we are introduction to the gospel of Luke what we've covered so far what we cover the first week you know who the writer is right the author or the the human author that God used and then last week we looked at what the audience and this week we will begin looking at the historical context. I'm going to read a brief little piece here and then we will and well we're gonna look at historical context and that's that's really brief and then we're gonna look at social economic environment and that's probably what we'll deal with for most of the class today. So historical context is The date here we want to point out, sorry I'm just making sure that things are on silent and everybody's moving in the direction that they should be moving. Okay, so the date. Scholars and folks who study the Bible and study the history, they generally place the date of the writing of Luke between A.D. 60 and A.D. 85. That is a pretty good span of years, about 15 years. And some argue for an earlier date, particularly if Acts was completed before Paul's death, which would have been AD 64. So that would be, you know, Luke would have been probably, or the Gospel of Luke would have been probably like closer to the 60 mark. Or maybe earlier. Well, we know that Jerusalem was sacked and all that. That was A.D. 70. So others favor a later date, noting Luke's developed theology. But either way, first century and Brother Luke there. So we can't necessarily perfectly affix a date but we know that it was that it was early on so that would that would set it somewhere roughly 30 years after christ's ascension so that's the the timeline there and then the setting this is uh My notes here, I grabbed this from a Bible background commentary. Luke wrote, during a time when Christianity was spreading rapidly across the Roman Empire, the early churches faced challenges, including persecution, doctrinal disputes, and the integration of Gentile believers. that doesn't really give us much of a setting other than the fact that it was somewhere in the Roman Empire and uh so which would be you know all all of the Mediterranean region basically in Europe and and so on so um so the setting we would If it was around AD 60 it could have been from Rome You know if he was with Paul there Toward the end or it could have been anywhere along those journeys that he went with Paul in you know, along the Mediterranean, the Asia Minor area or Judea could have been anywhere along that area. And so the setting of the writing is not necessarily as important as the setting of the events in the book, okay? You all understand that I'm separating the two, right? That when we talk about the, author and the audience and then the historical setting or the historical context. We're talking about the perspective of the literary aspect of it. When we start talking about the next point, social and economic environment, we're talking about. I mean, yes, it would include the time frame that Luke is writing in, but we're but we're primarily focusing on the setting of the events of the Gospel of Luke. OK. Right. Well, they all the events that are recorded in the Gospels are all in Judea. Well, and Samaria for some of it. But but the as far as so where it was written versus where it happened. May or may not be the same. So so when we talk about the setting and we start talking about the political environment, the economic environment, Understand that when we talk about that, there are two aspects of that. There's one at the time of when the events took place, and then two at the time that the events are written down, roughly 30 years apart, 30 to 45 years apart. So, Something to note is that the social, economic, and political environment and religious environment was likely to be very similar. from the time of the events taking place and the time of the writing being done. Very similar. The difference would be if, if it was written after AD 70, then the environment, the setting of where the events took place would be vastly different because there would be, you know, the overtaking of Jerusalem and Judea by the Roman occupation, removing Israel from their land. Obviously, that would be after A.D. 70. So, recognizing those things, our historical context of the writing, we kind of covered. Any quick questions on that? Yes, sir. Good. No, you. Sorry. I looked down. so there was more persecution there was more persecution I mean I suppose there was persecution like during the events that are being recorded but there was more persecution for Christians, obviously, when Luke is writing the Gospel of Luke. But when the Gospel of Luke was taking place, the events recorded in the Gospel of Luke, when they were taking place, the persecution was at Christ himself. So, but after the fact, yeah, the persecution had to do, it was religious persecution. they differed on, and that's another thing we'll get into when we talk about the religious setting, which is probably a few weeks away. But the persecution involved, it had to do with the difference of beliefs. And so there was often a bunch of head-butting on the difference of beliefs. And Rome actually, they had a solution, which we'll talk about when we get to that point, of fixing the two major denominations or sects of Judaism. They separated them and gave them various responsibilities so that they could work at peace with one another, at least somewhat. That's something we'll talk about. There are actually four major sects of Judaism or Israelites during that time, and we're going to deal with each of them, maybe one week for each one, we'll see, because there's a lot about each one. Yes, sir? Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Yep. I mean, yeah, I think about, like, you talk about journaling often, and I think about that myself, and I'm like, it'd be nice to journal, and I'm like, man, just trying to think of it, like, brother Steve asked me this morning, how was your week? And I was like, I don't know. I don't remember. So much happened this week. I don't, I mean, and it wasn't a particularly extra busy week, but a lot of things happened. So it's like, well, let's see, we did this, we did this. So like for me to recap what happened in a day, man. That's a lot of work. I would need a whole other day to do it, you know, so it's, I would need an extra day for every day just to record what happened the day before, and so. Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that a lot of people they'll question like, OK, well, you know, why doesn't the Bible tell us about what happened with Jesus between, you know, his birth and then the whole time in Egypt and the and then that up to up to 12 years old. And then there's a little thing about what happened when he's 12. And then from that point to, you know, when he started his ministry, what why don't we have that information? Well, I mean, there's a lot of information we don't have about everybody in the Bible. And part of the reason is, is the answer is John gave us that answer. John gave us the answer at the end of the gospel. John, he said, if if we were to record everything, the world couldn't contain the books. And so you record the things that were specifically necessary. And then you have you have to think about why did they write the book? You know? Yeah. Right, well, and then what's what's necessary? What do we need to know? And why were the Gospels written? They weren't written to give us a perfectly accurate account of everything that Jesus ever did. It was to give us an account of what he did that relates to what we need to know to to. And what we need to believe to be saved. That's the point. That's the point of the Gospels is to tell us what Jesus did in relation to our salvation. And the reason his birth is recorded is because we need to know that he was born according to the prophecy of his birth. And, you know, those are things. Yeah, that's right. So that's the date and the setting there. And then we have the, sorry, my phone keeps buzzing y'all. Quit sending me messages unless it's, unless it is an emergency. Hey, everybody, put your phones away, unless you're looking stuff up for the study, okay? And if you're doing that, please do so in a manner that you can still pay attention. All right, so number three, number three in my main big notes here. the social and economic environment. We're going to get into some things here a little deeper in relation to the social and economic environment. Now, y'all teenagers, do we have our other one? Is she okay? Where's she at? Okay, it'd be nice to see your face. All right, so Social and economic environment. This is gonna be a little bit a little bit deep some some thick things here on history and What was going on? All right, so This is again, primarily focusing on, we're gonna mention the things related to when it was written, but primarily this, we're going to focus or begin to turn our focus on the timeframe of the events. Okay, so the social and economic environment of the area. in which the Gospel of Luke was written. First century Judea under Roman rule. That's a very general concept there. It was complex and shaped by a mixture of German imperial influence and Jewish traditions and local customs. So we're going to try to stick just with social and economic for now. then we will kind of shift into political probably next week. So. Understanding this is going to help contextualize the themes in the Gospel of Luke, all right, and and give some context to the teachings as well. So. Especially when we deal with like he's going to deal a lot with the poor, the marginalized, the wealthy and. you know just some some key aspects of these things and so in order to understand why he would make a point to focus in those areas we have to recognize what was going on in that time now a lot of this is timeless as well like do we not have a marginalized and poor folk in our society today? Yes. Do we not have rich or elite or whatever and middle class? I mean, so the social structure is gonna look very similar. And so when we look at social structure and we look at the social and economic environment of that day, we can see that there are a lot of similarities to our day And then that helps us to recognize that a lot of the things that some people would look at in the book of Luke and say, well, that applied to them. No, it applies to us too. It wasn't written directly to us, but it applies to us because there are a lot of similarities in where we are. And so the context would then still allow for a direct application. So social structure and class divisions. They had an elite class, middle class, lower class, and poor. and then also slaves and servants. And so we're going to cover each of those quickly, hopefully, but the Roman officials and the