Is America the 21st Century Rome?

In the 25 years before Jesus--the time of Herod the Great--Romanization, which was that century's form of globalization, was facilitated by urbanization. Rome planted cities, aristocrats lived in the cities, they commercialized the country, and they increased taxes. Herod the Great did that in the south of the country. Through archeological research, you can see the huge commercial port at Caesaria on the coast, huge storehouses, and you also see the greatly expanded Temple esplanade in Jerusalem. That meant business, that meant pilgrims--nice pagan pilgrims who were going to come up to Herod's port and to his temple, because this was the biggest temple in the ancient world.

Commercialization hit the south, but Herod skipped Galilee. And that's evident on the ground. For example, he created temples to Rome and Augustus, sort of the twin deities of that century's new world order. You put one up way up in the north at Caesaria Philipi, you put one in the middle of the country, and you put another one on the coast. So the ground tells you that Romanization hit this country hard a generation before Jesus, but it didn't really hit Galilee.

This is conjecture: Rome turned the country over to Herod and said, "Go conquer it. If you can make it, you're our man, and if you can't, we'll get somebody else." And he really had a rough time in Galilee. It could have been he was avoiding further trouble; it could have been punitive. But he really didn't do anything in Galilee like he did in the south. And he was king of the Jews of the whole country, so Judea and Samaria got Romanized and Galilee didn't. What he did was to work out a way to brilliantly commercialize Jerusalem and have everyone on his side, because he extended the temple, which made him look devout and pious--but what he really built was a huge court for the pagans. And that would make no sense at all unless somebody said to him, "Build it and they will come."

Herod dies around the same time Jesus was born, and his son Herod Antipas takes over in Galilee. Which meant that Romanization-commercialization, urbanization-hits Galilee in the generation of Jesus. And about 4 B.C.E., about the same time Jesus is born, Antipas Romanizes the city of Sepphoris. He set out the streets in a nice tidy grid, he put in business-ultimately, he commercializes the countryside. That's because the aristrocrats who lived in the city had to have land since land was capital in the first century. So that would mean pressure on the land, which would mean, for example, peasants going into debt and foreclosures on debts that weren't paid.

Then, in the year 19--well into the generation of Jesus--Herod Antipas built a brand new city on the lake called Tiberius. That means he's commercializing the fish. The fish could be salted or they could be made into fish sauce and lots of other things that could be exported. So if you look at the 20s and you knew nothing about Jesus, you would say, "OK, Romanization has just hit lower Galilee full force and it's focused on the lake."

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