Roman Rule in Palestine

Rome was the fifth great empire to rule God’s people, and the earlier four shaped the world Jesus was born into.

Assyria (about 740–605 BC) conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. “The king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away unto Assyria” (2 Kings 17:6), and the ten tribes were scattered and settled among foreigners. Assyria allowed little religious freedom and pressed its captives to assimilate. Isaiah and Hosea had warned of that judgment and called the people to repent.

Babylon (605–539 BC) destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple in 586 BC and carried Judah into exile. Without a temple, the exiles gathered to read and study the Law, and many trace the rise of the synagogue to those years. Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel preached that God had not forgotten His covenant.

Medo-Persia (539–332 BC) was the most tolerant of them all. Cyrus decreed that the Jews might go home and “build the house of Jehovah, the God of Israel” (Ezra 1:3). Ezra the scribe taught the Law, and Nehemiah rebuilt the walls; scribes became the leaders of the people’s faith.

Greece (332–164 BC) brought Hellenism: the Greek language, philosophy and way of life. Under Antiochus IV Epiphanes it turned to persecution. He defiled the Temple and banned the Law, and the Maccabees rose in revolt (told in 1 Maccabees). In those years longing for a deliverer grew strong. Then in 63 BC the Roman general Pompey took Jerusalem. Rome allowed the Jews their religion, but only on the surface. Behind that tolerance stood its army, with client kings and Roman governors to rule the land. Rome also built roads and cities and spread Greco-Roman culture into daily life. Jesus was crucified under Roman law, and the church spread along Roman roads. Daniel had seen this succession of kingdoms and said, “In the days of those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44).

Rome began, so its legend says, as a kingdom founded by Romulus in 753 BC. Its kings held religious and military power until the last of them, Tarquin the Proud, was driven out for his tyranny in 509 BC.

The Republic (509–27 BC) put power in elected officials. Two consuls shared executive power for a year at a time; the Senate, a council of aristocrats, advised them and held great influence; assemblies of citizens voted on laws and elected magistrates. There were checks and balances, but power stayed with the elite, and in the last century of the Republic civil wars and corruption wore it down.

After Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, his adopted heir Octavian defeated his rivals, and in 27 BC the Senate gave him the name Augustus. He kept the forms of the Republic: the Senate met, consuls were elected, and he called himself princeps, “first citizen.” But he held the army, the treasury and foreign policy, along with the titles Imperator (commander), Pontifex Maximus (chief priest) and Caesar. Historians call his system the Principate: an emperor ruling behind a republican façade.

Under Augustus the government ran from the emperor through the Senate to the provincial governors, and under them to prefects and procurators like those who governed Judea. Augustus was declared a god after his death in AD 14, and the worship of the emperors spread through the provinces. It was “a decree from Cæsar Augustus” that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem (Luke 2:1), and John the Baptist began preaching “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar” (Luke 3:1).

Rome governed its provinces in two ways. Peaceful senatorial provinces were ruled by proconsuls appointed by the Senate. Luke names two: Sergius Paulus in Cyprus (Acts 13:7) and Gallio in Achaia (Acts 18:12). Imperial provinces, where armies were needed, were ruled by the emperor’s own legates. Syria, governed by Quirinius at the time of the first enrollment (Luke 2:2), was one of them.

Where it could, Rome let a loyal local king do the ruling. Herod the Great was made king of the Jews by the Roman Senate and ruled from 37 to 4 BC. He kept order, collected revenue and paid Rome’s price; in return he kept his throne. After his death his kingdom was divided among his sons. Archelaus received Judea (Matthew 2:22), but he ruled so badly that Augustus removed him in AD 6. From then on Judea was a Roman province under a governor of the equestrian rank, a prefect (later called a procurator). He lived at Caesarea and came up to Jerusalem at the feasts. Galilee stayed with Herod Antipas, “tetrarch of Galilee” (Luke 3:1).

Herod’s buildings show how he served two masters. For the Jews he rebuilt the Temple on a grand scale (“Forty and six years was this temple in building,” John 2:20). For Rome he built the harbor city of Caesarea with a temple to Rome and Augustus, renamed Samaria “Sebaste” after the emperor (Sebastos is Greek for Augustus), and named the fortress beside the Temple Antonia after Mark Antony. He even set a golden eagle, Rome’s emblem, over the Temple gate, and Jewish students tore it down. His great buildings showed his power, his piety and his loyalty to Caesar all at once.

