That Darkness Shall Not Overcome

Introduction

One of the assumptions taken for granted living in modern times is the fact we are living in modern times. We know it is 2022 and round about that many years ago time pivoted from counting down the BCs and began climbing into the ADs. But the people living around that time had no idea history was about to find its center. As a consequence, we can look back from the cozy vantage of the future, as though rewatching a beloved movie, and see the moment when the fortunes of the characters changed. We can look back and watch the reel of history flicker by, as the world lay, as the carol tells us, in sin and error pining, and anticipate that moment when the light would shine in the darkness and the soul feel it’s worth.

For the Jews in the depths of history, the time immediately preceding the advent of their Savior was intended by God to be the darkest in Jewish history, a time when their national identity was all but obsolete and the only spiritual warmth available was from the frequent friction between warring factions.

The centuries between the last oracles of Malachi and the birth of Christ is referred to as the ”Four Hundred Silent Years” – a time when God’s prophetic word dried up. I would like to briskly walk through this period to give the birth of Christ some historical and cultural context. The history is complex, with much power mongering, empire toppling, murder, death, deceit and desecration that left Israel with a near pulseless identity. Many names, dates and interesting happenings will be passed over for the sake of spacetime, to focus more on the pathos of the time and the hearts of the people, as this dark swampy history slogs toward lighter, higher ground. If you would like more information, I would recommend the small book by H.A. Ironside entitled The Four Hundred Silent Years. You can read the free online version here.

Round About The 450s

The state of Israel is no state at all. The north was wrecked by the Assyrians a few centuries prior in the mid 700s and was lost and gone forever. Judah, in the south, hung on by its teeth for an additional century and a half, but was then lost to the Babylonian empire after it continues to whore itself out to foreign gods. Babylon, God’s cudgel, then busted into Jerusalem and razed the place, leveled the temple and hauled off the cream of Israel back to Babylon, among this group was Daniel, he of the Lion’s Den fame. Babylon was a rickety state itself and imploded while the Medo-Persian empire swept in and assumed control of the situation not a couple generations after the exile of Jerusalem. Intra-empire intrigue ensued. The events of Esther happened during this time. Ezra and Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem’s temple and wall, respectively, by leave of a most propitious Persian emperor, which happened round about 450 BC.

A detailed and externally verifiable history of the events of Ezra and Nehemiah we have. But as for the prophetic word from God, it seems it was here the heavens dried up. The last the Jews hear from God is through Malachi, prophesying back in Persia, looking out over a dissolved national heritage and an anemic religion. From his mouth comes the last spark of divine word foretelling a messenger that will precede the coming of the Day of the Lord – this, as we know, turned out to be J the B.

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction

Malachi 4:5-6 (ESV)

Back in geographic Israel, the small remnant permitted to return to Jerusalem by the edict of the Persian king Darius eeked along. Life under the distant Persian rule was mild, and the remnant in Jerusalem was left to govern and defend themselves. Israel had no king, though the office of the high priest remained intact and thus the people’s tangible connection with God through the sacrificial system. 

However, after the death of Ezra and Nehemiah, the lineage of high priests quickly became funkified. One high priest murdered his brother to make his position more secure. Another’s son married a foreigner and ran off to Samaria and built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim, audaciously amending the Ten Commandments to include an eleventh: “Thou shalt build an altar on Mount Gerizim, and there only shall you worship.” (This is the mountain the woman at the well refers to in John 4.) Of course, Israel had had some odious priests in the past, so nothing terribly new here, but without a king or any prophets worth their salt, this single string of the priesthood was the only semi-functional connection Israel had with God. And it was fraying.

Far west of the Persian hub, a Macedonian named Phillip busied himself uniting Greece. His son Alexander, in the greatest military conquest of history, overcame the Persians and conquered the known world in just under two years, making Hitler’s blitzkrieg look like a couple of snails chewing the cud. Daniel chapter eight prophesies his swift and total victory as a e-goat flying across the land to slam the ram. And slam the ram the he-goat did; Alexander obliterated the Persian empire in 336 BC shifting the center of the world a thousand miles East to Greece.

But his reign was short lived. Having no more world’s to conquer, Alex grew fond of the drink. Though no one is entirely sure of the cause of death, he was gone quickly leaving his vast empire with no heir, again props to Daniel for an exquisitely pinpoint prophesy. Immediately following his untimely death, there was a land grab by a couple of his generals who used Palestine as a wishbone. Israel was tossed back and forth through a series of battles where thousands of Jews were killed. Hundreds of thousands were exported to Egypt where the Jewish culture and religion dissolved into Hellenized Egypt and lost their native tongue and customs.