aristocracy, the Roman officials and aristocracy, the elite class included Roman governors, military leaders, not all the military, but military leaders. local Jewish aristocrats and such as the Herodian dynasty like King Herod the Great and his sons there was a like a whole Dynasty they were they were elite Jewish folks who? Rome used to help rule that area there was a major difference between Greek rule and Roman rule and one of the major differences is when Rome would come and take rule or take power of an area they would usually put people who were citizens or countrymen of those same groups, they would put them in charge and control them as opposed to installing their own leadership. Now, sometimes when they would have a lot of turmoil and upheaval in society, they would install a Roman ruler in the midst. And so the environmental environment, I don't think I even deal with government that much, but this kind of covers that. These would be the folks who were, I guess I'm trying to explain it and I've got it written right here. So these individuals, the elite here, they often collaborated with Rome to maintain power and control over the Jewish population. That's talking about like Herod and those who were Jewish rulers. That's the next sub-point here. So Roman rule was imposed through local client kings like Herod, and Roman governors, such as Pontius Pilate. So you have Herod as a king, Pontius Pilate as a governor, but they would then work together and they would be responsible for maintaining order and collecting taxes. Now they didn't directly collect taxes, but they were responsible for making sure it was happening. So they would have tax collectors that they would hire often among the same population. It would usually not be somebody that they bring from Rome to be a tax collector. It would usually be somebody from the population that they're governing. So. Also, among this class, they would have wealthy landowners, merchants, and high-ranking priests in the Sadducee sect. They were part of this elite class. They had significant influence over religious and political life, especially in Jerusalem and the Temple. We'll deal again with the Sadducees and the Pharisees and all of those guys later on. So that's the elite class. Then we had the middle class. Middle class would typically be merchants and artisans. All right. So merchants and artisans, you'd have, they would consist of the craftsmen, merchants, traders, not traders like political traders, but traders like trading things, you know. who operated in urban centers like Jerusalem, Caesarea, Antioch, things like that, right? And another big Corinth was a large, they would have a lot of merchants there, but Corinth was actually probably between the middle and elite classes, okay? Now notice here there's not like an upper class. You've got middle class and elite. Elite typically, you look at the difference there, elite isn't just somebody who has a lot of money. It's all the power and the authority over a lot of the other people. Middle class, Middle class could be very rich people, but they didn't necessarily have the power and authority that the elite class had. They would have the funds and stuff like the Corinthians. They were very rich people. They were all middle class. They weren't considered part of the elite class because they didn't have the power. along with the funds, right? So that's kind of one of those differences between our society and theirs. We may have folks who are extremely rich, we would call them like upper class or rich, but they don't necessarily have power other than the fact that they have money to do things with. But we wouldn't consider someone that's extremely rich middle class. It's based on their, Our quote-unquote class system is more based upon your net worth. That's what our, but theirs was kind of based upon your place in society, like what you, like what kind of control you have over society. And so the middle class, they would have, they would, They would be in those major cities, but also they would sometimes be in smaller villages and towns. So as many Jews were involved in trade, particularly in grain, olive oil and wine. And they also worked in various crafts like carpentry. metalworking pottery those those would all be folks who would Have that and after I read to you what the lower class and poor After I read that that it'll help you kind of understand the middle class a little bit better but the Pharisees while religiously influential They were also often from middle class and they would focus on personal piety and adherence to the law. So they would be in that realm. So notice how you could see some, maybe some, animosity between scribes and Pharisees just based upon their class scribe or I'm sorry not scribes Sadducees and Pharisees and Sadducees they were part of the elite class and they had a lot of control over the religious system, but the Pharisees they they had their Bible doctrine right, for the most part, it would seem in comparison. And so we'll look at some of those things in more detail, but this animosity there, or maybe not animosity, but maybe some, oh, Competition, you'd say? So, lower class and poor. So the peasants and laborers, they would have, the majority of the population in Judea and Galilee were peasants who worked the land, often under difficult conditions. They grew crops like