Today we are rounding out our first chapter! We've discussed a lot during the course of this first chapter, Matthew 1, even though it's relatively short. We learned about Abraham, the ancient father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We learned about David and Solomon, Kings of the Jews. We discussed what Jesus' name would have translated directly to English as. (We would have called him Joshua Christ.) We learned that the Gospels were all written anonymously and at least a generation after Christ's death. We learned that "parthenos" is a Greek word for "virgin."
I hope that, by now, the reader has some idea of the pace and level of detail we will be studying at here. Suffice it, perhaps, to say that we have our work cut out for us. That said, we will now, as always, immediately push forward into the data.
Before we look at the text today, we will deviate slightly for a moment to gain a little more contextual data. Part of my broad thesis, which I will illuminate more clearly as we proceed, is that Jesus Christ was opposed to power and to empire. On the coattails of Leo Tolstoy and others, I will contend that Jesus Christ meant for his followers to eternally eschew all things associated with human authority.
Power, empire, and human authority, in Christ's time, had just been newly defined by the fall of the Roman Republic in 27 BC and the subsequent rise of the first Emperor of Rome, Imperator Caesar Divi filius Augustus (aka Caesar Augustus.) Given the influence of Rome over all of the Mediterranean at the time, Caesar Augustus was the most important and powerful person in the western and near eastern worlds on the day Christ was born.
Caesar Augustus, nephew of the famed Gaius Julius Caesar, found himself in sole control of the Roman Empire after a period of civil war and upheaval. His recently deceased uncle had effectively leveraged battlefield-prowess, political boldness, and popularity among his troops and the people of Rome against the Roman Senate. Julius Caesar had snatched and consolidated military, political, and religious powers upon returning to Rome from Gaul "illegally" at the head of his thirteenth legion in 49 BC.
Julius assumed control of the Republic by vesting himself with the republican powers of a tribune and censor. With these powers, he devalued the Senate by increasing the number of its seats and filling those seats with people who were beholden to him personally. In March of 44 BC, as he consolidated power, Roman Senators invited Julius to a statehouse on pretenses and stabbed him to death upon his arrival.
Julius' newly consolidated powers fell to his nephew, then known as Octavian. At this point there were several years of civil war to be had, as Octavian fought first beside, and then against the famed Mark Antony for control of Rome. Mark Antony, one of Julius Caesar's closest confidants and best military leaders, died by his own hand famously on August 1, 31 BC after being defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium on the sea near Alexandria. It was not long after, in 27 BC, that Octavian became Augustus Caesar, the Emperor and Living God of the Roman people.
From that point, Augustus had a long and effective reign over the nascent Roman Empire which lasted until his death by natural causes in 14 AD. Jesus Christ would have been around 18 years old at the time of Augustus' death. Jesus came of age, then, under the rule of Augustus, who had made a Roman Province out of Judea in 6 AD.
Upon the death of Augustus, his adopted son Tiberius Julius Caesar (formerly Tiberius Claudius Nero) took the throne. Tiberius thus became the second of the two Roman Emperors who would hold dominion over Jesus Christ and everyone Christ interacted with during his lifetime.
Tiberius was less popular among his people than Augustus had been, and proved at times to be a reluctant statesman. A few years into his rule, he began to defer much of his legislative responsibilities to underlings while taking frequent trips out of Rome to vacation destinations in Campania. A few more years, and the Emperor appears to have taken his leave of Rome all together, having become paranoid that people there wished to hurt him.
Tiberius holed up in a massive and luxurious vacation home on the Island of Capri to live out the rest of his days as Emperor. The ancient Roman historian Suetonius wrote Life of Tiberius, and in it recounted details about how Tiberius lived out his final years, exactly during Jesus' Galilean Ministry.
Quoting Suetonius writing about Tiberius in Life of Tiberius:
"Moreover, having gained the licence of privacy, and being as it were out of sight of the citizens, he at last gave free rein at once to all the vices which he had for a long time ill concealed..."And then:
"Even at the outset of his military career his excessive love of wine gave him the name of Biberius, instead of Tiberius, Caldius for Claudius, and Mero for Nero."So, Tiberius gets away from the sight of the people and lets loose any morality he has. He is such a drunk that his own people call him, in place of Tiberius Claudius Nero, "Biberius Caldius Mero." This translates approximately to "heavy drinker who is made hot by wine served neat."
Suetonius tells us more:
"On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions."The ancient historian goes on to mention multiple vile sexual acts that the Emperor was known to have engaged in with children over the course of his retirement on Capri. For civility's sake, I will not quote the material here, and I warn anyone who looks it up for themselves: Suetonius pulls no punches, and describes things in this vein that shook me constitutionally when first I read them.
It seems unavoidable that the most powerful man in the world during the Galilean Ministry was a drunken megalomaniacal child abuser.
Thus was the context of power and empire in the days of Jesus Christ.
Why is this pertinent?
One day soon we will find cause to ask the question: "did Jesus respect the authority of the State?" When we arrive at that question, Jesus' words will inform us best as to what esteem he holds human authority. Those words will, of course, be particularly informed by the context of human authority during his lifetime. The "State," to a person living in Palestine during the time of Jesus, was Rome. The "State" was Augustus and Tiberius.
If Jesus ever said the sentence "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," he very well could have said it at the exact instant that Tiberius Caesar was performing unspeakable sexual torture on one or more pre-pubescent slaves.
Tiberius is the context of power and empire during the ministry of Jesus.
Let's move on to today's Gospel reading.
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Matthew 1:24 through Matthew 1:25
24 When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.
25 He had no relations with her until she bore a son, and he named him Jesus.Recall that Joseph is being informed by an angel in a dream in regards to his wife's mysterious pregnancy. The angel has assured Joseph that Mary has not become pregnant by a man but by the Holy Spirit. The angel then mistakenly refers back to the Book of Isaiah to help explain all of this in a Jewish context. Finally, the angel told Joseph what to name Jesus.
Here in verse 24, we see Joseph's immediate response to the angel. Whereas they had not yet lived together in v.18, Joseph now brings Mary into his home as his wife. Of note here is the obedience of Joseph. Despite what common sense is telling him, he is willing to humble himself and to obey when he believes God is demanding humility and obedience. This reflex of obedience can be found in many characters in the Bible.
Verse 25 tells us, awkwardly, that Joseph and Mary did not have any sex until she had Jesus. This seems meant to solidify for the reader that Mary was not only a virgin at the moment of conception, but a virgin at the moment of Christ's birth. The text does not say specifically whether or not Joseph and Mary ever had sexual relations after the birth of Christ.
These verses are fairly straightforward in explaining this mythical "virgin birth" aspect of Jesus. Verse 25 is the pinnacle of the birth narrative in Matthew. You may be asking yourself: "where's the swaddling clothes and the full-up inn and the manger?" You will have to wait for the Gospel according to Luke for that more detailed account of the birth of Jesus. It is worth mentioning here that only two of the four Gospels narrate the birth of Christ, and that Luke's is by far the more detailed accounting.
We will take leave of this here. Next week, if all goes to plan, inspired by today's reading and spurred by a friend, we will spend some time discussing the proliferation of virgin birth myths among ancient peoples around the Mediterranean and the near east, which will place this part of the Jesus story in a different kind of literary context.
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Love.
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