The Silent Years (part 1)
Introduction. If you were reading the Bible in chronological order when events occurred without verse, chapter, or book divisions, you would encounter the following passage:
The first part comes from Malachi chapter 4 (the last book of the Old Testament) and the second part from Luke 1 (one of the four gospels at the beginning of the New Testament (NT)). Between them are three dots (ellipsis) which usually indicates an intentional omission from a text without altering its original meaning. It may surprise you, but that ellipsis here indicates roughly a 430-year gap in the narrative between roughly 435 and 7 B.C.. By comparison, this time span is slightly longer than all the events in U.S. history from the founding of the first colony in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, the rise of the 13 colonies, the declaration of independence in 1776, the civil war starting in 1861, the westward expansion to California, the invention of electricity, the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War, and the moon landings to the present day (2021).
A Gap of Interest and Understanding. This time period is sometimes called the “Silent Years” or “the period between the Testaments”. For some Bible students, this period is a mental equivalent of an ellipsis – a gap in their knowledge with no understanding of what happened. And perhaps they reason that if God didn’t see fit to inspire anyone to record the events of that time, there must not have been anything significant occurring, right?
Actually, just like with U.S. history, there were a number of major regional events, influential people, and cultural shifts that shaped the context of the New Testament. For example, you can see hints of this in words that suddenly appear in the NT, like baptism, synagogue, Pharisees, Hellenists, Caesar, centurion, and crucifixion. Without insight into what happened between the testaments, you may be somewhat handicapped in your appreciation of NT terms, customs, and events. So, in the interest of broadening your knowledge, let’s explore these “Silent Years”.
Sources. If such information isn’t in the Bible, where do we learn about this period? Simply speaking, we turn to secular historians just like we do for anything historical. In our case, this would include writers from ancient Greece and Rome, to include Flavius Josephus, a first-century A.D. Romano-Jewish historian. Of course, being secular and uninspired, these historical accounts have to be approached with some degree of reservation.
The same is true of what is called the Apocrypha (Protestant) or Deuterocanon (Catholic). For those who may not know, these are books of doubtful origin written between 200 B.C. and 400 A.D., accepted by Catholics and generally rejected by Protestants. Some of these books like 1st and 2nd Maccabees allegedly provide historical insight into the “Silent Years”.
The Last of the Minor Prophets. We begin on one side of the gap with the Book of Malachi. The Babylonians have fallen to the Persians about 100 years previously (the 2nd kingdom predicted in Daniel 2:39), some of the Jews in Babylonian captivity have returned to Canaan, rebuilding the temple and the walls of Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah.
However, the people were not prospering as predicted by the prophets. And they were starting to lapse again into a variety of sins, including mingling with and marrying foreigners, not paying tithes to the priests, offering up inferior or blemished animal sacrifices, and working on the Sabbath (Neh. 13). Malachi reminds them of God's love for His people, condemns them for their unfaithfulness, and urges them to repent. The book very fittingly concludes by pointing forward to a time when Elijah will return to prepare the way for the Lord, the coming Messiah (Mal. 4:5-6).
The Rise of the Macedonian (Grecian) Empire. At this point, the "word of the Lord" in written form goes silent. But time marches on. About 100 years after Malachi, the Medeo-Persian Empire (including the land of Canaan) eventually falls to the Alexander III of Macedon (in modern Greece), also known as Alexander the Great around 330 B.C.. This is the “third kingdom of bronze predicted in Daniel 2:39).
With an empire spanning from Greece to modern Turkey, the Middle East, and beyond to part of India, this allow Greek or Hellenistic culture to become widespread across the region. This included the introduction of the Koine Greek language and Greek religion (with gods like Zeus, Hermes, and Artemas who may be better known by their future Roman names of Jupiter, Mercury, and Diana).
