Intertestamental Years

Between Malachi and Matthew are about four hundred “silent years” during which God remained silent so far as fresh revelation was concerned. The broad outline of these years is given in Daniel 11, but much that meets us when we first turn from the Old Testament to the New Testament is new indeed. We read of sects and parties unknown in Old Testament times: Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians. Who were these? We find Hebrew a dead language and Aramaic and Greek the languages of intercourse, culture and commerce. We find Palestinian cities bearing Greek names, and Persia long replaced by Rome as the power dominating the Land of Promise. We read of “the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad” (James 1:1), otherwise known as the Dispersion. We discover that a Greek version of the scriptures is in common use among the Jews, and that idolatry, the great snare of Israel in the Old Testament, is completely rooted out of the nation. We read of an Idumean eigning as king in Jerusalem and of an official Jewish council known as the Sanhedrin holding some form of religious and political power in the land. We even find that the temple in Jerusalem is not identical with the one we left in the Old Testament, and that far and wide among the Jews, synagogues have come into existence as places of worship. Naturally we are curious about these things. Indeed, if we are to properly understand the New Testament, we need some information about them.

HISTORY

The Old Testament closes with Palestine still under Persian rule. A remnant of the Jewish people are in the land, but the majority are dispersed more as colonists than captives throughout the Persian Empire. In 333 B.C. Alexander the Great brought Syria under his control, and Palestine was merged into the growing empire of Greece. Upon the death of Alexander, the land became a pawn in the power struggles of Syria and Egypt, being ruled by whichever power happened to be the strongest at the time. The persecutions of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes provoked the revolt of the Maccabees who led the Jews in a struggle for independence 167-141 B.C. This was followed by the rule of the Hasmonaeans, descendants of the Maccabees, until 63 B.C., when Pompey the Great conquered Palestine and brought the country under the iron rule of Rome. Christ was born in Bethlehem in the days of Caesar Augustus. This Caesar appointed Herod the Great as king after the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C., when Augustus overthrew the alliance of Anthony and Cleopatra of Egypt. Herod the Great ruled Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Persia, and Idumea, and was the king responsible for the massacre of the babes of Bethlehem shortly after the birth of Christ. Herod the Great also rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem which had not been ornate enough to suit his tastes. The entire reconstruction took about eighty-five years and was not fully completed until the time of Agrippa II.

SECTS AND PARTIES

We frequently read of the scribes in the Gospels. These men were held in high esteem by the Jewish people as the interpreters and teachers of the Scriptures. As a class they first came into prominence after the return of the captives from Babylon, Ezra himself being described as both a priest and a scribe. They were bitterly opposed to Christ and were frequently denounced by Him for making the Scriptures of no effect by their traditions. The Pharisees were an influential Jewish sect which arose in the time of the Maccabees. They were originally a group of people who separated themselves from the ambitious political party in the nation. They were zealous guardians of the law and were conservative in belief, accepting both the supernatural and the concept of an after-life. The Sadducees on the other hand were rationalists, the liberals of their day, who denied the existence of spirits as well as the resurrection and the immortality of the soul. Numerically they were a much smaller group than the Pharisees and belonged for the most part to the wealthy, influential, priestly parties, the aristocracy of the Jewish nation. They also came into prominence during the days of the Maccabees. Both Pharisees and Sadducees opposed Christ, and those who did so were condemned by Him. The Herodians were in no sense a religious cult but were a political party who took their name from Herod and their authority from the Roman government. The Herodians looked upon Christ as a revolutionary and opposed Him on those grounds. The Zealots were an extremist group who were fanatical defenders of the theocracy and engaged in acts of violence against the Romans. One of Christ’s disciples might have been a Zealot (Matt. 10:4; Luke 6:15).

THE SANHEDRIN

In the New Testament times the Sanhedrin was the supreme civil and religious body within the Jewish nation. The president of the Sanhedrin was the high priest, and twenty-three members composed a quorum. The body eventually known as the Sanhedrin likely came into existence during the Greek period of Palestinian history, was dissolved during the Maccabean revolt, and was restored after the victorious conclusion of that struggle. The Sanhedrin had the right granted by the Romans to pass sentence of death but not the right to execute it. Christ and later Peter, John, and Stephen were tried by the Sanhedrin.

THE SYNAGOGUE

During the Babylonian captivity the Jews, with no temple in which to worship, began to meet in smaller assemblies for worship and religious instruction, and in this way the knowledge of the law was kept alive among the Jews. The institution of synagogues in all the lands of the Dispersion helped draw the attention of the Gentiles to the great truths entrusted by God to Israel.

THE DISPERSION

The scattering of the Jews from their homeland was originally a divine punishment for sin. In New Testament times dispersed Jews were to be found in all parts of the Roman Empire and were often wealthy, influential, and outstanding citizens. Living as they did among pagans, the Jews of the dispersion were able to win many proselytes to Judaism and, on the whole, while maintaining strict separation from idolatry, were more liberally minded than the Jews of the homeland. The common language of the ancient world was Greek, so it is not surprising the Jews of the Dispersion felt their need for a Greek translation of the Scriptures. This translation was made at Alexandria in Egypt between 285 and 130 B.C. and is known as the Septuagint.

PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD

During the “silent years” God had not been inactive. Indeed these four hundred years were years of intensive preparation of the world for the coming of His Son. The Jews of the Dispersion had done much to spread abroad the basic ideas on which the gospel was to be so firmly founded. The Jewish Sabbath, synagogue, and Scriptures became well known. Jewish separation, while it antagonized some, attracted others. The Jewish Messianic hope was kept alive so that when the apostles began to spread the news that the Christ had come, many were ready to believe. The Greeks had left a lasting mark upon the ancient world. Greek logic and learning and, above all, Greek language had made a cultural climate which, when the time came, greatly expedited the missionary outreach of Paul. The Romans had hammered the world into one vast empire and flung their arterial highways across the whole empire. Indeed a “Roman peace” had descended on the world, enforced by a central government with a genius for organization and the armed might to make it effective. Added to all this was the bankruptcy of pagan religions, which only served to accentuate the spiritual needs of mankind.

So “when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4-5).

Copied from Exploring the Scriptures; John Phillips, Moody Press

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