Lesson #13

Excursus,
Marks Roman Empire
1 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
In Lesson #12, having entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the
cheers of thousands welcoming Jesus as he who comes in the name
of the Lord, Jesus quickly engages the religious leaders in a series of
heated debates, first with the chief priests, scribes and elders; then
with the Pharisees and Herodians; next with the Sadducees; and
finally with the scribes alone. In each of the four encounters, Jesus
bests his opponents, publically humiliating them in the eyes of the
growing crowd, fueling the crowds resentment against the religious
leaders, their privileged positions and their implicit collaboration with
the Roman authorities. As Holy Week progresses, the crowds grow
ever larger, as does their resentment, fueling the very real threat of a
massive insurrection.

Jesus is playing a very dangerous game, one that will virtually ensure
his imminent arrest, trial and crucifixion.






















2 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
















Lesson #13 offers an Excursus on the Roman Empire at the time of
Marks Gospel. We touched on this topic in Lesson #2, but here we
explore it in greater depth.

The Gospel according to Mark was written sometime during the
second half of the 1
st
century, probably in the mid to late 60s, a time
of great turmoil in the Roman Empire. The back-story begins with
Julia Agrippina (A.D. 15-59), great granddaughter of Caesar
Augustus; adoptive granddaughter of the Emperor Tiberius; sister of
the Emperor Caligula; wife of the Emperor Claudius; and mother of
the Emperor Nero. Through incestuous marriages, imperial intrigue
and duplicitous assassinations, Agrippina engineered her son Neros
rise to power in A.D. 54. A brutal sociopath, Nero murdered his
mother Agrippina in A.D. 59, set fire to Rome in A.D. 64 (blaming the
fire on the Christians) and began the first state-sponsored
persecution of the Church in Rome, A.D. 64-68.


3 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
















During Neros reign the great Jewish revolt of A.D. 66-73
began, a revolt that resulted in the death of 1.2 million
Jews, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, and
the Jewish exile from Palestine that lasted nearly 2,000
years, until the founding of the modern state of Israel on
May 14, 1948.

This is the lived experience of Christians in Rome, the
world from which the Gospel according to Mark
emerges; this is the world that is the backdrop for the
Olivet Discourse recorded in Mark 13 and presented in
our next lecture, Lesson #14.

4 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire












To understand the Gospel according to
Mark it is essential that we understand
the historical and cultural context from
which the gospel emerges. Specifically,
we must understand:

1) The lived experience of the audience
to whom Mark addresses his Gospel;
and
2) How that lived experience informs
and shapes the narrative that Mark
presents.




5 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire













We learned in Lesson #1 that John Mark,
a young man, was not an Apostle, but he
was on the fringes of the group that
followed Jesus. He is first mentioned in
Acts 12: 12When this dawned on him
[Peter], he went to the house of Mary the
mother of John, also called Mark, where
many people had gathered and were
praying.

Mark was a nephew of Barnabas
(Colossians 4: 10) and the spiritual son of
Peter (1 Peter 5:13). Mark was with Peter
in Rome when Peter wrote his 1
st
epistle,
sometime in the early 60s (1 Peter 5: 13).














Papias, the Bishop of Hierapolis (his
writings date c. 95-120)who was a friend
and companion of Polycarp, the Bishop of
Smyrna (in the early to mid 2
nd
century)
who had personally heard the Apostle John
speakwrites that Mark wrote his Gospel
using Peters teaching and conversations as
his primary source material.

Further, as we have already learned, Mark
addresses his Gospel to the Christians in
Rome, almost certainly during the
persecution under Nero, A.D. 64-68 and
the beginning of the catastrophic Jewish
Revolt against Rome, A.D. 66-73.














If we go back to the time of
Marks composition in the mid
to late 60s, what do we really
need to know about the
Roman Empire in order to
understand Marks Gospel?













Good question!
On the whole, the Roman Empire
was a great blessing to humanity,
bringing stability and prosperity to
millions for nearly 1,000 years.








The 1
st
-century Roman
Empire was not simply
Italy and parts of Europe;
rather, the 1
st
-century
Roman Empire was the
entire land mass
surrounding the
Mediterranean Sea:
nearly half of which is in
north Africa!




















11 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
1. By the end of the 1
st
century A.D. the Roman
Empire consisted of 5 million square
kilometers, encompassing 40 different modern-
day countries and as many different cultures.

1. Its three largest citiesRome, Alexandria and
Antiochwere over twice as large as any city
on earth until the modern-day 18
th
century
industrial revolution.























12 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
3. 50-60 million people lived in the Roman
Empire.

4. Although commerce was conducted
primarily by sea, the Roman empire built
over 58,000 miles of roads, many of which
are still evident today, over 2,000 years
later!

5. To encourage efficient and effective
commerce the Roman Empire had a fully-
developed banking system and common
coinage.




















