Here is a excerpt from my new book Prosperity Teachings of the Bible Made Easy.
This is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Chapter Four Life and times in Biblical
days.
© Maggy Whitehouse 2012.
It’s not easy to understand the Bible with a 21st
century mind. For a start, we bring so many of our beliefs and projections to
the contents. If we have learnt that God is cruel, we will see a cruel God; if
we believe that God is good, we will justify or skip over any apparent
opposition to that view. If we are Christian, we will read the Hebrew Testament
through very different eyes from those of a Jew, an agnostic or an atheist. It
is important to understand that we cannot remove ourselves and our beliefs from
what is thought to be the world’s best-selling book (six billion sold according
to Bookseller World and countless
others throughout antiquity). And if, as most of us do, we have specific
beliefs about money, wealthy people and authority, then we will be reading
through those eyes also.
It is also important to realise that people in ancient times
did not think the way we do. The people whose stories are being told did not comprehend
our great cities with their rush-rush mentality. The population of Rome at its
height was approximately one million people, about the same as 19th
century London — then the largest city in the world. And Rome is not where the
stories take place. They happen in mostly rural societies where the night sky
was regarded with awe and fables were told to explain the purpose and the
meaning of existence.
People in Biblical times did not experience the news in the
way we do. Details of events from another part of the country — let alone
another part of the world — could take weeks, months or years to arrive. There
was no entertainment such as books to read. In fact, even in cosmopolitan Rome
in Jesus’ time, ninety five per cent of the population could not read or write;
if anyone needed to send a letter, they hired one of the five per cent, usually
a professional scribe, and the recipients the other end would hire another scribe
to read the letter to them.
Even those who could read text did not do so silently as we
do; they read out loud so that others could share the information. That is how
people were taught to read — the concept of reading quietly was unknown in
Roman times or before. Roman
villas even had private reading rooms where the literate could read out loud to
themselves without disturbing the rest of the family. It was only in the time
of St. Augustine (354-430) that we hear about the first silent reading
developed, perhaps, from the requirements of monastic life
Without easy access to information, the only entertainments
available once work had finished and supper was eaten were music or stories.
And the music generally involved stories. So a travelling storyteller or holy
man with new tales, teachings or ideas, most likely, would have been a very
welcome guest in a village. Of course, some of them might have been
controversial and sent away with their tails between their legs but even that
would be an event to be debated for months in places where very little other
news occurred.
This aspect of literacy is important in the discussion of
Biblical wealth as
Jewish religious teachings were preserved in sacred scrolls
which were written by professional scribes, just as they still are today in the
Torah scrolls in any synagogue. Sacred work could not just be written out by
anyone; it required an expert who would take a great deal of time and effort to
copy out the whole of the Sefer Torah
(the first five books of the Hebrew Testament) and every version had to be
perfect. It could take a scribe 18 months or maybe even more to complete one
scroll, during which time he could earn no other living. Therefore, wealthy
benefactors were required to pay for religious writings whether that payment
was in kind or in silver or gold.
This applied to a certain extent in the Christian world,
also, in that benefactors gave money to monasteries, where monk-scribes would
write out beautiful, illuminated copies of the Bible. However this practice decreased
dramatically with the invention of the printing press in the mid fifteenth
century. Also, the Christian scribes were men who had made vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience and lived in celibate communities. In the Jewish world,
the scribe, like the Rabbi would have been married, with a home and family to
maintain. This distinction is very important in assessing the differences
between the views expressed in the Old and New Testaments; the idea of a
celibate, community life was very foreign in pre-Christian days where God’s
commandment to “populate the earth abundantly and
multiply in it.” (Genesis 9:7) was taken very seriously. It still is by orthodox Jews. In
ancient days, the exceptions were the inner circles of the Essenes who lived in
Judea and a group called the Therapeutae who lived outside Alexandria in Egypt.
In early Biblical times, society depended mostly upon trade between
individuals. Money, as we would understand it, was rare. It was first used at all approximately 500 years before
the birth of Jesus. So, in much of the Hebrew Testament times, no coins were used and people
bartered goods instead. The aristocracies and royal courts used jewels and
precious metals as a form of currency but everyday people dealt with a more
practical form of exchange such as swapping one produce for another.
