Chapter 8
In This Chapter
● Exploring how Rome governed its provinces
● Understanding Roman control of the economy
● Detecting Rome’s impact on religion
By the time Jesus was born, the Roman Empire had been more or less in control of Palestine for 60 years. I say more or less because with the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, the ensuing civil wars in Rome, and the regional flare-ups where petty rulers tried to take advantage of the situation, there wasn’t much of that famous Pax Romana (Roman peace) that’s always talked about. But by 37 BCE, Herod the Great secured his kingdom in Judea, and six years later, Octavian got a lock on the Roman Empire (Chapters 6 and 7 cover these events). With strong leaders in place, Roman peace became reality.
In this chapter, you see how Rome managed its far-flung territories before and during Jesus’s lifetime. You get a sense of how the Romans deployed their army and worked with the local leaders in the different regions. You also discover the economic impact of Rome’s presence on the average person — the very group from which many in Jesus’s movement came — and you see the impact of Rome’s presence on the religious practices and beliefs of the people.
Governing Jesus's Homeland
The Romans’ goals in expanding their empire were fairly straightforward: They wanted as much income from as much territory as they could successfully manage. They also wanted all the glory that went along with their successful takeovers.
The region of Palestine (Jesus’s homeland), for example, provided no small amount of income from its own native agriculture and local industries. But Rome recognized Palestine for yet another reason. Its primary value to Rome was its location along the Mediterranean coast. Because Palestine straddled the highways connecting Egypt to Mesopotamia and the caravan routes connecting China and India with the Mediterranean, whoever ruled the region was in a great position to control both military and trade routes. Rome wanted the region quiet, stable, and loyal, and its emperors were willing to collaborate with anyone who could provide such guarantees.
Rome wouldn’t start calling the region “Palestine” officially until after the Second Jewish Revolt (132-135 CE). But I’ll use the term to refer to the entire region in this chapter because it’s a little easier than referring to all the little kingdoms that constituted it, such as Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee.
When the Roman general Pompey entered Palestine in 63 BCE, he didn’t take over direct control of Palestine because he didn’t have that kind of manpower. Rome generally found it more advantageous to let the locals run things for them. Instead, Pompey created an administrative province in Syria that was run by a Roman legate (a provincial governor). The legate was responsible for making sure that peace was maintained and that income flowed back to Rome.
If the local aristocrats couldn’t manage things on their own, Rome would step in and administer things themselves. This happened in 6 CE in Judea, Samaria, and Idumea when Herod Archelaus, one of Herod the Great’s sons, mismanaged things badly. Rome absorbed the region into the imperial province of Syria and installed a local prefect (a governor of equestrian rank).
In the following sections, I explain how the Romans ran Palestine — mostly with the help of the army and local aristocrats. This information gives you a backdrop for Jesus’s ministry and helps explain why the Romans wanted him out of the picture.
Keeping the peace through the force of the army
The primary way that Rome maintained the peace in the region of Palestine was through the coercive and deterrent force of its army. In that sense, empires haven’t changed much! In the following sections, I discuss the staffing, positioning, services, and payment of the Roman army in Palestine.
Staffing and positioning the army
Rome maintained two separate armies: the professional army of Roman citizens and the auxiliary army of soldiers drawn from all parts of the empire. The auxiliary army was often run by local client kings (whom I discuss later in this chapter) and warlords.
Here’s how the armies were organized:
● Men were arranged into units of 100 called centuries, which were led by centurions.
● Six centuries (600 men) formed a cohort, which was led by a tribune.
● Ten cohorts (6,000 men) composed a legion, which was led by a general.
The professional army was composed of free Roman citizens who, by the time of Augustus (see Chapter 6), were career military men. The lowest rank of officers were the centurions, who came from the equestrian orders (the knights in the Roman army), from city council posts, and from various cohorts where they had served well. The next highest military officers were the tribunes, who were of equestrian rank. The generals came from the Roman Senate. If these high-ranking guys did well on the battlefield, they could improve their fortunes financially and politically. This military career ladder was so well established that the Romans even gave it a name: the cursus honorum (“course of honor”).