13 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
6. Thanks to Alexander the Great, Greek was the
common language of the empire until the 4
th

century A.D., creating cohesion in a very
geographically and culturally diverse population,
although a plethora of local languages were also
used (e.g., Jesus and his friends spoke Aramaic,
the local language of Palestine, but the entire New
Testament was written in Greek).
7. Unlike most other ancient cultures, the Roman
Empire did not have a rigid class system,
but evidenced a high degree of social
mobility.




















14 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
8. The Roman Empire practiced slavery. Overall,
10-20% of the population throughout the Empire
were slaves. Slaves were primarily war captives
or indentured servants; slavery was not racially
based. Slaves could earn their freedom or be
granted their freedom by those who owned
them.
9. Freeborn women were Roman citizens, kept
their family name (not their husbands), could
own property independent of their husbands,
could own and operate businesses, could inherit
property
and wealth, wrote their own wills and
could travel freely throughout the Empire.




















15 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
10. Roman law formed the basis for the entire
Western legal tradition, including that of the
United States.

11. Religion in the Roman Empire was an integral
part of civil life, and it encompassed practices
and beliefs the Romans considered their own.
Religions of other cultures within the Empire
were respected and protected: the Jews, for
example, were free to practice their religion
and to operate their temple in Jerusalem..













Of course, like any great
civilization Rome had its share
of rascals and rogues, heroes
and villains, wars and
brutalities, scandals and
horrors.

The New Testament mirrors a
brief slice of Romes 1,000 year
history, a time of great
achievement but also a time of
great turmoil and strife.

















The 2
nd
half of the 1
st

centurythe period in
which the Gospel according
to Mark was written
witnessed cataclysmic
turmoil, especially as it
affected the Jews in
Palestine and the emerging
Christian Church throughout
the Empire.













18 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
Marks Gospel mirrors this
tumultuous time, and the
Christians in Rome lived
at its epicenter.
The story begins with Julia Agrippina (A.D.
15-59), great granddaughter of Caesar
Augustus; adoptive granddaughter of the
Emperor Tiberius; sister of the Emperor
Caligula; wife of the Emperor Claudius; and
mother of the Emperor Nero.

Through incestuous marriages, imperial
intrigue and duplicitous assassinations,
Agrippina engineered her sons rise to
power. After poisoning Claudius (her uncle
and 3
rd
husband), her seventeen year-old
son Nero became Emperor in A.D. 54, with
Agrippina controlling the reins of power.

Quickly, however, Neros relations with his
mother deteriorated, ending by Nero
having her murdered in A.D. 59.













Julia Agrippina with her son Nero,
c. A.D. 54-59. Aphrodisias
Museum, Turkey.
Thats my
boy!
Stop it,
Mom!
On 18 July A.D. 64 the Great Fire
of Rome erupted, destroying a
large portion of the city.
According to the historian
Tacitius, the fire raged for five
days, destroying three of
fourteen districts and severely
damaging seven others. Both
Suetonius and Cassius Dio point
to Nero as the arsonist, who
wanted to clear a large part of
Rome so he could build a new
palace complex.













Nero,
5
th
Emperor of the Roman Empire.
Capitoline Museum, Rome.













Hubert Robert. The Fire of Rome, 18 July 64 A.D. (oil on canvas), c. 1760.
Muse Malraux, Le Havre, France.
21 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
To deflect blame, Tacitus writes that Nero
blamed the fire on Romes Christians:

Therefore, to put an end to the rumor Nero created a
diversion and subjected to the most extraordinary
tortures those called Christians, hated for their
abominations by the common people. The originator
of this name [was] Christ, who, during the reign of
Tiberius had been executed by sentence of the
procurator Pontius Pilate. Repressed for the time
being, the deadly superstition broke out again not
only in Judea, the original source of the evil, but also
in the city [Rome], where all things horrible or
shameful in the world collect and become popular. So
an arrest was made of all who confessed; then on the
basis of their information, an immense multitude was
convicted, not so much of the crime of arson as for
hatred of the human race.

Both Peter and Paul were martyred
in Rome during this time.













Tacitus (c. A.D. 56-117)
Austrian Parliament Building,
Vienna.
The persecution ended with
Neros death. The Roman
Senate had declared him a
public enemy of the Roman
people and announced their
intention to have him executed.
With that, Nero turned to
suicide, but too cowardly to
carry it out, he enlisted his
private secretary, Epaphroditos,
to do the deed. Nero died on 9
June A.D. 68, the 6
th
anniversary
of his murdering his stepsister
and first wife, Octavia.












Claudia Octavia, daughter of the
Emperor Claudius, step-sister and
wife of Nero.
National Museum of Rome.












