What was the situation in Palestine around the time of Jesus birth?
At the time of Jesus’ birth, all of Palestine was held under Roman occupation. (Rome at that time was a city-state with enormous influence and power.) Herod the Great was the Roman representative who ruled all of Palestine. In many ways, times were good. People were working and making money – therefore there were plenty of taxes for the Romans to collect. Much of the tax money stayed in Palestine – the Romans used it to build the new city of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, villas and summer palaces for Roman dignitaries, and Herod (who had a Jewish mother) rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, which had been in ruins since the Babylonian captivity and exile. Travel seemed to be easy and safe in the context of the times, and many Jews received hellenized Roman educations: the Romans hired or enslaved Greek teachers to teach their children in Greek, and those educations were available to Jewish boys in Palestine. Though the Roman emperor was officially a god, Jewish religious belief and pract