As far as positioning was concerned, the Romans were generally content to keep three to five legions in the Syrian provincial capital Antioch. From there, the legions could be mobilized to deal with border attacks, internal uprisings, and the banditry and piracy that plagued the region. If it felt the need, Rome could position a couple of cohorts or centuries in important cities as well, which may be why you occasionally hear of centurions in the gospels (Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10 both refer to centurions in Capernaum; Mark 15:39, Matthew, 27:54, and Luke 23:47 refer to centurions in Jerusalem). After 6 CE, when Rome annexed Judea, Samaria, and Idumea as the new province of Judea, the local prefects usually kept about 2,400 men (four cohorts) in Caesarea Maritima or in Sebaste. They also kept one cohort in the Antonia Fortress on the edge of Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
These local cohorts were drawn from the auxiliary army but were organized just like the professional army. The soldiers came from various regions, and their common language was likely Greek. Because the soldiers weren’t Jewish and were there to occupy the country, they could be pretty contemptuous of the Jews as the Jews could be of them. This contempt periodically led to flare-ups around the time of Jesus and explains how volatile the situation could become (see the later section, “Impacting Jewish Religion with Roman Practice,” for more details).
Surveying the army's services
The Roman army — both the professional legionaries and the local auxiliaries — provided the following services to the empire:
● It kept the peace by protecting the edges of the empire against would-be invaders.
● It was constantly on call to take out the pirates and bandits who harassed pilgrims, travelers, and merchants.
● In large cities, it often helped the local police to keep the peace (for example, in Jerusalem during the pilgrimage festivals).
● The army sometimes assisted in the engineering and building projects, such as aqueducts and roads.
After Octavian received the titles Augustus and princeps (first citizen) and thus became the emperor of Rome (see Chapter 6), the army’s services had the effect of fostering travel and trade and thus prosperity throughout the empire — especially for Rome’s allies.
Paying for the army's services
The professional legionaries and auxiliary soldiers had to be paid, housed, fed, and entertained. The Roman attitude on this issue was that the folks receiving the “benefit” of the army’s services should be the ones to foot the bill. So, the colonial subjects found themselves paying to be occupied! The forms of payment varied. The most common were the following:
● Tribute: Sometimes Rome would force a subject population to pay tribute, which was a fixed sum or tithe that the local ruler would be responsible for raising. The province of Syria, which included the semi-independent client kingdoms of Judea, the Galilee, and the parts in between, was supposed to pay this tribute from 63 BCE on. However, the legates in Syria weren’t able to collect payments consistently because of the chaos of the Roman civil wars (flip to Chapter 6 for more on that).
When Herod the Great became King of the Jews, Rome exempted Judea from the tribute payments as a reward for the king’s loyalty. However, when Rome assumed direct control of Judea and turned it into a separate province in 6 CE, Rome conducted a property census so that the prefect could collect the tribute (check out Chapters 6 and 9 for more on this census).
● Billeting: Because the Roman army needed to be housed and entertained (particularly through the winter months when it was too cold for battle and their tents weren’t adequate protection against the weather), the provincial governors sometimes picked cities that they wanted to punish and made them play host to the army. This punishment, which was referred to as billeting, often ruined the cities financially because they were expected to pay for all the soldiers’ food and entertainment and had to kick people out of their own houses to lodge them. Cities often paid bribes to receive exemptions or sought alliances with Rome in order to be treated more generously.
