Caesar vs Satan?

If Nero got to hear Luke's version of Jesus' wilderness temptations, one must wonder (I think) what Nero thought about Satan claiming to be the chief Kingmaker over all worldly kingdoms. Considering that Rome had taken up that precise role over recent centuries - especially in the East - Luke's testimony definitely would have tickled the Emperor's ears in a particular way. Actually, the NLT might best capture the key line, as Nero would have taken it's full meaning: "I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them," the devil said, "because they are mine to give to anyone I please."

To modern readers, this often makes Luke's devil sound like Rome's puppet master. But is/was this the case? Did Luke intend to tell us that the Devil rules Earth through his appointees? And is that true? Does Satan appoint Caesars... Kings... US Presidents?

If so, and if Luke was even partly intending his Gospel to be read at Paul's defense, then Luke seems like a total moron to have slipped in such an insult. He may as well have said, 'By the way, Caesar, we believe our God's greatest enemy is the one who appointed you Emperor!' But if not, or if Luke was fully expecting Rome's Emperor to learn of this passage, or perhaps merely if Luke was not a complete moron, then something else must explain what's going on with his text.

Here's my suggestion:

The Latin Vulgate renders "devil" as diabolo, a transliteration of Greek διαβόλου, which meant something like accuser, slanderer or enemy. Thus, any ancient hearer of Luke 4 was introduced to this 'Satan' as a non-credible figure. As far as Nero was [or would have been] concerned, the devil may or may not have presented a vision to Jesus, and even spoken this claim, but the strength of this claim should have been - to Rome's authorities - strictly laughable, especially given the deceiving nature of "devil". To the point, I suggest Luke should have expected this reaction precisely, from Caesar.

These days, if you read Luke 4 theologically then it's fair game to extract this choice nugget and apply it however you like best see fit. The Devil rules Earth. He appoints rulers. Caesar was Satan's pawn, as was Herod, and Jesus could have become like them all, if he'd wanted. However, read Luke 4 historically and things become far less certain. Of course, in some cases less certainty is a very good thing.

The point of Luke's passage - for Nero's sake - is that Jesus refused Satan's offer. Thus begins a strong anti-political theme running all the way through both Luke's Gospel and Acts. For all Jesus' talk about "God's Kingdom", he obviously meant something else... but as for what, that's a whole other post.

To the point, once again:  If we realize that Nero wouldn't have taken the devil's world-rulership claim as sincere, or as valid... then should we? This will seem ironic to some, but as I see it, the greater our faith in the text, the more we might be better off thinking like Nero.

Accepting the temptation as historical fact assumes the quote to have been somewhat accurately reported. Granting Jesus actually did hear the devil's offer that day, and granting that Luke wrote it down somewhat accurately, what we have is a story being told for what it says about Jesus... not for what it says about Satan.

The deceiver could have offered to make Jesus a ham sandwich on Herod's front porch. It would matter no less, and no more. Jesus didn't give in so we'll never know whether the devil was telling the truth.

I might guess that he wasn't... or I might guess that he was... but then maybe the point of the story is that I'm better off not worrying much about world kingdoms, in any event.

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Roger Beckwith's Blind Spot, (or) The Profitability of Intercalation, Part 4 (of 4)

Now, at last, here's the major problem with Beckwith's proposal that Passover might have been one month earlier, sometimes, than we've tended to retroject when looking at lunar cycles. (See Parts 1, 2 and 3 if you're missing the details behind that statement.) To be simple about things, winter parties are smaller than spring parties, and bigger parties bring in more spenders. Yes, that's the whole point, but it certainly requires fleshing out in much greater detail.

Here, then, is the single most practical point.

The capacity of the festival season to bring in revenues depended on the ability of the Sanhedrin to maximize pilgrimage, and that required the Sadducces to provide at least one simple, reliable, logistical necessity: scheduling!

To make the case with one famous example: Simon of Cyrene would not have been able to attend any festival that was in danger of being moved back by a month, for any reason at all, let alone because some Pharisee said the growing grain suddenly looked like it was fattening too slowly! [We can probably clock that with more rigor if somebody helps me with ancient Judean agriculture. For now, I'll admit I don't know how early the grain heads would sprout, or be measurable by, but for now we hardly need such precision in measurement. If Simon needed a month to get to Jerusalem, and the Sanhedrin needed a month before that to get word out of the schedule, then the Sadducees would have to reach final decision no later than three months before the latter moon Passover, and that's cutting it too close to maximize revenues, if you want pilgrims staying in town one or two weeks before the big feast day itself. And again, why? So they could have a cold festival?]

In short, the Sadducees would not have left such major profits to revolve around Pharisaical whims. We should be almost certain, I think, that after decades upon decades of hosting the festivals, especially after 7 AD, they should have arrived at the logically most business savvy decision. The festival had to be scheduled for whichever of the two viable moons gave them the greatest potential for both travel and ancillary sales. Pilgrims move better the warmer it gets. Doves sell better when fatter, relatively speaking, in any year, good or bad. And even if a pre-70 Gamalliel argued in a very extreme year that Passover needed to be pushed to May, we can absolutely expect that the Sadducees would have ignored him. The ideal month was late March to mid-April, partly because they'd prefer to keep Tabernacles in the moderate season as well, but mainly because the festival had to be scheduled and announced well in advance, in order to attain maximized (say it with me, now) profitability.

