Study Guide to Land and Word: A Biblical Journey

Here is a sampling from Part One of the Study Guide, which is synchronized to the DVD. Although this 80-page booklet does not itself contain pictures, we have included here links to graphics on the NET website (created by Dr. Langfur) as a help to the viewer.

BRIEF CHRONOLOGY                                           5
INTRODUCTION                                                     9
PART ONE: ANCIENT PATHS                              11
PART TWO: THE FAITH OF JESUS                     24
PART THREE: THE FAITH IN JESUS                  41
LONG CHRONOLOGY                                           56
FURTHER READING                                              81

THE STORY begins with mud. If a great civilization is to develop, people can't be moving around all the time. Eight or nine thousand years ago, however, when people began to farm, they did not know that they could prevent depletion of the soil by letting it lie fallow or by rotating crops. After ten years or so the harvests would be poor and they'd have to move. In two places, however, the soil was always good, because rivers deposited fresh mud each year: (1) on the shores of the Tigris and the Euphrates, in the area known as Mesopotamia ("between the rivers") and (2) on the shores of the Nile. That is why the first great civilizations developed in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The two were close enough, especially given donkeys, horses, and camels, that trade and warfare were feasible. Yet travelers must drink.

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IN THIS country it rains from October through April. Winds bring moisture from the Mediterranean. The rain peters out, however, east of Amman, beyond which lie 600 miles of desert. All traffic between Egypt and Mesopotamia was squeezed, therefore, through the narrow funnel which became the land of the Bible. It is the sole "land bridge" joining Europe, Asia, and Africa. (Map 1.)

The rain percolates through the mountains, forming springs. Trade routes developed close to them, keeping to the level ground where they could, avoiding swamps and forests. There were no bridges, apparently, until the Romans arrived. (The Old Testament contains no word for bridge.) Upon reaching a river, either one forded it or went around its headwaters. On these principles two main trunk roads developed between Egypt and Mesopotamia. One of them skirted the desert east of the rift valley that includes the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. This was known as the Kings Highway. The other main trunk road stretched partly along the coastal plain. Until recently geographers, following the Latin translation of Isaiah 9:1, called it the Via Maris, the way of the sea, and so it is named in the video. This usage is no longer certain. Here we shall call it the "Great Trunk Road." (Map 2)

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THE TWO trunk roads joined at the great oasis of Damascus, from which the way continued toward Mesopotamia. The economy of ancient Israel, based in large part on control of the trade routes, was in competition, therefore, with that of Damascus. Geographically speaking, in other words, Damascus and Israel were natural enemies. This situation is reflected in the Bible: we find battle after battle between the Arameans of Damascus and the forces of Israel, usually at some point on the Kings Highway, such as Ramoth Gilead.

Israel had a natural ally as well: Phoenicia. Israel's coastline was straight, affording few harbors, but to the north the mountains of Lebanon pushed the Phoenicians against the sea, leaving little agricultural land, while the roots of these mountains formed excellent breakwaters, as at Tyre and Sidon. The Phoenicians became, therefore, the great sailors of the Biblical world, opening up and even founding (as at Carthage) the markets of the Mediterranean shore.

Thus Phoenicia's economy complemented that of Israel. This was the geographical background of the alliance between David and Hiram of Tyre. Solomon renewed it, employing Phoenician cedars and workmen in his building projects. Here then was a principle of Israelite statecraft: control the trade routes and to make an alliance with Phoenicia. (Map 3.)

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AFTER the death of Solomon, Israel split into a northern kingdom ("Israel") and a southern one ("Judah"). About 850 BCE (or BC, in Christian usage), the northern dynasty of Omri and his son Ahab tried to renew the key to wealth and power. They repaired the relation with Judah, and they cemented the alliance with Phoenicia through Ahab's marriage to the Sidonian princess Jezebel. The one missing link was the Kings Highway, for which this dynasty fought in vain.

Ahab's marriage to Jezebel seemed, no doubt, to make good geographical-economic sense at the time. But as any spoiled princess will, when forced to move to the sticks, she brought a few little things with her: "the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table." (I Kings 18:19) And here the old "principle of statecraft" encountered something else. That principle depended on control of the roads. But the roads, in turn, depended on the presence of water. And where did the water come from?

According to Deuteronomy 11:13-17, it is God who provides the water, and He permits no other gods:

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"SO if you faithfully obey the commandments I am giving you today – to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul – then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine, and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

"But beware, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the Lord's anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you."

