JCS: Getting into Character (part 3) -- Sights and Sounds
The thought experiment proposed in the
first post has our time machine plopping us down into the middle of the
first-century world of Jesus and the people around him. This would be an entirely astonishing
experience because of its strangeness to us.
Your senses would be assaulted by sights, sounds, and smells that your
moderns experiences could barely translate.
A short-form blog post is not going to do much to cut through the
murkiness of it all, but we can do a bit to bring you closer to comprehending this
odd world. And maybe it will help you
play your part with more confidence, more sympathy.
Sights and sounds are a broad
simplification of the experiences. A
more nuanced way would be to look at this old world through some lenses we
could easily latch onto: Land, Language, Literacy,
Learning, Law, and Lore.
To be honest, this alliteration is
contrived because I enjoy the sound of the words. A better writer, while not eschewing the
first four lenses (another “L” word, if you are paying attention), would have
called “Law” what it really is: politics or government or even power. And as for “Lore”, I am really thinking of
the religious life of these first-century people. Nevertheless, cheesy alliteration aside,
these perspectives on the “sights and sounds” are a useful starting point.
Let’s visit the LAND first.
Land
After our time machine drops us into the first
century, what our senses experience depends on where in the land we get dropped
you. Visiting Nazareth or Capernaum in the
Galilee region would be completely different to visiting Bethany or Bethlehem down
in Judea. This is not unlike the difference
you would experience between visiting West Texas and Manhattan. Moreover, there is a surprisingly diverse
climate in the land. Some places, for
instance, experience a rainy season over the Winter; others may not see a drop
of rain for years. You know where you
are based on clues (BTW, my new show idea, “Where in the World is Judas
Iscariot?”, was universally rejected by PBS executives… Live and learn).
Israel at the time of Jesus was predominantly
an agricultural society. There were not
good ports, so being a maritime power was not feasible. But the land could grow stuff, and everyone
was connected to it in some way (just consider how many of Jesus’ parables
involved agriculture). But its location
in the Europe to Asia to Africa “land bridge” also made it at a sort of “crossroad
to the world”. (This is a good news-bad
news story. Good news: lots of lucrative
commerce and trade which makes for prosperity.
Bad news: all that prosperity attracts the attention of invading, conquering
armies, from the Hittites to the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Persians
to the Greeks, not to mention the constant neighboring rivalries with
Philistia, Edom, Moab, etc. Israel ended
up being an economic ping-pong ball, bouncing between empires. This fact – and Israel’s expectation that
their glory and freedom would someday be restored – figured prominently in the
mindset of Jesus’ crowds. More about
that in a future article.)
Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a suburb of Jerusalem,
spend part of his childhood as a fugitive in Egypt, and was raised in the town
of Nazareth in the Galilee. He got around. Given that our story begins in Jerusalem, though,
our time machine ought to drop us there.
Jerusalem
in the first century is home to anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 people
(these are estimates because nobody was doing a headcount; ancient
historians like Josephus assert much higher numbers, in fact, but scholars
today recognize these numbers as exaggerations). Whatever the number of people, the population
comprises both Jews and non-Jews, although the city is
overwhelmingly Jewish.
The city is a product
of ambitious building and expansion projects begun under Herod the Great (yeah,
that’s my dad; sorry about the whole “murder the children” thing…and all the
other horrible stuff he did) at the beginning of the First Century. My “dad” restored the city to its former glory
(well, maybe transformed to a new glory) by building an amphitheater, a
theatre, various palaces and viaducts, and some monuments, all to impress Rome. From a pretty useful research website:
No visitor seeing Jerusalem for the first
time could fail to be impressed by its visual splendor. The long, difficult
ascent from Jericho to the Holy City ended as the traveler rounded the Mount of
Olives, and suddenly caught sight of a vista like few others in the world. Across
the Kidron Valley, set among the surrounding hills, was Jerusalem, "the
perfection of beauty," in the words of Lamentations, "the joy of all
the world."
The view from the Mount of Olives was
dominated by the gleaming, gold-embellished Temple which was located in the
most holy spot in the Jewish world and really God's world. This was the Lord's
earthly dwelling place, He mediated His throne here and raised up a people to
perform rituals and ceremonies here that would foreshadow the coming of His Messiah
kinsman redeemer who would be the lamb of God, slain for the sins of the whole
world.
The Temple stood high above the old City of
David, at the center of a gigantic white stone platform.
To the south of the temple was THE LOWER
CITY, a group of limestone houses, yellow-brown colored from years of sun and
wind. Narrow, unpaved streets and houses that sloped downward toward the
Tyropean Valley, which ran through the center of Jerusalem.
Rising upward to the west was THE UPPER
CITY, or Zion, where the white marble villas and palaces of the very rich stood
out like patches of snow. Two large arched passageways spanned the valley,
crossing from the Upper City to the temple.
A high, thick, gray stone wall encircled
Jerusalem. It had been damaged, repaired and enlarged over the centuries, and
in Jesus' day it was about 4 miles in circumference, bringing about 25,000
people into an area about a square mile. At intervals along the wall were
massive gateways. Just inside each gate was a customs station, where publicans
collected taxes on all goods entering or leaving the city.
A bustling city at all times, Jerusalem bustles even more in the Spring, when
our JCS story begins, because pilgrims travel from all over to visit the Holy
City for Passover. The Text records that
Jesus and His family visited Jerusalem every year for Passover, and one year
the boy Jesus decided to hang around a few extra days to have conversations
with the Jewish religious teachers in the Temple (Luke 2). Our song “Hosana” takes place during what is
called His triumphal entry at the beginning of the Passover festival. There were mobs because the city was crowded
with visitors, thronging to the Temple, moving about the narrow streets,
trading in the markets.
We will look at the importance of Passover and
the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in a future essay.
