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The Silent Years: Unveiling the 400-year Period Between the Old and New Testaments
73 Plays2 years ago
Hey there, Grove Hill Church listeners! I'm Dan Sanchez, and I'm excited to dive into this episode with you. Today, Pastor Ridley Barron and I are exploring a fascinating and often overlooked period in biblical history: the "silent years" between the Old and New Testaments. We'll uncover how God was at work behind the scenes, orchestrating events and preparing the world for the arrival of Jesus. Join us as we unravel the significance of this 400-year stretch and gain a deeper understanding of the historical and cultural context surrounding the time of Jesus. So grab your Bible, and let's embark on this enlightening journey together!
Timestamps:
00:00 Grove Hill Church podcast with Dan Sanchez.
03:03 Greek conquest unifies language, promotes education, infrastructure.
07:14 Pharisees preserved old ways, initially admired heroes.
09:41 Greek culture influenced art and appreciation worldwide.
15:02 Israelites repeatedly sought help and faced consequences.
19:09 Her husband's paranoia led to her death.
20:42 Impression of Israeli historical conflict, cruelty, hatred.
23:53 Dan emphasizes importance of Bible's full context.
26:30 Fun conversation, looking forward to exploring more.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Series
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the Grove Hill Church podcast. I'm Dan Sanchez and I'm joined here with Pastor Ridley Barron for our sermon slice series. Well, that's kind of a tongue twister if you say it too fast.
Was God Silent During the 400 Years?
00:00:11
Speaker
This topic we're actually diving into was based on not last Sunday, but two Sundays ago, because there's two things that I want to dock into and the Christmas one was the first one.
00:00:19
Speaker
The other one was something you talked about, Ridley, about how God hadn't been quite like, we call it the silent period, the 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament, how God wasn't too silent. Like you talked about reacting to that meme on Facebook, how God broke the silence with a baby and a manger crying and how that wasn't quite accurate because God was at least speaking through John the Baptist and he was, he's kind of speaking to Anna and the temple and other people, lots of things going on.
00:00:49
Speaker
Yeah. And then that got me to thinking I'm like, Oh, there's this topic, Ridley, we have to talk about the 400 year period because a lot happened there. So I'm excited to have us here because I think there's a big a lot to talk about. It's way too much to discuss in one podcast episode, but I thought it'd be fun to kind of like, throw some things out there so people could start connecting some of the dots between these
God's Work Behind the Scenes
00:01:10
Speaker
two things. Because in our Bible, it's just one thin sliver of a page.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah. And I am excited about talking about this because of the fact that we do, we tend to just discredit that 400 years or just dismiss them, but, um, it's not like God takes naps, right? So when we know for 400 years, he was up to something, even though he didn't have recorded words, uh, that were written down and included in our scriptures. And maybe he didn't give general announcements of things that were going on. He was still working in people's lives and he was coordinating events.
00:01:43
Speaker
leading up to what was going to happen in Matthew. There's a great study in missions. If you study missiology, one of my favorite things to do is talking about how God laid a plan.
Historical Timing of Jesus's Arrival
00:01:56
Speaker
saving the whole world because you can build it all the way back to the very beginning and You'll see that like God does this with Israel so that the world may know so that the world may know and it's throughout the whole Old Testament which makes me wonder what Jews think about that perspective because it's in the Old Testament so much and throughout the whole thing that I'm like Why do you guys keep it to yourselves? Yeah Because they're not very Evangelical and how they share their faith if you just walk into a synagogue and be like I'd like to be a Jew They're probably gonna look at you funny
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, right. But it's throughout, it's in the Old Testament all over the place. And you could see, I've heard it said that if God had put Jesus into the world in any other time period, it wouldn't have been as effective.
00:02:39
Speaker
that so much had to happen in that exact time period that Jesus came for all the infrastructure, for the general peace and safety there was for people to travel so Paul could go and wander through all these cities without being overtaken by a crowd or an angry mob or all these things. All these things were in place in roadworks and waterways and all these things so that the gospel could be made known to the most amount of people in the fastest time.
