Okay, this is lesson 26. Let's begin in prayer. The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Amen. The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right.
What are we going to be talking about here? Lesson 26. If we completed all of the major stages or chapters or eras of salvation history, the topic for today's lecture is the inter-testamental period. It's the so-called inter-testamental period, because there's a lot of debate as to what this period of history should be called.
Inter-testamental refers to the two-testaments, the time in between the two-testaments, Old Testament and New Testament. And often, if you go searching around online, it's going to refer to the 400 years between the last prophets of the Old Testament and Jesus Christ. So there's 400 years, because the last prophet was Malachi. We talked about that a couple of lectures ago.
You have Malachi is written around the fifth century or so, but Zachariah and Hagai are also some of the contemporaries. But Malachi specifically is the very last one, written sometime, well, certainly after the return from exile, sometime mid-fifth century. And then there's 400 years of so-called silence up until the New Testament and the enunciation of Archangel Gabriel and all the good stories that we'll talk about here pretty soon. Well, it's usually Protestants that are going to refer to this 400-year period of silence from God, because they maintain that there's no divine revelation, no prophecy from Malachi to the New Testament.
Okay, so that's where they are calling this 400 years of silence from God. And that's very misleading as actually wrong, because as we know, I have to still argue this in a different lecture, but as the first and second Maccabees are the inspired word of God, God is very much working in history, guiding the people of Israel through the dark times of the Greek persecution in the Maccabean revolt. So there is divine revelation going on in Scripture, and that's what first and Maccabees gives us. So we Catholics, as well as Eastern Orthodox, can't really say there's 400 years of silence from God, because we know what happens during the period of the Hellenistic age, right?
The Hellenization in the second century that we talked about in the last lecture. So while it's very misleading and really inaccurate to say there's 400 years of silence, as Protestants will maintain, I want to have to say, the reason why they maintain it is because they don't have first and second Maccabees in their Old Testament. And so that's why they say, well, there must be silence from Malachi, which is the last book in their Old Testament to Christ. And of course, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox don't maintain that.
So that is wrong. I mean, that's why I put intertestamental period in quotations. But the term is still, I think, very instructive, because it does highlight the fact that there's a lot going on here in salvation history in the biblical ancient world between the return from exile, the Greek Hellenistic period, and then the turn of the turn of everything of history with incarnation of Christ. So there's a lot of historical events and cultural changes that are taking place.
And if you don't have the Maccabees, for example, where you're not at least very familiar with the history, you're not going to understand the major players, institutions, and the factions that are present in the New Testament. So it's not an accurate term, the intertestamental period, because we have the Maccabees, but it's still an instructive term, because there are a lot of major changes before the incarnation of our Lord. All right. So I wanted to give those introductory points about what we're going to be talking about.
And by the end of this lecture, I hope that you have a better understanding of who those major players and factions and movements are in the first century of our Lord. OK? All right. So let's look at this next section of the notes from Greece to Rome.
Really quickly, very quickly. Let's just recap what happened in our last lecture during the Maccabees. So you've got this Maccabees and again Maccabees comes from Judas. Mattathias was the patriarchal figure.
He was the big daddy who started the whole thing off. But Judas, nicknamed the hammer Maccabees, was the one who really successfully brought the people back to possessed Jerusalem and rededicated temple and all this kind of stuff under the violent hellenization of Antiochus IV, that Bemani is out of his mind. Right? Pippanese is what he called himself, and everyone called him out of his mind.
So it was Judas Maccabees, his family rededicated temple. And gradually, over roughly 30 years or so, began to reclaim many of the territories that the Jews had lost for Judas to the extent that in the Hasmonean dynasties, after Judas dies, his brothers come onto the scene and take the helm and take the steering wheel, so to speak. And they begin what's known as the Hasmonean dynasty. And the dynasty is often argued to have begun under Simon or under Simon's son, John Hirconus, kind of a both and depending on who you read, what source you look at, they're going to say it was Simon in 142 or his son, John 135.
But nevertheless, it begins during that period. And it's called the Hasmonean dynasty because that was their ancestor's name. So it's not the Davidic dynasty. So it's interesting as you study the Hasmonean dynasty as it develops under John or Simon and his son, John, and then their successors.