● Molestation: Molestation was the act of being pressed into various forms of service to support the army. It could mean
• Seizure of the people’s donkeys or carts for transport
• Confiscation of people’s grain, supplies, and livestock to feed the soldiers and their horses
• The coercion of someone off the street to haul Roman equipment (as when Simon of Cyrene was forced to carry Jesus’s cross; Mark 15:21; Matthew 27:32; Luke 23:26)
• The theft of clothing, supplies, or slaves (in Luke 6:29-30 and Matthew 5:40-41, Jesus teaches what to do when someone “takes” your cloak) and the rape of wives, daughters, and sons
• A kind of selective lack of protection, perhaps of pilgrims going up to Jerusalem or of foreign Jews trying to deliver collections of donated money to the Jerusalem Temple
● Conscription: Rome often conscripted (forced) people into its auxiliary armies for military service. Given the frequent military campaigns that were waged as generals sought to climb their way up the cursus honorum, there was a powerful and ongoing need for more men.
Needless to say, the local rulers in Rome’s provinces sought exemptions from these forced payments and services. Judea, for example, was particularly fortunate, because even though King Hyrcanus II and his Idumean friend Antipater had initially fought against Julius Caesar, they switched sides in the nick of time and proved to be important allies to Rome (see Chapter 7). As a result, Caesar granted Hyrcanus favors in 47 BCE that included exemptions from all the previously listed payments. But these favors could always be withdrawn as new emperors, governors, or prefects came to power.
Allying with local aristocrats
The Romans generally relied on local aristocrats to run the day-today affairs in the provinces. These elites were given different ranks depending on how valuable they were to Rome. I explain these ranks in the following sections.
Ethnarchs, tetrarchs, and client kings
The first Jews to ally with Rome were the Hasmonean King Hyrcanus II and his Idumean friend Antipater (see Chapter 7). The Roman general Pompey rewarded them for the alliance in 63 BCE by allowing Hyrcanus to resume duties as the high priest in the Jerusalem Temple and to assume the title of ethnarch (ruler of the ethnos or ethnic group of Jews). However, Pompey also removed a lot of the Hasmoneans’ territory and annexed it directly to Syria.
When the Parthians, an empire based in modern-day Iran, invaded Judea in 40 BCE, Rome wasn’t about to give up the region. So, the Roman Senate told Antipater’s son Herod to drive back the Parthians and their Hasmonean allies, and he did. He was rewarded by Rome, but he was loathed by many Jews. Herod was, after all, a second-generation convert to Judaism, unlike the priestly Hasmoneans. As such, Herod had absolutely no legitimate historical claim to the throne.
But the Romans looked for legitimacy elsewhere. They felt that legitimacy lay in a person’s ability to control and produce income from a territory and to remain a loyal ally. Herod fit the bill. The Romans acknowledged his success by granting him territory beyond Jerusalem. This territory included his ancestral Idumea, the region of Samaria, and the Galilee. Herod eventually controlled all the major trade hubs and routes in the region (see Chapter 7 for details). Rome then gave him the title of “King of the Jews,” which was the highest rank that a local ruler could have. The title implied a higher level of trust and responsibility.
Herod’s kingdom was split between his three sons when he died in 4 BCE. Rome felt that none of them deserved the title of “king.” Instead, Rome gave two of them — Philip and Herod Antipas — the title of tetrarch, which literally meant “ruler of a fourth.” (By this time, it no longer meant an actual “fourth” of a kingdom, but just referred to a region too minor to merit a higher-level ruler). Philip became tetrarch of the northeast (lower Syria), and Herod Antipas became tetrarch of the Galilee and Perea. Both men ruled throughout the lifetime of Jesus.
Herod Archelaus, Herod’s third son, became ethnarch of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, but his rule only lasted nine years. He mismanaged things so badly that the Romans kicked him out, created a new province called Judea, and appointed a prefect to govern it directly. Pontius Pilate, the fifth prefect sent to Judea, was running the show when Jesus met his end.
Aristocrats, priests, and imperial retainers
Beneath the client kings and the other rulers were the various aristocrats who owned property and the bureaucrats, or retainer class, who managed the business of the kingdom (for a diagram of the local power pyramid, see Chapter 13). Here’s the lowdown on these two groups:
● Aristocrats: In Palestine in general, the aristocracy included large landowners in the villages, towns, and cities. In Judea it also included some of the priests, as well as the Sadducees. Given the importance of Jerusalem and its Temple (see Chapter 7), the Roman prefect worked closely with these aristocrats. And because the aristocrats were concerned about keeping their land and status, they were happy to collaborate with Rome.
