HEROD THE GREAT
Following the murder of Antipater in 43 BCE, his son Herod the Great rose to prominence in Judea. Having served as governor and then as tetrarch of Galilee from 47 to 40 BCE, Herod was declared king of Judea by the Roman Senate in 39 BCE. After taking his sweet time returning to Jerusalem, Herod began actively ruling Judea in 37 BCE.9
There is some debate about whether Herod the Great was a good king for the Jews. In many ways, his rule was a very accommodating, positive time for the Jews, as he implemented many policies and construction projects that benefited the Jewish people.10 Although Herod is rightly called a megalomaniac and a self-aggrandizing tyrant who built colossal monuments so that he might be remembered, those building projects were essentially government-funded economic stimulus projects that employed hundreds if not thousands of Jewish workers, which they appreciated.
But regardless of the good Herod the Great may have done for the Jews in the late first century BCE, the Jews always hated him. For one, he was paranoid and impulsive. He killed a number of his own sons and wives as well as his political opponents. In this sense, although the Gospel of Matthew’s inclusion of the “slaughter of the innocents” (2:16–18) is considered historically spurious by scholars because it is nowhere mentioned by Josephus (who mentions everything else Herod was even rumored to have done), scholars do not dismiss the story outright, because it is consistent with other murderous acts that Herod commonly ordered, especially in his later years.
I once held a coin of Herod the Great in my hand. It was the archaeological equivalent of a religious moment; I felt the pickax, the brush, and the holy trowel flowing through me. I remember feeling a connection to Herod the Great, not in any spiritual or metaphysical sense, but in the sense that I was touching history. I was holding the same bronze coin that perhaps a Roman soldier used to buy dinner or a Jewish shop owner received as payment for new pair of sandals.
I stared at the Greek letters inscribed around the edge of the coin, ΗΡΩΔΟΥ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ, ‘Ērōdou Basileōs, “Of King Herod,” and at the symbolic propaganda that was present in the center of the coin, the sacrificial tripod holding a large lebes bowl, a ceremonial vessel used for mixing items during pagan rituals. I imagined how the Jewish shopkeeper might feel receiving this coin, reminded even on the money he used that Jews were subjects of Rome and that their own king was Rome’s client, who went so far as to parade symbols of pagan religion on his coinage.
Carefully flipping the coin over, I noticed the image of a soldier’s helmet—a constant reminder of Rome’s military presence in Judea.
A coin of Herod the Great dating to 40 BCE. Obverse: ΗΡΩΔΟΥ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ , (‘Ērō dou Basileō s) “Of King Herod,” surrounding a sacrificial tripod holding a large lebes bowl. Reverse: Military helmet with cheek pieces surrounded by a wreath with a star at the top. Photo courtesy John F. Wilson.
It wasn’t enough to tacitly support pagan religion; Herod needed to remind his people who was really in charge, and a soldier’s helmet on a coin was the simplest, most ubiquitous way to do so. My thoughts raced back to Jerusalem as I clenched the coin in my fist, and I was reminded that, regardless of the good Herod the Great may have done for his Jewish subjects, the Jews of Jerusalem felt their so-called king was a sellout to Rome. Instead of being a real messiah and king of the Jews and rising up against Rome to lead the reestablishment of the kingdom of Israel for the Jewish people, he worked for Rome to suppress Jewish cries for independence. And that is why they hated him.
JUDEA AFTER HEROD
Following Herod’s death, Rome divided his kingdom up and placed it under the authority of three of Herod’s sons (the ones he hadn’t murdered) and Herod’s sister, none of whom received the title of king. The division of the kingdom had a huge impact on the daily lives of Jews under Roman rule. This is the period in Jewish and Roman history—the first and early second centuries CE—that contributed the entirety of the New Testament to the Bible. From the Gospels, which describe Jesus’s birth under Herod the Great (Matt. 1–2) and/or Quirinius (Luke 1–2) and his trial and execution before the prefect Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas “the Tetrarch”; to the letters of Paul, which were written to newly established churches in Roman territories; to the pseudonymous Pastoral Letters written to instruct the young churches throughout the empire; to the “Little Apocalypse” in Mark 13, which appears to be describing the fall of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE; to the (much larger) Apocalypse of John (the book of Revelation) encouraging Christians to keep the faith in the face of Roman persecution—all of these letters and books were composed within the context of the Roman occupation of Judea. That is, the New Testament is a wholly Roman phenomenon and is inseparable from the Roman context in which the story of Jesus and the early church is set.
Roman prefects, procurators, and legates were appointed to rule over Judea in place of Herod’s heirs throughout the first century CE. They were largely insensitive to Jewish religious, political, and general cultural practices, which caused conflict between the Roman authorities and the Jewish people. Both sides suffered greatly, as the Jews were regularly imprisoned and killed in response to their protests against Rome, and Roman governors were regularly recalled for not keeping the peace.