These words present the covenant between God and Israel. They appear often in Jewish ritual. Pious Jews recite them twice a day. A scribe writes them on a small piece of parchment, which is placed in a container and nailed to the doorpost of the house. (This is called a mezuzah.) Jews also place the text in boxes, which each straps to his arm and forehead during morning prayer, in fulfillment of the commandments in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. (These are called tefillin in Hebrew, or in English, phylacteries.)

The covenant as it appears in Deuteronomy 11 is the first written statement of the notion that God rewards the good and punishes the wicked.

In bowing down to Jezebel's gods, the people breached the covenant. God's response, as promised, was to shut up the heavens. The prophet Elijah announced a drought, which lasted three years. Then God commanded Elijah to approach King Ahab and challenge the prophets of Baal to a confrontation on Mount Carmel. This range divided the Phoenician territory from the Israelite. Its upper part was uninhabited, because it was impossible to grow grain there. (The rock of Carmel is deeply cracked, and the rain seeps far down, leaving the top layer of soil too dry.) Thus it was a neutral zone, an ideal place for the confrontation. (Map 4.)

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THE ACCOUNT in I Kings 18 comes as a fulfillment of the covenant text in Deuteronomy. I refer you to the Bible or the film, where I tell it in detail. I choose to begin on Mount Carmel with Elijah, because this story brings out the Israelite covenant faith. That is Point A in a thesis I am about to develop.

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FOR POINT B we want to jump forward in time to the situation as it was 2000 years ago. Roman interest in the land was twofold: (1) to secure the eastern Mediterranean between Egypt and Europe, and (2) to have a buffer against the dangerous Parthians to the east (where Iran is today).

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WHEN Pompey conquered the country for Rome in 63 BCE, the Romans were already the main sea power, having taken over the role of Phoenicia. Pompey overthrew Jewish rule in the cities on the northern half of the Kings Highway; these were re-organized in an alliance known as the Decapolis ("ten cities"). Likewise, he and his aides "romanized" the Great Trunk Road. By getting the two main trade routes into his grasp, he laid the basis for what would become a Roman pincer movement, controlling the land. A pair of pincers or pliers has a screw joining the two parts, and in this case the screw was the capital of the Decapolis – the only member west of the Jordan – Beth Shean, then known as Scythopolis, which sat on the best link road between the Great Trunk Road and the Kings Highway. (Map 5)

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ALMOST forty years after Pompey's conquest, Herod the Great (the same Herod whom Christians associate with the murder of the innocents in Bethlehem) received from the Emperor Augustus a small Phoenician town on the coast, called Strato's Tower, and began building one of the three greatest harbors in the world. He attached to it a city, which he named Caesarea Maritima. This is our main film location for the study of Roman might. The harbor was the first to be built artificially – Herod had a kind of cement which dried quickly under water. The southern jetty curved 800 yards into the Mediterranean.

Inside the harbor, cargo ships would winter, filling up with the spices and precious goods of the East. The harbor was called "Sebastos" (Greek for Augustus). At the same time, an easy ride away – on the site of Ahab's old capital Samaria – Herod built a city which he called Sebastia. Thus he drove a "pagan dagger" from the sea right up into the heart of the country. Around this dagger, on the Sharon plain, sprang up dozens of Roman towns. Swamps were drained, roads built. In addition to "land bridge" and buffer, the country now functioned as "bridgehead" for Rome to the fabulous, exotic, perfume-and-spice-rich, dangerous East.

Movies and novels often exaggerate the harshness of Roman rule before the Jewish revolt. In fact, the Jews were singled out for favor (because they had supported the victorious Julius Caesar in the civil war with Pompey). They did not have to worship the Roman gods; uniquely among subject peoples, they enjoyed freedom of assembly (the synagogues!); they were not subject to the draft; they did not have to pay taxes in the seventh year. For the most part, in short, the Roman pincers did not pinch all that much, and the Romans assumed that the Jews would be content. Exceptions arose when a Roman procurator did something that violated Jewish religious sensibilities.

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THE JEWISH historian Josephus Flavius, writing in the late seventies CE (Common Era, the academic equivalent of AD), describes one such incident involving Pontius Pilate. In 26 CE, Pilate sneaked images of Caesar into Jerusalem, violating the Jewish ban. The Jews came to Pilate in Caesarea, meeting him in the hippodrome. I refer you again to the film, where I tell this story. (Or read it in the NET website.) It was an example of nonviolent civil disobedience that worked. Forty years later, when another procurator violated the sanctity of the Temple, Jewish resistance did not remain nonviolent: that would be the beginning of the first great revolt against Rome.

