Revelation through Destruction

It was over.

A brutal defeat at the hands of the often victorious Romans.

Fire, famine, and fear spread throughout the city.

The Israelites had suffered brutal defeats many times, but this time was different.

When it comes to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in the first century, many historians and theologians will reference it almost in passing, like it’s one semi-relevant event among many.

And for the historian, maybe this is the right approach.

But for the theologian, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD is one of the most important events in Christian history.

Let’s start with some context.

The Jews existed within the larger Roman empire as a minority but with relative levels of autonomy, as they were ruled by a client-king that was subject to the Roman hierarchy. The initial resentment between the two parties began with a Roman general named Gessius Florus seizing wealth—specifically 17 talents—from the Temple treasury. In his eyes, this was the just thing to do, as he believed it was owed to Caesar and the imperial treasury. After the Jewish people began to protest, Florus quickly quelled the rebellion, sending soldiers into Jerusalem with many Jews killed as a result. Soon after, religious sacrifices offered on behalf of the emperor ceased, which was the Jewish people’s way of acknowledging Roman rule without violating the First Commandment. Essentially, the conflict became official and there was likely no going back.

Regarding their impending conflict with the Romans, the Jews faced one major headwind and one major tailwind.

The tailwind was the architecture of the Temple itself.

Titus, the son of the newly minted emperor Vespasian, was the general charged with conducting the attack against Jerusalem. In the time leading up to the attack, he circled the city of Jerusalem, specifically analyzing the Temple, and was amazed by what he saw. Keep in mind, Roman architecture was the gold standard at the time and is still admired in contemporary discussions. The combination of the fortress-like architecture, natural valleys surrounding the city, three successive walls protecting the northern side, massive stone walls taller than 40 feet and weighing hundreds of tons, and massive defensive towers rising above the walls awed the general. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Titus acknowledged that God had to be on the Romans’ side because the strong fortifications of the city would have been nearly impossible to breach through human effort alone.

Conversely, the headwind was the disunity among the Jewish people at the time. There were already different factions within Israel at the time, consisting mainly of the Pharisees that emphasized study of the Hebrew Bible and oral tradition, Sadducees that only accepted the Torah and focused on the Temple priesthood, and the Essenes that withdrew from Temple participation because of perceived corruption. When the Roman rebellions broke out, different leaders with different visions for how to tackle the issue emerged, as John of Gischala, Simon bar Giora, and Eleazar ben Simon all cultivated different factions that disagreed on what the best method was. Thus, while in theory they should have united under the common goal of ensuring survival against the Romans, they brutally fought each other, even burning their rivals’ food supplies on several occasions.

In fact, the ensuing famines were so severe that Josephus reports a story of soldiers approaching a woman’s house for food only to realize that the meat she offered them was the flesh of her own young child. The soldiers, hardened by the brutal war surrounding them, were horrified.

Because of this, Rome’s plan was to let the Jews fight themselves until they were so weak that they would be unable to repel any attack, which is exactly what happened in 70 AD. According to Josephus, Titus had no intentions to burn the Temple but rather a rogue solider hurled a flaming torch, starting a massive fire that couldn’t be tamed on time and burned for three consecutive days. When it was all said and done, more than 1.1 million Jews, which included residents, refugees, and pilgrims died in the siege. Interestingly, there was a sizable contingent of Arabs who joined the Romans because of their longstanding enmity towards the Jews, which is fascinating that the hostility existed even before the creation of Islam in the 7th century.

From a secular historical perspective, the event was massive because Jerusalem was more than simply the dwelling place of the Jews. Pliny the Elder, a well-known Roman author and military commander, labeled the city “by far the most famous city of the East,” with the Temple serving as not only the religious center but also a major political hub and an economic marketplace.

Thus, while the fall of Jerusalem and its Temple was relevant from a historical perspective, analyzing the event’s significance from a theological perspective is where things become interesting. First, it perfectly fulfills the prophecy of Christ recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, where Christ both explicitly says the Temple will fall and implicitly hints at the destruction of the city:

Since the parable describes the King burning the city down due to murdering the servants and refusing to acknowledge the son’s feast, we can reasonably conclude that it was God’s providence to see the city destroyed as a punishment for its rejection of His beloved Son and prophets.

Also, Christ’s prophecy was relevant for many reasons but one that is not acknowledged often is that it heightened the awareness of the Christian community living in Jerusalem that a crisis could come at any time. In fact, according to the notable early Christian historian Eusebius, essentially the entire Christian population of Jerusalem left for Pella, a city in modern-day Jordan just a few years before the destruction. Because the prophecy was fresh in their mind, they interpreted the early revolts against Rome as a sign to leave before things got ugly.