Greek and Roman Influences on Gospel Spread
00:03:02
Speaker
Well you mentioned very quickly in just that little sentence that you just did there three real key things that happened during these four hundred years one of them is the. The conquest of the greek society which brought the world together with the greek language now for the first time ever large sections of the entire world are speaking the same language which gives.
00:03:26
Speaker
Not only the ability for people to speak and understand each other, but for writings to take place that are in the same language. And so it increased the education level of most people to have something that they could read, you know, those kinds of things. And then, of course, then when the Romans come in, you mentioned the Pax Romano, the Roman Peace, which enabled people to be able to travel with a little bit better safety. Enforcement of laws was more
00:03:56
Speaker
Empire-wide, so there was that protection. But it also, for the first time, infrastructure really became a focus and a concern. There are literally, if you go to the Middle East today, there are still highways that the Romans built 2,000 years ago that are in pretty decent shape.
00:04:12
Speaker
And because of that, guys like Paul and Silas and Timothy on their journeys had a little bit easier time taking the new church to these places across the empire.
Modern Parallels to the Silent Period
00:04:21
Speaker
So those are just some great examples that you just mentioned one by one there that I think we forget 400 years something was going on to get ready for Jesus's arrival.
00:04:31
Speaker
It's funny because I think I look at the 400 years of silence and you can almost like look at it like what's going on today because we don't have like big profits going around. I mean, you have people with the title of profit for sure, providing things on YouTube, but I don't pay much attention to those guys.
00:04:48
Speaker
But like it almost seems sometimes like compared to like the New Testament or the Old Testament that God silent but if you look at these 400 years God's very much in the work setting up plays making sure the right things are happening in the right places setting up the systems for for this one thing to happen for his son to come into the world and I feel like that's a lot of what he's doing to now getting things positioned moving this moving that and it's hard to see but in retrospect you're like, oh
00:05:15
Speaker
so amazing and gives me a lot of hope.
God's Orchestration During Silence
00:05:18
Speaker
That's why I like studying this period. One of my Old Testament professors compared this time period to the time if you go to a play where the curtain is drawn and the people are moving things around on the set to get ready for the next scene. He said this is literally what was going on. God was orchestrating events. He was rearranging empires. He was rearranging
00:05:41
Speaker
you know, political things, economic things, all those things were lining up just the way he wanted to. So that boom, we get to the new Testament, the curtain is pulled back and all of a sudden Jesus has arrived.
00:05:53
Speaker
And, um, I, yeah, I agree with you. We don't, we don't necessarily know exactly what God is up to in this advent period as we're awaiting the second arrival, but there's got to be the sense of expectation from those of us who are believers that he is definitely behind the scenes. The curtain may be drawn and we may not be able to see his hand completely, but there's going to come a day when that curtain is going to pull back. We're going to go, ah, that's what you were doing.
Emergence of Pharisees and Sadducees
00:06:19
Speaker
So.
00:06:21
Speaker
I remember looking at the New Testament and having a revelation, or not a revelation, but like general, like a thought came to my mind. I'm like, wait a second. We get mad at the Pharisees, but we also get mad at the Israelites for not doing the things they need to be doing in the Old Testament.
00:06:40
Speaker
Why we, but this seems like the Pharisees are actually walking out the things we used to get mad at the Israelites for not doing. Right? And that's when I started actually realizing some things had happened because in the old Testament, you don't have Pharisees. You don't have Sadducees. Right. There's a totally different ruler. There's a totally different scene set. A lot has changed in between it, but just even, even if you know nothing about what happened in between, we know some major things have shifted.
00:07:03
Speaker
There's still a temple and there's still a priest, still a high priest, but there's no, there's not even a rabbi. You don't have any rabbis. So a bunch of things have changed in between these two time periods. Yeah. And, um, I, I have not dug into this time period, like I probably will after this podcast, cause now you've got me all excited about it. But one of the things I understand to be the origin of the, the Pharisees was that when they were brought back out of captivity.
00:07:31
Speaker
The whole nature of the Jewish religious system changed. Instead of going to the temple now, it was expected that you would be a part of the local synagogues. And that gave rise to the rabbis. But also as part of this whole restructuring and rebuilding of the nation of Israel, the Pharisees were brought in because these were the guys who were the preservers of the old ways.