● The retainer class: These folks served the Romans and the local aristocrats. The class included the legate’s and prefect’s armies and staffs, the local ruler’s staff, the scribes who kept the political, military, and economic records, the individuals employed by the aristocrats to collect taxes and tolls, and the private armies, bodyguards, or police forces of the aristocrats.
Resisting Rome
The Romans were able to exercise effective control of their Jewish client kingdoms and the Judean province during the years of Jesus’s life, but they still found themselves facing some resistance. That resistance took a variety of forms, including the following:
● Inventing a whole vocabulary of resistance that’s invisible to the foreign occupiers — everything from symbolic messages hidden in numbers (for example, 666 as a code name for Caesar Nero in Revelation 13:18) to puns and inside jokes (like Jesus expelling a “legion” of demons into a suicidal herd of swine, Mark 5:1-20)
● Reclaiming one’s own traditions
● Using local rather than imported products
● Attacking the occupying army and its collaborators
Outright revolts occurred periodically during Jesus’s lifetime. For example, as I mention in Chapter 7, riots broke out when Herod hung a golden eagle (which was thought to be a pagan symbol) in the Temple. Also, when the Romans annexed Judea and conducted a property census for tax purposes (Luke 2:1-3), another revolt broke out in the Galilee. This revolt was led by Judah, who rallied people with the idea that they shouldn’t bow to a pagan empire (Acts 5:37; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.1.1).
The story of Jesus’s crucifixion indicates that he was lumped with social bandits and rebels like Judah. For instance, he was arrested like one (Mark 14:48), killed in place of one (Mark 15:6-15), and crucified between two others (Mark 15:27). This doesn’t mean that Jesus was a rebel or a thief; it simply means that he was mistaken for one, which may have been why he was killed (for more on Jesus’s crucifixion, flip to Chapter 14).
When there was an insurrection, Rome crushed it brutally. It would send out the area cohort to battle the insurrectionists, and often the cohort would arrest and execute any surviving rebels. If the insurrection proved particularly difficult to quell, additional legions could be summoned from Syria, as they were in the First Jewish Revolt (66-74 CE).
Getting a Grip on the Economy
In addition to its strategic significance (which I discuss in the earlier section, “Governing Jesus’s Homeland”), Palestine played an economic role in the larger Roman Empire. Some of its produce, such as dates, olives and olive oil, and wine, was prized for trade. The rest was subject to taxes, which could be difficult to pay for peasants who were just scraping by on their farming income.
Understanding the economic picture in the Roman-controlled Palestine helps make Jesus’s teachings clearer, especially for people today who live in economies based on industry and technology. Many of Jesus’s characteristic parables use examples of seeds, tenant farming, large landowners, and debt to drive home his lessons about the kingdom of God.
Working the land for crops
There are estimates that about 90 percent of the people in Palestine were what we might call peasants. Most of these folks probably fell into one of the following categories:
● Small landowners
● Tenants who worked other people’s land and paid rent
● Landless peasants who either worked as day laborers or engaged in banditry (see the sidebar “Making a living in Jesus’s day” for more information)
During the time of Jesus, the ruler of the region and the local aristocrats had large agricultural estates encompassing some of the best land in the region. There’s some evidence that these wealthy folks were amassing more of the land at the expense of the small landowners. Even then the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
Most of the peasants in Jesus’s time needed to farm in order to survive. They grew their own food, and they sold any surplus to trade for items that they couldn’t produce. The chief crops in the region were grain, vegetables, fruits, and legumes. But some households also produced some spices and meat. Meat wasn’t eaten very often, though, because it was expensive. The average peasant diet was pretty simple, consisting mainly of barley bread, salt, olives, oil, onions, and grapes.
