Survey of The Book of Haggai

Heya everyone! As I mentioned in a previous post, I am working my way through a hermeneutics book - and that means I am writing papers on various topics. The last one was on slavery in the New Testament times. This time I had to write up a survey of the background and situation that was going on at the time the events in the book of Haggai took place. I am going through this book for myself - so I have no one to "turn the papers in" to - so I thought I might as well post em on my blog pages - who knows, maybe someone will find them interesting. Anyway, here's the paper on Haggai:

The events of the book of Haggai took place in 520 B.C. - there seems to be unanimous agreement to this point. Several things said within the book correspond to very well known and established dates and events. The historical accuracy of this particular book seems to be well attested to, since the details can be compared to extra Biblical sources. This is after the 70 years of Captivity in Babylon, and 16-18 years after Cyrus had decreed that the Jews could rebuild their temple (2 Chron 36:22,23). This is during the second year of the reign of King Darius. Darius was not really a name, but more of a title, and this particular Darius was Hystaspes (or Hystaspis) who ruled Persia from 522-486 B.C. The precise date this book begins from is the 1^st day of the 6^th month of the Jewish calendar- which would be the month of Elul, roughly corresponding to August – September on our calendar Reckoning from our calendar, and the first message Haggai delivered was August 29^th, 520 B.C. - work began on the temple 23 days later on September 21^st, 520 B.C. (it took just over 3 weeks for the people to respond to Haggai's message.)

In 2 Chronicles 36, Cyrus had decreed that the Jews could rebuild their temple. Cyrus, however, was heavily involved in the other duties of his office, and (unfortunately) appears to have paid little attention to whether or not the Jews actually rebuilt the temple. Under Cyrus' decree, just over 42 thousand Jews (Ezra 2:64) returned to Israel under the leadership of Zerubbabel [his Chaldean name was probably Shesh-bazzar, as mentioned in Ezra 1:8) the son of Shealtiel who was the governor of Judah. 1 Chron 3:17 names Pedaiah his father, so Shealtiel was likely Zerubbabel's uncle, who adopted him after his father Pedaiah died. Cyrus had appointed Zerubbabel governor.], and had settled in Jerusalem and in the neighboring towns of Bethlehem, Bethel, Anathoth, Gibeon, Kiriath-jearim (Ezra 2:20). The Jews were anxious to reestablish their religious practices, and erected the altar of Burnt Offering almost immediately. They also made plans to rebuild the temple, and actually started to rebuild it.

At that point the Samaritans approached and offered to help rebuild the temple, but their offer was refused. This angered the Samaritans, and so (encouraged by Cyrus' successor Cambyses) they harassed the Jews until they gave up and stopped building the temple. They did, however, build themselves nice houses, planted crops – and pretty much resumed their lives, without God. National disobedience in the Old Testament is commonly connected to national adversity, so it shouldn't be surprising that their crops began to fail, inflation was out of control and life got very bad very quick.

Shortly thereafter, Hystaspes ascended to the throne. As a young man, Hystaspes had vowed, if ever he became king, whatever of the holy vessels were in Babylon, he would send to the temple at Jerusalem; and upon solicitations made to him, the Jews were encouraged to go on with the building of it. It was at this point that Haggai delivered his messages.

Haggai delivered his messages to Zerubbabel, the governor, and Joshua, the High Priest – so Haggai's ministry took place in Jerusalem. Haggai means “festive” or “festal” - it may also be a shortened form of Haggiah (1Ch 6:30), meaning “festival of Yahweh” According to Jewish tradition, he was a member of the Great Synagogue. Haggai is the 10th in the order of the Twelve Prophets. He also may have been a very old man at this point, and may have actually seen the first temple.

Haggai's message was fairly simple. God told Haggai to tell the Jews that the reason for the bad crops was that they had not built the temple – they had put themselves before God. They all had nice homes, but Gods temple was unfinished. Joyce Baldwin explains “The nations had to know beyond any doubt that the God of Israel had not gone out of existence when the Israelites were removed from their land.” The Temple and the Covenant were bound up together and “while the temple lay in ruins there was no outward sign of the Lord's presence with the restored community.” The Lords reputation was at stake, and He will not tolerate His name and honor to be impugned.

At the same time Haggai was preaching, Zechariah was also preaching. Just over 3 weeks after Haggai delivered his first message, work on the Temple resumed, and was finished 4-5 years later. The wall around Jerusalem, however, was not built for another 70 years.

Slavery in New Testament times

 

[I am currently going through a textbook/workbook on hermeneutics, and one of the exercises I had to do was to type up a summary of slavery as found in the New Testament era. So I figured I might as well post it here - hope ya like it!]

Ok, this is supposed to be a 1 – 2 page summary on the practice of slavery in New Testament times. As my library is currently on the small side – the direct historical information I could find was rather limited, so I don't know that it will actually reach 2 pages in length. I will do my best to be straight forward and honest.

