Between the Old Testament and New Testament

The Four Hundred Silent Years

Hi. My name is Rick Taylor, and I have been asked by the teaching team here at The Well to talk a little bit about the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament. This era is often referred to as the “four hundred silent years.” That is because there was nothing written in Scripture during that period of time between Malachi and Matthew. But while Scripture may have been silent, heaven was not inactive, and an incredible amount of history took place.

When we close the Old Testament, one world power is in charge of the nation of Israel. An entirely different empire rises up during the interim, and by the time we open the New Testament, yet another nation is in total control. Furthermore, a whole host of customs, institutions, and religious groups that never existed in the Old Testament suddenly appear on the pages of the New Testament. We read about them and ask, Where did that come from? I’ve never heard of that before. Why wasn’t that in the Old Testament?

To understand how the stage was set for the coming of Jesus, we need to go back to the book of Daniel.

Daniel’s Vision of the Empires

During his time in exile, Daniel prophesied about four great world empires that would rise and fall between the days in which he lived and the establishment of God’s eternal kingdom.

Daniel 2:31-45 (NASB)

’You, O king, were looking and behold, there was a single great statue; that statue, which was large and of extraordinary splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome. ’The head of that statue [was made] of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. ’You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. ’Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. ’This [was] the dream; now we will tell its interpretation before the king. ’You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory; and wherever the sons of men dwell, [or] the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given [them] into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. You are the head of gold. ’After you there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth. ’Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so, like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces. ’In that you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom; but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. ’[As] the toes of the feet [were] partly of iron and partly of pottery, [so] some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle. ’And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery. ’In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and [that] kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. ‘Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.’

The first of those nations was Babylon. Babylon was the world power that besieged Jerusalem, capturing Daniel, his friends, and many promising young leaders, carrying them away into captivity in Babylon—modern-day Iraq. Later, King Nebuchadnezzar returned, destroying Jerusalem and the temple completely. For a time, Israel ceased to exist as a sovereign nation; the people were either exiled or scattered throughout the known world.

Daniel prophesied that a second nation would arise to conquer Babylon. We see this second kingdom in power as the Old Testament draws to a close. Daniel depicted it as a bear raised up on one side—representing the Medo-Persian Empire. It was an alliance between two distinct peoples: the Medes (from modern-day Turkey) and the Persians (from modern-day Iran). Together, they united against their common foe, marched south, and conquered Babylon.

It was Cyrus the Persian who issued the famous decree permitting the Jewish exiles to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple of God. Later, King Darius supported the work, enabling Nehemiah and the people to rebuild the walls and re-establish Jerusalem as the capital. For the first time in seventy years, the Jewish people were back in their land as a recognized entity.

The Rise of Greece and Alexander the Great

While God was working among His people in Persia and Judea, fascinating developments were taking place far to the west in Greece and Macedonia. As the Old Testament was winding down, Greek philosophers began shaping the intellectual landscape of the world.

It began prominently with Socrates, who spoke out passionately on social, philosophical, and scientific matters. He questioned authority so persistently that the Athenian government put him on trial, ultimately condemning him and forcing him to drink hemlock. But Socrates had a brilliant student named Plato. Plato was shrewd; he shared Socrates’ ideas, but instead of merely lecturing, he wrote them down in dramatic dialogues. Because he framed his teachings as stories about Socrates, he escaped execution and became immensely popular, passing his philosophies down through generations.

When Plato’s life drew to a close, his most famous student was Aristotle. King Philip of Macedonia approached Aristotle and hired him to be the personal tutor and mentor to his young son, Alexander. Alexander was a brilliant, ferocious student who absorbed Aristotle’s teachings on strategy, science, and leadership. When Philip died, young Alexander assumed the throne and quickly became known to history as Alexander the Great.

Alexander swept eastward, rapidly conquering the known world. On his march to overthrow the massive Medo-Persian Empire, he passed through the strategic strip of land called Israel, claiming it for Greece. He pushed through Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, marching all the way to the borders of India. Yet at the young age of thirty-two, Alexander died suddenly.

Just as Daniel had prophesied centuries earlier, this mighty Greek empire did not pass to Alexander’s heirs. Instead, it was fractured into four separate kingdoms ruled by his four top generals. One took Greece, another took Asia Minor, another took Syria and the east, and another took Egypt.

Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabean Revolt

The two most powerful factions—the Seleucids in Syria to the north and the Ptolemies in Egypt to the south—found themselves in a perpetual tug-of-war over the little land of Israel caught in the middle. Israel was the ultimate land bridge between continents and offered vital ports along the Mediterranean Sea. For roughly 150 years, Israel became a brutal battlefield, caught in the crossfire between north and south.

The conflict reached a horrifying climax under a northern Seleucid king named Antiochus IV, who arrogantly gave himself the title Antiochus Epiphanes (“God Manifest”). Antiochus was brutal. He outlawed the practice of Judaism under penalty of immediate death. He banned circumcision, forbade the reading of the Torah, marched into the sacred Jewish temple, erected an altar to Zeus, and sacrificed a pig on the holy altar to utterly defile the faith of Israel.

His desecration provoked a fierce backlash. A priestly family known as the Maccabees rose up in revolt. Led by Judas Maccabeus (nicknamed “The Hammer”), a band of devout rebels and zealots launched a guerrilla war against the overwhelming might of the Syrian-Greek forces. Against all military odds, the Maccabean revolt succeeded. They reclaimed the temple, cleansed the sanctuary, and drove the foreign oppressors out of the land.

For the next eighty years, Israel experienced something they had not tasted in centuries: national independence. They were free to worship, free to live by God’s law, and free from paying crushing taxes to foreign tyrants. They cherished and fiercely protected that hard-won freedom.

