But who was emperor? Prior to the crucifixion, the priests cried, “We have no king but Caesar.” ( John 19:15.) A title rather than a person, Caesar refers to several different emperors in the New Testament.Ĭivil wars had plagued the Roman republic during the century before Christ. The reader of the Gospels knows that Rome ruled the Mediterranean world and that the emperor ruled Rome. For just as modern constitutional governments made possible the survival and spread of the restored gospel, so did ancient political, economic, and social realities combine to enable Christianity to affect the world within 35 years of its founding.
This article, therefore, is not written as historical recitation, but as an illustration of the New Testament setting-the mood and style of the times-that will help us to see the significance of the remarkable blending of events that enabled the first Christian preaching to spread so rapidly. Thus we study the ancient setting of the New Testament not simply because the New Testament is ancient, but because we can better transfer old instruction to today’s problems when we better understand the events that are relevant. To know little of the historical setting of the New Testament is to know little or nothing of the special problems the people of the early church faced and to be ignorant of these problems is to be, to some extent, ignorant of the solutions given by the apostles. Yet this scripture cannot be fully understood without a basic knowledge of the century that produced it-a century different from, and yet in many ways similar to, our own. Thus, all of us can profit greatly by reading the New Testament for its moral challenges alone, with little concern for its historical background. The New Testament relates the development of the early church and presents an untold number of moral challenges without dwelling at length on the society and culture from which it grew.
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