00:07:56
Speaker
Initially, I think we've actually said this before in some conversations. Initially, they were heroes for Israel. They were doing the right things. They were keeping the commandments. They were reminding the people, thus says the Lord, and those kinds of things. It wasn't until much later, of course, around the time of Jesus that they kind of got off kilter and got a little legalistic and got all proud and caught up in their own egos.
00:08:24
Speaker
I was studying this period with my kids because I'm homeschooling and I do history. I do Bible and I do science.
Cultural Shifts Under Greek and Egyptian Rule
00:08:31
Speaker
but one of my favorite parts is doing history. And selfishly, just to learn for myself, going back through their books and I'm teaching them, but I'm learning more than they are. So one of the things that I picked up was like, what happened? Because they were ruling themselves at the end of the Old Testament. They had taken control of the temple and their land. But then there was like a sequence of takeovers, multiple takeovers that we were just talking about even before we tapped record.
00:09:00
Speaker
And this is, I had to go take notes a little bit to remind myself what happens. I studied this with my kids, but there was the takeover by the Greeks first, like you mentioned before. And that was huge because everybody started speaking Greek. This laid the foundation for what the common writing system, the common Greek, and I didn't even recognize that that
00:09:18
Speaker
Is what laid it even for people to be able to communicate in a similar language across the very large expanse because of course Alexander the Great came contoured and that Served as a system for Rome to come in and continue to build off that because they were so influenced by Greece as well So that was the first big takeover. You have any insights over other things that happen while? through the Greek culture Well, just the the Greek culture that phrase actually speaks a lot to us about
00:09:49
Speaker
the Greeks were very refined, very dedicated to arts and things of that nature. And so there was this, um, this emphasis on arts throughout the empire, great appreciation of arts and artistic works and things of that nature. I don't know what impact that had on Israel during that time, but as an empire as a whole, again, it just kind of gave a greater awareness and appreciation of
00:10:16
Speaker
nature and things around them because they incorporated that into all this artistic stuff. Appreciation of the human body, for instance, some of the Greek artwork that was, you know, very, we're very familiar with some of the statues that were made during that time period. I think probably
00:10:37
Speaker
I think probably it would be a fascinating study just to look at both the Greek and the Romans during this period to go, okay, what pieces of their culture do we see still lying around? You know, there are good ways. I mean, lots of good ways and things we see all the time. If you go to DC, you see like Greek culture everywhere. Right. And I'm not sure some of the bad ways. Yeah. I'm not sure where the Aramaic language comes from, which is what most people were speaking at that time. I think you were talking about that before we hit record this morning.
00:11:07
Speaker
Obviously, the Greek language is really, really important, but the Aramaic was involved there. So to your point, because the Greeks conquered, that's why the New Testament is written in Greek, because it was the language of the day. Not long after the Greeks take over, the Egyptians actually take over the territory of Israel.
00:11:25
Speaker
And the note that I had there is one, the Greek, the Jews got to actually do pretty well under the Greeks and the Egyptians. Like they got to continue to do them without a lot of interference. So it was pretty friendly. But the thing that was important during the Egyptian takeover was that a lot of Jews then started working in Egypt and Alexandria, which was a really big city back then. Yes.
00:11:50
Speaker
You heard about the Alexandrian library was really famous. It was one of the great wonders of the world, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. Eventually got burned down. But one of the things that happened there was that the Old Testament was in Hebrew and was translated into Greek to become the Septuagint. Yes. That's important now because a lot of the quotes in the New Testament, quoting the Old Testament are coming from the Septuagint, not from the original Hebrew, which makes translations kind of wonky sometimes. Because of course, when we're translating the Old Testament,
00:12:20
Speaker
That's coming from the Hebrew. But yet we're translating Greek over in the New Testament, even though it's supposed to be a direct reference and that creates weird audit oddities. And so right now, some of our listeners, a light bulb is going on because they have those nice new study Bibles that we spend all that money on. And in the footnotes down there, they'll say in the Greek Septuagint, it says this. So that's, that's what that is. It is a Greek translation of the Old Testament that was done during this time period.
