Week 35
Some bible readers only read the NT.
Some read the NT plus selections from the OT.
Some read the OT and the NT.
But no one reading the bible reads anything about what’s going on between the OT & NT because there’s nothing there.
In my bible the OT ends on page-1334. One page later the NT begins on page-1 (in between is one page that says The NEW TESTAMENT). In my bible there’s nothing but that one page – I turn it and I’ve jumped from the OT into the NT. But in reality an awful lot has been happening.
I check three or four sites to see what’s been going on in the roughly 400-years not accounted for. Three pretty important things for a NT-reader to know about are:
1) One Important Political Fact: Rome is now officially in the driver’s seat. Babylon is gone. Persia is gone. Greece has come-and-gone. Now Rome is the New Big Dog.
2) One Important Geographic Fact: the old territorial divisions between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom are long gone. Now there are three main regions. Jerusalem/Judaea in the south. Galilee in the north. And in the middle is Samaria.
3) One Important Social Fact: there are two distinctive Jewish groups in the NT that weren’t in the OT – the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They were religious-cultural-social rivals for the most part.
Three big new developments plus a lot of other novelties. So starting Matthew today I’m in a whole new world.