God had been preparing His people for the Messiah for some time. I think Mark Moore says it best. “Jerusalem was occupied by Rome. Herod, a corrupt Idumean, was the king of the Jews. The Maccabean revolt of some one hundred fifty years earlier was now just a memory. Yet the Scriptures echo across the years that the Jews are God’s chosen people. Through them would come the deliverer. Unfortunately, the materialistic culture of the Greeks, foisted upon them by the Hellenists, blinded them from spiritual hopes and left them searching for a military/political messiah.”