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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas

The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.

The war with Rome and the fall of Jerusalem

In AD 66 Judea rose against Rome. By AD 70 Roman armies had starved and burned Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and sacrificed to their standards where it had stood.

Greek and Roman worldKings, rulers and courts

First, in plain English

The grandparents could still point to where the old cathedral stood before the bombing. About forty years after Jesus, Judea rose against Rome. Rebel factions fought one another inside Jerusalem while the Roman legions closed in. The city starved, the temple burned, and Roman soldiers sacrificed to their own standards in its courts. The Gospels' first readers knew how it ended.

What it meant then

Josephus, the main witness, began the war as a rebel leader and watched the siege from Titus's side. The outer wall fell around May of AD 70 and the temple at the end of August. Most Jews held the temple to be invincible, though a minority, including the Qumran community, expected it to be judged. Daniel's abomination that makes desolate (Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11) had been seen fulfilled before. The ESV Study Bible recalls how Antiochus IV ordered an altar to Zeus set up in the temple in 167 BC. When Pilate brought standards bearing Caesar's image into Jerusalem, the crowds said they "would take their death very willingly, rather than the wisdom of their laws should be transgressed" (Josephus). Wright notes that in AD 40 the emperor Gaius Caligula tried to put a statue of himself in the temple. When the war came, Josephus saw the zealots' bloodshed in the temple as fulfilling an ancient oracle. The city would fall, it said, "when a sedition should invade the Jews, and their own hand should pollute the temple of God." He tells of a starving mother who killed and ate her son during the siege. He also tells of fugitives trapped by the flooded Jordan in 68 and slaughtered. After the burning, the soldiers brought their ensigns to the temple "and set them over against its eastern gate; and there did they offer sacrifices to them." The Burnt House in the upper city held revolt coins of 67 to 69 and none later (Garland). Many Jews saw God's judgment in the destruction. Early Christian historians say the Jerusalem Christians fled to Pella, as the ESV Study Bible reports from Eusebius.

The bridge to today

An analogy: a city that remembers the year its great cathedral burned in a war. Every sermon about judgment preached afterward is heard against that memory.

What it changes in the reading

Warnings about the temple's fall and a time to flee, as in Matthew 24:15-16, point to the war of 66 to 70, and the cultural backgrounds notes set the burned city of a king's parable, as in Matthew 22:7, beside Rome's burning of Jerusalem a generation later. Luke 21:20 speaks of Jerusalem surrounded by armies.

Where the analogy breaks

Not the loss of one building among many. A burned cathedral leaves the city and its other churches standing. In AD 70 the temple most Jews thought could never fall was burned, the city was starved by siege, and Roman soldiers sacrificed to their standards in its courts.

Where scholars disagree

Three questions. First, what the desolating sacrilege was. Keener and the cultural backgrounds notes follow Josephus: the zealots' bloodshed in the temple, then the Roman standards in its ruins. The ESV Study Bible sees Antiochus as an earlier pattern, with fulfillment in AD 70 and in a future image of the Antichrist. The CSB Study Bible says Jesus' word standing makes it an idolatrous object, not an event. Wright reads it as the pagan invasion ending with blasphemous objects in the temple. Second, the flight to the mountains. Keener says both the hills and the route to Pella could have offered refuge, and that the flight to Pella shows the saying was not invented later. Wright argues that no one would call a descent of three thousand feet to Pella fleeing to the hills. Third, whether the warnings were written after the event. Many scholars read the burned city of Matthew 22:7 and the detail of Mark 13 as hindsight, and Garland dates Mark to AD 68 to 70 on that basis. Carson, Moo and Morris answer that both use the stock language of sieges, not the events of 70, and say the same of Luke 19:43 and 21:20.