Meanwhile, back up in Israel, Jerusalem was fought over by increasingly nefarious rulers in Syria to the north and Egypt to the south for the next hundred years. There was lots of intra-kingdom murders, inter-kingdom marriages, violence, deceit, intrigue and lootings. Think of reading a history of The Young and the Restless, except with more poisonings and fratricide. Whichever side won, the Jews lost; whoever prospered, they were robbed. I will highlight a couple of interesting facts from this period that give the Gospels more context.

During this time, a high priest named Onias decided he didn’t feel like paying tribute to the ruling power. Onias had a son who traveled to Syria, the incumbent power du jour, to parlay leniency for his father’s insubordination. On the way he overheard a group of foreigners traveling with him who intended to ask the Syrian king for the right to farm the taxes in Palestine. Thinking this was a fantastic idea, the son of the high priest bribed the king and won the rights to farm the taxes. He became the first “publican”—tax collector—and was despised by the Jews for his shameless exploitation of his own people. It was this same group of abominable humans that Jesus dined with, as we see in Mark 2, when he went to the house of the “publicans and sinners.” Note also that this overmilking of the Jews’ with taxes came from the office of the priest.

Also during this time, we see the seedlings of two factions taking shape among the leaderless Jews, which would ripen over the next hundred years. The dominant party was the hellenizing faction who sought to integrate all things Greek into the Jewish culture. They didn’t see any deliverance for the Jews except by following the ways of the heathens. They desired to see all that was Jewish to be replaced by Grecian culture. This group eventually came to be known as the Sadducees.A smaller, weaker, though intransigent group, took the opposite view and doubled down on their traditions and adherence to Mosaic law, adding to it and becoming more and more dogmatic in order to preserve their faith. They wanted to separate themselves from the carnal, lascivious culture and gave themselves the name Pharisees which means “to separate.”

An Old Timey Antichrist

It is now 220-ish BC. Enter Antiochus IV. Hollywood has yet to write a villain so nefarious. Along with waging continual war with Egypt, he managed to wound the heart of Jewish culture more than anyone else prior to, and probably since, this time. Affectionately referred to as “the Antichrist of the Old Testament,” it is this man that the prophet Daniel foretold as “the abomination” (Daniel 11:31), though he gave himself the surname Epiphanes, which means, “the Illustrious.”

Here’s what happened.

The high priest of the time had a brother named Joseph who surreptitiously went to Antiochus IV and bribed him for the position of high priest, promising to do all in his power to completely hellenize the Jews, even changing their name to “Antiochans,” which doesn’t have the same ring to it, but apparently Antiochus liked it and gave Joseph the priesthood. Joseph changed his name to Jason, after the famed Greek hero, just to prove he was a legit bootlicker. In local Palestine life, this put the burgeoning Sadducean party in complete power, who were all too willing to slough off Judaism and mate it with Greek philosophy, religion and sacred games. 

Well, Jason reaped what he had sown, because four years later his brother bribed Antiochus, promising to turn the hellenization of the Jews up to eleven, if that were possible. And it was! He changed his name to Menelaus, who was a Trojan war vet and Greek hero, and the sold the sacred golden articles in the Temple to fund his bribe, then had his father assassinated when he spoke out against him. Furthermore, Menelaus wasn’t even in the priestly line, leaving the once venerated and exclusive role of high priest instituted by God through the line of Aaron up for the highest bidder.

One fine day, while Antiochus was on a campaign against his perennial Egyptian enemy, a rumor reached Jerusalem that Antiochus had been killed. Ecstatic at the news of his demise, the Jews took the opportunity and rioted, overthrowing the apostate Menelaus and killing Antiochus’ sentries in Jerusalem. 

Slightly complicating the Jew’s plans, Antiochus wasn’t dead. That’s why we don’t spread rumors. When he heard of the uprising, he came back with a vengeance and slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews. Forty thousand people were killed in three days, houses were destroyed, the city set aflame. Then, he went into the Holy of Holies, guided by the vile Menelaus, with a big old fat sow and slaughtered it right there on the sacred altar. After making a broth with the flesh of the unclean animal, he sprinkled every sacred item in the temple, desecrating it utterly.