00:12:49
Speaker
Again, because the language of the empire was Greek. And anytime you're translating from Hebrew into another language or from Greek into another language, it's not a perfect science. We don't have the exact same words and phrases that they did in that day and age. And so that's why in your Bible, while it may have come from the Hebrew, it will offer Greek Septuagint alternatives.
00:13:16
Speaker
to kind of give some better clarification on what the phrase actually meant.
Roman Takeover and Herod's Temple
00:13:21
Speaker
Not long after that, not well, but not long, like another a hundred, 200 years go by and, uh, they live in peace. And then Syria comes and conquers them and actually desecrates the temple, a guy named, and I can't pronounce his name, but it's in Teocas, Antiochus Antiochus of what? Is it Antiochus Epiphanes?
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah. Antiochus. That's it. That's how you pronounce it Antiochus, the great of Syria captures Israel in 204 BC. So about halfway through this silent period is captured and he's no good. Like they were doing fine before under the two other rulers, but now now they got this guy, he's defiling the temple. They really don't like him like at all. This is like the worst thing ever, but it leads to the next step, which is the Maccabean revolt.
00:14:15
Speaker
which is, I haven't read the book of Maccabees. It'd be an interesting book to go and buy just for historical reasons. The Catholics have put it back in their Bible, so that's always an interesting thing.
00:14:28
Speaker
I should buy that book someday just to read it. From what I know, the Maccabees are a royal class of Jews, kind of aristocracy, and are the ones kind of like trying to get their people back to revolt against these people, but they are unsuccessful. I think they take a couple of tries and are unsuccessful. They need help in order to overthrow the Syrian Empire. So where do they go?
00:14:54
Speaker
the Romans. Romans. Which becomes the thorn in their side for hundreds of years after this. If this doesn't sound familiar to you, you didn't pay very close attention to the Old Testament because the Hebrew people, the Israelites, were very bad about doing this. That God would say, I'm going to be your deliverer. I'll be your provider. And then somebody would come along and mess with them. And they would go to Egypt and say, can you come help us? Or they would go to somebody else and say, can you come help us? And they would just get them into bigger trouble.
00:15:22
Speaker
So that's exactly what happens here. They went to the Romans and tapped them on the shoulder and said, we need your help. Rome says, we'll be more than happy to take you over. So yeah. And you know, at first I'm sure things are good. They get to restore the temple and they, they cleanse it from the desecration and they get things going again. But that sets up a really interesting problem because the Romans do what Romans do.
00:15:47
Speaker
And they integrate everybody into their Roman ways, the worship of Roman gods and the Roman culture, which is largely Greek, but still has a very dominant thing. And every other group they've ever assimilated integrates within time, except for the Jews. Yes. And as my kids and I studied Rome, the author that wrote this fantastic
00:16:14
Speaker
book that's written for I think junior hires but it's a fantastic read it turns it turns a good story of Augustus Caesar specifically who's like really the pinnacle of Rome this particular Caesar who really puts Rome on the map and keeps it there for a while
00:16:28
Speaker
his story from boyhood to adulthood. And she talks a lot about how, even though this isn't even a Christian author, she weaves Israel into it a lot because it was a major part of Rome's story was Israel, this tiny little place out in the back woods is a pain in Rome's side forever. Like as much as the Jews don't like the Romans, the Romans do not like the Jews. That is like constantly- The spies. The Caesars, the head of Rome,
00:16:56
Speaker
isn't like, oh, what? Who? No, they know who the Jews are, and they do not like them. Well, if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong, but it was Augustus Caesar who appointed Herod to be the king. This is where we get Herod's temple, because in an attempt to placate and try to keep peace in Israel, Caesar thinks, okay, I'll go get a guy who's at least part Jew. That's what Herod was, but he was
00:17:26
Speaker
Edomite, which means he was not of the Jewish line for king. He comes in and he builds the temple in an attempt to try to bring peace and keep the Jews happy, which they really didn't like. I mean, they were thankful for it, but at the same time, they're like, this pagan dude just built us a temple, which means it's not holy from the, you know, the first day the bricks are laid. So yeah, it was a, it was a very much of love hate relationship that they had working there all the way through Israel.
