As we leave politics and economics for the season celebrating the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, I marvel at the planning which preceded the great and holy event. The timing and location of Jesus’ birth was no accident or random event. It must have been determined from the beginning by our Savior and His Father to accomplish all of the purposes of the atonement. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that:
Everlasting covenant was made between three personages before the organization of this earth, and relates to their dispensation of things to men on the earth; these personages, according to Abraham’s record, are called God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the witness or Testator.[i]
The Savior Himself, in defining the Gospel to the Nephites, taught that it was all planned beforehand:
13 Behold I have given unto you my gospel, and this is the gospel which I have given unto you—that I came into the world to do the will of my Father, because my Father sent me. UAdd a Note 14 And my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross, that I might draw all men unto me, that as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father, to stand before me, to be judged of their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil—[ii]
Joseph Fielding Smith wrote that it is because it was in the middle of the earth’s mortal history. (Adam to Christ is 4,000 years. Christ to the end of time is 4,000 years).[iii]
In addition to these spiritual considerations, however, all the political and cultural circumstances had to be in place, too. Our Savior had only three years in small, obscure Galilee in which to complete His mission, and make possible the fulfillment of God’s purpose for creating the earth in the first place. Both He and the Holy Land were at the crossroads of history and civilization. Nazareth itself was between the two great highways, one running south to Egypt (the Coastal Highway) and the other running east through Jordan (the King’s Highway.) So, even the specific location in Nazareth – not Jerusalem on its high hills – was strategically placed to allow transportation not just of goods, but also ideas, throughout the commercial world.
And, time? The holy temple . . . “His Father’s House” . . . and all of Jerusalem . . . came together under Herod the Great just before Jesus’ birth, and were totally destroyed less than a decade after Peter and Paul’s martyrdom. Only in the exact time of His life, could He have taught in the temple and the Holy City.
Six critical conditions can be identified that converged in time and place making it ideal for His ministry:
1. Creation of a body of moral law . . . accepted as God’s law . . . that came to be codified, that the Son of God, Jesus, the Christ to all the world, could use as the foundation theological and moral framework for His divine mission.
2. Dispersion of God’s covenant people throughout the world. This made it possible for the Hebrew law to reach into every culture with the same message.
3. Converting that moral law from oral to writing (The Targum) during the Second Commonwealth under Ezra the Prophet.
4. The establishment of a common language (Greek) and point of reference for the entire Western World.
5. Translation of the written moral code in the universal Greek language (the Septuagint.)
6. Establishment of an overarching empire (the Roman Empire) that instituted common laws, security and institutions that transcended local and national boundaries and cultures. This made the spread of the Gospel possible for the first time in history.
With all six of these converging, the time and place were ready for the arrival of the Son of God, for the Gospel that He brought, for the establishment of His Church, and for the spread of the testimony of Christ from Africa and Asia to Europe and, finally, to the Americas.
The Creation of a Body of Moral Law: 1500 bc
First came the moral law delivered by God (known among the early Israelites as the Torah, or the “law”) that provided the foundation for God’s presence. This was a direct challenge to the wood and stone idols that were worshipped by the world of the Old Testament at the time.[iv] The Torah testified of the “One True God” and His covenant people. The Torah was codified over the centuries as the Five Books of Moses, or the Pentateuch. We know them as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
With every step by which each of the three parts was sealed [the Law {Torah, Pentateuch}, the Prophets {Nebi’im}, and the Writings {Ketubim}], nothing to be added or to be taken away, the text was likewise fixed and thenceforth made the object of zealous watchfulness. Even with regard to the latest book of our scriptures, we read its text substantially in the form in which the great Rabbi Akiba read it, he who said that the system by which the sacred text was guarded constituted a fence about the Scriptures. In that system, at first oral and later committed to writing, the letters were actually counted and lists made, to the end that no alterations should creep in at the hands of careless scribes.[v]
Even today, Western civilization bases its legal structure on these writings.
The Dispersion of Israel: 722 bc and 588 bc
Following the giving of the Law came the dispersion of Israel (the “Diaspora”) throughout the world in two great pre-Christian era waves:
- In 722 bc the greater part of the Northern Kingdom of Israel was carried off into the Assyrian Empire; and,
- In 588 bc the inhabitants of the Southern Kingdom of Judea were taken to the enlarged Babylonian empire.
And, with them went God’s law and God’s prophets. But, no matter how far they were taken from Jerusalem, they remained largely un-assimilated Jews.
Wherever a Roman, a Greek, or an Asiatic might wander, he could take his gods with him, or find rites kindred to his own. It was far otherwise with the Jew. He had only one Temple, that in Jerusalem; only one God.[vi]
Tragic and inhumane as the Diaspora was, the Torah traveled with the new residents to their new home, and thereby God’s message reached into every culture. However,
[They were] strangers in a strange land. . . . That such should be the case, and these widely scattered members have been united in one body, is a unique fact in history. Its only true explanation must be sought in a higher Divine impulse. The kings which bound them together were: a common creed, a common life, a common centre, and a common hope. Wherever the Jew sojourned, or however he might differ from his brethren, Monotheism, the Divine mission of Moses, and the authority of the Old Testament, were equally unquestioned articles of belief .
. . . For the deepest of all convictions was that of their common centre; strongest of all feelings was the love which bound them to Palestine and to Jerusalem, the city of God, the joy of all the earth, the glory of His people Israel.
Thus, the seeds of the Gospel were planted and nourished in capitals and cultural centers throughout the Middle East and much of Asia, Northern Africa and Europe.
The Written Law: 450 bc
Next, the Law – even when lost through sin and rejection — survived throughout much of antiquity until it was brought together and written down at the “Great Assembly” during the Second Commonwealth in exile in Persia (about 450 bc) under the prophet, Ezra. Because the common language of the time was Aramaic, it was notated in that language in what is known as the Targum. It gave God’s chosen people written and oral scripture in their own language, and made the Torah of God ‘distinct and giving sense’ through means of interpretation, that the Word of God might be understood by all God’s covenant people.
The Aramaic translation was known as the Targum, first made orally and afterwards committed to writing because Israel had forgotten the sacred language. All this, however, is veiled in obscurity, as is the whole inner history of the Jews during the Persian rule.[viii]
The Establishment of a Common Language (Greek): 333 bc
Next came the establishment of common points of reference (Greek writing, methods of learning, and critical thinking) spread by Aristotle for the entire Western world through conquest by Alexander the Great (333 bc.)
The political connection of Israel with the Grecian world . . . may be said to have commenced with the victorious progress of Alexander the Great through the then known world (333 bc). It was not only that his destruction of the Persian empire put an end to the easy and peaceful allegiance which Judaea had owed to it for about two centuries, but that the establishment of such a vast Hellenic empire, as was the aim of Alexander, introduced a new element into the old world of Asia. Everywhere the old civilization gave way before the new.[ix]
However, it was the establishment of the Greek language itself that had the greatest impact on the Savior’s coming mission because it made it possible to teach His Gospel in a common language through the entire empire.
The language which our Lord commonly spoke was Aramaic; and at that period Hebrew was completely a dead language, known only to the more educated, and only to be acquired by labor; yet it is clear that Jesus was acquainted with it, for some of His scriptural quotations directly refer to the Hebrew original. Greek, too, He must have known, for it was currently spoken in towns so near His home . . . . Greek was, indeed, the common medium of intercourse, and without it Jesus could have had no conversation with strangers — with the centurion, for instance, whose servant He healed, or with Pilate, or with the Greeks who desired an interview with Him in the last week of His life.[x]
For the first time, entire continents and nations could converse in a common language.
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