One of these largely ineffective, yet well-known Roman prefects was Pontius Pilate, who the Bible says presided over the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. There is archaeological evidence that confirms Pilate’s tenure as prefect in Judea in the form of coins he minted and the famous Pilate Stone, an inscription discovered in secondary use as a stepping stone in the Roman theater of Caesarea Maritima, which reads in part, “[Po]ntius Pilate . . . [Pref]ect of Juda[ea].” The Pilate Stone is presently on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. (There is a replica on display outdoors in Caesarea at the location the inscription was uncovered.)
The “Pilate Stone” on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Discovered at Caesarea Maritima, the Latin inscription preserves the lines, “[PO]NTIVS PILATVS . . . [PRAEF]ECTVS IVDA[EA]E,” or “Pontius Pilate . . . Prefect of Judea.” Image courtesy Israel Museum.
The inscription was discovered in Caesarea because, following its institution of prefects, Rome moved the administrative center of Iudaea from Jerusalem to Caesarea. Pilate likely lived in Caesarea, overlooking the Mediterranean, and traveled to Jerusalem only for significant matters requiring his personal oversight.11 And he will forever be remembered for one of those significant matters: lending Roman approval to the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.
The political tension between the Jews, early Christians, and their largely inept Roman governors became such a powder keg in Jerusalem that militant conservative Jews rebelled against Rome in 66 CE, which today is called the Great Jewish Revolt. This war changed the course of both Judaism and Christianity, as it resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE and the dispersion of Jewish groups (including the Christians) who subsequently adapted their practices to those that could survive without needing the Temple. And it was the loss of the Jewish Temple that served as a watershed moment between Judaism and Christianity, as both Jews and Christians physically fled their separate ways and began to write down the stories and histories of their respective faiths. Thus we can say that in the same way that the destruction of the First Temple largely produced the Hebrew Bible, so too did the destruction of the Second Temple produce the bulk of the New Testament and the Mishnah, the first written redaction of Jewish oral tradition.
PAUL’S LETTER TO THE ROMANS
Another example of the role that Rome and its empire played in the creation of the Bible is the apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which is arguably his magnum opus. The letter not only presents Paul’s apologetic masterpiece for the supremacy of Christ; it also represents the relationship between early Christians and Rome. Given the fact that Paul wrote his letters before the destruction of the Temple, Paul’s letters hold the distinction of being the earliest Christian wr
itings known to us today. And no letter of Paul is more important than Romans.
According to Brendan Byrne, professor of New Testament at Jesuit Theological College, the apostle Paul wrote Romans for several reasons.12 First, Paul wanted to introduce himself to the church in Rome—a church that, unlike the recipients of so many of his other letters, was a church that he did not found. Paul was going to visit Rome on his way to Spain and needed a home base for his operations there. Therefore, Paul does not condescend to the Romans in the same manner as he does with the churches he founded in Galatia (Gal. 1) and Thessaloniki (1 Thess. 4), but lays out the gospel to the Romans in much broader, more inviting strokes.
Second, Paul is laying out what is essentially a systematic account of his theology of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, for an audience made up largely of Gentile Roman converts to Christianity. That is, one of the true strengths of the book of Romans is that it explains this essentially Jewish religious tradition and messianic expectation in terms that Jews and non-Jews can understand. It also appears to encourage Roman Gentile and Jewish converts to Christianity not to denigrate Jews or the Jewish heritage upon which Christianity is inextricably based. Paul regularly reminds the Roman Christians that Jesus is thoroughly Jewish, making direct quotations and appeals to Jewish Scripture on at least fifty-seven occasions in Romans.13 Thus, in much the same way that Josephus chronicled Jewish history for Romans fifty years later, Paul presented the Jewish faith in a manner that would be understood and accepted by Roman Christians.
One key difference between Paul’s Letter to the Romans and the writings of Josephus is that, while Josephus was attempting to cast the Jewish faith in terms of Hellenistic philosophy so that it would be palatable to the Roman establishment, thereby offering an apology for the Jews whose rebellion the Romans had recently suppressed, Paul does not write Romans simply to inform his readers about Jesus; he writes for the purpose of converting them to the faith and compelling them to do the things Jesus instructed his disciples to do. Paul is not writing history for the sake of chronicling the story of Jesus; he wants Romans to believe what he’s saying and to join the movement. Josephus wanted Romans to understand the importance of Jewish contributions to society; Paul wants the Romans to recognize Jesus as the savior of the world and become his disciples—a desire that coincidentally would be fulfilled three centuries later.
Finally, Paul wrote Romans for the purpose of raising money and support for his missionary activity. The entire final chapter of Romans is a lesson in name-dropping and the power of public praise of those who have already contributed to a campaign.14
Thus, Rome helped build the Bible not only because of its cultural significance as the setting in which the New Testament was written, but because Paul’s Letter to the Romans serves as the single greatest summary of the gospel of Jesus to Gentiles in the Bible. Furthermore, it was this letter to the Romans that so encapsulated Paul’s message of Jesus’s grace that it later served as the centerpiece of Martin Luther’s theology during the Protestant Reformation.
