Acts of Apostles in the Early Church 



Author: Martin Goodman. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Hardcover/Paper editions.

About the Author:

Martin Goodman has divided his intellectual life between Roman and Jewish worlds. He has edited both the Journal of Roman Studies and the Journal of Jewish Studies.

Goodman has taught Roman History at Birmingham and Oxford Universities, and is currently Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford. He is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

(Publisher)

Reviewed by Nathan Langerak, pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church in Crete, Illinois. (Digest of review from the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal *)

"The book centers around the question, why did the conflict between Rome and Jerusalem come to a leveling of Jerusalem and a razing of the temple, which was never rebuilt?

"Having traced exhaustively many different possible explanations and rejecting them all, the author [Goodman] comes to the conclusion that the prosecution of the Jewish Wars by the Romans was a personal decision of a new emperor to enhance his image with Senatus Populusque Romanus.

"Vespasian's political calculation was right, and his effective policy for enhancing his imperial image by promoting his success in the Jewish war and by refusing to allow the Jews to rebuild was followed by his successors in the Flavian dynasty, particularly his sons Titus and Domitian . . . and was continued by his successors down to the defeat of Bar Kokhba in [A.D.] 135.

"Yet, even the author acknowledges that there are aspects of this history that are inexplicable. He points out that the Roman treatment of the Jews in this war . . . was entirely different from their treatment of any other people.

"He points out how 'outrageous' it was in ancient times for the Romans to refuse to allow the rebuilding of the temple . . . . It was virtually inconceivable. Yet the ban stood. The author comes to the conclusion that circumstances converged to produce this outcome. The temple was never rebuilt because of Roman prejudice and the need of later emperors to draw on the success of Roman against Judaism.

"While these explanations may be . . . the answer of Scripture is far deeper. The Lord of history was finished with Jerusalem, with the temple, and with all the outward types. In their destruction he would give one more type to his church, a type of the world's end.

"This viewpoint . . . sees that all things, from the careless toss of a firebrand to the imperial policy of worldly emperors, are in the Lord's hands. They are determined by Him. They are carried out by Him for His purpose.

"The author quotes the prophecy of Jesus [referring to the end of Zion] in Luke 19:43. He treats the Scriptures not much differently than he treats Seutonius, Tacitus, or Josephus. He views the Lord's words as having been fulfilled when Titus ringed the city with a stone wall . . . .

"The preterist does virtually the same thing and treats the sack of Jerusalem as exhausting the precursory signs. In this the preterist is wrong. That does not mean, however, that the destruction of Jerusalem is not instructive for our understanding of eschatology. It is the event that Jesus prophesied and is recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. The prophecy of Jesus was fulfilled typically in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D 70.

"A further benefit of the book is that . . . the author provides a magisterial review of the two cultures that underlie both the gospel history and the subsequent apostolic history of the church . . . . The gospel took place in time and in a particular circumstance . . . . This book lays out that time and circumstance."

"Martin Goodman is marvelously suited to such a study. He is erudite, thoroughly conversant in both Roman and Jewish antiquities, and a clear writer . . . His suitability to the task comes out in the book's many good maps and several plates full of interesting illustrations and pictures, as well as the book's eminent accessibility for the general reader.

"Avoiding all the technical encumbrances that usually hinder a book of this nature, the author patiently explains every facet of the subject he covers, and in a lively way brings the civilization that is now 2,000 years removed from us closer to us so that we can understand it better.

"He puts in context some obscure references in Scripture to men like Judas the Galilean, and Theudas, and the Egyptian . . . . He vividly describes the ancient world in which the Christian church lived her life and carried out her mission work, a work that he points out was unique in the ancient world."

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* The Reformed Protestant Theological Journal is published by the Protestant Reformed Theological Seminary twice each year and mailed to subscribers free of charge.)