Following Neros death
civil war erupted and four
emperors reigned in quick
succession: Galba (8
months); Otho (2 months);
Vitellius (8 months); and
Vespasian (10 years). The
first three emperors were
dispatched through
murder or suicide within a
year.

Galba, A.D. 68-69
(8 months)
Assassinated
Otho, A.D. 69
(2 months)
Suicide
Vitellius, A.D. 69
(8 months)
Assassinated
Vaspasian, A.D. 69-79
(10 years)
Natural Death

At this time of enormous political
chaosin A.D. 66the great
Jewish revolt began in Palestine.
Nero chose the brilliant general
(and future Emperor), Vespasian,
to suppress it. Fielding more than
50,000 combat troops, Vespasian
began operations in Galilee; by
A.D. 68 he had crushed opposition
in the north, moved his
headquarters to Caesarea
Maritima the deep-water port on
the Mediterranean and
methodically began clearing the
coast.

















Meanwhile, the defeated Jewish
leaders in Galilee escaped to
Jerusalem, where a bitter civil
war among the Jews erupted,
pitting the fanatical Zealots and
Sicarii against the more
moderate Sadducees and
Pharisees. By A.D. 68 the entire
Jerusalem leadership and their
followers were dead, having
been killed by their fellow Jews,
and the Zealots held the temple
complex, using it as a staging
area for their war against Rome.















With Neros death in Rome, Vespasians troops
proclaimed him Emperor. Support spread
quickly, and in A.D. 69 Vespasian left Jerusalem
for Rome to claim the throne, leaving his son
Titus to conclude the war in Jerusalem.

By the summer of A.D. 70, Titus had breached
the city walls and captured the temple. During
the fierce fighting the temple complex caught
fire, and on Tisha BAv (29/30 July A.D. 70) the
temple fell: 1,000 years of Jewish temple
worship ended in a single day. The fire spread
quickly to the city itself, destroying most of it.
Tacitus writes that no fewer than 600,000 Jews
fought the Romans in Jerusalem; those
captured were crucified, up to 500 per day;
and historians estimate that 1.2 million Jews













Titus
Capitoline Museum, Rome.
died during the span of the Jewish Revolt, A.D. 66-73. It was the greatest catastrophe
in Jewish history until the Nazi holocaust of 1939-1944.













Roman Forum.
Situated between the Palatine and Capitoline hills, the Forum was the center of
political and civic life in Imperial Rome.
Photography by Ana Maria Vargas.
28 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire













David Roberts. The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under the
Command of Titus, A.D. 70 (oil on canvas), 1850. Private Collection.
29 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire













Fallen and scorched stones on the pavement parallel to the Western Wall of the
Temple platform, Jerusalem. The stones fell on August 10
th
A.D. 70 when the
Temple burned. Recent excavations in Jerusalem have unearthed them.
30 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire













Arch of Titus
On the Via Sacra, south-east of the Forum, the Arch of Titus
celebrates Roman victory at the Siege of Jerusalem, A.D. 70.
The arch was erected by the Emperor Domitian in A.D. 82.
.
31 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
Detail of the Arch of Titus, depicting the triumphal
procession with spoils of war, including the menorah
from the Temple.
Photography by Ana Maria Vargas













All of this occurred in a brief span
of six years, A.D. 64-70, the very
time the Gospel according to Mark
was being composed.

Obviously, living through such an
experience profoundly affected
Marks audience and shaped
Marks narrative strategy for his
Gospel. Like a skier caught in an
avalanche, Markand the
Christians in Romewere swept
up, tumbling down the mountain
like loose scree, powerless to
resist the violent turbulence of
history.
















We have already seen how Marks
Gospel rhetorically mirrors the
speed, tension and turbulence of
such an historical and cultural
context, with its staccato use of
and and immediately, the steady
beat of the historical present tense,
the withholding of critical
information and demons darting
helter-skelter back and forth through
its landscape, like so many skeletal
insects.

Rhetorically and stylistically Marks
narrative rockets forward, keeping
pace with the heart-thumping,
adrenalin-pumping events
experienced by its audience in real
time.













This intense historical
and cultural context is
the foundation on which
Mark will build Jesus
Olivet Discourse in
Lesson #14, our next
lecture.

Stay tuned!

1. All artliterary, visual and musicalmirrors the
historical and cultural context from which it emerges.
Can you think of how other historical periods have
influenced art in a variety of media?
2. How do the tensions of the times influence Marks
narrative strategy?
3. How do the events in Rome during A.D. 64-70 influence
the way Mark portrays Jesus?
4. Mark clearly portrays Jesus as a radical reformer, if not a
revolutionary. If Mark were writing his Gospel addressed
to Rome today, how do you think he would portray
Jesus?
5. How do you think todays historical and cultural context
would influence Marks rhetorical strategy and prose
style.






35 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire
Copyright 2014 by William C. Creasy
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36 Excursus, Mark's Roman Empire