wheat, barley, olives, and grapes, and they usually didn't own the land they were working on. they typically would be working land and and so very similar to if you if you've followed history much very similar to up until maybe like the mid 1800s maybe maybe maybe early 1800s up until that time most of the world would operate this way you you if unless you were very wealthy you didn't own your own land you would work someone else's land and then They would be your landlord and you would be the tenant of the land and you would take care of that land. But it's their land and so they actually owned all of the produce. From what you worked and then you would as a as a peasant or a tenant you would then Give them the product of your of your labor and then they would give you back what you need to survive You'd have a place to live but they owned it and so that that was very very common, especially like when you read, you know, things about like France and England, there was that society. A lot of the writings that we would read, I've been listening to a lot of Charles Dickens stuff, and he writes novels, but the setting that he was in was like early to mid-1800s, but he wrote about the 1700s. He wrote about something like the tale of two cities. It's about Paris and London, and there's like a lot of background history that goes into that now. Obviously, they're novels. They're not all true. But the idea is the basis of his writing is what was going on the economic situation. You know, you had the reign of terror where the people actually ran the country and they would take out anybody they wanted to. They could use mob rule to have someone execute. And that's actually the large aspect of that book was written about that. A guy that was a part of the elite class. And he said, I disown my family. I'm out. And he went to London and then ends up going back because one of the servants was arrested. And he's trying to save that servant. He gets arrested and condemned to death and all of these kinds of things. But the mentality of the concept there, if you were part of that. elite class, or in this case, middle class, you would own property, you would own those things, and you would have tenants that would take care of managing it. And they would answer to you. And in fact, a lot of times, depending on the scenario, the social environment of the community, a lot of times the landlord The reason he was called Lord, landlord is because he actually had control over not just the property, but the lives of the tenants. Like if if the country was going to war, the landlord could activate his tenants to fight on behalf of the country. Yeah. Think about that. If you're if you're renting and your landlord said, You're going to Iraq, buddy. Whoa, wait a minute. You know, I mean, that's that's the way it was. But here you have a very similar they would be under very difficult conditions and very similar kind of scenario there. But these laborers, they'd often they were often also heavily taxed by both the Roman authorities and local rulers, leading to economic hardship. So oftentimes, they would only have what they need just to live. Many peasants worked as tenant farmers, again, paying a portion of their produce to wealthy landowners. Now, I've spent a lot of time talking about tenant-landlord scenario. Just because someone was able to gain ownership of property did not necessarily move them to the middle class, if that makes sense. So owning your own property was like a step in that direction, but you still, if you were still being taxed in that same bracket, so to speak, you weren't out of that. A lot of times the middle class would pay off the tax collectors to give them a break on their taxes so that was there was a lot of corruption in that so Something to mention here, the zealots, which again we'll talk in more detail about, and other revolutionary groups were often composed of lower class individuals who were dissatisfied with the oppression of the Romans and the wealthy elite. And then for these for this time frame, there was another class even lower than that, and that was the slaves and servants. So slavery was a common institution in the Roman Empire as well as. all of the history of Israel. Very, very common in biblical times. And so, like other subjects of the empire, they lived under the authority of Roman slave owners. But not only Romans. It wasn't just a Roman thing. It was it was every community had that. Slaves worked and what's that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's another thing, too, is we look because because of our social environment in which we live, we look at slavery as more of a. I mean, it wasn't that it wasn't forced then, but but not all cases, but we look at it as more of like a crime against humanity kind of scenario now. These slaves, they would work in households, on farms, in mines, or as soldiers. While some were treated well, others were subjected to harsh conditions and had little personal freedom. A lot of the slaves that went into the military and worked as soldiers, they would work for a period of time, usually 30 years. then after that they would obtain their freedom and usually they would also obtain land and they would also obtain like a pension and if they survived and so they would move they would actually skip These folks would actually, they would skip a whole