Prophetic Sayings, Especially Regarding the Temple
Prophetic Sayings, Especially Regarding the Temple
Jesus undoubtedly viewed himself as a prophet, not just a sage. This observation is suggested not only in his proclaiming the kingdom, working signs or confronting Jerusalem’s temple authorities, but in some of his clearly prophetic sayings. For example, Jesus’ woes against Galilean villages like Chorazin and Bethsaida are surely authentic (as we have noted), yet they also clearly evoke the language of biblical prophets, who sometimes unfavorably compared God’s people to Sodom or pronounced judgment through mock laments.158
We noted some of Jesus’ eschatological teachings in ch. 3. Such teachings about the future generally suggest Jesus’ prophetic interests, often with a future role for himself. Most of these hold good claim to authenticity. We have already noted, for example, Jesus’ saying in “Q” that his disciples would judge Israel from twelve thrones (Matt 19:28; Lk 22:30). If Jesus’ twelve chief disciples held this exalted role, what role might we expect for their teacher (who repeated the common observation159 that a disciple is not above a teacher)?
Finally, and at greatest length here, Jesus’ warning of the Temple’s destruction seems surely authentic.160 It is multiply attested, probably even in “Q,” which is likely pre-70 and pre-Markan (Matt 23:38//Lk 13:35). By itself, the “desolation” of the “house” could in principle refer to anything from a royal palace (Jer 22:5) to Israel as God’s house (perhaps Jer 12:7), but in the context of Jesus’ teachings in the gospel tradition it can only mean the destruction of the Temple. 161 Thus the Temple is “left” (cf. Mk 13:2) “desolate” (Mk 13:14). This interpretation is the most natural in a Jewish context;162 the Babylonians had also left the Temple163 and city164 “desolate.”165
Mack asserts that, “apart from Mark’s passion narrative, there is no indication that Jesus or his early followers looked for the destruction of the Temple,” 166 but few scholars today would find his position consistent with our data.167 That Jesus actually uttered such a judgment against the Temple a generation before it happened should not be doubted historically. Whereas the later church may have forgotten some of the significance of some of Jesus’ words and deeds against the Temple, they nevertheless preserved them: a symbolic act of judgment there (Mk 11:15), the testimony of witnesses the Christians believed to be false (Mk 14:57-58; cf. Mk 15:29; Jn 2:19; Acts 6:14),168 and (as we noted) “Q” material like the house being left desolate (Matt 23:38//Lk 13:35). Jewish Christians who continued to worship in the Temple (Acts 2:46; 21:26-27) nevertheless remained faithful to a saying of Jesus that they would surely not have created.169
Further, those who question the authenticity of Jesus’ more specific threat to destroy and rebuild the Temple based on lack of contemporary expectations for the Temple’s destruction and renewal have not examined contemporary expectations carefully enough.170 Granted, Jesus’ warnings about the Temple’s destruction cannot have been as popular (or likely as explicit in public) as his teaching that God’s kingdom was coming. While first-century Jews did not focus on “positive” messages the way many of the most popular preachers in the U.S. today do, most still remained loyal to the Temple and many regarded it as invulnerable.171 Nevertheless, Jesus was surely not isolated in his perspective.
Some of Jesus’ sectarian contemporaries also predicted judgment on the Temple; for instance, if Testament of Levi is pre-Christian at this point, it promises the desolation of the sanctuary on account of the priests’ uncleanness.172 The Testament of Moses, which accuses priests of polluting the altar,173 prophesies judgment against the Temple,174 and because the Roman ruler destroys only part of the Temple in the oracle, the prophecy undoubtedly predates AD 70. In some texts, enemy rulers may want to destroy the Temple,175 but God will establish it eschatologically.176
Likewise, pre-Christian Jewish literature includes many texts about God bringing down a new Temple, a claim that presumably has implications for the old one.177 (Some scholars even think they find evidence for a Messianic Son of David building the new Temple.)178 This expectation may help inform how we should understand Jesus’ own approach. Jesus hardly expected his own disciples to tear down the old Temple; like some of his contemporaries, as Sanders observes, Jesus expected God to act.179 The disciples who hear Jesus’ warning about the Temple’s destruction are said to connect it with the age’s end (Mk 13:4) — thus allowing for an imminent Temple from above. As we have observed, this expectation fits the sort of beliefs known to have existed among some of their contemporaries. (Crossan admits that Jesus’ threat against the Temple is authentic, yet doubts that it could have been literal.180 Such an approach, however, while not impossible,181 runs into more difficulty with the criterion of Jewish environment; a “symbolic” threat against the Temple is much harder to document among Jesus’ contemporaries.)