00:17:53
Speaker
It's funny, going deeper into that story, my kids and I found out that Herod was in charge of northern region. Herod was, because of his dad, a schmoozer. He was always playing up. He's like, hey, I will be your servant. Help me help you. That's why he really won Rome's favor that way because he was just playing the cards like many guys in power do.
Herod's Paranoia and Madness
00:18:20
Speaker
Eventually gets in favor with Rome Rome comes in and retakes because I think they had a little squirmish over in the southern part Rome retakes over here It's helping them take over but at the same time
00:18:31
Speaker
that they've like fortified themselves in Jerusalem and Romans doing its Rome thing, taking over the city as it was siege warfare, slowly just starving them out. And Herod's like, you know, I'm going to be taking over these people. Meanwhile, he keeps like forklifting like cows over the wall so that they could continue to do their burnt offerings because they're going to run out. He's trying so hard to win favor with them the whole time because he knows he's like only half of them. He wants to be a ruler, but you could tell like,
00:19:00
Speaker
Based on the story I read, he really wants to be a good ruler, but he knows he can't ever be the Messiah. He knows he can never be like the guy. But he tries really hard. He builds the temple. He tries to give them all the stuff they want while also placating Rome because it's their fault that he's in charge. I think the one story that got me for him, though, that made me understand why he was so crazy was he actually had married a Jewish princess.
00:19:29
Speaker
And he was so suspicious that people were going to overthrow him as king that his sister set her up to essentially make it look like she was guilty of poisoning him. And he loved her so much. She was so beautiful, this Jewish Maccabean princess.
00:19:49
Speaker
And uh, he hesitated and hesitated. And finally, because she wouldn't like say that she was innocent because she was so prideful that she was just like, if you think I'm guilty, then I'm guilty. He finally has her put to death and it ravishes his mind. He goes crazy from there out.
00:20:06
Speaker
And you could, if you read the story, he's like a sleepless nights. He starts to show like signs like solid and trying to spear David. I'm like, Oh man, Herod went crazy after that because he knows he killed the love of his life out of suspicion for his crown. I'm like, no wonder why he was crazy by that time. He was paranoid really paranoid after that. I would love to know the name of this book. Cause it sounds like it does a great job retelling and recapturing this period for, for those
Roman-Jewish Tensions and Revolts
00:20:31
Speaker
kids.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's not like a traditional textbook history book, but it does do a good job of crafting the narrative and showing you how all these things weave together in a way that's more memorable. I remember one of the things that left an impression on me when we were in Israel years ago, about eight years ago, and I can't remember which mountain it was on. I do remember it was by the Sea of Galilee and it was right down the road from Magdala, where Mary of Magdalene was.
00:20:59
Speaker
And during one of the revolts there, the Jews had holed themselves up in these giant caves on the side of this mountain.
00:21:07
Speaker
And the Romans couldn't figure out how to get them down. And you know, the Romans, they're merciless. They're going to go, they're not going to just leave them alone. So they built this system to lower baskets down the side of the mountain so that the Roman soldiers and these are like giant baskets, like the size of a small VW van or whatever. And they would lower these soldiers down and they would shoot them with arrows in the caves in order to eradicate them.
00:21:31
Speaker
And I was thinking about just the great lengths that these two went, again, because they hated each other so much. The Jews are constantly pestering them, constantly trying to overthrow them. Romans are like, you know, we're not going to have any grace or mercy for any of this. We're going to do whatever it takes to eradicate you people.
00:21:48
Speaker
Yep. There was a couple more. I remember going to Israel and seeing other evidence of is of Rome essentially building crazy, doing crazy engineering things to like take over and stop the revolts. There's multiple of them because it happens so many times. That's why the Romans hated the Jews. Cause there was always a, is the pain in their side. Well, and there is the course of Judas Maccabees in the, in the new Testament, we have a mention of him who was one of the ones who was part of the revolution.
00:22:18
Speaker
You know, can't forget Barabbas who was arrested for murdering during the revolt. So even even in Jesus's time, there was this lingering bitterness between them so much so that.