In other words, it seems to be a divine punishment not for those with Jewish ancestry but specifically for those who refused to accept Christianity.

More specifically, the timing is everything.

Many early Christian writers believe God specifically gives the Jews a generation to convert to the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as He has revealed it before the punishment commences and it becomes obvious that Christianity is the perfect fulfillment of Judaism in the Old Testament.

There are many examples in the Old Testament that highlight a generation lasting 40 years, with the most obvious being the 40 years the Israelites had to remain in the desert for their infidelity:

While we cannot know with perfect certainty, many scholars date the life of Christ to be around 3 BC to 30 AD, meaning that 40 years elapsed between the death of Christ and the fall of the Temple so that Jews had exactly one generation to convert.

Hence, after the destruction of the old Temple, priesthood, and sacrifice, the Jews are faced with an unfortunate reality: the very essence of the religion that had been practiced century after century had vanished. The idea that the religion could be continuously practiced through observance of the rituals and preservation of the oral tradition without these key components would have been foreign to many of the patriarchs and prophets. However, a minority of Jews understood that the Temple, priesthood, and sacrifice had not done away with, and not even preserved, but upgraded. In fact, they realized that these aspects of the old religion played a role in a greater typological story to pave the way for the Temple that can never be destroyed, the perfectly benevolent High Priest, and the sacrificial lamb of infinite dignity and worth: Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

And even when Jesus Christ left this Earth, he left for us the new Temple, the Church, the new priesthood descended from the 12 Apostles, and the new Sacrifice to be offered in the new Temple, the re-presentation of the original sacrifice made by the priest on behalf of the members of the New Israel, which are Christians because St. Paul tells us “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendant, heirs according to the promise.” Thus, the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not change but rather has been steadily revealed to us and has unfolded according to God’s plan. This was not a split second decision on the behalf of God but rather it was always the plan delivered to us by the prophets:

Perhaps the most interesting Old Testament excerpt relevant to this topic can be found in Daniel 9, where St. Gabriel the Archangel describes a vision to Daniel:

While the timeline of “weeks” can be confusing, there are a few things that are clear: there would soon be a time when “transgression will stop…sin will end, guilt will be expiated, everlasting justice will be introduced, vision and prophecy ratified, and a holy of holies will be anointed.” Not only that, but the anointed one will be “cut down with no one to help him,” and a group of people will “destroy the city and the sanctuary,” during the time the anointed one will “make a firm covenant with the many” and “abolish [Temple] sacrifice and offering.”

I don’t think it’s possible to be any more accurate than that. Christ defeated sin, expiated guilt, ushered in everlasting justice, and fulfilled prophecy through His death on the cross and His ensuing resurrection and provided us with the Holy of Holies through not only His bodily presence while on Earth but through His sacramental presence that will remain until He comes again. He also established the New Covenant that redeemed Israel but also grafted in the Gentiles, hence “the many,” and after the Romans destroyed the Temple, the old form of sacrifice and offering ceased.

Interestingly, the destruction of the Temple ushers in a noteworthy connection between Judaism before and after the siege and Catholicism and Protestantism. This connection should be clear by now: both Catholicism and Judaism before the siege incorporate the priesthood, sacrifice, and the Temple while Protestantism and post-siege Judaism revolve around the study of their holy texts through appointed leaders. The comparison obviously isn’t perfect given that contemporary Jews have a much higher level of adherence to rituals and observances but the parallel still holds. Thus, after the destruction of the Temple, Judaism became a stripped down version of itself without some of its most essential elements of the religion because it simply didn’t have access to these said elements. Protestantism similarly is missing many important aspects to the Christian religion with the most notable being the source and summit of our faith, the Body of Christ available for consumption and adoration. However, what separates Protestantism from post-Temple Judaism is that the Protestants deliberately rejected the sacrificial nature of Christianity while the Jewish people had no other option but to transition to a version of its previous religion without its core.

What is notable is that this was not the first time the Temple was destroyed.

In the 6th century BC, the Babylonians similarly destroyed the Temple, but their reign didn’t last long, as the Persians would soon conquer them and King Cyrus allowed the Jews to come back to Jerusalem to rebuild it. This would not be the case this time around, as the Romans immediately rebuilt a pagan temple in its place, in addition to the dispersion of the Jews into the nations.

Thus, let us faithfully continue to pray for the conversion of the Jewish people, that they may accept the religion of their forefathers and embrace the real Mashiach, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

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