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The author of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds Christians that they’re surrounded by a terrific “cloud of witnesses.” (NRSV) That “cloud” has continued to develop in dimension since then. In this month-to-month column we shall be interested by among the folks and occasions, over the previous 2000 years, which have helped make up this “cloud.” People and occasions which have helped construct the group of the Christian church because it exists at this time.
In AD 70, within the First Jewish-Roman War, Jerusalem was captured by a Roman military (after a horrible siege) and the good Temple destroyed. Today solely the retaining “West Wall” stays of this magnificent constructing. Its development had began in about 515 BC, as a substitute of the temple earlier destroyed by the Babylonians.
This constructing was then completely renovated and enlarged by Herod the Great (the Herod of the Christmas story) in a method which drew architectural inspiration from throughout the Eastern Mediterranean world. The ensuing development was magnificent, with its enormous central constructing set inside a terrific sanctuary surrounded by colonnades, and with its outer and interior courts of accelerating sanctity and spiritual exclusivity.
The impression of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple
Its destruction ended what is commonly described as “Second Temple Judaism”, a time period used to explain the Jewish group between the beginning of the development of the Second Temple and its eventual destruction by the Romans.
It was this Second Temple Judaism into which Jesus was born and lived. It was a group and a religion that was centred on the good Temple. Its removing was a cultural earthquake that’s tough to magnify. Judaism was basically modified because it was compelled to return to phrases with this enormous loss.
However, for the rising Christian group there was no comparable shock to religion and apply. For, whereas the post-Ascension followers of Jesus had first continued to fulfill within the Temple courts, inside a era the religion had unfold out over the japanese Mediterranean and communities had been fashioned as distant as Rome.
As growing numbers of gentile converts joined the brand new group (the “ecclesia,” the “church”), the intimate reference to Jerusalem and the Judean heartland had been damaged. This shift was accelerated by growing communal battle, as early Christians had been put out of the synagogues throughout the Jewish diaspora for holding beliefs deemed extremely offensive by these in authority.
More basic, one thing enormous had occurred throughout the perception system of this increasing group. A system of Jewish sacrifice and community-focus which had as soon as centred on the Jerusalem Temple had been radically reorientated to focus, as an alternative, on the individual, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus.
Christianity was not a Jewish sect. It had turn into a multi-ethnic group through which most members not had a historic or emotional tie to the heartland of Judaism. Although profoundly indebted to – and constructed on – Jewish religion and scriptures, the Christian group had turn into one thing totally different to Judaism. While Jerusalem and the Temple would proceed to play a major position inside Christian outlooks, the brand new religion was not depending on them.
Judaism, too, now needed to chart a brand new course ahead which – whereas eager for restoration of what had been misplaced – needed to turn into one thing totally different to what had existed earlier than. But that – and the event of rabbinic, synagogue-based, Talmudic religion – is one other story.
The destruction of the Temple in AD 70 additionally impacted on the best way through which the battle resulting in the occasions of Easter was emphasised within the rising Christian group and its foundational paperwork.
The Temple and Easter
The undeniable fact that the Temple vanished eliminated its bodily presence and this had an impression on its place inside the best way early Christians remembered the conflicts through the ministry of Jesus. As a end result, we frequently consider the occasions of “Holy Week” (the week resulting in Easter) in Jerusalem because the end result of a battle which was basically rooted within the Galilean ministry of Jesus. There is a readily understood cause for this attitude and it’s, arguably, a results of the occasions of AD 70.
While there’s debate over precisely when the Gospels had been written, it could be accepted by most trendy consultants that they reached their current type both because the Temple was coming to an finish or after its destruction. This is especially the case concerning the Gospel of John and is seen within the ease with which this Gospel contemplates a post-Temple religion.
By the time that the Gospel John was compiled, the Temple, its sacrifices, and its organisation, would have felt like they had been a part of one other world. It would have been like reflecting on the world of 1939 from the attitude of, maybe, 1960. That different “world” was nonetheless the once-lived expertise of older members of the group however was, on the identical time, profoundly separated from the current.
Jerusalem was destroyed and the Temple was gone. This might have been about to occur, or nonetheless a uncooked occasion, whereas the opposite gospels had been being compiled. It had receded into the previous when John was written. And this loss impacted on the emphasis within the Gospel data.
The Temple because the epicentre of battle
Those who acted exterior the Temple elites at all times sailed near the wind. Even teams that we have a tendency to treat as a part of the first-century institution might come near this. The Pharisees believed that God may very well be worshipped away from the Jerusalem Temple and its sacrificial cult. This didn’t set them in opposition to the Temple, nevertheless it definitely set them other than those that claimed it had religious supremacy.
This had inside it the seeds of an concept that Torah may someday substitute Temple (as certainly it did after AD 70). Given the Pharisees’ deal with prayer and lively examine of the Law, it’s no shock to find that they fostered the establishment of the synagogue as a central place inside Jewish group life – and one which might outlive the traumatic Roman destruction of the Temple.
Edginess may be seen extra clearly within the ministry of John the Baptist. With a message to all Israel, proclaimed by himself and so circumventing the Temple and its priestly hierarchy and sacrificial actions, John was an enormous problem to the Jewish institution. He was at all times dwelling on borrowed time.
This was much more so within the case of Jesus. He warned Jerusalem (no matter its possession of the Temple) that will probably be left “desolate” (Matthew 23:38). He drove cash changers from the Temple courts; and, extra shockingly, additionally predicted its destruction (Mark 13:2). He forgave folks their sins, exterior the system of Temple sacrifice. This was explosive.
