What Happened Between the Old Testament and the New Testament?

Let’s start with a short pop quiz.

• What’s the last book of the Old Testament?

• What’s the first book of the New Testament?

If you guessed Malachi and Matthew, have a biscuit on our behalf. In your Bibles, these books are just one page apart, but can you guess how many years separate them?      

400 Years of Silence!

From the last writings in the Old Testament to the appearance of Jesus Christ in the Gospels, 400 years passed—a period known as the "Intertestamental" period or the "Silent Years." It’s called "silent" because there was no prophetic word from God as there had been before. From the casual reader’s perspective, it might seem like God went silent and abandoned humanity to take care of other eternal business, …Multiverse and all (Just kidding).

How many of you would describe this current season of your life as your own "silent years"? Perhaps your life feels like you and God aren’t on speaking terms? You feel stuck, with no movement in your life, and God isn’t explaining why. It feels like a permanent waiting room.

God's Work Behind the Scenes

Here’s what’s interesting: what we describe as 400 years of silence was actually 400 years of God actively working in the political, religious, and social setting of Palestine to prepare the way for the arrival of Jesus Christ.

I’ll show you how God did this, but first, note from your Bible that before the silence, God gave the Old Testament prophet, Daniel a detailed vision of world events that would transpire during that 400-year period. So, in a sense, God left a roadmap for the people to rely on during those painful seasons when they didn’t hear from heaven.

A Roadmap Through the Silence

In Daniel’s vision in Daniel 7, God shows him the transition of power between four world empires, represented by wild animals. The first animal, a lion with the wings of an eagle, represented the Babylonian empire. The second animal, a grizzly bear with ribs sticking out of its mouth, represented the Medo-Persian empire. The third animal, a four-headed leopard with four wings, symbolized the Greek empire. The fourth terrifying beast represented not only the Roman empire but also a future ruler we understand to be the Antichrist.

While this blog is not about prophecy; I lay out Daniel’s vision to give you a roadmap, so you understand how active God was during those 400 years. I’m going to make one simple point and spend the rest of the blog posy walking you through the historical events that took place during those periods. The key point is this:

GOD’S SILENCE DOES NOT EQUATE TO INACTIVITY.

WHILE YOU MIGHT FIND YOURSELF IN A SEASON OF WAITING, REST IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT GOD IS BUSY AT WORK ON YOUR BEHALF AND FOR HIS GREATER PURPOSES.

Let’s dive in, starting at the end of the Old Testament book of Malachi. The Jews are returning from captivity in Babylon, and the Persians are the rulers of the world. In Daniel’s vision, the Persians are represented by the grizzly bear with ribs in its mouth; the Babylonians are the winged lion, whose reign has just ended.

At the beginning of the intertestamental period, a Persian king named Cyrus is leading the world, and Israel is one of the nations under their control. During his reign, he allowed the Jews to practice their religion and even rebuild and worship at their temple. That’s the story we read in the book of Ezra when it says God stirred the heart of King Cyrus to be sympathetic toward the Jews in exile.

However, that honeymoon period didn’t last long. In the first half of those 400 years, a young man named Alexander, the son of Philip of Macedonia, led a Greek army to conquer the Persians and take control of the entire Persian Empire. We know this young man today as Alexander the Great, one of the greatest military commanders of all time. He created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from the Ionian Sea to the Himalayas. You’ll recall from Daniel’s vision that the Greeks are represented by the four-headed leopard with four wings.

Alexander was a student of the Greek philosopher Aristotle and was well-educated in Greek philosophy and politics. As part of his strategy to preserve his brand-new massive empire, he began to unite all the nations he conquered around a common culture—this process was known as "Hellenization," the spread of Greek culture and thinking. The most important part of this assimilation plan was that everyone now had to learn to speak Greek. Universities and great libraries were built to propagate this new "Greek way of living." As a result, the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek, becoming the translation we know today as the Septuagint. Most of the New Testament references to Old Testament passages actually use the Septuagint phrasing.

Consider how advantageous this was for the spread of the Gospel yet to come. Up until this point, all nations spoke different languages and would need many translators to get a message across. But due to Hellenization, God worked things out through Alexander so that many nations, if not the whole world, could now read literature in the same language.

WHILE YOU WAIT, GOD WORKS.

This is also the period when fourteen additional books called the "Apocrypha" were written. Though they contain some interesting cultural and historical insights, they were rejected as part of the Biblical canon due to inconsistencies and errors.

Although the Hellenization process brought the world together and Alexander allowed religious freedom for the Jews, it proved to be a very tough transition. Greek culture was contrary to many Biblical values. It was worldly, based on logic and void of faith; it was humanistic and often ungodly. The apostle Paul frequently speaks about this culture in his Epistles, emphasizing the power of the foolishness of the Gospel in a Greek world.

Alexander eventually died at a young age, and his kingdom was split. During this period, the land of Israel, along with the Jews, passed from the Babylonians, their original captors, to the Medo-Persians, and then to the Greeks—just as God showed Daniel it would.

The Maccabean Revolt and Jewish Independence

This brings us to about three-quarters of the way through the 400 years. After Alexander’s death, the land of Judea was ruled by a series of successors, culminating in the rule of a Syrian tyrant named Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus was historically an enemy of the Jews not only because he restricted their religious freedom, but also because he sold the priesthood for profit, and desecrated the temple by slaughtering a pig on its altar and replacing it with a pagan one.