It's interesting because they began with noble intentions. They really wanted to be obedient to the law. And of course, we're not going to offer unclean sacrifices and unclean flesh. They wanted to return to a proper observance of the law, as Antiochus, of course, was eliminating their whole way of life.
And many people followed suit. Well, as they, as after Judas died and Hasmonean's really kind of became entrenched, they began to compromise. Little by little, they began to compromise with various foreign customs, specifically the fact that they are not a Davidic line, the family here, they're not a Davidic line, and they're high priests when they shouldn't be either. So little by little, they're kind of looking the other way.
There's a whole slew of examples you can find in historical documents as well. In the beginning, Simon and John, they're very noble in terms of trying to observe the law, but there are cracks in the foundation. We can certainly say that. So there are various factions that begin to develop, sex that begin to develop in response to the Hasmoneans.
Either you're going to support the Hasmoneans and their rule and the way they do things, or you're not, you're going to fight against them because you feel that they shouldn't be the high priest and they shouldn't be the ones in charge. So there's all these civil wars, you can call them tensions, not so much full-blown civil wars, but certainly there was violence involved, tensions between different groups, such as the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees will talk a lot more about their characteristics for these two different groups in a little bit. But the Pharisees, suffice it to say right now, did not support the Hasmoneans.
They developed around this time. They don't support the Hasmoneans. They feel like they're being untruded, a lot of Moses. Whereas the Sadducees are supportive of the Hasmoneans.
So this is the beginning of some of their political tensions and disagreements. Various things happen and it gets very unruly. There's a lot of unrest during the turn of the first century there. So what happens is Rome gets involved.
There's Greek rule is getting weaker and weaker. Rome on the other hand is getting stronger and stronger. They're the new kid on the block and it's this occasion of trying to interfere and intervene really, intervene with these various wars and infighting between the Pharisees and Sadducees and other groups. Roman ravines in general Pompey conquers Jerusalem in the year 63 BC.
And that, my friends, is the effective beginning of Rome's control over Palestine. In the year 63 BC, Pompey comes in, besieges the city. He also arrogant, kind of like Antiochus IV. He goes into the temple and even goes into the Holy of Holies, which was a big problem.
So you can't have some Roman Gentile going into the Holy of Holies. And the story goes that everyone's making a big fuss about it and he decides arrogantly to go into the Holy of Holies and he's very disappointed because there's nothing in it. The Ark of the Covenant, if you remember a few lectures back, the Ark of the Covenant was hidden by Jeremiah. Hidden in the cave sealed up and it wasn't ever found again.
And the Ark of the Covenant was the only thing that was supposed to go into the Holy of Holies. Well, if they didn't have the Ark of the Covenant and the glory cloud of course is not there as well, he opens up the curtain and there's just an empty room. It's like, what's the big fuss all about? Right?
So there's an interesting story there. But he does desecrate the temple. Now, Julius Caesar, famous Julius Caesar, he made this guy by the name of Antipater, the Edomian, in charge of Judea in the year 47 BC. Antipater is not a Jew.
He's from kind of the territory, the cousins of the Jews, descendants of Esau, but he makes him the proctorator, the man in charge, the administrator of all of Judea. Now, Antipater is Herod the Great's father. This is the story that's going to begin to introduce how Herod becomes in charge right around the time Christ at the time that Jesus is born. And he is some colorful character.
We'll talk about him in just a second. All right. So, Antipater is made proctorator of Judah in 47 BC. And of course, no surprise, there's all kinds of political and social conflicts, intentions, and infighting going on as well.
Until a few years later, in 40 BC, Herod has got to go into Jerusalem with Rome's political support and military support. He besieges Jerusalem again with 60,000 troops. He wins and he claims the throne for himself. His father was just a proctorator, just the administrator, the guy in charge.
But now Herod, nicknamed Herod the Great, not because he was a virtuous or anything like that. He was an insane lunatic, but he was made, he claimed himself to be king, right? And Caesar Augustus in 23 BC confirmed that, confirmed Herod's rule, then Herod and ruled all the way until 4 BC from that point on. So this is, these are the broad strokes.