ROME’S ROLE IN THE CANON
Rome had one final role in building the Bible we have today, and it involves canonization, or the process of choosing the books that would become included in what we call the Bible. “Canon” is from the Greek κανών (kanōn) meaning “rule” or “measuring stick.” Thus, a canon is something by which other things are measured, namely, the authority of a particular Christian writing. Those books included in the canon are thought to be “divinely inspired,” “God’s Word,” “Scripture,” “God-breathed,” and therefore authoritative. Indeed, the Bible is the record of God’s message to humanity for many Jews and Christians around the world.
But the process of canonization is much messier than most people realize (or want to know). Indeed, the Bible is a product of a very political process. For those interested in delving deeper, I recommend Professor Michael Barber’s excellent three-part summary of the process of canonization for both the Old and New Testaments.15
HOW THE HEBREW BIBLE CAME TO BE
Let’s look at the Hebrew Bible first. Once upon a time, scholars thought that the books that came to be officially included in the Hebrew Bible were decided in three stages: the Torah was determined around 400 BCE, the Nevi’im (Prophets) by around 200 BCE, and the Ketuvim (Writings) by 100 CE. Scholars believed that, following the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, all of the Jewish sages and scholars fled and convened at a theoretical Council of Jamnia in modern Yavne, Israel, on the Mediterranean coast, in order to decide which books were to be included in the Hebrew Bible. Many scholars insisted that such a council took place to settle debates similar to the one found in Mishnah Yadayim 3:5, which preserves a debate between Jewish rabbis about which books “made the hands impure” due to their holiness, meaning which books would be included in the official Jewish canon.16
This theory was largely dismissed after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran (see Chapter 9), when scholars found that the Jewish sectarian books in caves surrounding Qumran included references to books that were not limited to the Hebrew canon we know today, including Enoch, Jubilees, and liturgical works like extra psalms and Songs for Sabbath Sacrifices. The scrolls discovered at Qumran also included copies of Greek books and targums (Aramaic translations of Hebrew biblical books), some of which were included in the Septuagint (see Chapter 7) and some of which were previously unknown.
Furthermore, multiple copies of the same biblical books were discovered at Qumran. These copies often did not match each other word for word, and some of the copies more closely matched the Septuagint’s versions of the books than the Masoretic Hebrew texts we have today. Thus, scholars quickly realized that multiple versions of the biblical books were circulating in antiquity, meaning that Jews in the first century CE weren’t sure not only which books were canonical, but which versions of the books were “authoritative.”
There is also evidence from the Talmud that the Hebrew canon had not yet been settled. For instance, the book of Sirach is quoted as Scripture in the Talmud and preserves the introductory formula “for so it is written in the Book of Ben Sira.”17 In fact, Sirach 13:15 appears to be quoted in the Talmud as representative of the Ketuvim (the Writings section of the Hebrew Bible): “Every fowl dwells near its kind and man near his equal.”18
So scholars realized that the biblical canon was not as “fixed” as we originally thought. Different Jewish groups venerated different Jewish writings, and there were sometimes multiple copies of certain biblical books that differed from one another. As we learned in Chapter 7, the Septuagint is significantly different from the Masoretic Text in that it includes over a dozen more books than were canonized in the Hebrew Bible. Today, the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible are:
The five books of the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The eight books of the Prophets (Nevi’im): Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings,19 Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the “Book of the Twelve” minor prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Naḥum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Ḥaggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
The eleven books of the Writings (Ketuvim): Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Qohelet (Ecclesiastes), Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Neḥemiah (which is a single book in Judaism), and Chronicles.
Many Christians have been taught that there are thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, while Jews have been taught to count twenty-four books. The way I was taught to remember this was that there are three letters in the word “Old” and nine letters in the word “Testament,” so thirty-nine books in the Old Testament. (And then multiply three times nine to get twenty-seven, the number of books in the New Testament.) The discrepancy between thirty-nine and twenty-four can be explained by noting that Jews count the Book of the Twelve (minor prophets) as one book, not as twelve, so that takes us from twenty-four to thirty-five. The books of Ezra and Neḥemiah are counted as one book in the Hebrew Bible, but as
two books in the Old Testament, taking us to thirty-six. The books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are also each counted as a single book, while Christians count them as two books each (i.e., 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, and 1–2 Chronicles), which brings us to thirty-nine books. This is how the twenty-four books of the Jewish Hebrew Bible are counted as thirty-nine books in the Christian Old Testament.
Thus, the Hebrew Bible was decided over a much longer and much less understood period of time, meaning that what Jews and Christians today consider to be the Hebrew Bible was not boomed forth from the top of a mountain and did not float down from the heavens in completed fashion. Rather, the process of canonizing the Hebrew Bible had a lot more to do with what different groups believed to be true and chose to include.
And if you thought determining which books would be in the Hebrew Bible was confusing, just wait until you see how the New Testament came into being.
HOW THE NEW TESTAMENT CAME TO BE
When we look at how both Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible were canonized, we know that by the end of the first century CE there had been several Christian works composed by a number of authors. The letters of Paul, the Gospels, and some of the non-Pauline letters like Hebrews had been written. But so too had a number of documents that were incredibly popular at the time, but that are unknown to many people today.20 Thus, the church had to decide which of these books would be canonized as the “Word of God.”
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