Ancient Rome & the Bible
September 7, 2012 1 Comment
The Bible records a number of ancient civilizations. Perhaps the most famous of these is ancient Rome.
By the time of the New Testament, Rome was the major world power, and it was in control of the Holy Land during the entire earthly life of Jesus and during the lives of his immediate followers.
Jesus was born during the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus. He was crucified during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius. The book of Acts records the Roman emperor Claudius by name. And both St. Peter and St. Paul were martyred at Rome by the Emperor Nero.
It is clear that the Romans were extraordinarily important to the world in which the New Testament was written.
All that makes it worth asking: Who were the Romans, and where did their civilization come from?
Read on here.
About Fr Stephen Smuts
Indeed we must look to the Greeks and Hellenism, and this greatly effected Jewish thinking and thought, as we see with St. Paul a Jew but Roman citizen, and Pharsee (Acts 21: 39 ; 22: 3 ; 23: 6, etc. / See also Gal. 4: 4-7) Simply and profoundly, St. Paul was a Jewish Greco-Roman, but Christian theologian!