The 400 Year Gap Between The Old And New Testament

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While my Atheistic Bible study ought by rights to go from Genesis into Exodus, and continue through the books of the Bible chronologically, I am keen to tap into my extensive New Testament notes too, as my atheism is more often challenged by Christian than by Jewish religionists. I will certainly return to the Old Testament books though. I want to look first at what happened between the Testaments, an area few scholars seem to touch on directly. The main question here is, were the Old Testament prophets prepared for the rise of the Roman Empire? As the last book of the Old Testament ends with Malachi’s prophesies, Israel was still being promised that it would once again become a mighty nation under leadership of the descendants of Jacob. That never happened, and even today, Israel could not achieve it without major shifts in global power. Israel is still not recognised as a legitimate sovereign state by many of its Middle East neighbour states. Only nuclear weaponry and the might of the US and its allies keep an uneasy peace there, often broken by violent skirmish conflicts in Tel Aviv, Gaza, etc. With all three major monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam seeing the region as holy and significant, the political tensions there are continually close to breaking point. The ‘Minor Prophets’ of the later Old Testament defined Israel’s struggle for freedom in relation to countries in the immediate region, such as Palestine, Egypt, and Assyria. These countries would still be important 400 years on, but there was a new and immensely powerful kid on the block – Rome. Virtually nothing in the Old Testament prophecies warns of the Roman Empire’s impact on events. (Though many commentators try to decrypt prophesies to find references to Rome. After all, Christ would die in the hands of their executioners under Pontius Pilate’s command. Christianity later flourished by converting the Romans so that the Empire became a Holy Empire. The prophecies give little indication of this. Similarly the World has changed considerably since Revelation was written. We have had more than 2,000 years of social and technological achievements since John wrote his last Amen. The World grew bigger between the Testaments. Surprisingly few countries are mentioned in the Bible, and especially in the Old Testament. Most are in the Middle East. Ethiopia plays a prominent role in events from time to time. India is referred to only once, in the book of Esther (8; 9) as a distant country where some of the scattered Hebrews may possibly have migrated. A general letter is sent there for them. Russia gets in on the act in Ezekiel when its tribesmen briefly invade Judah. Tarshish in Spain is where Jonah fled to and sailed from in the voyage that saw him swallowed by a whale. For the author of Jonah, Spain is simply a place a long way away, and yet still under God’s view - it was a metaphor for the other end of the World. The Bible authors had a very narrow sense of global vision. There was a World beyond and many knew of it. Traders came and went along the spice roads, taking in China, and the African interior. Phoenician coins found in England’s Cornish Tin Mines indicated that trade between the early Celts & druids and the Phoenicians was active. China doesn't get mentioned in the Bible, as it had no direct influence on events within it. It is only from the Acts of the Apostles onwards that Christians developed a missionary zeal, taking their faith to Greece, Africa and into the heart of Rome itself. Christians had a more conscious sense of expansionism than their forbears. If Malachi travelled 400 years into his future he might not recognize Israel any more or relate it back to his prophesies. Despotic rulers are running Israel in the New Testament. They are Rome approved puppet leaders providing the over-stretched conquerors with local controllers, often paid generously, unlike their people. In Israel, the Rome-paid despot ruler when Jesus is born proves to be Herod, given to the bloodline of Esau, and not as promised to the Jews, a descendent of Jacob and David. The prophecies seem to have gone very wrong. With Noah’s Flood in Genesis supposedly drowning the World, it was probably at best the World known to the book’s authors. France, Switzerland, etc., were irrelevant to the writers of Genesis. Joseph feeds the entire World from Egypt towards the close of Genesis which would simply be impossible. The authors were not thinking of a World as big as we know now. Australia and America were not even discovered as yet. Israel’s rise and fall is central to the Old Testament. It is the nation of God’s favoured Chosen People. Countries not affecting or affected by Israel to all intents and purposes, might as well never have existed. In reality, that unseen remote World was to explode into the lives of the Israeli's in the gap years, with devastating consequences. Even internally, the way of life changed dramatically. The Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed and rebuilt quite frequently over the 400 years between Testaments. During these missing centuries Israel’s political leadership broke into factions and parties, the most influential being the Pharisees, Essenes and Sadducees. The influence of Greece spread across Palestine through the conquests of Alexander The Great. The Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle, would greatly influence early Christian church reasoning. The Sadducees in particular were heavily influenced by Hellenistic philosophy. They were often sceptical to the point of being atheists. As the Italians conquered Greece and became the central power of Europe the map of the World changed way beyond that envisaged by the Jewish prophets. Then a minor personality cult began to grow, claiming their God was born of a virgin, and that he had become a living human incarnation of God, but that he had died and came back from the dead. Rome initially ignored the eccentric sect, until the essentially Jewish faction started converting gentiles (non-Jews) to the faith, increasing membership dramatically. As early Christians separated themselves from the parent Jewish faith Rome began trying to suppress the fledgling religion, sometimes with extreme violence, but the cult was to prove unstoppable. It began, if scripture is to be believed, with the births of two men, John The Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. Other of my web pages will examine their alleged stories. Arthur Chappell