By Cyril Anderson

Part 1 of 4

 To understand the historical context into which Jesus (as) came, one must understand the basic contours of the history of the Hebrew peoples that came before Jesus (as), and some of the prophecies of the prophets that came before him from his people.  This history is characterized by alternating highs and lows in relation to the overall piety of the community.  When they were weak in faith and practice, chasing after the gods of the polytheists and idolaters around them, they experienced ill consequences.  When overall they were pious and loyal to the law of God, their fortunes improved.  From time to time, they would be sent great leaders whose guidance, combined with their acceptance of this guidance, would lift them up to better fortunes.  Examples of such figures are Moses, David, Solomon, and Hezekiah.  This tended to be alternated with poor leaders who led astray or let things lapse.

 This history is well-documented in the Books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, particularly, which document the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Judea, later the divided kingdoms of Judea and Israel.  The people also received warners, who came when the wrongdoing had reached a fever pitch, inviting the people one last time to reform themselves before it was too late, warning them of the consequences of their actions if they continued.  Examples include the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.  The Israelites underwent two such catastrophes in their history before the coming of Jesus (as). 

 The first was the captivity in Egypt from sometime after Joseph so of Jacob until the time of Moses.  Following a period of high status of the Israelites in Egypt, they were then enslaved when the leadership of the kingdom moved to new hands.  Moses (as) later came to lead the Israelites out of captivity to the promised land of Palestine.   Moses, who died without himself entering the land, warned his people that their presence in the land was conditional on their spiritual condition and on their treatment of those around them. 

 The other great catastrophe affecting the Hebrew peoples was the captivity in Babylon lasting from 586-516 B.C. E.  The period from the triumphant entering into the promised land, through to the decline and eventual downfall and captivity by the Babylonians, is well detailed in the Biblical books of Joshua, the books of Samuel, and the Books of Kings and Chronicles.  This second captivity was ended following the conquering of the Babylonians by the Persian Empire.  The captivity was formally ended thanks to the generosity of the Persian King Cyrus, who, following a vision in a dream in which God reportedly spoke to him, he ordered that the Israelites were to be returned to Palestine, with money given to them to help rebuild Jerusalem, particularly the Temple on the Mount.  This is described is the Biblical book of the Prophet Daniel (as).   The Israeilites returned to Jerusalem, led by Ezra, and led by Nehemiah, rebuilt the Temple, and the city of Jerusalem.  This is the same Temple that played an important role in the story of Jesus (as) about 490 years later.  It is important to note the warnings of Daniel in the 9^th chapter of Daniel.

 Daniel (as) was one of the great figures of Jewish prophetic history, being considered one of the 4 major prophets, of the later prophetic period, along with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.  Jeremiah came to the Israelites during their exile in Babylon, and his Prophethood lasted through the rule of Babylon and afterwards, into the period when the Persians later conquered the Babylonians.  In many ways, the Prophethood of Daniel (as) mirrors that of the prophet Yusuf.  Daniel, like Yusuf, rose to a high position as a result of helping the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, to interpret a dream that he had had.  In this dream, Daniel interpreted the dream as prophecying of four great empires or kingdoms to follow the Babylonians: the Persians, the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, and a later kingdom, the “kingdom of heaven” that would supercede and overthrow this final Roman kingdom.  The Second chapter of Daniel introduces this notion of the five kingdoms, while later chapters expand on the idea.  Daniel chapter 7 portrays these four kingdoms as beasts of different character, while the fifth kingdom was represented symbolically by a man.  One could say that the first four kingdoms were respresented by beasts because the kingdoms they represented were founded in beastly systems of rule based on subjugation and oppression of people.  Meanwhile, the fifth kingdom, the kingdom of heaven was represented by a man because this way of governing that would be introduced would represent a way of governance that is actually suited to the unique potential of human beings.  It is said that this kingdom would be a force to oppose the other inhuman forms of government, and bring them down:

And in the days of those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sovereignty thereof be left to another people; but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.   Daniel 2:44

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