The Origin of the Synagogue

During this intertestamental period—and especially during the dispersion of the Jewish people—profound institutional changes occurred. One of the most important was the birth of the synagogue.

You never read about synagogues in the Old Testament, but when you open the New Testament, they are everywhere. Jesus taught in them, Paul preached in them, and every Jewish community had one. Why did they spring up?

Because the Jewish people had been scattered across the world—from Persia to Greece—most could not travel to the temple in Jerusalem for regular weekly worship. To preserve their identity and faith, local communities established synagogues wherever at least ten Jewish men resided. The synagogue served three primary functions:

1. A House of Worship and the Word: Synagogue worship focused heavily on Scripture. Roughly eighty percent of their service revolved around the public reading and exposition of God’s Word. They systematically read through the Law and the Prophets, discussing its meaning and calling one another to faithful obedience.
2. A House of Education: The synagogue served as the local schoolhouse. This was where Jewish boys and girls learned to read, write, and memorize the Scriptures from their youth.
3. A House of Civil Administration: Local judges and elders convened at the synagogue to settle civil disputes, property issues, and moral matters within the community according to the Law of Moses.

Even in Israel, while people still journeyed to the temple for the major annual feasts and sacrifices, their daily and weekly spiritual life was centered in their local synagogue.

The Rise of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes

This era also witnessed the rise of distinct religious and political sects that play major roles in the Gospels.

First, there were the Pharisees. They began as a devout movement dedicated to preserving holiness and strict obedience to the Law of Moses in the face of pagan Greek culture. They were meticulous students of Scripture and committed vast portions of the text to memory. Over time, however, many became excessively legalistic, prioritizing human oral traditions above the heart of God’s Word. Yet they remained influential among everyday people. The Apostle Paul was trained as a Pharisee, and Jesus frequently engaged with their theological circles.

Second, there were the Sadducees. Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees were the wealthy, aristocratic ruling class who controlled the high priesthood and the temple operations. They rejected the oral traditions, denied the supernatural realm—such as the resurrection of the dead and angels—and held only to the first five books of Moses. They were political pragmatists who preferred cooperating with ruling foreign powers to maintain their wealth and status.

Third, there were the Essenes. The Essenes were ultra-pious separatists. Disgusted by the political corruption of the Sadducean priesthood and the compromises of urban life, they withdrew into the Judean wilderness to live ascetic lives dedicated to prayer and copying Scripture. It was the Essene community at Qumran that preserved the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. Many scholars believe John the Baptist lived a lifestyle deeply influenced by or connected to the Essenes in the wilderness.

The Roman Conquest and Herod the Great

Toward the end of the eighty years of Maccabean independence, internal rivalry and a bitter civil war erupted within the ruling family. This infighting left the nation weak and vulnerable.

In 63 BC, the Roman general Pompey marched into Jerusalem, bringing Judea under the authority of the rising Roman Empire. Rome treated Judea as a strategic frontier buffer state between their empire and the kingdoms of the East. Rome’s primary concern was simple: keep the peace, maintain order, and pay taxes.

Around 37 BC, the Roman Senate appointed an ambitious, ruthless leader named Herod as “King of the Jews.” Herod the Great was despised by many devout Jews because of his Idumean lineage and allegiance to Rome. To win favor with his subjects, Herod launched massive, magnificent architectural projects. He completely remodeled and expanded the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, transforming the Second Temple into one of the architectural wonders of the ancient world.

He constructed impregnable fortresses like Masada overlooking the Dead Sea and the Herodium near Bethlehem. On the Mediterranean coast, he constructed the state-of-the-art deepwater port city of Caesarea Maritima—the very city where the Apostle Paul would later stand trial before Roman governors.

Herod’s economic success birthed another group mentioned in the New Testament: the Herodians. These were political and business elites who supported the Herodian dynasty and Roman rule because it brought commercial prosperity.

On the opposite end of the spectrum were the Zealots. Remembering the glorious victories of the Maccabees, these Jewish freedom fighters refused to acknowledge Caesar as lord, advocating violent revolution and armed revolt against Roman occupation.

The Pax Romana and the Fullness of Time

In Rome, power consolidated under Octavian, who was granted the title Augustus Caesar in 27 BC. Augustus transformed the Mediterranean world, establishing what became known as the Pax Romana (the Roman Peace).

Augustus swept piracy from the Mediterranean Sea, making travel safe. He constructed an unprecedented network of paved roads and highways connecting cities from Spain to Syria. He instituted a uniform legal system that offered extraordinary protections to Roman citizens.

Yet Rome maintained this peace with an iron fist. If you rebelled against the empire, you faced brutal consequences. Roman soldiers utilized the flagrum—a whip embedded with bone and metal designed to tear flesh to the bone. For capital crimes and insurrection, Rome utilized the most humiliating and excruciating form of execution ever devised: crucifixion. Crosses lined the highways outside major cities as a graphic deterrent to anyone contemplating rebellion.

This Roman Empire was the fourth kingdom Daniel had prophesied centuries earlier—a kingdom of iron, strong, enduring, and sweeping across the known world.

And it was precisely into this meticulously prepared world that God moved.

Rome had built the roads. Greece had provided a universal language. The Jews had planted synagogues with the Old Testament Scriptures in every major city. The stage was set.

Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. Every person had to return to their ancestral hometown to be registered. Because of that imperial decree, a humble carpenter named Joseph and his young, pregnant wife, Mary, left the northern town of Nazareth and traveled south to a little village called Bethlehem.

Luke 2:1-7 (NASB)

Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there, in the fullness of time, the silence was broken, baby Jesus was born, and the New Testament begins.