When Judea became a province in AD 6, Rome took a census to set its taxes. Judas of Galilee rose up “in the days of the enrolment” (Acts 5:37), teaching that paying tribute to Caesar meant accepting a master other than God. The revolt was crushed, but the idea lived on among the Zealots.

The people paid a tax on their land and a tax on each person to Rome, and tolls on goods moving through the land. Tolls were collected by publicans, local men who bid for the contract and kept what they could collect above it. Matthew was one, and Zacchæus was “a chief publican, and he was rich” (Luke 19:2). They were hated as collaborators and extortioners. The Temple tax of a half-shekel (Matthew 17:24) was a religious tax, but Rome watched the money that flowed into the Temple. That money might pay for a revolt.

So the question put to Jesus was a trap: “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or not?” A “yes” would anger the people; a “no” was treason. He asked for the coin, which carried the emperor’s image and titles, and answered, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:17–21).

Rome’s soldiers were never far away. A cohort of perhaps 600 men was quartered in the Antonia, overlooking the Temple courts, and more came up with the governor at the feasts, when crowds and tempers ran high. The “band of soldiers” at Jesus’ arrest (John 18:3) was such a cohort. When a mob seized Paul in the Temple, “the chief captain of the band,” the tribune Claudius Lysias, “took soldiers and centurions, and ran down upon them” (Acts 21:31–32). Centurions often appear in the New Testament as men of discipline and even faith. One built a synagogue (Luke 7:5). One confessed Jesus at the cross (Mark 15:39). Cornelius “feared God with all his house” (Acts 10:2). Rome’s first concern was order. Pilate washed his hands “when he saw that he prevailed nothing, but rather that a tumult was arising” (Matthew 27:24).

Pontius Pilate (AD 26–36) was prefect of Judea under Tiberius. The Jewish writers Josephus and Philo remember him for offending Jewish customs. He brought standards bearing the emperor’s image into Jerusalem by night, and backed down only when crowds of Jews at Caesarea bared their necks rather than allow it. He took money from the Temple treasury to build an aqueduct and had his soldiers beat the protesters. Luke tells of “the Galilæans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices” (Luke 13:1). At Jesus’ trial he found “no crime in him” (John 18:38), yet he gave way when the cry came, “If thou release this man, thou art not Cæsar’s friend” (John 19:12). In AD 36 his attack on Samaritan pilgrims at Mount Gerizim led to his recall to Rome.

Rome’s grip reached even the high priest’s garments. After Judea became a province, the governor kept the high priest’s sacred vestments, including the ephod and breastplate, under Roman guard in the Antonia. The high priest received them only by the governor’s leave, a few days before the great feasts, and gave them back afterward. Even the worship of the Day of Atonement depended on Rome’s permission. Vitellius, the governor of Syria, finally returned the vestments to the priests’ keeping in AD 36.

Antonius Felix (about AD 52–59) was a freed slave who rose through the influence of his brother Pallas at Claudius’ court. The Roman historian Tacitus said he “exercised the power of a king with the mind of a slave.” He married Drusilla, daughter of Herod Agrippa I (Acts 24:24). Josephus says he arranged the murder of Jonathan, a former high priest. He put down rebels and would-be prophets with the sword. Lysias took Paul for one of them, “the Egyptian” (Acts 21:38). When Paul reasoned with Felix “of righteousness, and self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was terrified” (Acts 24:25). Still he kept Paul two years, hoping “that money would be given him,” and left him in bonds “desiring to gain favor with the Jews” (Acts 24:26–27).

Porcius Festus (about AD 59–62) inherited a troubled province. The chief priests asked him at once to bring Paul to Jerusalem, plotting to kill him on the way (Acts 25:1–3). Festus refused, but when he offered Paul a trial in Jerusalem, Paul appealed to Caesar: “Unto Cæsar shalt thou go” (Acts 25:12). Festus called Paul’s preaching of the resurrection madness (Acts 26:24). Josephus judged him fairer than Felix, but he too was politically careful. He died in office, and in the months before his successor arrived, the high priest Ananus had James the Lord’s brother stoned (Josephus, Antiquities 20.200).

The governors who met the gospel acted out of practical politics, not conviction. Pilate wanted no riot, Felix wanted a bribe and Festus wanted the case off his hands. King Agrippa II, Rome’s client king, was intrigued but noncommittal: “With but little persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian” (Acts 26:28). Rome tolerated religions that kept the peace, and its officials were curious about Christianity but cautious.

