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History Corner
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F. F. BRUCE ON THE ROMAN
PEACE
F.F.
Bruce New Testament History (New York: Anchor Books;
1972; p. 40).
‘There were . . . special reasons why the
Roman peace was less attractive to the people of Judaea than to many other
provincials; it is doubtful if there were any other subjects of Rome on whom the
burden of tribute to Caesar bore so heavily as it did on them.
The weight of
their double tribute, ‘to Caesar and to God’, as it might have been put,
combined with other forms of taxation administered by extortionate
publicani to bring the province to the brink of economic collapse.
Popular resentment was felt not only against the Romans but against the wealthy
landed proprietors who prospered at the expense of their poorer
fellow-countrymen; this is perhaps the situation which called forth the outburst
against the rich in James 5: 1-6.
The successive Zealot revolts, culminating in
the war of A.D. 66, were directed almost as much against the Jewish
‘establishment’ as against the occupying power.’
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