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Show i " is THE WORLD IN WHICH JESUS LIVED International Sunday School Lesson for January 2, 1949 MEMORY SELECTION: "When the fullness of the time came, Go dsent forth his Son. " Galations 4:4. who controlled the temple were, by virtue of their position, in name the heads of the nation, and it was to them that the Ro- . - Y . mans looked when they sought ' to deal with the Jews as a people. The High Priest was the head of the Sanhedrin, the Jew- ish council to which the Romans ; entrusted whatever powers of local seUJ government they left to the Jews of Judea. The great priestly families were the center ! of the party of the Sadducees. i The Jews, a proud and nation-j nation-j alistic people, irked under the ! Roman yoke and devout Israel-: Israel-: ites found comfort and peace in ' the faith that God would in his own. good time fulfil the covenant coven-ant promise made to the fathers of his chosen race. This fathered the hope of a coming new age, when Jehovah himself would sweep away the existing world system and replace it by his own perfect Kingdom in which all the wrongs of his chosen people would be redressed, and Israel would be exalted to its proper place in the world. They . had pictured the Messiah as a political savior rather than a : spiritual savior. Looking at the situation in Palestine in which Jesus found himself, we can agree with Paul, ' when he declared that, "in the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son." The intense expectancy expect-ancy which gave first to John y the Baptist and then to Jesus a ready hearing was the outcome of long ages of slow growth and development. His coming was the time of Jerusalem's last visitation, visi-tation, her final opportunity to accept God's way of salvation. It was the fullness of time but Jerusalem and the Jews did not accept it (Lk. 19:42). For the first six months oii 1949, we shall have for our con-1 sideration a chronological study of the life of Jesus Christ, drawn from the Gospels, largely from Mark and Luke, but also taking account of the narratives of Matthew Mat-thew and John. This study is a continuation of the historical study of the Bible where the Spring quarter of 1948, the Captivity Cap-tivity and Return of the Jews, left it. Our lesson for this week is a study of the background, geographical, geo-graphical, political and religious, of that particular portion of the world into which Jesus was born. Geographically, the world into , which Jesus came was a very small world. He was born in what we know of as Palestine, less than 11,000 square miles in 1 total area. Its length west i of the Jordan from Dan i'n , the extreme north to Beersheba ' at the south was one hundred and forty-four miles. Its width t at Beersheba was ninty miles; ? at the sea of Galilee forty miles; " and at the part farthest north " twenty-five miles. The section east of the Jordan had about the same- length and varied in width eighty miles in the north ; to thirty miles in the south. ; When we speak of Palestine, we usually mean the section west ' of the Jordan, where Jesus spent t most of his life. Politically, all the nations of the then known world were under un-der the dominion of the great Roman Ro-man Empire. The armies of ' Rome held sway everywhere and a peace prevailed such as the world had not enjoyed for centuries. cen-turies. While the Jews were restive res-tive under the yoke of Rome, great things were being accorrv . plished by that government. Mili- tary roads were built leading out from Rome in every direction, portions of which remain to this day, and travel was relatively safe and easy. As someone has said, had those ancient road-builders road-builders been endowed with prophetic pro-phetic vision, they might truthfully truth-fully have said: '"The Christ is coming by and by, and we are helping to prepare a pathway by which his ambassadors may journey through all lands with the message of mercy for the sons of men." In Jesus' time, there were three centers of religious interest: in-terest: 1. The Law; 2. The Temple; and 3. The Messianic Messian-ic hope. Since the time of Ezra, the written law of the Old Testament Testa-ment had been the guiding rule by which the Jewish life was regulated. reg-ulated. On the basis of this law and its interpretations, every aspect of life was ruled. Since the obligation to observe the law, as interpreted by the "tradition of the elders" was accepted by all Jews as an essential part of their religion, the Pharisees, who devoted themselves to the study and teaching and interpretation of the law, held in Judaism a place of the greatest importance. The Temple held first place in the hearts of all Jews. As the crowning act of worship for the first century Jew was the offering offer-ing of sacrifice to Jehovah and the only place in all the world where this could be done was the temple at Jerusalem, therefore there-fore Jews from all over the world came on pilgrimages to this holiest of places in all the : universe. . Since these visits I could be made but infrequently, j except by the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the synagogue became be-came the center of religious life in the villages, chief priests |