We need one further consideration. In earlier times of suffering – say, when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom, or when the Babylonians took Jerusalem – the pain could be seen as God's just punishment, because the people had not kept the covenant. But when the Jews returned from their Babylonian exile (530 BCE), they had learned their lesson: they no longer worshipped foreign gods. This was even more purely the case after the successful Hasmonean (Maccabean) revolt against the Greeks. So the question arose: Why are we not sovereign in our own land? Why do we not have the place among the nations which God promised us? Why do we find ourselves inside this pair of Roman pincers?

TO IMAGINE the force of this question, we go to a spot overlooking the Lake of Galilee. We try to picture what the Jewish fishermen would have seen 2000 years ago as they brought in the morning catch.

They were surrounded by the Gentiles: the Decapolis cities of Hippos and Gadera, with Beth Shean-Scythopolis just down the river; or mixed pagan-Jewish cities like Bethsaida, Magdala, and Tiberias. (Map 6.) Pagan temples overshadowed them. To Jews who took seriously both their covenant faith and their everyday experience, the Roman pincers – however much or little they pinched! – must have posed a problem.

Confronted with such a difficulty, religious Jews did then what they have always done: they searched the Bible for an answer. They found it in Micah 5:

BUT YOU, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Though you are small among the clans of Judah,
Out of you will come for me
One who will be ruler over Israel,
Whose origins are from of old,
From ancient times.

Therefore Israel will be abandoned
Until the time when she who is in labor gives birth...

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THE DECISIVE hint was in the words: "Till she who is in labor gives birth." Labor... birthpangs... the birth of the Messiah! As soon as that connection flashed through someone's mind, the Roman pincers became explainable. The thought might have gone something like this: "Just as a woman in labor undergoes pains before the joyous event, so our time is in pain, because the Messiah is about to be born! Indeed we are suffering. But it is not an arbitrary or punitive suffering. It is rather the prelude to God's redemption of the world." (Compare Mark 13: 8; Romans 8:22.) Various groups formed around the idea that God would soon re-enter history, establishing His kingdom. Among them were the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as John the Baptist and his followers, some of the Rabbis, and more militant groups as well. But the fishermen heard the message from one who walked along the lake's northern shore, saying to people, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." (Matthew 4: 17.)

The question is, Did it happen? Was the Messiah born– at this time, in these circumstances? That is the question about which Jews and Christians have disputed ever since.

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PLEASE NOTE, however, that what started out as a dry and dusty bit of geography – all that about rain and springs and roads – probably has a great deal to do with the fact that we are who we are. Those roads became, 2000 years ago, the Roman pincers. Out of their apparent contradiction with the covenant faith arose the message of the Gospels. The latter did not take shape in some otherworldly realm; it arose in a particular place in particular circumstances.

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YET THERE IS another wrinkle. For notice how the question was set up: We are fulfilling our part of the covenant, so why the Roman pincers? Indeed, we Jews were not worshipping foreign gods anymore. But what if some prophet or rabbi were to come along and change the meaning of idolatry? What if it was no longer a question of Baal and Asherah, but rather the idols of the heart? Could one then claim to be fulfilling the covenant?

Here we enter a whole other – and deeper – dimension of Jesus’ teaching.
On the one hand, he brought a message of comfort – at this point in the film we hear the beatitudes.

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"UNLESS YOUR righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, `You shall not kill, and anyone who kills will be subject to judgment,' but I say unto you, One who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment....You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." – Matthew 5: 1-10, 20, 21, 27.

There is a great deal more in the Sermon, but I have picked out these two statements in order to illustrate what is meant by "the idols of the heart." The Rabbis traced their teachings back to oral laws which God, they believed, had given Moses on Mount Sinai. But here Jesus, on another mountain, deliberately distinguishes his teaching from the Mosaic. Before this, you might have the evil impulses, but as long as you didn't carry them into action, you were all right – because you did no harm to society. But now Jesus appears to be saying something new and much more difficult. Not only must you be at one with the social order. You must also be at one with yourself.

Given this interpretation of the commandments, who can claim to be fulfilling the human side of the covenant? Who is without moments of anger or lust? We can see, provisionally, that there has been a change here in the meaning of sin, and following that, there will have to be a change in the meaning of redemption.

There is more, much more, to be said on this topic. We shall return to the Mount of Beatitudes. But it is now time to consider how this change came about: from the covenant faith as Elijah knew it to its re-definition by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. That is the theme of Part Two.

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