Testament:: The Bible and History: Mightier Than the Sword VHS

The historical context into which Jesus was born, the background against which the New Testament was written, is the period in which the Old Testament achieved its final shape--a period of intense national crisis and religious ferment while the people of Judea tried to repel the advances of Rome and its pagan emperors. We begin in Jerusalem, a provincial city occupied by the Romans, and learn about its occupants and the ideological differences between the conservative Jews of Jerusalem who sought to preserve their religious and cultural traditions, and the more numerous Hellenized Jews throughout the East, many of them highly sophisticated and cosmopolitan. A detailed examination of the remains of some of the greatest cities of the time--Ephesus, Miletus, Pergamon--shows the nature of the Eastern Hellenic civilization of which Jerusalem was a part and into which Jesus was born. Approx. 52 minutes long.