUS

  Like many cities and nations, Rome has two early histories:
one historical and one mythological. The historical reality of early Rome is a topic for another book. However, the foundation myth of Rome has many points of contact with various stories in the Bible.

  The mythological story of the founding of Rome centers on the story of Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the god Mars (the Roman god of war), who were (and tell me if you’ve heard this story before) saved by being placed in a basket in the Tiber River and allowed to float downstream. When the flooded Tiber receded, a wolf whose pups had recently died discovered the abandoned twins. Instead of eating them, the wolf nursed them as her own offspring, and a woodpecker assisted in feeding the twins. Both animals are sacred to the god Mars.2

  A shepherd named Faustulus discovered the twins and brought them to his wife, Acca Larentia, and they raised them as their own. When they became adults, they discovered the truth about how they wound up in a basket in the Tiber to be raised by wolves. The twins had been condemned to death by their grandfather’s brother, Amulius, who stole the throne from their grandfather, Numitor, king of Alba Longa and descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas (the focus of Virgil’s Aeneid), and murdered all of Numitor’s male descendants.

  Their mother, Rhea Silvia, had been forced to become one of the Vestal Virgins, the priestesses of the Roman goddess Vesta, goddess of family, hearth, and home. However, Rhea Silvia became pregnant—a conception that the Roman poet Livy says was the result of being raped by an unknown man,3 but that (and again, tell me if you’ve heard this before) Rhea Silvia attributed to miraculous conception by a deity (in this case, the Roman god Mars). When Amulius heard of it, he ordered the twins to be killed and their mother imprisoned, but a servant instead set them adrift, allowing the river to decide their fate.

  Upon learning about the crimes committed against their family, Romulus and Remus avenged Amulius’s usurpation of their grandfather’s throne by confronting Amulius, killing him, and reinstating their grandfather Numitor as king. They then chose to found a city of their own on the site on the banks of the Tiber where the wolf had nursed them. However, they could not agree where to build the city. They engaged in augury (the ancient practice of watching birds and interpreting their actions as a divine omen), and after a disputed result Romulus built the walls of his city, Roma, on the Palatine Hill (which overlooks the Roman Forum), while Remus began building on the more easily defensible Aventine Hill farther south. Anxious to prove his brother and his chosen site to be militarily inferior, Remus mockingly jumped over Romulus’s walls. Embarrassed by his brother’s exposure of his vulnerable city walls, Romulus killed the invading Remus in a fit of rage, vowing, “So too will perish every one hereafter who shall leap over my walls.”4

  The first citizens of Rome were said to be outlaws and fugitives to whom Romulus gave residence (so, like Australia). But since most of the new settlers were men and there were not enough women to form families and grow the city, Romulus decided (once again, tell me if you’ve heard this before—hint: read Judges 21) to steal women from the nearby tribe of the Sabines while the Sabine men were distracted at a festival of Cronus in the Circus Maximus. The abduction and “rape of the Sabine women” resulted in war between the Sabines and Romulus, which ended only when, according to the myth, the Sabine women expressed total affection for their Roman husbands, and the two parties agreed to end their fighting and live together in peace.5 Romulus is believed never to have died, but rather (yet again, tell me if you’ve heard this one) to have been taken up to heaven in a violent storm (cf. Elijah in 2 Kings 2:1–11).

  My colleague Sarah Bond made an observation concerning Romulus and Remus and the Bible. She compared them to Peter and Paul, and I believe the comparison is apt. Peter and Paul are the patron saints of Rome and are credited as the founders of Christian Rome in the same way that Romulus and Remus are considered the founders of ancient Rome.6 Furthermore, in the same way that Romulus ultimately overtook Remus and later became the primary representative of Rome, so too did the apostle Paul ultimately eclipse the apostle Peter (the “rock” upon whom Jesus built his church) to become the primary representative of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul is credited with thirteen letters in the New Testament canon, while Peter is credited with only two letters (and scholars think later forgers wrote those).

  The book of Acts supports this theory. The first chapters of Acts begin with the eleven disciples (minus Judas) and focus upon Peter and his preaching in and around Jerusalem. But from the story of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9 onward, we see that Paul begins to displace Peter as the principal preacher of the gospel. In fact, Peter’s and Paul’s messages so conflicted with one another—Acts 15:2 says there was “no small dissension and debate”—that a conference was convened in Jerusalem to reconcile the differences between the messages concerning circumcision and the consumption of meat sacrificed to idols (Acts 15; cf. Gal. 2). But from that point on, the book of Acts follows Paul (not Peter) on his missionary journeys, demonstrating that it was Paul who ultimately triumphed over Peter and that it was Paul’s gospel to the Gentiles that would become the normative message of Christianity.