Some of the regional crops were prized throughout the Mediterranean and were often grown on aristocratic estates (but were leased or were tended by day laborers or slaves). These cash crops included dates and date wines from Jericho and the Dead Sea region, balsam from Jericho for use in medicines, and some spices.
Budding ports, trade routes, and village commerce
One of the things that made King Herod “the Great” (see Chapter 7) was his success at improving trade facilities and securing local control of important trade centers. He took a tiny coastal village at Strato’s Tower near the Galilee and built it into a modern city called Caesarea Maritima. He sank a lot of cash into making the port the most technologically advanced in the Mediterranean. This city had excellent offloading and warehousing facilities, which drew ships and overland traders and increased the flow of import and export duties. Similarly, Herod’s control of his ancestral land, Idumea, which was south of Judea, and his alliances with the Nabateans, whose kingdom encompassed land from southern Syria to northwest Arabia and eastern Egypt, meant that he had a lock on the overland caravan routes from China and India. When the Romans granted Herod Gaza in 30 BCE, he had the port end of that spice trade and with it all the import and export duties on trade between the east and the Mediterranean.
Making a living in Jesus's day
While a majority of the people in Jesus's time farmed, the gospels mention a host of other occupations, including carpenters, fishermen, merchants, stewards, lawyers, builders, prostitutes, judges, tanners, innkeepers, doctors, teachers, laborers, clothes cleaners, guards, potters, bakers, grinders of grain, and blacksmiths. Also mentioned in the gospels are the retainer class positions (such as scribe, soldier, and toll collector) that I mention earlier in this chapter.
Many people couldn't make a living on the land and became bandits instead. Travel was extremely dangerous as a result of these thieves, and so people usually traveled in groups and didn't carry much money with them. You hear about these bandits in the gospels, such as the ones who beat up a man going down to Jericho in Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
In addition to ports, Herod built up cities at important points along the inland roads that ran up Palestine. An example of one such city is Sebaste in Samaria. Herod’s son, Herod Antipas, who gained control of the Galilee, continued this practice, building cosmopolitan Greek-style cities in, among others, Sepphoris (near Nazareth) and Tiberias (on the Sea of Galilee). These cities functioned as administrative centers and trade hubs for local and international commerce. Of course, most of the local farmers couldn’t afford the imported goods, so they stuck with the local products. But there is evidence that even small rural villages grew at this time because of the general increase in commerce.
Rome didn’t directly participate in the construction of these ports and roads. In fact, they were quite grateful when the local rulers took the onus on themselves to finance capital improvements like these. The emperors read such expenditures as gestures of loyalty. They understood the economics of the act — that improved infrastructure meant more revenue for them and less money out of their pockets.
Paying taxes, tolls, and trade duties
Every Roman province was required to pay up in one way or another to receive the privilege of Roman protection. Usually, Rome would expect the local ruler to pay the hefty sum, and then it would be up to that ruler to recoup the loss from his own people in whatever way he could. The ruler and his fellow aristocrats also were frequently “invited” to offer gifts, such as soldiers, fleets, property, food, games, and precious items, to the Romans.
Herod the Great used different sources of cash for his payments and gifts. For example, he would
● Collect tolls on the roads and in the markets and ports
● Collect booty from his battles
● Force payment from people he had conquered
● Dip into the income from his royal estates
Think Tony Soprano, first-century style: Herod would squeeze his “captains” (the aristocrats), who would squeeze their clients (smaller, local landlords), and so on down the food chain. Everyone who had the responsibility or bought the contract to collect taxes would add a cut for themselves, too.
Estimates say that during Jesus’s lifetime the average farmer contributed anywhere from 20 percent to 35 percent of his income in taxes and tithes. Some scholars put the figure much higher, however. Farmers usually paid their land taxes with their crops. In this case, the ruler would cash out some of the produce, ship some of it off, or store it in huge granaries (in case of a bad crop year). Besides paying taxes through tolls and duties, many Jews throughout the empire also paid a couple of days’ wages a year to support the Jerusalem Temple. And others took seriously the obligation to tithe their produce for the support of their local priests.
