Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CITY

(NEW TESTAMENT)

Cities played an important role in the social, cultural, and religious world of the Roman Empire, anecdotally illustrated in the Latin root for civilization (civitas, “city”). Jesus’ ministry took place on the outskirts of cities in and around the Galilee, Paul’s travels and letter-writing occurred in an urban context, and the city is a key theological concept in several NT books.

Even though the term pólis occurs more than 150 times in the NT, the Greek concept of a democratic, self-governing city-state had given way to the reality of Roman administrative needs. Rome ruled its empire through cities and distinguished between a bewildering variety (e.g., civitas, colonia, municipium). In the East, Rome integrated the local elites and rulers into a network of cities to tax efficiently its empire, and even created confederations of cities, such as the Decapolis, to facilitate its defense. Cities did have larger populations than towns or villages, but were primarily recognizable by distinctive architectural features and patterns. Roman period cities adopted several architectural features from the Greek pólis and provided amenities necessary for what the Romans thought of as civilized life: an agora, a basilica used as a court or administrative building, an odeon, an aqueduct, public baths, nymphaea, and temples. The architectural arrangement tended towards regularized orthogonal grids, often by artificially subduing topographical limitations and challenges. Facades of fresco, marble, or plaster, coupled with ingeniously executed colonnades created vistas that focused on monuments of Roman rule, such as a temple, an emperor’s status, or the basilica. The social position of the wealthy was visually reinforced in seating in theaters or amphitheaters or in inscriptions declaring their munificence.

In its socio-political structure, the city’s elites competed with one another for prestige by sponsoring building projects, their maintenance, and public festivals, made possible by the rents and taxes they collected from the countryside. In varying degrees, individual cities numbered few wealthy residents but many poor, some of whom had migrated after being dispossessed from their land only to become dependent upon distribution and beneficence of the elites. Aside from the few wealthy, some merchants, artisans, soldiers, and public workers, a city’s population comprised primarily slaves, day laborers, the chronically poor, and indigents. Trade routes through the larger cities, and especially those near the Mediterranean coast, facilitated mobility and brought together various cultural, ethnic, and religious groups — who often clashed. Such social turmoil, and the discontent of the poorest substratum, were both feared and harshly controlled by Roman-appointed rulers.

Numerous cities in Palestine had already been urbanized in the Hellenistic sense in the first few centuries b.c.e. Herod the Great’s rule (37-4 b.c.e.) as a client king of Rome was characterized by enormous architectural and urban activity — he founded Caesarea Maritima as the most modern and beautiful port city in the Levant, and Jerusalem and Sebaste-Samaria were transformed with Roman urban architecture. Herod Antipas, who inherited Galilee from his father’s kingdom, built the cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias as his capitals — albeit on a smaller and less ostentatious scale — and he apparently avoided overt signs of paganism, such as statues or pagan temples, and his coins remained aniconic. Although no evidence indicates that Jesus visited these cities during his ministry, certainly they had an impact on the Galilee by realigning trade patterns and funneling profits from the countryside’s agricultural produce as taxes for Antipas and Rome. The Gospel writers’ proclivity for the term pólis — they even bestow this title on the villages of Nazareth (Matt. 2:23) and Capernaum (Matt. 9:1 and Luke 4:31) — is indicative of the imprecision with which the designation was used or perhaps even their unawareness of these sites.

While Jesus’ ministry took place in Jewish Galilean village culture on the fringe of second-rate urban centers, Paul was fully immersed in the urban life of the Greco-Roman world. His hometown of Tarsus was a major port city, and the cities most identified with his missionary travels — Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus — count among the largest and most cosmopolitan of the time. Their social, religious, and cultural diversity and complexity leave their mark on Paul’s letters and in Acts; Paul typically made contact with these cities’ Jewish communities, and from there sought to expand to include Gentiles. The latter part of the book of Acts can even be read as the various city officials’ attempts to deal with the political strife and social upheaval accompanying Paul’s missions. The demographics of the Pauline communities were primarily lower-class, though some upper-class slave owners (e.g., Philemon) were included, and a mix of Jews and Gentiles with various ethnic heritages. Paul’s visits to Palestine were confined primarily to the large port city of Caesarea and to Jerusalem (Acts 21–26).

The city of Jerusalem itself plays a theological role in the Gospels, Acts, and the Apocalypse. Twice Matthew explicitly calls it “the holy city” (Matt. 4:5; 27:53), and Luke presents Jerusalem as a kind of axis mundi, the Christian navel of the world. Jesus steadily moves towards Jerusalem in Luke’s Gospel culminating in his inevitable crucifixion which must take place there, according to Luke 13:30-33. In the geographical schema of Acts, Christianity spreads from Jerusalem . . . to the ends of the earth. The crisis of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple reverberated among early Christians as well, and its devastating consequences can best be seen in the predictions found in Mark 13. The apocalyptic vision of John foresees a new Jerusalem which will supersede the fallen Babylon/Rome (Rev. 21).

Bibliography. M. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley, 1973); W. Meeks. The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, 1983).

Jonathan L. Reed

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CITY

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)