But do you think Antiochus was done? Are megalomaniacs ever done? He instituted the Act of Uniformity, compelling all Jews to worship his gods. Mothers who were found circumcising their sons in conformity to Jewish law were thrown from the city wall, their babies at their breasts. Those found observing the Sabbath were burnt alive.

It is not possible for us to understand the devastation of this event. The Temple, one of the few remaining ties to their identity, was violated in the most egregious manner and aided by the high priest himself. It would have been better by far if the Temple had been simply destroyed again. The times were dark. The Jewish identity was flatlining, the culture diluted by foreign impositions—and all this instigated or assisted by their own leaders. 

But, perhaps, on the horizon, there was a sliver of light.

The Hammer Falls, and Hammer Falls

Just at this time there arose a family, the Maccabeans, who would rebel and win back from the detestable king their independence. The Maccabean revolt was led by Judas “The Hammer” Maccabaeus, which is a fantastic luchador pseudonym. Though hopelessly outnumbered for the entirety of their campaign, they consistently overcame their enemies through impeccable strategic prowess and guerrilla warfare. It is from one of these conflicts that the Jewish holiday Hanukkah was born. 

This epic under-dogging is worth reading about in depth, though for the sake of space, we will not tell that story. After Antiochus had been routed, the temple was cleansed and rededicated. Antiochus eventually died a horrible death, raving in madness til his disease-ridden end, which was poetic. The Maccabeans fought and overcame every oppressor that came against them. Furthermore, Judas made an alliance with the growing power in the west, Rome, to make the Syrian kings think twice before attacking. When Judas died, his brother Jonathan took up the torch and was coaxed into accepting the position of high priest. It seemed now as though all must be well: a Maccabean was high priest, the Syrians were crushed and a Roman-Jewish alliance was in force. Once again, the Jews had a leader who feared God, fought for them and coalesced their identity back in the heart of Judaism, the Temple.

Could this be the fulfillment of the prophecy foretold, when Israel would rise up and crush its enemies? Alas, false summits can bring about a greater despair than if they never were, and hope deferred makes the heart sick. Although this revolution was a glorious reinvigoration of the Jewish spirit, it was short-lived. There descended upon Palestine a maelstrom of pseudo-allegiances, short lived promises and murder that trickled through the line of the Brothers Maccabaeus, until at last their descendants became as vile and wicked as the Syrians against whom they fought for so long. 

The chaos that defined the following several decades was largely civil, with the parties of the Pharisees and Sadducees, now both well-defined, fighting amongst themselves for power. So active and harsh were the Pharisees that many Jews living in Jerusalem asked for leave to relocate because of the inability to live under their extreme dogmas. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were so busy ingratiating themselves to the Gentiles, loose in their lives and liberal in their religious views, they did little to aid the common Jew during the chaos. The two parties eventually came to blows and civil war broke out. Far from the reestablishment of the Israel state through a courageous and charismatic family, they fell to a yet lower national state than ever before.

The Last Hundred of the BCs

We are now up to about 100 BC. The unquestionable world power is Rome, and they are busily subjugating the world. Rome allowed the Jews a king to govern over them, though they were firmly under the Empire’s thumb.  Alexander, grandson of Simon Maccabaeus and the acting king from 106-79 BC, was a ruthless extremist, killing those who were not circumcised and quelling rebellion so completely as to mutilate men, women and children.

It is difficult to summarize the frequent and horrific bloody conflicts that occurred from the puppet king Alexander to Herod the Great, a period of time lasting only about a half a century. One incident necessary to recount is how the Temple was nearly destroyed, yet again, for this sets the stage for Herod, the tetrarch ruling Judea at the turning of the tide.

Alexandra-Salome, a Jewish queen, died leaving her son’s Hyrcanus and Aristablus to fight over the Jewish high priesthood. Hyrcanus was in deep with the Pharisees, Aristablus with the Sadducees. During the passover of 63 BC, Hyrcanus and his Pharisees trapped his bro and the Sadducees in the Temple and were besieging the crap out if, but Ari was able to get a message to Roman general Pompey, a military stud, promising tons of filthy lucre if he would come make his brother stop picking on him. Pompey shows up, separates the two rascals on Ari’s behalf, but then becomes suspicious that Ari was a dirtbag, which he was, and sided with Hyrcanus instead. Ari is arrested while his followers were still holed up in the Temple, so Pompey, because he is wicked smaht, only worked on his siege dams on the sabbath because he knew the Jews wouldn’t be allowed to attack. He then busts a hole in the Temple wall and those inside are either summarily killed or committed suicide before they could be. Hyrcanus gets the priesthood and Judea is annexed by Rome and set up as a client state.