If you couldn’t pay your taxes or rents, you could lose your property and become a tenant farmer or wage laborer. Apparently, some people even resorted to selling their children, wives, and even themselves into slavery to pay off debts. Some scholars believe this sort of thing happened a lot in first-century Palestine as land became concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer elites. However, the jury is out on that fact until more archaeological data comes to light.
There’s no question that a tax load of 20-35 percent would be rough for someone living from harvest to harvest and day to day. The aristocrats and rulers were aware that they could squeeze only so much blood out of a turnip. So, in difficult years of drought or natural disaster, they would find ways to lessen the tax load on their countrymen, if only for a year or two.
The risk of revolt was an incentive for the aristocrats to occasionally reduce the tax load. I’ve already mentioned the revolt against Roman census led by Judah the Galilean in 6 CE (see the earlier section “Resisting Rome”). The Roman historian Tacitus said that things got hot in 17 CE too, when Jews pressed for a reduction of tribute (Tacitus, Annals 2.42). Apart from these two revolts, we don’t hear about any peasant uprisings, at least in the Galilee, during the time of Jesus. Living may have been difficult, but it wasn’t so bad that there was widespread and violent unrest. That would change, however, within 35 years of Jesus’s death, when a massive Jewish revolt against Rome convulsed the region.
Impacting Jewish Religion with Roman Practice
Temples were important centers in ancient cities, especially in cities like Jerusalem where there was only one. The Jerusalem Temple (which I cover in detail in Chapter 7) was a huge commercial hub. During a pilgrimage festival, Jews and non-Jews from all over the Mediterranean would stream to Jerusalem to offer prayers and sacrifices, to sing, to share their traditions, to pay their tithes and taxes, and to have a good time for days or even weeks. Apart from the festivals, there were always priests on call at the Temple for the daily sacrifices and the various offerings petitioners came to make.
The Romans, on the other hand, had a very different religion from the Jews. They worshipped many gods, including deceased emperors such as Caesar and eventually Augustus. The Romans were open to new cults, and they even constructed and dedicated temples to the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Persian god Mithras back in Rome. The auxiliary Roman armies positioned in the region were even more diverse. These armies were composed of Greek-speaking men who were drawn from all parts of the empire and who also worshipped many of their own gods.
Even though they’d had centuries of experience with it, the presence of “idol worshipers” in Palestine was difficult for some Jews. They were troubled by the presence of pagan customs, irritated by the political autonomy of some of the Greek cities, and offended by the way they had to struggle to survive under people they considered to be outsiders. The situation was especially volatile in Jerusalem, home of the single Jewish Temple to the single Jewish God.
This volatility helps explain the fact that when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem that last time, the crowds began to gather behind him and the Romans began to get nervous. They knew how easily the people could turn against them in the national capital, and experience taught them that swift, decisive action was the best remedy.
Problematic practices and idolatrous images
The Romans and their Jewish aristocratic friends had to be careful not to offend the sensibilities of the Jews, especially in Judea. For example, if they built a gymnasium for men to exercise naked, as was the Greek custom, the Jews wouldn’t take it well. It would be like your city council rezoning your neighborhood as a nudist colony. Some Jews were fairly comfortable with some Greek and Roman customs, but others weren’t. They wanted to preserve their own traditions.
Because of their differences in opinion, mutual contempt could flare up between the Roman auxiliary army and the locals. There’s a story, for example, of a soldier who was standing on the rampart of the Temple one Passover and mooned the Jewish pilgrims and pretended to pass gas. The pilgrims were so offended that they began to riot, which led to hundreds of people being crushed to death (Josephus, Jewish War 2.12.1).
Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Judea, could stoop pretty low, too (though not as low as the mooning soldier!). Pilate, the prefect who crucified Jesus, tried to introduce his cohorts’ military standards in the holy city — he hung staffs with images of the emperor on them. The Jews forced him to remove the images (Josephus,
Jewish War 2.9.2-3; Jewish Antiquities 18.3.1). Another time, Pilate hung some inscribed shields in Herod’s palace in Jerusalem. The Jews took these shields to be blasphemous, and protested to Emperor Tiberius, who forced Pilate to remove them (Philo, Embassy to Gaius 38).
