Matthew Winant - Blog #11 (Topic of Choice 5/4/09)

This past semester I took Roman history with Dr. Hyland, as I am a history major looking to attend grad school I thought that this would be a wonderful class to take. Not only was the class amazing, I learned things throughout the semester that I would have never expected to learn. Most importantly, I learned cultural facts about the province of Judea and Jerusalem and how they effected Judaism and Christianity. It is easy to study the Jewish culture and how it affected the ministry of Jesus during the 30's AD, but the Roman culture is often overlooked by both believers and non believers. Easily known is that Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor, allowed Jesus's crucifixion and mention of Roman taxes needed to be payed. However, what is not usually known are the intricate facts about the life of Jesus and the reason for his crucifixion. In the Roman world, the most important and highest attainable asset was the ability to become a Roman citizen. Now only few provinces outside of Italy achieved citizenship status, and it was often used as a reward for loyalty. The high priest of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus' ministry was a Roman citizen, and by that power he had the ability to have an attendance with the Roman governor at any point in his life. Jesus, however, was not a Roman citizen and thus was subject to all other Roman citizens first before his handing over to the Jewish people. For a noncitizen, you could be executed without a trial. Also, the act of crucifixion was not a means of death for Roman citizens. Being the worst death a person could suffer, crucifixion was saved only for non-citizens. Luckily, Jesus being cruified fulfilled Scripture and it was necessary to suffer the worst possible death. This is just a quick look into the Roman perspective of Jesus' minister and I would encourage for those interested to learn more about it, it would give you more insight into the happenings of Jesus.