  THE FORMATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

  Whether you follow the mythological or the archaeological founding of Rome, the founding of the Roman Republic in 509 BCE marks the end of the early Roman Kingdom. The Roman Republic was characterized by the establishment of the Roman Senate, in which elected representatives made decisions on behalf of the Roman populace. As Rome increased in political, economic, and military strength, it expanded its control over the Italian peninsula through military conquests and political alliances.

  By the third century BCE, Rome’s control had spread west along the Mediterranean coast to Spain and south across the Mediterranean to northern Africa. By the end of the first century BCE, Rome had taken control of what is now France to the northwest, spread east along the Mediterranean coast into mainland Greece and the Greek islands, and continued east into the western part of what is today Turkey and south along the eastern Mediterranean coast into modern Syria and Lebanon.

  In many ways, the Romans are to the Greeks what the Persians were to the Babylonians. The Romans essentially took over all of the lands that had previously belonged to Greece. In doing so, the Romans also incorporated many aspects of the Greek culture, including their pantheon, most of whom they simply rebranded with Roman names. This is how Zeus became Jupiter, Aphrodite became Venus, Hermes became Mercury, Poseidon became Neptune, and Ares became Mars. (The Romans essentially turned the Greek gods into planets.) It is this Roman adoption of Greek culture and the blending of it into their own Roman culture that causes scholars today to speak of a combined Greco-Roman culture.

  The Roman Republic stood until the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE) on the Ides of March (March 15) 44 BCE and the victory of Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian (63 BCE–14 CE), over Mark Antony (83–30 BCE) and Cleopatra (69–30 BCE) in the final war of the Roman Republic, the Battle of Actium, in 31 BCE. The Roman Senate voted to give Octavian supreme autocratic military and civil authority for life along with the honorific title Augustus in 27 BCE, marking the end of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Roman Empire. The ascension of Octavian to the new role of Roman emperor instituted a period of relative peace called the Pax Romana (“Roman Peace”), which lasted over two hundred years, from 27 BCE until 180 CE. Ironically, it was during the Pax Romana that the ministry and crucifixion of Jesus as well as the destruction of Jerusalem (twice) took place.

  POMPEY AND ROMAN PALESTINE

  Rome greatly impacted the lives of Jews in the Holy Land when the Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, commonly called Pompey the Great (106–48 BCE), annexed Jerusalem, Syria, Phoenicia, and Coelesyria for Rome in 63 BCE. Pompey was a successful military commander—so much so that in 60 BCE he joined arguably the wealthiest man in history, Marcus Licinius Crassus, a general, politician, and real-estate speculator (talk about an economic “triumvirate”), and the general and politician Gaius
Julius Caesar in a military-political alliance known as the First Triumvirate, which was essentially (and stop me if you’ve heard of this before) three individuals ruling together as a single (yet triune), unassailable, ultimate authority. The Holy Trinity, er, triumvirate of Crassus, Caesar, and Pompey dominated Roman politics until 53 BCE, when Crassus was killed by the Parthians during truce negotiations following the Roman defeat at the Battle of Carrhae.

  When General Pompey conquered Jerusalem, he walked into the Jerusalem Temple and then into the Holy of Holies and back out again without any reprisal from the local religious authorities, political authorities, or God himself. Pompey transgressed the sacred precinct of the Jewish Temple to make a point: he wanted to demonstrate to all that he was now in charge. Pompey’s transgression of the Jerusalem Temple echoed a similar act by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who a little over a century earlier had also desecrated the Temple, which led to the Maccabean Revolt.7 Pompey’s transgression is commonly referred to as the “abomination of desolation” or “desolating sacrilege,” and the New Testament authors also allude to it as a symbolic act that takes place when chaos and destruction are about to befall Jerusalem.8

  Of course, one cannot help but see echoes of this act—of walking in and around the Temple precinct as a demonstration of authority—in Ariel Sharon’s ironically comparable walk atop the Temple Mount in September 2000. It was an act that many credit with instigating the Second Palestinian Intifada in Jerusalem, as it was essentially a demonstration that Sharon was in control of all of Jerusalem (not just west Jerusalem) and could go where he chose within the city.

  Following Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BCE and subsequent victory over Pompey in the Battle of Pharsalus (48 BCE), an Idumean Roman client governor to the south of Jerusalem named Antipater pragmatically shifted allegiances from Pompey to Caesar and even arranged to rescue Caesar from the Siege of Alexandria following the battle. This further ingratiated Antipater with Caesar, who in 47 BCE granted Antipater Roman citizenship, relieved him of all taxes, and installed him as the first Roman procurator of Judea. Antipater’s sons were also appointed as local rulers, including one son named Herod (74–4 BCE), who ruled Galilee.