As societies became more and more influenced by Greek, and
later, Roman civilization, this like-for-like barter was replaced by weights of
precious metals and then by coins. Generally in the Hebrew Testament, when an amount of silver
or gold is given, such as 10 shekels of silver, this refers to the actual
weight of silver, not 10 silver coins. Pre-weighed metal coins, which were given the same names as
the weight units, became a more convenient means of exchange as soon as travel
became more commonplace and easier with the expansion of the Roman Empire.
Therefore, a great deal of the riches mentioned to in the
Old Testament referred to a more general prosperity than a financial one. Signs
of God’s favor were seen in happiness and health as well as in business
dealings. People as far back as Abraham and Sarah’s times were just as
frequently wandering cattle-keepers as they were tillers of the ground so they
would not necessarily have houses full of possessions in the way we do. In a
nomadic, rural society, your wealth was pretty much everything you could carry
or herd.
However, in Genesis 13:2, Abraham is described as being “very rich in livestock and in silver and in
gold” so he is being portrayed as an aristocrat among men in a society where
precious metals were deemed as valuable as they are today and were often worn in
jewelry as an outer sign of wealth.
With the Roman conquest of Judea, money became much more
commonplace and was, quite possibly, associated with the hated invaders. Those who
collaborated and traded with the occupying force would also have been hated and
despised, as has been the case in every century since. Therefore it is entirely
possible that Jesus and his followers might have looked upon hard cash with a
jaundiced eye.
However,
this view does sit at odds with Jesus’ tolerance of, if not friendship with, tax
collectors. These
people (as is often still the case) were disliked by their fellow men,
especially the Pharisees and the scribes. Tax collectors to them were “especially wicked sinners” (Matthew 9:10-11;
Luke 15:1-3; Mark 2:15). Reputedly, the collectors were allowed to gather more
than the government asked and keep the excess amount. Some of these tax
collectors were Roman but others were Jews.
Jesus set a startling new precedent by mingling with the Jewish tax
collectors. He ate with them (Mark 2:16), showed them mercy and
compassion (Luke 19:9), and he even chose a tax collector (Matthew) as one of his
disciples (Matthew 9:9). Jesus even compared their willingness to repent
of their sins with the arrogance of the Pharisees and scribes (Luke 18:9-14; Matthew
9:11-13).
Jesus himself is customarily assumed to have been poor although, I
would suggest, much of this is reading of the Gospels through the eyes of a
later-developed Christian poverty consciousness (see chapter eight). Popular
opinion certainly sees him as a poor, itinerant preacher, despite the fact
that, in the Gospel of Matthew, it’s stated that the Magi brought him
incredible wealth in the form of gold, frankincense and myrrh which were three
of the most valuable commodities of the time.
He was also fond of eating and drinking with his friends. “The son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say,
Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!” (Luke 7:34) so, although it would appear that early Christianity
embraced the ideas of poverty, chastity and martyrdom with fervor, Jesus
himself appeared to like having fun and good food. His very first miracle was
turning water into wine so that there would be enough to make everything merry
at the Marriage at Cana (John 2:1-11).
Much of the poverty consciousness that developed may have
been due to St. Paul’s teachings and his acceptance of all-comers to the new
faith. Paul indicated strongly that he believed that Jesus would return very
soon and that both belief in him as Lord and a life of great goodness were
required in advance of the Day of Judgment. There would be no point in amassing
riches as it was all going up in smoke very soon.
In 1
Thessalonians 5:2-11, Paul wrote: "For yourselves know perfectly that
the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say,
Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a
woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in
darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children
of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of
darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be
sober."
The
stories of saints and holy people within Christianity have always emphasized
that they walked away from both marriage and money; that martyrdom was seen as
holy and self-denial sacred. This is still seen even today in allegations that
Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta believed that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus. The Lancet and The British Medical Journal have both criticized Mother Theresa and her staff for their failure to give pain
killers. Sanal Edamaruki writing for Rationalist
International claimed that in her homes for the dying, one could “hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered
from their open wounds without pain relief” adding that Mother Theresa’s
philosophy was that it was ‘the most beautiful gift for a person that he can
participate in the sufferings of Christ.”
So, again, we see differing views on worth or
prosperity in interpretation of the Bible’s teachings. Jesus and those who
followed him lived at a time of great revolution in social affairs — a change
as great as the invention of flight in the late 19th century.
However, we also see that Jesus did not automatically judge those who were
wealthy — or even those who were thought to be misusing wealth by the general
populace.
