Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Mark 13:1-37, The temple's fall and the Son of Man
Leaving the temple, Jesus says not one stone will be left on another. On the Mount of Olives he warns of what is coming and of the Son of Man on the clouds.
Mark 13:1-37, in every translation this tool compares.
When a disciple admires the temple's great stones, Jesus predicts that it will be torn down completely. Asked when, he warns four of his disciples about impostors, wars, persecution and a crisis that will send people fleeing from Judea, and he speaks of the Son of Man's arrival in power. His last word is to keep watch, because nobody knows when it will happen.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/temple-and-courts\/","n":"The temple and its courts","s":"Herod's huge rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, believed to be God's dwelling, laid out in courts that kept Gentiles, women and Jewish men at set distances.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/synagogue\/","n":"The synagogue","s":"The local gathering place where Jews met on the Sabbath to pray and study Scripture. It was also a community center, run by people of standing.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/son-of-man\/","n":"The Son of Man","s":"Plain Aramaic for a human being, and also the figure in Daniel 7 who comes on the clouds and receives a kingdom. It is Jesus' favorite way of speaking about himself in the Gospels.","r":""}
Keener notes that Josephus reports a number of false prophets in the decades before AD 70 who tried to imitate Moses or Joshua, and that the temple fell about forty years after Jesus spoke, the rough length often used for a biblical generation. Teachers normally lectured sitting, which is how Jesus gives this teaching. The cultural backgrounds article on Herod's temple dates the work from 20 to 19 BC, with adornment continuing until AD 63. Josephus, the article on the fall of Jerusalem notes, began the war as a rebel leader, changed sides and watched the siege from Titus's camp: the outer wall fell around May of AD 70 and the temple at the end of August. In the ruins archaeologists found the Burnt House, with rebel coins of 67 to 69 and none later, and a woman's arm bones (Garland; the cultural backgrounds article on houses). The temple mount walls rose about 165 feet (Garland). Garland notes that the participle of 13:14 is masculine, making the abomination a person, and that let the reader understand may be a word to the one reading Mark aloud.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Mark 13:1, 13:6, 13:9, 13:26, 13:28 and 13:30, and note on Matthew 24:15
- N. T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, comment on Mark 13:14-27
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Mark 13:2
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Herod's Temple
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Josephus and the Fall of Jerusalem
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Houses in the Holy Land of the First Century AD: Peter's House in Capernaum; Insulae
- David E. Garland, Mark, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Mark 13:1, 13:2 and 13:14
