YR 8 RE: JESUS OF NAZARETH – REAL PERSON, REAL PLACE

THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS IN THE TIME OF JESUS

From your Year 7 Religion Education, you will remember the story of Moses leading the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt to freedom in their own land. These people believed that it was God who did this for them and that God wanted them to remain free under God’s rule. Being ruled by others was very hurtful to the Jewish (Hebrew) people and it marked a return to a form of slavery. The Zealots were Jewish freedom fighters or, from a Roman point of view, terrorists and trouble makers.

Pontius Pilate and the Romans

The Roman legions conquered Palestine and established their power between 63 and 37BCE. No one could challenge them. The way in which the Romans treated the Jews of Palestine was always dependent upon the internal bickering and cold-blooded murder among the power elites in Rome. In the year 6CE, following yet another Roman power struggle, the major part of Palestine was downgraded into a province under the control of a governor – known as a prefect – who lived in the Jewish King Herod’s palaces in Caesarea Maritima and Jerusalem. This prefect was responsible to the Roman legate stationed in Syria. The Roman Emperor entrusted the prefect with full power, even the power of capital punishment. Capital punishment meant to be sentenced to death. The prefect supervised the collection of the emperor’s taxes from the local population and maintained public order. In the year 26CE, Pontius Pilate was appointed prefect of Palestine. He was a high-handed, mean-spirited ruler who did little to make his Jewish subjects feel kindly towards him. He was responsible in his ten years as prefect for several violent incidents where he ordered the army to indiscriminately kill Jewish protesters whom he feared might begin an uprising against his authority. His most famous encounter was with Jesus at Jesus’ trial in Jerusalem.

Taxes

One of the great burdens for the Jews at the time of Jesus was taxation. After the Romans established direct rule over Judaea and Samaria in 6CE, the Roman form of taxation was introduced. There was, as the most common taxation, a tax on the value of crops and property. There was also a tax on people, and for this reason the Romans needed to hold a census (a count of the people) from time to time – to see how many people there were in the land. Probably one day’s wage had to be paid for every adult worker, male and female. There were also taxes to be paid for the transportation of goods for sale, an inheritance tax, a sales tax on certain goods (such as slaves) and a licence tax on business people.

The Jewish people already had to pay a religious tax of one tenth of their income to the priests and levites in the Temple of Jerusalem and there was another Temple tax of half a shekel paid by all adult Jewish males. In the time of Jesus this tax would have brought in about 14.5 tonnes of silver every year for the Temple’s activities.

While the taxes on agricultural produce and adult workers were probably collected by the Roman prefect, such as Pontius Pilate, some of the other taxes were farmed out to tax collectors. These men were looked upon as being traitors to their own people because they were doing the Roman enemy’s work. Together with sinners and the unclean, especially lepers, the Jewish tax collectors were considered outcasts by the Jewish population. When, in addition to the taxes, there were heavy rents to be paid for land, it is little wonder many farmers went bankrupt. They had no option but to hire themselves out as labourers without any land of their own.

Taxes were paid by using coins. There would have been many different coins circulating in Palestine in those days. There were, first of all, Greek coins. However, the Romans minted their own silver coins, which were the main form of currency. The Roman coins had images of the emperor on them and the eagle standard which stood for Rome. Many Jews regarded this money as unclean which meant a Jewish person could not use them. The Romans allowed the Jews themselves to make coins, but only bronze ones and not silver. In the Gospels we find all types of coins mentioned: the drachma, lepton and talent are Greek, while the denarius is Roman and the perutah is a small Jewish coin. Because there were so many different types in circulation, money changers were needed at the Temple. It seems that Jesus was outraged when he saw all the commercial dealings with money in the Temple.

Your task:

1.  Explain what each of these words mean. You may need to look them up in a dictionary or use Britannica Online which you access through the JBC web page. Make sure you choose the correct meaning as some words have more than one meaning. The words are: legion, prefect, tax collector, levite and zealot.

2.  Collect a picture or image and label each of the following. Shekel, drachma, Roman soldier, Temple in Jerusalem

3.  Prepare a visual diagram with a Jewish person in the middle. On the left hand side of the person, list all the taxes you paid or could be asked to pay to the Romans. On the right hand side, list the taxes you had to pay to the Jewish religious leaders.

4.  As a Jewish person who believed that only God was your ruler, what do you think Jewish people would have thought about being under Roman rule?

5.  As a Jewish person who believed that only God was your ruler, what do you think Jewish people thought about Jewish people who cooperated with the Romans, for example, by being tax collectors?

6.  Complete the word find. There are twenty-four words in this list. One of them is not in the word find. Which word is that?

When you have finished the word find, there will be thirty-three letters left over. These letters are used to complete the sentence at the bottom of the page. The missing letters are in order starting from the top left of the word find and working across each row.

Slavery / Roman / Pilate / Zealots / Palestine / Conquered
Prefect / Legion / Uprising / Taxes / Census / Priests
Temple / Shekel / Silver / Collectors / Traitors / Sinners
Coins / Bronze / Drachma / denarius / Levite / Unclean
c / o / L / l / e / c / T / o / r / s / E / E / P / m
S / a / j / o / s / U / i / r / A / n / e / d / r / r
l / R / e / V / l / i / s / b / R / o / n / z / e / s
a / r / E / p / a / l / E / s / t / i / n / e / f / R
V / g / n / i / S / i / r / p / u / g / a / A / e / e
e / b / e / l / L / s / c / L / i / e / e / l / c / n
r / O / m / a / N / h / o / o / n / l / l / o / T / n
y / S / s / t / s / e / i / r / p / s / c / t / a / i
G / a / i / e / n / k / n / s / c / e / n / S / u / S
T / e / m / p / l / E / s / t / T / X / u / h / e / r
e / t / I / v / e / l / O / d / r / A / c / h / m / A
d / e / r / E / u / q / N / o / c / t / m / A / N / s

History Fact

Between 66 and 70ce, the Jews of the Judea Province staged the first of thr______

______

Jews_&_Romans