Due to the rising popularity of the Greek language among Jews, the Old Testament was translated into Greek around 250 B.C.. Known as the Septuagint translation, its Greek book names are somewhat recognizable to us (e.g., ”Genesis”, ”Exodos”, “Deuteronomion”, “Routh”, ”Esther”, “Psalmoi”, ”Amos”). It likely was used by Jesus, apostles, and early Christians. It also was used by Jerome in his Latin translation of the Vulgate OT around 380 A.D. and is still the standard version used in the Greek Orthodox church.
The Dead Sea Scrolls. During this time, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea was the Jewish settlement of Khirbet Qumran. Almost 1000 manuscripts were stored in 11 caves nearby, later discovered between 1946 and 1956, these became known as the “Qumran caves scrolls” or the “Dead Sea Scrolls”. Dated between 380 B.C. and 80 A.D., these manuscripts were roughly 40% OT, 30% Apocrypha, and 30% sectarian. The OT manuscripts contain parts from all but one of the books in the OT. What is so significant about this discovery is these OT manuscripts were written roughly 1000 years earlier than any previously discovered ones. And careful comparison demonstrated the unusual accuracy of manuscript transmission over that long period, building confidence in the reliability of the Old Testament.
The Maccabees. After Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., his empire was divided among his four top generals. Two of the resulting major Grecian factions dominated the eastern Mediterranean: the Ptolemies (in Egypt and Judea) and the Seleucids (in Asia Minor, Syria, and Persia). Judea came under Seleucid control around 170 B.C.. with the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. While the Ptolemies were tolerant of the Jews, Antiochus IV launched religious persecution against them, ordering them to worship Zeus and polluting the temple in Jerusalem.
The Jewish Maccabees revolted against this pagan persecution beginning around 165 B.C., resulting in a rededication of the temple in 164 B.C. and the institution of Hanukah or the Festival of Lights. Eventually, they won their freedom from the Seleucids in 141 B.C., establishing the Hasmonean dynasty under the rule of the brother of Judas Maccabeus.
Interlude. We’ll pause here with the Jews in Judea and the surrounding regions living somewhat autonomously in peace. However, that peace and independence would be relatively short lived. Yet another regional empire was gaining strength and would sweep through the region, bringing with it another wave of political and cultural change which we’ll explore in part 2.
- "Remember the Law of Moses, My servant, Which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, With the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. … There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.”
The first part comes from Malachi chapter 4 (the last book of the Old Testament) and the second part from Luke 1 (one of the four gospels at the beginning of the New Testament (NT)). Between them are three dots (ellipsis) which usually indicates an intentional omission from a text without altering its original meaning. It may surprise you, but that ellipsis here indicates roughly a 430-year gap in the narrative between roughly 435 and 7 B.C.. By comparison, this time span is slightly longer than all the events in U.S. history from the founding of the first colony in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, the rise of the 13 colonies, the declaration of independence in 1776, the civil war starting in 1861, the westward expansion to California, the invention of electricity, the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War, and the moon landings to the present day (2021).
A Gap of Interest and Understanding. This time period is sometimes called the “Silent Years” or “the period between the Testaments”. For some Bible students, this period is a mental equivalent of an ellipsis – a gap in their knowledge with no understanding of what happened. And perhaps they reason that if God didn’t see fit to inspire anyone to record the events of that time, there must not have been anything significant occurring, right?
Actually, just like with U.S. history, there were a number of major regional events, influential people, and cultural shifts that shaped the context of the New Testament. For example, you can see hints of this in words that suddenly appear in the NT, like baptism, synagogue, Pharisees, Hellenists, Caesar, centurion, and crucifixion. Without insight into what happened between the testaments, you may be somewhat handicapped in your appreciation of NT terms, customs, and events. So, in the interest of broadening your knowledge, let’s explore these “Silent Years”.
Sources. If such information isn’t in the Bible, where do we learn about this period? Simply speaking, we turn to secular historians just like we do for anything historical. In our case, this would include writers from ancient Greece and Rome, to include Flavius Josephus, a first-century A.D. Romano-Jewish historian. Of course, being secular and uninspired, these historical accounts have to be approached with some degree of reservation.
