The Time

It seems that no matter the decade or century, people always want to believe they are at the dawn of something new. Just as people today believe that Jesus will return within the next 50 years (such a theology isn’t biblically supportable and arose within the last 100 years, but we’ll table that), people in the first century believed their time to be unique as well. Living under the rule of Roman occupation, they were waiting for someone to come and free them once again. Jesus didn’t turn out to represent that kind of change, but he was certainly a figure of renewal and reformation.

Scholars today recognize the time of Jesus as part of “the axial age,” a relatively small period when religious movements made drastic changes away from ritual and esoteric practice and teachings and toward inclusive practices and philosophies. During this period, Hinduism made progress away from Vedic principles and the Bagavad Gita arose; the Buddha’s following created a new religious movement directed toward inward harmony and outward peace; Mohammad’s movement created Islam; the Pharisaic movement and first century climate of Israel changed Judaism, and Jesus planted the seeds of Christianity. Something happened globally in human consciousness, whether coincidental or not. Religion, as it existed for centuries, started to look very different. Christianity was part of that.