Passages where it appears

{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/matthew-22-1-14\/","n":"Matthew 22:1-14, The king's wedding feast","s":"A king's invited guests refuse to come to his son's wedding and kill his messengers. He burns their city, fills the hall with people from the roads, and throws out a guest without wedding clothes.","r":"Matthew 22:1-14"}
{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/matthew-24-15-28\/","n":"Matthew 24:15-28, The desolating sacrilege and the flight","s":"When the desolating sacrilege spoken of by Daniel stands in the holy place, those in Judea must flee to the mountains at once. False messiahs will say he is in the wilderness, but his coming will be like lightning.","r":"Matthew 24:15-28"}
{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-13-1-9\/","n":"Luke 13:1-9, Pilate's victims, the tower and the fig tree","s":"People tell Jesus about Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices. He answers with a tower that fell in Siloam, a call to repent, and a fig tree given one more year.","r":"Luke 13:1-9"}
{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-13-22-35\/","n":"Luke 13:22-35, The narrow door, the feast, the fox and the hen","s":"On the way to Jerusalem Jesus warns that many will find the door shut while people from east and west recline at the feast in God's kingdom. Warned that Herod wants to kill him, he calls Herod a fox and grieves over Jerusalem.","r":"Luke 13:22-35"}
{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-19-28-48\/","n":"Luke 19:28-48, The king rides down to the city and weeps over it","s":"Jesus rides a borrowed colt down the Mount of Olives while his disciples spread their cloaks and praise the king who comes. Seeing the city, he weeps over the siege to come, then drives the sellers out of the temple.","r":"Luke 19:28-48"}
{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-21-5-38\/","n":"Luke 21:5-38, The temple's stones and Jerusalem surrounded","s":"When people admire the temple's stones, Jesus says not one will be left on another. He warns of false claimants, arrests in synagogues, Jerusalem surrounded by armies, and signs in the sky before the Son of Man comes.","r":"Luke 21:5-38"}
{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-23-26-49\/","n":"Luke 23:26-49, The road to the cross, paradise, and the ninth hour","s":"Simon of Cyrene carries the cross, the women of Jerusalem mourn, and Jesus warns them of days to come. Crucified between two criminals, he promises one of them paradise and dies at the ninth hour.","r":"Luke 23:26-49"}
{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/hebrews-8-1-13\/","n":"Hebrews 8:1-13, Copy and shadow, and a new covenant","s":"The high priest believers have is seated in heaven and serves in the true tabernacle set up by the Lord. The earthly sanctuary was a copy and shadow built to the pattern shown to Moses, and Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant shows that the first was growing old and ready to disappear.","r":"Hebrews 8:1-13"}
{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/james-4-13-5-6\/","n":"James 4:13-5:6, Merchants, landowners and the wages that cry out","s":"James rebukes traders who plan a year of business without God, then turns on rich landowners whose hoarded wealth is rotting, whose withheld wages cry out to the Lord of hosts, and who have fattened themselves for a day of slaughter and condemned the righteous one.","r":"James 4:13-5:6"}

Beings in the Gods of the Bible

{"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/gods-of-the-bible\/zeus\/","n":"Zeus","s":"The chief Greek god, whom a crowd mistakes Barnabas for.","r":"Acts 14:12-13"}

Sources

Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Matthew 22:7, 24:1-3, 24:2, 24:15, 24:16, 24:19 and 24:20
NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Matthew 22:7, 23:38, 24:2, 24:15, 24:19 and 24:20
ESV Study Bible, study notes on Matthew 24:15 and 24:16
CSB Study Bible, note on Matthew 24:15-22
N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part Two, comment on Matthew 24:15-28
N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, ch. 8, section (iv) Specific Signs of Emergency
Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.1, trans. William Whiston
Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 4.6.3, 4.7.5, 6.3.4 and 6.6.1, trans. William Whiston
NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Josephus and the Fall of Jerusalem
David E. Garland, Mark, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, Setting and Purpose, and on Mark 13:2
D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 2, Matthew, section Date, and ch. 3, Mark, section Date
D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 4, Luke, Date

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