Roman and Jewish Context of Early Christianity

When I taught 7^th grade years ago, I heard the tail end of an argument between two girls.  The penultimate line was, “Then what religion was Jesus?” To which the other girl hurled with confidence, “Jesus was Baptist.”  We laugh, knowing that Jesus was Jewish, but I think many of us are rather vague on the historical context that gave rise to the Jesus movement, especially if we read the Bible in a vacuum, or rely on those religious movies that appear, without fail, every Easter.  So this morning, I thought it would be useful to summarize the position of Judaism in the Roman Empire between 100 BCE and 135 CE, then focus on the religious conflicts within Judaism itself, and the implications for the early years of Christianity, when it segregated from its root religion of Judaism.

Our images of first century CE Jews as a small band of poor people limited to Palestine, dressed in striped blankets and wearing burnooses is misleading.  First of all, they didn’t wear that Arab headdress.  Second of all, during the first century BCE, Jewish populations thrived throughout the Roman Empire.  They were not some marginalized population crowded only into the eastern Mediterranean hinterlands.  For example, although Rome was obviously the political capital, Alexandria, Egypt was the cosmopolitan and intellectual city (maybe like the different perceptions of New York City and Washington DC for America, today).  In Alexandria, Jews accounted for about 40% of the city’s population (and it was supposedly one of the Ptolemy pharaohs who commissioned the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament, a few centuries earlier).  Throughout the empire, Roman records calculated a Jewish contingent upwards of 10%, often in cities and in positions of business, educational, and political leadership. By contrast, do you know the percentage of Jews in the US today?  Less than 2%.  Furthermore, the Romans granted Jews favored status during that century.  They had full freedom to practice their religion, including not working on their Sabbath, not worshipping at Roman religious sites, and practicing circumcision.  Had the influential Greek population of the eastern empire been in power, they would likely have outlawed what they regarded as that barbaric act of self-mutilation.

Native Plants and Gardening

We live in South Central Alaska.
Among the edible wild plants on the property are plenty of edible berries:  blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, elderberries, cranberries.  Vitamin C is not a problem in the summers or for people who can the berries in the fall. Edible wild leaves for salads or cooked preparations (or medicine) include fiddlehead ferns (which must be cooked), fireweed, dandelion, and chickweed  (Do you remember Euell Gibbons?  He called the last a miracle plant because it is so good for so many things).  I've used spring time spruce tips in shortcake, viniagrette, and tea, based on information that Captain Cook had his men drink spruce tip tea to ward of scurvy during winter explorations.

Below is a list of native and purchased plants that this neophyte gardener and forager has nurtured and how they performed over the past few years.