Milford chronicle., 1959-12-25
The Hope Of Peace on Earth

To Christians, all the transcendently impor-
tant events of human history, including the
Nativity of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem, are
centrated into four or five decades which rough
ly coincide with the beginnings of the Roman
principate. 1t is much-nOted irony that these
events went wholly unnOticed not only by the
Roman but also by the Jewish chrOniclers of
the time; for the references to them in certain
texts of Flavius Josephus are now deemed to
have been the interpretations of piously mis-
guided Christian coypsts.
The only records, then, are those of the
Gospels, which do indeed make mention of per-
sonages of purely worldly note-such Herod
the Great the Imperia legate Quirinus (or
Quirinius), Herold Antipas, the Galilean Te-
trarch, the Procurator Plate, the Archpriest
CSlaphas, Caesar Augustus himself-but
only they encroach upon the narrative of the
birth, life and death of the Saviour. 1t is clear
that the Evangelists were very little concerned
about the difficulties some of these references
might create for the historians or the higher
critics of remote future and that their purpose
was rather the faithful reproduction of the oral
tradition preserved among the disciples, to
emphasize the realization of the Messianic proph-
ecies, and to spread their Evangelion, or It'd
ings of great joy among "all the people,"
Jewish and Gentle. 1t is even possible that the
Evangelists like so many of the earliest Chris
tians, believed that history, as we understand
it, was already nearing it's end and therefore
Lord, and the Kingdom of Heaven, for which He
had taught them to pray, were very close at
hand.
In a sense, of course, the Gospels and the
Christian revelation above and beyond his
tory They are for all mankind in every age
and place and even, as we are now assured, for
the inhabitants of other planets, if such there
be and if they stand like the children of Adam
and Eve on EARTH in need of redemption. But
in another sense Christianity is uniquely his
tOrical religion because it's central mysteries of
the Incarnation and Atonement were fulfilled
a a ar
juncture of world events, when, in the mystical
language of the, Fourth Evangelist, the Word
had become flesh and had dwelt among men
upon earth. In other words, the birth, life and
death of Christ as narrated in the Gospels are
matters of fact and not of allegory; and because
of this Christians-once the archaeological Wis
ion had begun to recede into remote future
have always felt the necessity of relating the
revelations concerning certain long obscure
events occurring in Palestine somewhere be-
tween the years 10 B. G. and A. d. 40
Thus it is of interest to examine the con-
dition of the Roman world into which the Saw
iour was born. The first thing to be noticed is
that it really time of peace on earth," if
only in the political sense of the words The
gates of the temple of Janus Quirinus were
shut, as they had been only twice before in all
the long history of the city, stretching over
more than half millennium. The epoch there
fore, is known the pax Romano: but it had
come at the end of hundred years of civil wars
marked Dy wholesale purgeS ana genOcldeS that
were probably almost without counterpart until
our own unhappy times and by foreign wars in
which Mthradates Eupator of Pontus and the
Parthians of the Middle East had represented a
form of menace equipvalent to those of Adolf
Hitler in the 1930s and of Communist Russia
today.
But of universal good will among men"
Roman or otherwise, there is little evidence or
none Augustus we are told lived in daily fear
of assassination, as well he might, remembering
what had happened to his famous kinsman on
the fateful Ides of March, No one can examine
the Roman portrait sculpture of the period
without being impressed by the seemingly con-
temporary aspect of it, by all those familiar