A post-AD 70 perspective?
We usually are likely to view the battle between Jesus and the Jewish authorities as targeted on battle with Galilean Pharisees, till Easter Week when issues exploded in Jerusalem. While, in fact, the Gospels inform us that it was the ultimate week in Jerusalem that led to his demise, we nonetheless are likely to focus so much on the battle with the Pharisees in Galilee as resulting in that. This is comprehensible as a result of this types such a key a part of the Gospel accounts.
Their emphasis is quickly defined. We, arguably, hear comparatively little of battle with clergymen and the Jerusalem elites (other than within the Holy Week account) as a result of, after AD 70, this was not urgent on the minds of the early church because the Temple and its priesthood had immediately been consigned to historical past by way of the violent actions of the Romans. In distinction, Pharisaic affect survived and fed into post-Temple rabbinic Judaism. This was the type of Judaism with which early Christians interacted after AD 70. Also, Acts 6:7 signifies that clergymen transformed in giant numbers; one thing we wish to know extra about.
On nearer examination, Jesus’ battle with key facets of the Temple by way of the practices there, and attitudes in the direction of it, introduced him into battle with the Jerusalem aristocracy and the priestly class. For if his message might carry reconciliation with God and religious renewal, then what was left for the Temple and its complete sacrificial system?
On reflection, evidently it was this battle, greater than battle with the Pharisees, which led to his arrest and execution. Although the well-publicized battle with the Pharisees in his Galilean ministry is commonly assumed to have led to the plot to kill him, the easy actuality is that this group didn’t drive his arrest and trial. Instead, it was battle over the Temple which led to his execution.
Jesus and his followers had been most likely perceived as a counter-Temple motion and it was this, quite than disputes over particulars of apply (with the Pharisees), which led to his demise. While his type of preaching and his devotion to the Law (Torah) was per most of the practices round him, it was his self-perception and self-presentation that grew to become essentially the most contentious level.
As the Gospels point out, his message was that it was in him that the longed-for future kingdom was being initiated. A brand new Israel was forming round him; God’s future kingdom was showing; he, not Temple exercise (vital although that was), grew to become the primary occasion. Battle strains with the Jerusalem elite had been being drawn as Jesus preached.
The Temple elites, way more than the Pharisees, had the aptitude to make a battle lethal. Furthermore, their opposition to any unrest and turbulence was one thing that the brokers of the Roman occupying energy might perceive and collaborate with (Judea being a part of the Roman province of Syria).
If battle in Galilee precipitated bother and endangered Jesus’ life, that in Jerusalem introduced sure demise. We are even informed that in Galilee “some Pharisees got here and stated to him, ‘Get away from right here, for Herod needs to kill you'” (Luke 13:31), which means that it was Herod Antipas (tetrarch of Galilee and Perea till AD 39) who posed the principal risk there. There is proof that the Pharisees who opposed Jesus acted in live performance with Herodians (Mark 3:6, 12:13).
It is tough to think about Jesus’ disagreements with the Pharisees in Galilee resulting in a profitable capital prosecution. It was in Jerusalem, with its priestly theocracy and their relationship with Roman energy, that disagreement grew to become deadly. And within the precise arrest and prosecution the Pharisees performed no important half. Mark and Luke assign them no position by any means in these closing authorized occasions, whereas Matthew mentions them solely as soon as in his Jerusalem narrative concerning the precise demise of Jesus (Matthew 27:62). Conflict in Galilee might understandably loom giant in our ideas, nevertheless it was battle in Jerusalem with the priestly theocracy which led to Jesus’ arrest and execution.
Comparing the Gospels, it may be argued that John’s account of a number of visits to Jerusalem over three years is persuasive – which might permit for battle with the Temple elites constructing over that point – whereas the writers of the synoptic gospels sharpened their deal with the final, and explosive, go to which culminated in Jesus’ demise. If that is the case, we will envisage a gentle ratcheting up of rigidity, as an growing sense of problem was felt by the elites of Jerusalem and the Temple; after which a closing (and explosive) Passover go to to the town.
On reflection
The traumatic occasions of the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, in AD 70, had a profound impression on Judaism however much less on the Christian group. However, arguably, considered one of its important results was to reduce the emphasis on the long-term battle with the Temple elites because the Gospels had been compiled. This was as a result of the Temple was now a part of a misplaced world, whereas battle with the institutional descendants of the Pharisees was ongoing.
As our ideas flip once more in the direction of Easter, reflecting on this will help us as we search to grasp the dynamic that led to the cross. As Jesus proclaimed his radical message, he got here into battle with the holders of wealth, energy, and affect and, consequently, with the exponents of imperial power. It is a reminder of how the Gospel is on a collision course with the values of the world.
Martyn Whittock is a historian and a Licensed Lay Minister within the Church of England. The creator, or co-author, of fifty-six books, his work covers a variety of historic and theological themes. In addition, as a commentator and columnist, he has written for a number of print and on-line information platforms and been interviewed on TV and radio information and dialogue programmes exploring the interplay of religion and politics. His current books embody: Daughters of Eve (2021), The End Times, Again? (2021), The Story of the Cross (2021), Apocalyptic Politics (2022), and American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America (2023). Exploration of the battle which culminated at Easter is an space explored in his co-written guide, Jesus the Unauthorized Biography (2021).