At first Rome saw Christianity as a Jewish sect. Paul’s accusers called him “a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5), and the Jews in Rome said, “As concerning this sect, it is known to us that everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts 28:22). Because the Jews had legal standing, the church grew for a time without drawing Rome’s attention. Claudius did expel the Jews from Rome about AD 49 (Acts 18:2); the Roman historian Suetonius blamed riots over one “Chrestus,” likely a garbled “Christ.”

First-century persecution was mostly local and sporadic: a mob in Philippi, magistrates in Thessalonica, the riot at Ephesus. Christianity was not yet illegal, but Christians were seen as suspicious, antisocial and subversive. They were accused of atheism for rejecting the gods, cannibalism from rumors about the Lord’s Supper, and incest for calling one another “brother” and “sister.” Paul faced beatings, prisons and trials, and used his citizenship to appeal and to delay his death (Acts 25–28).

Then came Nero (persecution AD 64–68). When fire destroyed much of Rome in AD 64, he blamed the Christians. Tacitus records that some were dressed in animal skins and torn by dogs, and others burned as torches at night. Tradition places the deaths of Peter and Paul in his reign. Domitian (AD 81–96) demanded to be called “lord and god” and enforced the tax on Jews harshly; tradition dates John’s exile to Patmos, “for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Revelation 1:9), to his reign. Empire-wide, organized persecution came later, in the second and third centuries.

Between AD 66 and 135 the Jews rose against Rome three times. The first and greatest, the Great Revolt (AD 66–73), had been building for years under corrupt governors. It broke out under the procurator Gessius Florus, who in AD 66 took seventeen talents from the Temple treasury. When the people protested, he sent soldiers into Jerusalem to kill and plunder, and thousands died. At Caesarea a dispute over land beside a synagogue boiled over when a Greek sacrificed birds at the synagogue’s entrance, and violence followed. In Jerusalem the captain of the Temple, Eleazar son of Ananias, stopped the daily sacrifices offered for the emperor, and that was a declaration of rebellion.

Cestius Gallus, the governor of Syria, marched on Jerusalem and then withdrew, and the rebels routed his legion at Beth-horon. The victory emboldened the revolt. Nero sent Vespasian, who with his son Titus subdued Galilee in AD 67; tens of thousands were killed or enslaved. Vespasian became emperor in AD 69 and left Titus to besiege Jerusalem.

Inside the city the Jews fought each other. Zealots and moderates battled, rival leaders burned one another’s grain stores, and the defenses were weakened before the Romans even breached them. In AD 70 the walls were broken and the Temple burned. Josephus put the dead at 1,100,000, with 97,000 taken captive.

Jesus had foretold it: “There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). He had also warned, “When ye see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that her desolation is at hand. Then let them that are in Judæa flee unto the mountains” (Luke 21:20–21). The church historian Eusebius records that the Christians of Jerusalem took the warning and escaped to Pella, across the Jordan.

The last rebels held out at Masada, Herod’s fortress by the Dead Sea, until AD 73. Josephus says that when the Romans breached the wall, the defenders chose to die by their own hands rather than surrender. Judea was left nearly emptied by slaughter and slavery. Vespasian turned the Temple tax into a tax for the temple of Jupiter in Rome.

With the Temple gone, sacrifice ended. Jewish life gathered around the Law, prayer and the synagogue under the rabbis, and rabbinic Judaism grew from those years. For Christians the fall of the Temple confirmed what the book of Hebrews had said: the first covenant was “nigh unto vanishing away” (Hebrews 8:13). Christ had “offered one sacrifice for sins for ever” (Hebrews 10:12), and no altar in Jerusalem was needed again.

Two more revolts followed. The Kitos War (AD 115–117), under Trajan, was fought mostly among the Jews scattered abroad, in Egypt, Cyrene, Cyprus and Mesopotamia, more than in Judea. Then under Hadrian, Trajan’s kinsman and heir, came the Bar Kokhba Revolt (AD 132–136). The governor Tinnius Rufus carried out Hadrian’s plan to build a Roman colony on the ruins of Jerusalem, and Jewish practices, circumcision among them, were banned. Simon bar Kosiba led the revolt. He was hailed as Bar Kokhba, “son of the star” (from Numbers 24:17), and many took him for the Messiah. He failed. Jerusalem was rebuilt as the pagan city Aelia Capitolina, Jews were barred from entering it, and the province was renamed Syria Palaestina.