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BASEL CHRONICLES | EDITORIAL | APRIL 2021

According to Martin Hengel, “in the
ancient world, crucixion was not only a

gruesome and painful death, but was a
shameful death, and was the “death of a
slave”, in ways that we often do not

understand today.”

A few years later, the city was rebuilt by
the new Roman governor, Herod Antipas.

People loyal to Rome re-populated and
the re-built city, which included wealthy
Jewish landowners with kinship ties to

the priests at the temple, in Jerusalem.
Ownership of land was at the discretion

of the Romans, who exacted heavy taxes
in return. Much of the working-class popu-

lation of the area, laboured on their large
estates and paid taxes to the Jewish

landowners, in exchange for the privilege
of having work. Herod Antipas, put a
similar arrangement into place around

the Sea of Galilee. Wealthy Jews pur-
chased shing rights along the shoreline

from the Romans. They then contracted
shing privileges to shermen for a fee.

Only those who paid could sh. For
many of the leadership classes in

Israel—those who made the expected
compromises with the Roman imperial
bureaucracy—life was not so bad. They

went along to get along, and it worked.

The temple in Jerusalem, which Herod
the Great had rebuilt and enlarged,
served as a key part of the Roman-

Jewish power structure. It functioned as
a kind of central bank through which

much daily trade owed, and the tax
revenue extracted from the people