One of the key aspects of the backdrop of the gospel accounts of the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus in Palestine is Roman rule.
It is there at the beginning of the story, with Augustus Caesar passing a decree to take a census of all within the Empire (Luke 2:1). Our Lord’s ministry begins, we are told, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar (14 –37 AD), the son of Augustus’ wife from a previous marriage. And it is there at the end of the story when, during the reign of Tiberius, Jesus is crucified.
Crucifixion was a form of punishment that the Romans had adopted from the Persians and which they liked because it normally extended the dying process of the criminal over two days or so. It is noteworthy that the responsibility for carrying out the sentence of Jesus’ execution was entrusted to a Roman centurion.
'An angular Messiah is our only hope'
Having devoured Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist (2022) with fascination, I wasn’t going to miss reading his latest, The Traitors …