One may also compare a Qumran document from before 70 CE. It accurately warns that the Kittim (by whom they mean the Romans) would carry off the Jerusalem priesthood’s wealth.182 Yet this warning hardly makes the prediction, in a document that must predate 70 CE, a post-70 prediction!183 As David Hill observes,
that Jesus himself could have made the prediction [of the Temple’s destruction] is no more improbable than that Jesus ben-Chananiah should have done so in AD 62 (Jos. Bell. VI.300ff.): indeed, the destruction of the Temple was one of the most important elements in post-Herodian messianism, and not every reference to it requires a date after AD 70.
Similar examples could be multiplied.185
Similarly Jesus’ evocation of the language of the biblical prophets renders superfluous a necessary appeal to prophecy after the event.186 That the first Temple’s previous violations indicated judgment would have made sense to Jesus’ contemporaries steeped in biblical tradition,187 and many, though not all, Jewish teachers in succeeding centuries recognized the destruction of Herod’s temple as judgment.188
Finally, those writing a retroactive prophecy after an event might be more likely to report the prophecy with literalistic accuracy rather than hyperbole. That is not the case here, for some stones were left standing on others;189 some of these stones in fact still remain, and are rather conspicuous. Most of them are between two and five tons, but one, nearly forty feet long, is close to 400 tons. One would suppose that someone “prophesying” after the event might have taken better account of the concrete evidence against one’s literal claim.190 Whether or not Mk 13 predates 70, the Jesus tradition it reflects surely does.
Similarly, one would also never guess from the passage that the Temple actually was destroyed by fire.191 Moreover, in a “prophecy” after the event, the earliest sources would probably also have more clearly distinguished between the Temple’s demise and Jesus’ return (cf. Mk 13:2).192 Thus one scholar, who doubts that the Synoptics accurately report Jesus’ teaching about the imminent end-time, complains that if the Synoptics are accurate here, Jesus was “mistaken rather than misreported”193 — the very sort of conclusion composers of tradition after 70 would have wished to avoid.
Jesus’ graphic language of the sacrilege or desecration that would lead to desolation or destruction (Mk 13:14) made sense in its Jewish environment. It alluded to a recurrent biblical and early Jewish judgment motif regarding Israel’s history; it provided the ultimate symbol of national and religious humiliation. 194 Jewish people resisted such desecration to the death,195 except in times of national apostasy, when they might be considered its cause.196 Even before the first exile, the prophets recognized scattering and tribulation as a judgment designed to bring God’s people to repentance (e.g., Deut 4:26-31). In the second century BCE, the Syrian ruler defiled the altar, causing an “abomination,” ruining the sanctuary with “desolation” (1 Macc 4:38; cf. 1:54). In the Dead Sea Scrolls, one could profane the Temple by persecuting the righteous there.197
While such language informs Jesus’ wording more generally, Jesus’ particular reference to a desolating sacrilege in the sanctuary (Mk 13:14) suggests a more specific biblical allusion to the Book of Daniel.198 Noting this allusion might not in itself resolve what Jesus meant by it. When the Book of Daniel refers more than once to the “abomination that would result in desolation,” it might, like Israel’s larger history, allow for more than a single event.199 In any case, the end had not come after Antiochus’ desecration of the Temple (Dan 11:31; cf. “then” in 12:1), providing ancient interpreters the possibility that another desolation would come (see Dan 12:11-12). Early Jewish interpreters reapplied Daniel’s image of final tribulation in new ways, in the Dead Sea Scrolls200 and apparently other circles,201 including among some first-century Christians.202