Moreover Greece and Hellenized Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt had a knowledge of the conduct of business, of banking, and of the details of administration which they gave to the western half of the Empire. Indeed Roman history between the battle of Actium and the reign of Diocletian from one point of view is the history of the spread of eastern ideas to the West and of their absorption there. Not only did captive Greece take her captor captive, but in a sense Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor won their conquests as well. Many causes operated to further this intellectual domination of the Hellenized East over the Roman West. The eastern provinces had not suffered in the civil wars at the end of the Republic as had many parts of the West; their wealth was not wasted, and in general their social and economic relations were comparatively undisturbed. Under the wise administration of the Emperors these provinces grew richer; their inhabitants, especially the Greeks among them, gained a consciousness of their own intellectual superiority which they had not had in the last two centuries before our era. The influence of the East, therefore, was in many ways consciously exerted.
Thirdly we must bear in mind that the world was cosmopolitan. For centuries traders had carried not only wares but ideas from one part of the ancient world to another, slaves had done their part, which was not small, since many of them were educated; and from the time of Augustus the soldiers drawn from every province of the Empire exerted a great influence in breaking down the barriers between the nations. For the idea of a cosmopolitan world Stoicism had furnished a philosophic basis; the actuality was realized in large measure by the natural developments under Roman imperial rule. Separate nations had ceased to exist; and in the universal levelling which a growing autocracy produced, the differences between citizens, provincials, and slaves were diminished and an approach was made to a cosmopolitan equality.
Furthermore the Roman world of the first three centuries was virtually a world of peace. Merchants and traders, tourists and missionaries moved freely from one end of the Empire to the other. The value of this Roman peace was recognized by the Christians; near the end of the second century the Christian writer Irenaeus declared: “The Romans have given the world peace and we travel without fear along the roads and across the sea wherever we will.”[301]
The world was also one of religious unrest and inquiry. The traditional religions and the inherited forms of religious expression had in large part failed. There was, as has been said in an earlier lecture, a sense of weariness and dissatisfaction which showed itself in the large resort of all classes to Stoic philosophy, in the devotion among the cultured to the mystic philosophies, in conversions to Judaism, and later in the ready reception of oriental religions, including Christianity. We have already seen how both philosophy and mysticism recognized that men had a sense of moral guilt and were conscious of an estrangement from God through sin, from which they desired to secure purification, that is, to attain freedom from the common lot of the bondage of wickedness. Philosophy and mysticism also agreed in holding that the means at man’s disposal were not sufficient to accomplish his release, that the reason and the will unaided could not free him, and that therefore external help was necessary—that an act of grace made known by a divine revelation was required. This escape from sin, this freeing of man’s spirit, for which they longed, was regarded as a reunion with God, which gave the promise of security and salvation here and hereafter, and which thereby answered man’s hope for an unbroken and a perfected existence. It was into a world of such a nature and with such religious thoughts as these that Christianity entered.
But Christianity grew out of Judaism. It will be well therefore to recall briefly to our minds those religious ideas of the Jews to which the mission and the teaching of Jesus were immediately related. At the beginning of our era a majority of the Jews had abandoned the earlier notion of a golden age, a material kingdom of God, which was to be set up on earth, for a belief in a more spiritual kingdom, which was to be established at some future time either on a transformed earth or in a supermundane heaven. They no longer expected that the whole nation would share in the supreme happiness of this kingdom, but only those individuals who by righteousness and through God’s mercy had won a place therein; the wicked were to be either utterly destroyed or punished forever in Sheol. Moreover the Jews generally entertained Messianic expectations of various kinds; they did not, however, look forward with confidence, as their forefathers had done, to the coming of one who should be a national king on earth. There were besides hopes of revelation from God on which we must not pause. Nor is it necessary to speak of the weaknesses of Judaism, its tendency to make the practice of religion a matter of conformity to the minute regulations of the law, its frequent disregard of moral motives, its pride and religious pretence.
All thoughtful readers of the New Testament are aware that within it are represented three stages in the early development of Christianity. In the first the disciples of Jesus formed a group and then a sect within the Jewish nation. The second was that in which the gospel was carried outside Judea into the Roman Empire to Gentiles as well as to Jews. Thus the transformation of Christianity into a universal religion was begun. In that movement, as we all know, Paul was the chief figure. The third stage was that in which philosophic thought began to operate upon the doctrines of this new religion. It was the period in which Christian theology started to develop; the time in which Christian thought began to be expressed in philosophic form and squared with the philosophy of the day. The fourth Gospel is the document in our canon in which the use of a great philosophic conception for the expression of Christian ideas is first obvious.
Let us now consider briefly the teachings that belong to these three stages, as they are represented by Jesus, by Paul, and by the writer of the Johannine books.
Like every great spiritual teacher Jesus built on the beliefs of his time, refining, enlarging, ennobling, and transforming men’s conceptions of God and of his kingdom, of man and of his salvation. His teachings were concrete; he made no attempt to present his views in philosophic form, but inculcated his lessons as occasion offered or required. His words and the history of his life are preserved to us in imperfect and fragmentary forms, having been recorded after his death at a time when his followers had considerably increased in numbers and were to be found at many places outside Judea and Syria. For our present purpose we must confine ourselves to the three synoptic gospels. Of these Mark in essentially its present form was written shortly after 70; Matthew and Luke can hardly be earlier than 80-90 a.d. These gospels are necessarily both historical and interpretative; their writers were children of their own day and shared in its beliefs and superstitions. They were naturally credulous toward the myths and legends which had rapidly grown up about Jesus. When we consider their great eschatological interest, we realize that the authors actually tell us an extraordinary amount concerning Jesus’ life and teachings. The historical interpretation of the gospels must take all these matters into account.
It is impossible to understand Jesus’ teachings if we detach them from his person, for in a very real sense he was himself the gospel. Only by grasping so far as possible his personality can we comprehend in any adequate degree the impression which he made on his followers. Their discipleship at the time and the whole development of Christianity after Jesus’ death depended on that personality. Nor is there anything strange in this fact; we are in a degree familiar with it in our own experience, whenever any great teacher or leader appears.