Pagan cities
Palestine had long been under Greek empires before it was under the Roman Empire (see Chapters 6 and 7). So, several cities in Palestine were entirely Greek: Their people, constitutions, buildings, customs, and religious practices were all Greek. In fact, Hellenistic culture had such allure that Greek architectural practices and styles continued to dominate city-building under Rome and its local client kings. Herod the Great and his sons built several major cities, and many of them included the temples, stadiums, gymnasia, and marketplaces typical of the nearby Greek cities.
One of Herod’s sons, Herod Antipas (who was tetrarch of the Galilee), built two such cities at Sepphoris and Tiberias. Sepphoris isn’t far from where Jesus grew up, so some scholars have argued that Jesus was more influenced by the local Hellenistic culture than by rural Jewish culture. Because Jesus was a carpenter, some scholars even think that he may have helped build Sepphoris! But the gospels never mention Jesus visiting these cities as an adult.
He certainly was exposed to Greek language and culture, but his primary world was the Jewish world of the rural Galilee.
The pick of the high priest
As I explain earlier in this chapter, Rome didn’t have a large enough civil service and army to take over direct governance of its empire. Instead, the emperor relied on the local aristocracy, whose interests were often similar to Rome’s anyway (they both wanted peace and stability and the status quo from which they both benefited).
When Rome took over Judea directly in 6 CE and banished Herod the Great’s son Archelaus, the Roman prefect also took over Herod’s practice of appointing the high priest directly.
The high priest was supposed to be the purest of the pure, the single person who represented the Jewish people before their God. If he was being picked by a pagan who prayed to the Roman God Jupiter, how could he serve the Jewish God with any integrity? That’s at least how some Jews saw it. However, the fact that the situation continued like this from 6-66 CE suggests that the high priests must have managed the peoples’ sensibilities fairly well.
At the time of Jesus’s arrest and death (around 30 CE), the high priest was named Caiaphas, and he had been selected for the post by the prefect Valerius Gratus in 18 CE. He’s the man whose Temple police arrested Jesus, and he’s the one who turned Jesus over to the Roman prefect (Mark 14:33-15:15; Matthew 26:47-27:26; Luke 22:47-23:25; John 18:2-19:16). The gospels viewed Caiaphas as a traitor and heretic for turning Jesus over, but given who paid his salary, it really isn’t that surprising.
The plunder of the Temple treasury
The worst offense against the Jewish people was when a foreign ruler would rob the Temple treasury to fund his latest military campaign or public works project. The Jewish people had donated that money for the service of God! Pontius Pilate even got into trouble when he pilfered the offerings to build an aqueduct for the ritual baths and slaughtering floors of the Temple. The people protested until Pilate’s plainclothes soldiers infiltrated the crowd and started stabbing them (Josephus, Jewish War 2.9.4; Jewish Antiquities 18.3.2).
Purifiers and prophets
The period of Roman rule spawned several prophetic figures who protested Roman presence and sought to purify the land, mostly after the time of Jesus. Only one appears in the gospels: John the Baptist. He purified not through ritual baths but with river water. The river in which he baptized people was the same river that the Jews passed through when they first conquered their land. In his gospel, Luke notes that John the Baptist was from a priestly family but that he wasn’t purifying people through the Jerusalem Temple. By standing in the river where the nation had been born and washing people in it, it’s as if he’s calling the people back to their roots and offering them another way to reconnect with God. The Temple was the chief place where the nation maintained its relationship with God, and there’s no evidence that baptized people stopped going there (take Jesus, for example). But at the same time, John the Baptist offered a ritual that evoked Jewish heritage at a time when their land and Temple had been defiled by Rome. For more about John the Baptist, see Chapter 10.