00:22:34
Speaker
Even, gosh, one of the disciples, Simon the Zealot, he was a zealot. What was he zealot about? By getting rid of Rome. That's what he wanted to do. That's what he wanted to spend his life doing, trying to overthrow the Roman Empire. So it was a constant presence in the give and take of their culture.
Historical Context of Jesus's Life
00:22:50
Speaker
So all that sets up the context. So now when you go back to read something like the Gospels or the New Testament, you realize that when riots are starting to format, because of Jesus and the Jews are starting to get crazy over it, why Pontius Pilate is under pressure to do something about it.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yes. Why there's so much tension when Jesus is speaking and Roman guards are talking or centurions are doing this or that. This is all the underlying context of the pressure of the day and why the Jews are... Honestly, one of the things that happened was that the Jews were so incorrect in their perception of reading the Old Testament and predicting what the Messiah was going to be like. Yeah. Because they hated Rome so much that they saw through a lens
00:23:37
Speaker
their own lens of hatred for Rome, thinking that the Messiah was going to be this conqueror and overlooked all the parts about him being a humble lamb, you know, at first. Of course, there are lots of evidence of him being a conqueror because, you know, in his second coming, that's going to be the case.
00:23:53
Speaker
And you know, Dan, you bring up a great point about how this context and this is, this is why it's so important not only that we read the Bible, but that we read the whole Bible and that we try to connect these dots. Because if you look at the trial of Jesus, the night he was arrested, any normal day in the, in the Roman empire, some guy comes along and tries to create a problem like that.
00:24:17
Speaker
It would have been nothing for the guy that was in charge, Pontius Pilate, to just put him to death. Be done with it. I don't need to treason this guy in my kingdom, but because of the pressure from above to keep things calm and to keep them peaceful,
00:24:33
Speaker
And then the pressure from the people in Jerusalem who were saying, wait a minute, this is this guy's been doing some really good stuff. We want to follow him thinking he might be a conqueror. That there was this huge pressure that came together on Pontius that said, you better handle this very delicately, because this could be the end of you, not just the end of Jesus, but this could be the end of you, because if this thing gets out of hand, Rome will have your head. So it kind of like you said, it really helps to set the context for the whole story of Jesus's life at the end.
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's why he's washing the blood of his hand, like washing his hand ceremonies. He's like, don't kill me. He's like, he's like, I'll do my best to not get killed here for this choice. Yeah. And why he offered up Barabbas as an alternative to say here, here's your custom. We're going to do this. And that custom is another example that custom had been put in place to appease the Jews. This time of year, we'll let one of your prisoners go and you get to decide who it is. Like that's going to make them happy that they're under persecution from the Romans.
Why Understand Historical Context?
00:25:33
Speaker
So there's always more. Yeah. We look to the word, but all at the same time, it's fun to get the context around the word so we can better interpret this inspired word that we have from, from God. So for all of you who are still in school, this is why you need to pay attention to your world history classes. There you go. And for those interested, I did dig it up. It's called the guest to Caesar's world, um, by Genevieve Foster. Uh, I got it as, as part of the curriculum for the,
00:26:03
Speaker
my father's world homeschool curriculum. It's just part of the set. I will say there are sections in here where you can definitely tell it's written by a non-believer because she'll go into explanations around other world religions and some explanations around Judaism and its origins. You're like, no, we didn't evolve to this. It started in a garden. That's okay. If you take that in mind, other than those few sections, it's a really fantastic book. Cool.
00:26:32
Speaker
Well, cool. This has been a fun, fun conversation. Hopefully we can dig back into this because there's so much other stuff that happened in this 400 year period, but still you can only pack so much into a 30 minute episode. I don't know. I'm going to say it here on the podcast. I think this would be a fun sermon series sometime. Unpacking, unpacking. You've put a challenge out there for me now. There you go. Positive pressure.
00:26:57
Speaker
So thanks for listening to the Grove Hill podcast where we try to impact the life of every person with the whole gospel by any means possible, including this episode. So if you liked it, if you were challenged by it or were inspired by it, you know, continue listening to the show. Can you share this with a friend and let's make Jesus known.