Journey: Lesson 19 - Persecution And Hope

By Marcel Gervais

This is lesson 19 of the Journey Bible Study Program series. This lesson gives a description of the main events affecting the people of God and the sacred literature produced in the years between 175 and 20 BC.Chapter 1 describes the beginning of the revolt against the Seleucid king,, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Chapter 2 is a description of apocalyptic literature as found in the book of Daniel. Chapter 3 describes the main events of the Maccabean revolt. Chapter 4 describes the teaching of the Book of Wisdom on immortality, on Wisdom and on the love which the Lord has for all he has made.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcel Gervais
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927766224

Marcel Gervais

About the Author Archbishop Gervais was born in Elie Manitoba on September 21 1931. He is the ninth of fourteen children. His family came from Manitoba to the Sparta area near St. Thomas Ontario when he was just a teenager. He went to Sparta Continuation School and took his final year at Saint Joseph`s High School in St. Thomas. After high school he went to study for the priesthood at St. Peter’s Seminary in London , Ontario. He was ordained in 1958. He was sent to study in Rome. This was followed by studies at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. He returned to London to teach scripture to the seminarians at St. Peter’s Seminary. In 1974 he was asked by Bishop Emmett Carter to take over as director of the Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education. This Centre had been founded by Bishop Carter to provide a resource for adult education in the spirit of Vatican II. This Centre involved sessions of one or two weeks with many of the best scholars of the time. Students came not only from Canada and the United States but from all over the globe, Australia, Africa, Asia and Europe. By the time Father Gervais became the director Divine Word Centre was already a course dominated by the study of scripture to which he added social justice. This aspect of the course of studies was presented by people from every part of the “third world”; among which were Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez and Cardinal Dery of Ghana. In 1976 the Conference of Ontario Bishops along with the Canadian conference of Religious Women approached Father Gervais to provide a written course of studies in Sacred Scripture for the Church at large, but especially for priests and religious women. This is when Fr. Gervais began to write Journey, a set of forty lessons on the Bible. He was armed with a treasure of information from all the teachers and witnesses to the faith that had lectured at Devine Word. He was assisted by a large number of enthusiastic collaborators: all the people who had made presentations at Divine Word and provided materials and a team of great assistants, also at Divine Word Centre. The work was finished just as Father Gervais was ordained an auxiliary bishop of London (1980). He subsequently was made Bishop of Sault Saint Marie Diocese, and after four years, Archbishop of Ottawa (1989). He retired in 2007, and at the time of this writing, he is enjoying retirement.

Book preview

Journey- Lesson 19 Persecution And Hope

by Marcel Gervais, Emeritus Archbishop of the diocese of Ottawa, Canada

Nihil Obstat: Michael T. Ryan, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

Imprimatur: + John M. Sherlock, Bishop of London

London, March 31, 1980

This content of this book was first published in 1977 as part of the JOURNEY Series By Guided Study Programs in the Catholic Faith and is now being republished in Smashwords by Emmaus Publications, 99 Fifth Avenue, Suite 103, Ottawa,ON, K1S 5P5, Canada on Smashwords

Cover: ...I saw ...one like a son of man. ...On him was conferred sovereignty.. Daniel 7:13-14

COPYRIGHT © Guided Study Programs ln the Catholic Faith, a division of The Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education 1977. Reproduction ln whole or ln part is Prohibited.

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Martyrs and rebels

Chapter 2 Courage for the times (Book of Daniel)

Chapter 3 From freedom to oppression

Chapter 4 Hope and love (The Book of Wisdom)

Answer key to practice questions

Self-test

Answer key to self-test

Recommendations for group meeting on Lesson Nineteen

About The Author

Psalm 96

A hymn praising the Lord as king, and proclaiming the coming of his reign. This hymn was used in the liturgy of the Temple, where it expressed the faith of the People in the kingship of the Lord. The hymn uses the thought of Second-Isaiah: the nations of the earth are invited to come to recognize the lordship of God and to abandon their worship of gods who are zeros, nothings (vs 5; Isa 40:18f; 41:29). All of the peoples of the earth and all of creation are invited to sing praise to the one and only King who rules with justice and who will demand justice from all nations.

This psalm expresses one of the central thoughts of this lesson. In a period of great turmoil in Palestine, and of tensions for those outside of the Holy Land, the People began to hope more and more intensely for the great act of God which would make sense out of history. They longed for the day when the Lord, whose reign they celebrated in worship, would in fact establish his reign throughout the world.

Lesson Objective To describe the main events affecting the People of God, and the sacred literature the People produced, in the years between 175 and 20 BC.

Introduction

From the beginning the People of God had to deal with the cultures of the peoples among whom they lived. Upon entering the Promised Land, the problem of dealing with the Canaanites presented itself. Kingship brought with it the influence of both Canaanite and Egyptian patterns of monarchy. The domination of the Assyrians brought the People into contact with that culture. The Babylonian period, and the Exile in Babylonia, brought a forced exposure to this flourishing civilization. Then Persian rule brought them both the freedom to return home, and with it the temptation to adopt Persian ways and customs. After the Persians came the Greeks. Perhaps more than any other culture with which the People had had to deal, Hellenism posed the most serious threat because it offered so much that was good. Hellenism, however, as we said in the last lesson, did not come in its purest, most exalted forms.

Hellenism, as Alexander and his first successors saw it, was the promotion of the best of Greek culture to the uncivilized masses in the newly conquered nations of the Greek empire. Conquered peoples, however, have a way of getting back at their conquerors. While many aspects of Hellenism attracted the conquered peoples, the reverse also proved to be the case: there were many aspects of the cultures of the conquered which became very attractive to the Greeks. By the year 200, Hellenism was no longer the exalted and beautiful thing it was intended to be; it was in fact a very confusing mixture of things Greek and things non-Greek. The conquest of the eastern parts of the Persian empire had opened a way for all kinds of eastern religious practices. Hellenism became in fact a hodgepodge of Greek and eastern thought and customs. On the popular level of everyday life it was not the refined thinking of a Plato which touched the people, but Greek-style hats, hair styles and dresses, and athletic games mixed in with strange and attractive eastern cults and astrology.

In Palestine the People