After a couple decade and some power shuffling, the Hasmonean dynasty which was allowed by Rome to retain local control in Judea (basically the remnant of the Maccabeans) was disintegrated by Herod the Great. Herod was a young man when he came to power, an excellent civil servant and a brilliant diplomat. Also he murdered a ton of people. If the corpses slain by Herod were placed on a scale, they would weigh several tons, so he literally killed tons of people. He killed several of his wives, two of his sons, his brother and uncle, 69 out of 70 of the Sanhedrin and our friend Ari, the absolute last of the line of the famed Maccabees. Numerous other political rivals were off-ed as well. 

So you can imagine when some oddly dressed strangers from the East show up at the Herod’s palace and ask where the King of the Jews has been born that all the stars are talking about, he was less than thrilled. Feigning excitement, Herod instructs, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” And the Magi were like “Wow, did you see that guy’s eyes get all crazy when we mentioned that baby king? You don’t think he would kill a town full of babies just to make sure he buries this do you?” And wouldn’t you know it, but that is exactly what Herod did.

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

Matthew 2:16 (ESV)

Living up to his infamy, he ordered all male babies under two born in Bethlehem to be slaughtered. The guy was a looney.  And to make matters worse, the guy wasn’t even a Jew, but of the line of Esau – an Edomite, a long-time blood enemy of Israel. 

So we are up to the single digits of BC, which means we have some fairly fantastic news about to break. It is under this murderous demagogue that the Christ will be born. But lest we forget the darkness before the dawn, lets sum up the situation:

There is a murderous Edomite on David’s throne who just showed his disposition towards his subjects by murdering their babies. The land of Palestine has habitually ravaged and looted over the past 400 years and was sitting precariously under its iron thumb. Several generations of spiritual leaders who were meant to connect them with God did their level best to annihilate their entire way of life and the only groups representing any leadership are bickering and intolerable religious factions erupting into frequent civil wars. The Temple was just about wrecked for the second time by the two leading religious groups in town. The priesthood was gangrenous, the spirit of the Jews anemic.

Conspicuously absent from all this was God’s word. Nothing. No prophet, no charismatic leader judging the people or relieving the yoke of their oppressors.

Or so it seemed. It was into this darkness the Lord of Light was born, a Savior. Born of a virgin under a decaying religion with apostate priests, in a powerless nation under an enemy king, with feckless leadership of bickering and intolerable factions, and no one to plead their cause. His birth was attended by foreigners and the poor and insipid farm animals in a drafty cave. Israel didn’t need help; they needed saving. The words of “O Holy Night” are that much more invigorating given the context:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
til He appeared and the soul felt it’s worth
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

The government of the world will be on his shoulders and the sun will never set on his dominion and reign. As we know and have been rehearsing for millennia, it was not to the Jews alone this Savior was sent, but to the lost sheep of the world to make the dry bones on every continent dance and laugh, having just found out a way to defeat Death, the great Fear, and live forever unburdened by the Sin, the great Oppressor.

Conclusion

As I was thinking about all these happenings in history and how God was preparing the world, not just Israel, for the coming of a Savior—the pining, the fulminating of sin, the crumbling religion, the orphaned sentiment mushrooming in the dank spiritual soil—it contrasts starkly with my yearning to buy my kid a Xbox Series S. The juxtaposition of these two realities is difficult to justify. What preparations would I need to make in my son’s life so that, when he receives a video game console, it would be described as a new and glorious morn?

In my life things are pretty good. Probably yours too. Food on the table, roof over the head, friends, ugly sweater Christmas parties, eggnog and yule logs. Candles are quaint and add ambiance. But candles are not needed in the day; no one notices the contrast of light on light. But Christmas is precisely in the contrast: Light and dark, life and death, hope and despair, heights and depths, dirty and clean; a newborn stormcrow heralding the destruction of oppression and darkness. Christmas is the sweet and somber celebration of the tectonic plates of spiritual reality upheaving, a story of violence on violence, the brute force of Love overpowering the lesser darkness. The love of God—fiery, sharp, bright, ruthless, ready to kill, ready to die—conquering sin through his Prince of Peace.

The Gospel of John has no Nativity narrative but does have the best word on Christmas:

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:4-5 (ESV)

In light of this dark and tragic history ending in a Savior drawing his first breath in a manger, I say to you have a very Merry Christmas!