He is one of those described in the Bible as the "abomination that causes desolation." (Daniel 9:27; Matthew 24:15–16, )

Antiochus’s actions created significant tension between the Jews and the Syrians, eventually leading to an uprising led by an elderly Jewish priest named Mattathias and his son, Judas Maccabeus. This uprising, known as the Maccabean Revolt, lasted around 24 years, and ended with Jewish independence and the rededication of the temple. This event is commemorated every December by Jews as "the Feast of Lights" or Hanukkah.

As a result of the Maccabean political dynasty, the temple was rescued, the rightful priests were restored, and the Jews experienced a period of independence and self-rule for the first time in a long while.

The Roman Empire and the Final Preparation

However, shortly thereafter, around 100 years before the Gospels, the Romans came into power. This period was marked by war, violence, and infighting. The Romans, by the way, are the ones who perfected the art of crucifixion. You’ll recall that the Romans are part of the terrifying beastly animal Daniel saw in his vision (Daniel 7:6).

Around 63 BC, a Roman military ruler named, Pompey placed all of Judea under the control of the Caesars. It was this same Roman Caesars who eventually appointed a half-Jew named Herod the Great as king over Judea—the same Herod who later ordered the massacre of all two-year-olds in Jerusalem, threatened by the birth of Jesus (Matthew 2:16-18). The Romans who built a massive network of roads to connect the world, known as the Pax Romana. If the Greeks are known for their intellectual and cultural influence, the Romans should be recognized for leaving an infrastructural map for navigating your way through the world.

I honestly forget the source of this quote, but in a class on church history years ago, I wrote down this excerpt:

 “The Roman Road system spanned more than 400,000 km of roads, including over 80,500 km of paved roads. When Rome reached the height of its power, no fewer than 29 great military highways radiated from the city. Hills were cut through and deep ravines filled in. At one point, the Roman Empire was divided into 113 provinces traversed by 372 great road links. In Gaul alone, no less than 21,000 km of road were improved, and in Britain at least 4,000 km.”

Now consider how advantageous this was for the spread of the Gospel. God made it possible during these 400 years for the world to read the same literature in the same language and to travel easily from one end of it to another by road. These are the same roads that Paul, along with thousands of other believers would travel to bring the Gospel to different parts of the world, reminding us once again that:

WHILE YOU WAIT, GOD WORKS

While this was good news for the world, it sadly meant that the Jews were once again under foreign rule. They were conquered and oppressed, and hope was running low—faith even lower. At this point, we are 70 to 50 years away from the birth of Christ, and still, no words or prophecies, no special revelation. Just silence.

Enter: Pharisees And Sadducees

It was during this period that two important political and religious factions emerged in Palestine: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sadducees were liberal aristocrats, wealthy, and they favored the practices of the Greeks. They held most of the power through the Sanhedrin, the religious council, and did not believe in resurrection or life after death.

On the other hand, the Pharisees were conservative zealots who added their own laws to the actual laws of Moses. In fact, they sometimes considered their own laws more important than God’s, which is why Jesus often rebuked them, referring to them as "white-washed tombs." (Matthew 23:27-28)

Given the political, religious, and social pressures, the Jews were facing a desperate situation. The religious leaders, who should have been their spiritual guides, were instead taking advantage of their ignorance and spiritually abusing them. The Sadducees robbed them of hope with their no-resurrection theology, while the Pharisees placed heavy religious burdens on them that even they couldn’t keep. The Roman rulers taxed them heavily and oppressed them. Life was miserable, and God remained silent. Every household echoed with a deep cry and longing for the promised Messiah.

One Silent Night

This cry continued for years until one night, an angelic being named, Gabriel appeared in a small town called Nazareth. He visited a teenage girl named Mary and delivered the most astonishing news anyone could hear. He told her that she had found favor with God and would be entrusted with the responsibility of bearing and raising God’s Son. She was to name Him Jesus, for "He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High... and His kingdom will never end."

Some thirty years later, people from all over Judea began flocking to the desert to hear a wild man named John the Baptist, who was calling people to repent of their sins. John's mission was one of water baptism and preparation. He fearlessly called out the hypocrisy of the religious leaders while preparing the hearts of the masses for the arrival of the Messiah.

After four decades and even with John’s preaching, the loudest voice that pierced the silence was a baptism that took place on an ordinary afternoon where heaven opened up, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, and like a breath of fresh air, God spoke, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with Him, I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:17)

From that point on, Jesus took on the mantle and began speaking with authority, leaving no doubt in His hearers' minds that He was indeed the very voice of God, which explains why the religious leaders often wanted to kill Him.

And this brings us to the Gospels, Matthew, chapter one.

As we look back over those long 400-plus years, it becomes evident that God was not silent. He was actively working in the political, social, and religious arenas to set the stage for the arrival of the greatest hope the world has ever known, Jesus Christ. That’s what the scriptures mean and who it is referring to when it says in Galatians 4:4, "When the time had fully come, God sent His Son."

Has God been silent in your life recently?

Rest in the knowledge that God’s silence does not equate to inactivity. While you wait, God works. If you’re desperate for a word of revelation from Him and He’s not speaking, hold on faithfully to the last set of Biblical instructions or promises He gave you before He went silent.

Remember, there is often a flurry of activities taking place behind the scenes that don’t always directly involve you but will be worked out by God for your good and ultimately for His glory.

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