There's a lot more names and dates and, you know, little infighting going on here. But these are the broad strokes of how we get from Greece, from the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans, all the way to Rome. Because of the infighting of the Hasmonean dynasty, Rome interferes, intervenes, general Pompey swashes the city, takes control, and then eventually Herod has got to come in with Rome's support to bring peace to the area. And he becomes the ruler, the king, the so called, totally false, so called king of the Jews at that time.
Okay. All right. So I hope that that makes sense. So, I'm going to go back to the next point.
Now that we've come so far together from the exile of the kingdom of Judah in the south, and the exile of the kingdom of Israel in the north, however many lectures ago that was, what I'd like to point out is this whole transition of power, from world super power to world super power to world super power, was all foretold back in the prophet Daniel. If you look at Daniel chapter two, you find the story of Nebuchadnezzar, he is the king of the Babylonians. He's the one who in three waves conquers Jerusalem and then ultimately just wipes Jerusalem clean, just mows it down and leaves nothing standing in the year 586. Well Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has Daniel in among his exiles.
And the famous story of Daniel, the lions, and all this stuff, we're going to do a Bible, an awesome Bible study on Daniel at one point. What happens is Nebuchadnezzar has this dream, a very scary dream. You don't know what it is because he wakes up and he says, anyone who can tell me the dream and its interpretation will be greatly rewarded, right? With riches and honors and all the rest of it.
And everyone's like, what are you talking about? Like no one can tell you what your dream is. And he says, if you don't tell me the dream and what it means, you're dead. And they're like panicking and then ultimately Daniel steps in after praying with his buddies and praying to God and asking for deliverance, God reveals the dream to Nebuchadnezzar.
And then Nebuchadnezzar says, okay, you're able to reveal this. He says, no, only God can. And here is the dream. I'm going to read for you now, Daniel chapter two verse 31 and following.
He says, you saw O'kean and behold, a great image, this image mighty of exceeding brightness did before you and its appearance was frightening. The head of the image was fine gold. It's breast and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron and feet, partly iron and partly clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand.
It struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay of the bronze, the silver and the gold, all together were broken in pieces and became like chaff in the summer, threshing floors. And the wind carried them away so there was not a trace of them could be found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
And this is the dream. The interpretation then comes next. And essentially because we don't have time here, essentially what he says is you, Nebuchadnezzar are the head of gold. Your empire, the Babylonian empire is the head of gold.
But there's going to come an empire after you that's represented by the silver. That turns out to be Medo-Persia, the same Medo-Persia that lets the Jews return to Jerusalem. And in turn to century 538. Then the belly and the thighs, that's Greece, which we talked about of course, Alexander and of course leading up to Antiochus IV.
That's Greece. Then he says the legs of iron, oh he doesn't list, I have to clarify, he doesn't list all of these kingdoms by name. We now know this, after reading this prophecy and seeing history that it was all foretold, it would be a complete sequence of super powers from Babylon, the head of the gold, Persia, which is silver, Greece is bronze, and then the legs of iron refers to Rome. But Rome is weak, it's feet as iron and clay mixed together, which is obviously not very strong.
And the stone that strikes it, it destroys all the secular world, worldly powers, we know is going to refer to Christ himself. He will make a great kingdom, an everlasting kingdom of God that will be represented by this big mountain that will fill the whole earth. That is the revised, renewed, upgraded kingdom of David, which is the kingdom of God, which is the Catholic Church. Okay, so it's really kind of interesting before we get into some of the big players of the first century.
So I wanted to share with you that in chapter two of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar has this dream, and this is exactly how Daniel interprets it. There's going to be the sequence of major world super powers, and that's where we are now in our story. Now we're looking at Rome. Rome has come on to the scene, it's made of iron, right?
So super strong, Rome was amazing, right? They conquered everybody. So super strong, but they have internal weaknesses ultimately, and it's going to be the Church, the kingdom of God that's going to overtake it. And again, of course, the kingdom of God is going to overthrow all worldly super powers no matter what they may be.
Okay, so I just wanted to close that little point there, and let's go ahead and look. Hi, this is Dr. Nick Leibish. Thank you so much for listening.
If you like access to my complete courses, please visit www.scriptchurchandtradition.com. God bless.