The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple must have resounded like an earthquake round the Christian churches in 70AD. Even a cursory reading of the NT makes it clear that the status of the Jews and the Jewish religion were huge issues for the NT church. yet, as far as I know, the only possible references to the events of 70AD see it as a future event.
I can only think of three possible answers to this question:
- Almost all the NT books were written pre-70AD - contrary to what most scholars of all stripes and all ages believe (as far as I am aware from my limited knowledge).
- It wasn't as big a deal as everyone thinks it was. The NT Christians knew that the temple of Jesus' body had already been torn down and rebuilt. The physical temple was yesterday's news and nobody cared.
- There are references to the destruction of Jerusalem all through the NT, but I am just too blind and ignorant to see them.
As God is continually reminding me - you can't understand his Word without his Spirit, so I will be praying about these nagging questions I'm putting down. But as I said before, this is partly an appeal for help from those who have more of the Spirit than I do.
I'm inclined to a BIG yes to (2) and maybe to (1).
ReplyDeleteHere's what I get from it:
ReplyDelete1. Yes, many of the NT books were written earlier than scholars are apt to say.
Little-o orthodox scholars are mostly trying to be modest in their claims lest they get refuted at some later point, and flaky scholars are trying to undermine the reliability of the NT because that sells books and gets lecture invitations. Don't forget the clergyman in C.S.Lewis' Great Divorce!
But what of those books clearly written later? Well, what of them?
If any of the synoptic gospels was written later, it was still likely to follow the chapter-pattern set out by whichever one was written first (which I think was a now-lost Aramaic/Hebrew "outline" version of Matthew which was later brushed up and revised under Matthew's direction to produce the Greek text we have now). Since that pattern didn't go all the way to A.D. 70, none of the other synoptics did, either.
John's gospel was after A.D. 70 but was written for a rather different purpose (a deeper theological reading of Jesus' doings, keeping in mind topics that needed clarifying among the early Christians). John still followed the pattern of the other gospels, though, stopping (as was by then conventional) roughly at the Ascension. No reason it should record the destruction of the temple!
Acts stopped too early to record the destruction of the temple. Perhaps Luke, having already written his gospel as Volume 1 and Acts as Volume 2, was planning a Volume 3 but got sidetracked?
Hebrews' use of tabernacle terminology suggests it was written before 70. The letters of Paul were often earlier than 70. Of those that weren't, they were written to address particular problems in various churches or to exhort particular people (e.g. Philemon). Why should he mention the fall of Jerusalem? Do all your e-mails today still make references to the 9/11 attacks?
Only Revelation and the letters of John remain. But look at where John was living his later years, and what he was writing about: I don't see the fall of Jerusalem as being pertinent. That leaves Revelation: Can anybody be perfectly confident that it doesn't refer to the fall of Jerusalem in some cryptic way? I can't.
2. The Olivet Discourse is two answers interwoven, resulting from the disciples asking two distinct questions thinking they were the same question.
The disciples ask about the temple being destroyed and about the Second Coming, thinking they'd be simultaneous; Jesus answers by describing certain things about the destruction of the temple, and then transitions to the end of the world at the very end after citing the conventional apocalyptic language always used in Scripture to describe the deaths of kingdoms (e.g. Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel's predictions of the fall of Egypt or Babylon).
When wars and rumors of wars emerged, and a great persecution of Christians broke out (Nero, deaths of Peter and Paul), the Christian Jews, aware of Matthew 24, fled Judea into the hills.
As a result, when the Romans came in, leveled the Temple, and killed the majority of the Jews then in Jerusalem and its surroundings, most of the Christian Jews weren't there anymore. They had fled, and as a result were resented by the non-Christian Jews. The big separation between Christianity and Judaism probably dates from this event.
So that's one reason why the fall was a non-event among the Christians. They weren't terribly affected; they just saw it as God confirming to the Jews that the Old Covenant was gone. There was, in God's mercy, "one generation" from the time of the Resurrection to the destruction of the (now obsolete) Herod's Temple, but that was it: The old had gone and the new had come.