With this as our final analysis, one can easily look over a calendar of dates for the entire first century and predict which full moon would have been preferable for the Sadducees from a profitability standpoint. No, the Metonic Cycle wasn't around yet and the equinox 'rule' wasn't an officially documented requirement, at least, not that we're aware. Nevertheless, we should have no trouble concluding with that Passover in the first century should have always been scheduled after the equinox.

The bottom line now is their bottom line then. Scheduling Passover was entirely about revenue.

In 2001, Roger Beckwith did a magnificent job of detailing the intricacies of ancient intercalation, and for bringing such rigor to our awareness about such historical details, he is still very much to be commended. Unfortunately, Roger's blind spot was in failing to see the inevitability of convenient intercalation. It isn't what the calendar might have said that we need to be skeptical about. Rather, we should put our historical faith in what Jerusalem's upper classes needed that calendar to say, just in order to keep the whole thing going year after year, not to mention earning enough to pay for that giant Temple rebuilding project that was (apparently) still underway.

Jerusalem's calendar needed to say, "Open for Business", and it needed to say so many moons in advance.

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For more of my (earlier) writings on these points, see the following posts:

Dating the Crucifixion: Sadducees, Calendars and Festival Finances (Nov '09)
Dating the Crucifixion, Despite Lunar Details (Nov '09)
The Passover Travel Itinerary of Simon, from Cyrene (Aug '11)

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Roger Beckwith's Blind Spot, (or) The Profitability of Intercalation, Part 3 (of 4)

Let's cut to the chase about this Rabbi Gamalliel's letter, and what it might mean. (See Part 1 and Part 2 if you need to get caught up quickly.) As I said, there are two major oversights in Beckwith's whole argument, one minor and one major.

The minor problem is political and the major problem is economic.

First, the minor problem. It is well established that Jerusalem's local government was dominated by Sadducees before 70 AD, and that the Pharisees rose to much greater prominence only after the Temple's destruction. Thinking about Rabbi Gamalliel's concerns should lead us to question not in which era that letter might have been written, but to ask in which era that letter might have carried weight with decision making authorities. The answer is both obvious and clear. Before 70 AD, Jerusalem's ruling elite had no political reason to change course [as Beckwith's scenario suggests might have been the case] simply due to one Pharisee's opinion.

Now, we must quickly admit, despite this, that Gamalliel's ineffectiveness before 70 AD would not necessarily be a problem for Beckwith's scenario. That such a Pharisee could have felt moved to write such a letter, before 70 AD, is itself reason enough to suggest that the Sadducees could have scheduled Passover too early in some year for that Pharisee's preference. But as I said earlier, this is a theoretical possibility. It's not really a practical likelihood. Therefore, while this first problem isn't technically a problem for Beckwith's argument, it does display a lack of practical consideration about the political reality surrounding such a plea in the pre-70 era. That's a 'minor problem', to say the very least.

But this minor problem eventually leads us to the major problem, which we'll get to in a moment.

There's another angle to question things from, altogether. Instead of asking in which era the letter was more likely written in, or in which era it would have been more likely to carry weight, we can ask more pragmatically, in which era was such a letter more likely to be necessary? Again, the answer should be immediately clear.

After 70 AD, with Jerusalem no longer able to host major festivals, and no Temple to hold the official sacrifice of each family's lamb, the Rabbis had to begin coming up with new procedures for largely decentralized observances. That the Rabbis had not been in charge of this ever before is one factor. That custom in general was now facing upheaval is another factor. Beckwith's Gamalliel letter is theoretically plausible in any part of the first century, but it makes much more practical sense in the post-70 time period. Likewise, in turn, such a letter makes much less practical sense in the pre-70 era, and for this we have several more reasons.

Up to 70 AD, the Sadducees had been lording it over Jerusalem for over two centuries. In the 30's AD - including all possible dates for Jesus' crucifixion (that question being the whole point of all this, remember), the Sadducees had just spent 20 to 25 years managing Jerusalem beneath the comfort of Rome's direct rule. Point being, for the first time in centuries Judea's local government did not have to concern itself one iota with the business of self defense.

Human History has long since revealed  that local governments in such situations tend to increase their aptitude for furthering economic prosperity, and they can often do so quite dramatically (the obvious 20th century examples come quickly to mind, but Roman Provincialism also bore this out over and over). The local ruling elite, the Sadducee Party - who naturally included the landowners, the brightest, and the most capable men in Jerusalem - they simply must have spent all of those decades becoming more skillful at increasing both civic and personal revenues. And when you look at first century Roman Jerusalem, between AD 7 and 70, the biggest single source of annual revenue was the festival season.

All this background, finally, brings us to the 'major problem' with Beckwith's proposal:

The Sadducees should have been way ahead of Gamalliel, in any year, because waiting for more grain and fatter birds and lambs, in any year, would have always been much, much more profitable.

In other words, it's a money thing. Duh.

To be concluded...