It is often mentioned that the Bible condones slavery – but this is not accurate. Old Testament slavery has no modern parallel, there has simply never been anything like that before or since. It bore several similarities to our modern day employee – employer relationship, but even that comparison limps. The Mosaic Law jealously guarded the human rights of slaves. They were to be treated with dignity, respect, love and kindness. One extremely important distinction of OT slavery was that slaves were to be freed every seven years. Another, possibly equally significant fact, was that the slaves were to be treated so well that God put provisions in the law allowing for the slave to basically become part of his masters family if he so desired – which happened very frequently.

But that was Israel's law in the OT times. What we encounter in the New Testament era is completely different. In the NT, we find Israel under the occupation of Rome – and as such, they were subject to Roman law. Roman law had no provisions for the human rights of the slaves. Put bluntly – the Roman practice of slavery was just as evil as the American version was. Rome saw slaves as property, as tools. Aristotle, one of the most enlightened of the Greeks, held that the Creator had made the majority of the human race for slavery – he was quoted as saying "The slave is a living tool, and the tool is a lifeless slave." This mindset survived into the NT times. Slaves in the NT era had no rights what so ever – they were not seen as human, and there was absolutely no law governing how a master could treat his slaves. It was this system that the first Christians had to live with.

Approximately half of the population of the city of Rome – and a large part of the Roman empire as a whole, were slaves. A very large number of the early Christians were slaves. Domestic slavery was the most common form, where slaves were owned by private citizens to work at their masters homes or businesses – but there were a significant number of state and city slaves as well – these slaves were owned by the state itself and they performed an increasing amount of tasks.

While the system of slavery in Rome was cruel and brutal – it was not without pragmatism. A dumb slave was a worthless slave (for the most part). Roman citizens wanted to have their slaves run their households and businesses while they pursued their various amusements – but in order to do that, the slaves needed to be well educated and trained to handle the tasks they were assigned, and to handle them well. For this reason, the Roman army, on it's campaigns, often took the brightest and best young men and women from the conquered peoples and brought them home to be sold into slavery. Slaves often ended up being better educated then their masters, and were frequently used as secretaries and teachers. Slaves commonly ended up acting as the official representative of their masters in professional capacities. To help understand the issue of wanting a smart person to run your business while at the same time viewing them as less then human, it may be helpful to keep a modern concept in mind: robots. Rome would have loved the idea of robots! But, they were centuries away from even the vaguest concept of a robot, so they made due with human slaves (they just chose to try and forget about the "human" part!)

The governmental slaves are a particularly interesting aspect of the Roman system of slavery, in that a state or city slave could hold virtually any occupation – even the highest administrative positions. State slaves constituted the work force that kept the bureaucracy functioning in the Roman empire (particularly in Rome itself). To a large degree, the Roman empire (on a practical level), was run by slaves.

Slaves had significant incentive to provide good service to their masters – slaves were paid "wages". Wages, in that context, meant that the slave earned money, that the master kept for them – but was available to the slave to use – one of the possible uses of the money was for the slave to buy their freedom. Beyond that, the slave (once freed) could purchase an actual Roman Citizenship – the sale of citizenship was not officially condoned, but it was done none the less. Masters could also simply give their slaves freedom – either conditionally or unconditionally. If the freedom was conditional, then the slave usually continued in his obligations to his former master – but he now performed them as a free man. Masters could also transfer ownership of a slave to a god – which usually resulted in conditional freedom.

The New Testament itself neither condemns or endorses slavery. It simply treats it as a fact of life that must be dealt with. It gives guidelines for behavior within the existing social order of the day (Col 3:22 – 4:1; 1 Timothy 6:1-2; Phil 5-9; 1 Pet 2:16-21; but see 1 Cor 7:21-24). The problem was, the Gospel put slaves and masters on an equal level within the church. It was not uncommon for a slave to end up being a deacon or elder in a church where his master was a "member" - which resulted in the slave having a certain amount of authority over his master. While this was no trouble for the slaves and masters who actually found themselves in this situation (they were all slaves to Christ), non-believing Romans perceived this situation as dangerous to the social and economic stability of Rome. The fear was unfounded. In the NT, Paul did counsel believing slaves to seek freedom if possible ( 1 Cor 7:21), but he also told slaves to obey their masters (Eph 6:5; Col 3:22; Titus 2:9).

In conclusion, it is unfair to claim that the Bible supports slavery. The OT system of slavery is unlike anything else in history – we have no frame of reference to compare it to, and it bore no similarity to the system of slavery we commonly think of (other then, perhaps, the word "slavery"). The NT slavery was never endorsed by the writers of the Bible. It was an entirely Roman system, set up and enforced by an occupying force in Israel -and the NT writers simply gave instructions on how Christians were to function within a preexisting system.

The NT never specifically addresses the issue of slavery because compared to the problem of sin, slavery is of very little importance (this is true of many, many issues that one could bring up). That being said, the spread of the Gospel can be directly linked to the demise of slavery. Put simply, where the gospel goes, slavery ends. Maybe not immediately, and there may be the odd hold out here and there, but in general, it is an undeniable fact.