class. They could go from being a slave to being middle class and skip the poor peasant class by giving 30 years of their life to the military. And then a lot of times these folks would try to start families that late in life. Yeah. Because having a family was a whole other scenario if you were a servant because there were various technicalities. You would have to purchase the freedom of every family member in addition to your own. And so a lot of times they would wait until they're getting close to the end of their service time and then have family. or they would have secret family. That would be, you know, sometimes what would happen is like slaves that are serving in the military, they would end up having a non-socially sanctioned relationship, not saying that they didn't get married, but they would have a non-socially sanctioned relationship long-term engagement, so to speak, with someone from the middle class or from the peasant or poor class with the understanding that when they finish their time, they'll get married and bring them up. So they would typically, like a man that would go into the military, he would pursue a wife from the class above him. so that when he gets to the middle class, when he gets done, they both move up. And so, by the way, marriage, I just finished a really, really long book on the history of marriage, and marriage oftentimes would not be about, you know, who suits your fancy, you know, who you like or whatever. Oftentimes it would be qualifications, initial qualifications. You're going to marry someone who is in your class or above, which is kind of complicated if Both are trying to do that the above part because obviously one would have to be below if they're not equal and so they would typically do that because it brings you into it keeps you in your same class and you can Continue and or the other side of it a lot of times it would be about you know this is what I'm doing with my most of the time it was the man would say this is what I'm doing with my life and Who among the people that I know or my family knows or we can find would qualify to do what I do with me? Yes, that is, yes. So says Jesus ministry. With its emphasis on freedom and justice would have resonated with many who lived in servitude and oppression. Now there there were also. Scenarios where let's say you're. From like the the poor or the lower class. Group there and. You know you're you're growing up a lot of times people would go down to go up and that's by the way, that's that often would happen and You know that that's when you look at society and you look at you know social and economic environments oftentimes there are ways to go down in order to go up and I What they would do is they'd be poor peasant maybe tenant farmer, whatever and they say They run into they go into the market and they meet say one of the elite and they say I hear that you have need of a servant or they'll meet a soldier who's in leadership, like a centurion, and they'll say, hey, I'll come work for you as a soldier, but also work for you personally as a servant. And they'll put themselves directly into a slavery environment for the purpose of going from peasant to middle class. So they take themselves to a lower class, so that they could get the higher class. And sometimes it'd be very dangerous to do that if you're doing military service. If you're doing servitude, sometimes it would be a period of time. In America, they had that. Well, America, England. So if they wanted to come from England to come to America and they couldn't afford to do it, they would do what they called indentured servitude. So they would say, you know, they'd find somebody who can afford it, who needs help with their property. And they would say, hey, sign me up. You pay my bills to get me there and pay my bills while I'm there for seven years. and I'll work for you for those seven years. And after that seven years, they would be let go on their own and they were free to do whatever they wanted to do. And by the way, just so that everybody understands, this wasn't like a race thing. This was a person, a people thing. It was, if I don't have it, then I'm poor and I can take advantage of these opportunities to serve in order to get ahead in that sense. Yes, sir. Hmm. For Rome, often, yes, yes. You'll find it in the book of Acts. There's a reference. Where Paul's arrested and he says, we're Romans, and he's like, well, how how are you a Roman? You know, because he sees he's a Jew. He's like, well, how is it that you're Roman? And he and he says, well, I was free born. you know, he was born a Roman born, you know, free in in an area. He said, well, man, it took me years to earn my freedom. Same. And so that's that's kind of a wink to the social scenario of the time, because oftentimes, you know, it would take years for someone to earn their freedom in that sense. And that freedom he's talking about isn't Freedom from slavery. It's freedom from the oppression of the Roman Empire. He earned his freedom by becoming a citizen of Rome and and becoming a Roman citizen usually came with other benefits because there were things where you know you're not a Roman citizen. You don't get to do certain things you don't have. For example, when Paul was. Was was arrested. and taken to trial there in Israel. He said, I sit at Caesar's judgment seat. He says, I appeal unto