Waiting For Messiah – The Story Behind the Story

By Neil Earle

Adolf Harnack

Adolf Harnack (1851-1930) was one of the preeminent scholars of his day and the teacher of the illustrious 20th century theolgian Karl Barth. His Mission and Expansion of Christianity of 1905 has been called the most concrete historical description of the spiritual power of the early faith ever published.

Harnack was able to put in clear and potent prose the historical conditions that prepared the First Century world for the spread of the Christian gospel from a tiny base in ancient Judaea. He execlled at capturing the sense of divine favor and timing relating to the appearance of the Jewish Messiah and the Christian’s Lord, what St. Paul called “the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4).

Other church historians built on Harnack’s clear, classroom-style presentation. Here was the First Century background as Harnack outlined and which he saw as Divine Providence at work in history:

  1. The unity of language and ideas. “Let a man travel from Britain and Spain in the west to the bounds of Asia Minor in the east, and wherever he went he was still in the Roman Empire,” wrote William Barclay. “There were no frontiers; there were no passports needed...The world was one world. A man could not get out of the Roman Empire if he tried” (Barclay, Ambassador for Christ, pages 32-33). The Gospel thus had “free course” (2 Thessalonians 3:1).

  2. Appian Way – Paul walked these very steps.
  3. International travel was easier than it had ever been. We still say “all roads led to Rome” and they seemed to be built to last forever. Some still survive. The sea routes were safe as well. Less than a hundred years before, the brigands and the pirates had been subdued on the orders of Rome. Paul and the early church used these roads and Paul’s companion Luke sketched a daring sea voyage in Acts 27 and named the still-extant Appian Way outside Rome (Acts 28:15).

  4. The world was at peace. Men still talk of the Pax Romana – the Roman Peace. This made it much easier for the message of the great events of Bethlehem, Calvary and Pentecost to spread far and wide, even outside the borders of the Roman Empire.

  5. All of this led to what Harnack called “the practical and theoretical conviction of the essential unity of mankind.” The Romans had extended the benefits of Roman citizenship across a lot of the empire and Paul was to play that trump card on more than one occasion (Acts 25:11). The essential message of “oneness in Christ” was more easily given a hearing (Galatians 2:28).

  6. A sense of the embryonic equality of all men and women was building. After Plato came Stoicism, the popular Roman philosophy adhered to by leaders such as Cicero and others (Acts 17:18). It taught – amid much error – that there was a divine spark in all mankind that could be appealed to, which implied that there was more to existence than the physical realm. Overall, in spite of the cruelty of the times, women and slaves were beginning to be more valued. One of the early disciples was a devout Jewish lady with her own business (Acts 16:14). The liberating message of Christ who nominated women as his best followers (Mark 14:3-9) fit that developing spirit. Missionaries such as Paul used these revolutionary social ideas as bridges to “the God who made the world and everything in it” (Acts 17:24).

  7. The so-called Pax Romana enabled the spread of Christianity throughout the world. Click photo to enlarge.
  8. A hunger for redemption was burning in the souls of men and women. The ideas of Plato and Socrates had undermined belief in the old system of gods and goddesses – Zeus hurling thunderbolts and impregnating young girls. Also, at the other extreme, the scientific advances coming out of Alexandria were in decline after the peaks reached by Archimedes, Euclid and Eratosthenes. Even with the technological advances of these times scientific creativity had reached an impasse. But in Jesus and Paul’s day “care of the soul” was advancing as a way to speak to the mysterious problems of a cruel and irrational world. Christianity was ready-made to meet this need and all the others (John 7:37-39). But it had competition.

  9. The Eastern mystery cults pouring into the Roman Empire included much erroneous speculation but also the sense that religion should change a person. The most popular cult among the Roman army included being baptized in a pit by blood pouring out from an eviscerated bull stretched on a grate overhead. Christian baptism of the kind Jesus exemplified could meet that yearning for a fresh start without the gruesome effects (Matthew 3:13-17). It is expounding this last point, those internal conditions and needs that were tugging at people deep inside, which makes Harnack’s summary so effective. As he wrote: “The soul, God, knowledge, expiation, asceticism, redemption, eternal life…these were the supreme thoughts which were living and operative” (Harnack page 33).

History is His Story

And so “it came to pass," in the elegant words of the King James Version, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. Caesar thought he was in charge but he wasn’t really. He was like so many world conquerors who worship their own fame. They are quite often a tool in the hands of the Great God (Isaiah 10:12-15; Proverbs 21:1).

Simply to recount the basic events is to see how much God was in control of this slice of world history.
Jesus needed to be born at Bethlehem, so Caesar Augustus passed a tax law.
  • Jesus needed to be born at Bethlehem, so…a Roman emperor passes a tax law (Micah 5:2).

  • Gentiles were prophesied to attend and give luster to his birth (Psalm 72:10). And so…so a star was spotted in the eastern Roman Empire that set the eastern Magi “following yonder star,” beckoning them toward “the Westland.” The Jewish Messiah was prophesied to be a sign of hope for all people (Isaiah 49:6).

  • The Messiah, like national Israel, would be called out of Egypt and so Jesus’s parents took him there to hide out when a murderous king launched a pogrom against the young child (Matthew 2:13-15).

  • Being the Messiah His birth would be unusual in physical terms – accompanied by miraculous interventions, one of which Christians call the Virgin Birth (Isaiah 7:14).

  • Messiah’s appearance would be controversial and attract much hostility from his own people. He would be the stone the builders rejected (Psalm 118:22). And so the King of his own country of Judea tried to kill him in infancy (Matthew 2:16).

  • The Bethlehem baby would be born in humble circumstances among the humble of the land. His coming was designed to be particularly good news to the poor, the excluded, the less, the lost, the least (Isaiah 57:15). And so Jesus as Savior was first proclaimed to and announced by humble shepherds, men considered ceremonially unclean by the religious authorities in Jerusalem (Matthew 2:20).
All in all, it’s quite a story. The events of Jesus’ first coming offer encouraging evidence that God is in control of history, and of our own lives. “History is his story,” someone said. And that’s good news at any time of year.