The same is true of what is called the Apocrypha (Protestant) or Deuterocanon (Catholic). For those who may not know, these are books of doubtful origin written between 200 B.C. and 400 A.D., accepted by Catholics and generally rejected by Protestants. Some of these books like 1st and 2nd Maccabees allegedly provide historical insight into the “Silent Years”.
The Last of the Minor Prophets. We begin on one side of the gap with the Book of Malachi. The Babylonians have fallen to the Persians about 100 years previously (the 2nd kingdom predicted in Daniel 2:39), some of the Jews in Babylonian captivity have returned to Canaan, rebuilding the temple and the walls of Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah.
However, the people were not prospering as predicted by the prophets. And they were starting to lapse again into a variety of sins, including mingling with and marrying foreigners, not paying tithes to the priests, offering up inferior or blemished animal sacrifices, and working on the Sabbath (Neh. 13). Malachi reminds them of God's love for His people, condemns them for their unfaithfulness, and urges them to repent. The book very fittingly concludes by pointing forward to a time when Elijah will return to prepare the way for the Lord, the coming Messiah (Mal. 4:5-6).
The Rise of the Macedonian (Grecian) Empire. At this point, the "word of the Lord" in written form goes silent. But time marches on. About 100 years after Malachi, the Medeo-Persian Empire (including the land of Canaan) eventually falls to the Alexander III of Macedon (in modern Greece), also known as Alexander the Great around 330 B.C.. This is the “third kingdom of bronze predicted in Daniel 2:39).
With an empire spanning from Greece to modern Turkey, the Middle East, and beyond to part of India, this allow Greek or Hellenistic culture to become widespread across the region. This included the introduction of the Koine Greek language and Greek religion (with gods like Zeus, Hermes, and Artemas who may be better known by their future Roman names of Jupiter, Mercury, and Diana).
Due to the rising popularity of the Greek language among Jews, the Old Testament was translated into Greek around 250 B.C.. Known as the Septuagint translation, its Greek book names are somewhat recognizable to us (e.g., ”Genesis”, ”Exodos”, “Deuteronomion”, “Routh”, ”Esther”, “Psalmoi”, ”Amos”). It likely was used by Jesus, apostles, and early Christians. It also was used by Jerome in his Latin translation of the Vulgate OT around 380 A.D. and is still the standard version used in the Greek Orthodox church.
The Dead Sea Scrolls. During this time, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea was the Jewish settlement of Khirbet Qumran. Almost 1000 manuscripts were stored in 11 caves nearby, later discovered between 1946 and 1956, these became known as the “Qumran caves scrolls” or the “Dead Sea Scrolls”. Dated between 380 B.C. and 80 A.D., these manuscripts were roughly 40% OT, 30% Apocrypha, and 30% sectarian. The OT manuscripts contain parts from all but one of the books in the OT. What is so significant about this discovery is these OT manuscripts were written roughly 1000 years earlier than any previously discovered ones. And careful comparison demonstrated the unusual accuracy of manuscript transmission over that long period, building confidence in the reliability of the Old Testament.
The Maccabees. After Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., his empire was divided among his four top generals. Two of the resulting major Grecian factions dominated the eastern Mediterranean: the Ptolemies (in Egypt and Judea) and the Seleucids (in Asia Minor, Syria, and Persia). Judea came under Seleucid control around 170 B.C.. with the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. While the Ptolemies were tolerant of the Jews, Antiochus IV launched religious persecution against them, ordering them to worship Zeus and polluting the temple in Jerusalem.
The Jewish Maccabees revolted against this pagan persecution beginning around 165 B.C., resulting in a rededication of the temple in 164 B.C. and the institution of Hanukah or the Festival of Lights. Eventually, they won their freedom from the Seleucids in 141 B.C., establishing the Hasmonean dynasty under the rule of the brother of Judas Maccabeus.
Interlude. We’ll pause here with the Jews in Judea and the surrounding regions living somewhat autonomously in peace. However, that peace and independence would be relatively short lived. Yet another regional empire was gaining strength and would sweep through the region, bringing with it another wave of political and cultural change which we’ll explore in part 2.