Caesar. Any regular Jewish person being tried for crimes could not do that. You had to be a Roman citizen to appeal to Caesar. And so and there's a lot of interesting things about that. In fact, that as we kind of talk about the book of Rome, the letter to the Romans and Paul's desire to go see them. It's very interesting that Paul desired and prayed that he could go see the Romans, which we're going to talk about a little bit more next week in the Sunday morning message. But he prayed that he could go and be a benefit and visit Rome. And as he's praying for this, God's lining up the details for his arrest in Jerusalem. And then he shows up and a prophet there, I think is in Ephesus or somewhere along that way. This prophet gets up and he said he takes Paul's belt or his girdle, you know, and he says by and he bound his hands with, he says, he says, the owner of this is going to be bound. And so he told him he gave him a prophecy, said, hey, you're you're going to get arrested. And then he's writing to other people about going to Jerusalem. He said, I go to Jerusalem being told by various people that bonds await me there. And then he gets there. And sure enough, that's what happens. And then he appeals to Caesar and he gets a free trip to Rome. What's that? Yeah, that's what I was saying, indentured servitude. Yeah. So now with Paul, you know, he was freeborn. But that but yes, to answer that question, yes, it did. It did closely tie to your citizenship. Yeah. Typically, if you are a Roman citizen, you weren't in the servant class. You might sometimes be in the poor class. But typically Roman citizens would be middle class and above. But the poor class, typically that would be like, well, yeah, anybody who wasn't a Roman, wasn't a Roman citizen. which would include all the Greeks, all the Jews, everybody from northern Africa that that Rome occupied. I mean it would have been and and before Rome was there uh recognized there was a and I just listened through the the letters or the the books of the Maccabees Very interesting. The Maccabees, it's argued that their historical account is skewed in favor of Jewish tradition. Obviously, that's what, you know. So the four books to the Maccabean, now I think there's more claimed to be Maccabean books, but the first four, they kind of entail a lot of the history of what happened during that 400 years of silence. And so it's not scripture, so that everybody knows. So I think the first two of those books were included in the Apocrypha. But Apocrypha, obviously, it's outside of the script or the graph, the writings of the Bible. So they were, it was kind of like trying to throw some commentaries in or some history books in so that you could see the history when you're reading the Bible. But they were always recognized to not be Bible, not to be Scripture. But they talk about the Maccabees and the Zealots were part of that group, some of that, but it talks about the Antiochus a lot because Antiochus was the one who he and his sons were the ones who ended up primarily ruling the region that included Judea. And so, anyhow, so there would be those Greek folks, there would be the Macedonians, there would be those from Asia Minor, or they just call it Asia, there would be those from Asia, there would be folks in Europe, that would all be subject to the Roman Empire, but not Romans, not Roman citizens. And so they would be subjects, which is kind of maybe, it's not another class, but it's kind of another category. Man, we just spent a lot of time talking about the social environment, the economic environment. I want to And I know it seems as though we covered economic environment, but we didn't. There's a lot more to cover. I'm gonna say let's pick up on economics next week because if I've got, like it starts here. Well, that's economics, and then we get into a religious and cultural context. And we're gonna cover that. I know some stuff is gonna be repeated when we talk about the specific religions, but yeah, I think we can cover all that next week. It is one minute past our time, so. No, we don't. No, we don't. 1030 is when Sunday school ends. 1045 is when the morning service starts. I want to give everybody the opportunity to use the restroom or whatever and fellowship with one another for just a few minutes before we go on. I know there's, I just don't want to try to cram 30 minutes of information into 10 minutes. It'll be richer if we save it. and spend a little more time on it. And I know that it makes us think, well, how long is this introduction gonna take until it's done? So we don't really have time for questions or comments, so we'll get into that maybe next week as well. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for the opportunity here to look at what was going on in the setting there, the social aspect of society at that time. We just pray that as we Consider these things that we would realize that there are a lot of similarities and. You know, people who may try to. Alienate concepts of the Bible because of the. The historical context being different than our historical context, we recognize that that. It's not so different. There are still a lot of similar aspects, so we pray father that you just. Help us, Lord, to receive the word and apply it to our lives. We pray, Father, that you'd meet with us in our service this morning and have your way in Jesus' name.