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Galatians 4:3-4
3 So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. 4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law

The millennium before Jesus was filled with empires, one after the next, taking over ever increasing territories of land. Assyria had conquered the world and carried away the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 bc. Then Babylonia took control over the Assyrian empire and managed to carry away the inhabitants of Judah into captivity by 586 bc. Then Medo-Persia (the Achaemenid Empire) rose up in the east and successfully took over the Babylonian territory and expanded it greatly (539 bc). After a couple of hundred years a Macedonian named Alexander managed to defeat Darius III and take over the enter Achaemenid Empire and press east as far as the modern Punjab Province of India expanding the territory yet again. He conquered the whole world within his short 12 year reign (he was 20 when he became king in place of his father Philip). Alexander was a brilliant and fearless military strategist (he was undefeated in battle) but was also well educated in general, having Aristotle as his personal tutor. Furthermore, Alexander wasn’t just interested in conquering the world and submitting it to Greek rule; he wanted to make the world like Greece. He spread the Greek language, culture, religion, and philosophy to the lands he conquered and encouraged intermarriage.

Then through series of conflicts the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties (two of the three sections of Alexander’s empire after his death) battled for power. The kicker is that they had to march through Judea every time one of them wanted to attack the other. By the 2nd century bc the Seleucids (in the North and East) were victorious and turned their attention to Jerusalem. A fierce time of persecution resulted in which Judaism was outlawed under Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 bc). Mattathias and his sons (Judas Maccabeus, Jonathan, and Simon) led a rebellion dubbed the Maccabean revolt. Under Judas the Jews won their religious freedom from the Seleucids. After Judas died, his brother Jonathan was actually appointed governor by the Seleucids. After Jonathan died, his brother, Simon was granted complete independence in 142 bc. Now for the first time since 605 bc Judea had control over its ancestral territory. However, many in Israel did not approve of Simon’s successor, his son John Hyrcanus and the Pharisees publicly called for his resignation from being king (he was also high-priest). Many internal battles ensued and from 135bc to 63bc there was unrest and much intrigue in the Hasmonean Dynasty with brothers killing brothers, struggling for power, in order to be the next king-priest. Finally, Pompey annexed Judea to Rome and through a series of very clever events a man named Antipater was apointed by Julius Caesar as Procurator of Judea. Antipater’s son Herod married into the Maccabean family line and became king of the Jews in 43 bc. Herod (the Great) was king when Jesus was born.

Now that Judea was under Roman control (since 63 bc) many in Jerusalem were thinking about revolution (especially during Passover, Purim, and Chanukah–three festivals celebrating God’s deliverance of the Jewish people from oppressive kings). Naturally, there were quite a few uprisings that Herod’s descendants and Rome’s Procurators were able to control during the lifetime of Jesus. Then in 66 ad the people revolted (for real) and the Roman general, Titus, came and laid sieged to Jerusalem. In 70 ad the city was conquered, the second temple was destroyed, and the people (nearly dead already from starvation) were slaughtered. This marks the end of the inhabitation of the land of Judea until the 20th century (thought there was another Jewish war in 135 ad that we won’t mention here).

So if Jesus were born a century earlier, he would have lived in a time of political unrest (his people fighting among themselves for power). Furthermore the apostles would not have been nearly as capable of carrying the gospel throughout the world because the Roman Empire had not yet established stability (or roads and other infrastructure in many areas). When Jesus lived was called the Pax Romana because the world was at peace. Furthermore, the world already spoke Greek as the international business language. This means that if someone wrote a document (let’s say a Gospel) in Greek, it could be read by a vast amount of different people from all over the Roman Empire. If Jesus were born a century later, there would be no Jewish state for him to live in because the Jews had been expelled in 70 ad (and again in 135 ad). In other words, Jesus and the Christian movement began at just the right time. Kind of makes you think that God had something to do with it?