The Destruction of the Temple (70 AD)

[CutlerB]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently reading the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, and it's really good, I must say. Currently, I am reading the Gospel according to St. Mark and I came across the prophecy of the destruction of the Temple.

In Chapter 13 Verse 8 Jesus prophecies that earthquakes and famines will accompany or precede the destruction. I was wondering, do we have any recorded earthquakes and famines of this around 70 AD? I've not heard of any, that's why I'm asking.

Thanks!

[JustaServant]

Josephus mentions instability regarding wars, earthquakes, and famines in his "Antiquities of the Jews", book twenty.

[Julia Mae]

Originally Posted by CutlerB

Hi everyone,

I'm currently reading the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, and it's really good, I must say. Currently, I am reading the Gospel according to St. Mark and I came across the prophecy of the destruction of the Temple.

In Chapter 13 Verse 8 Jesus prophecies that earthquakes and famines will accompany or precede the destruction. I was wondering, do we have any recorded earthquakes and famines of this around 70 AD? I've not heard of any, that's why I'm asking.

Thanks!

I think you are connecting two sections a that are about separate things. In verse1 and 2, they are coming out of the temple area, which I understand was quite extensive.

But by verse 3, they are on the Mount of Olives outside of Jerusalem, sometime later. Now, possibly as they walked, the conversation went from the specific prediction about the Temple to the end times, which is the topic Jesus is addressing in this part. So, Jesus isn't saying there will be earthquakes around 70A.D., He is speaking of end times.

It is also possible Jesus wasn't referring to 70A.D. in the first part but was talking about end times than, too. After all, some of that Temple complex is, indeed, still standing.

[onemangang]

Here is some info I compiled from various historians like Josephus

During the Jewish revolt (war against attacking Rome) There were a large number of Jews who wanted to maintain peace with Rome while the Zealots were fed up with the Jewish leadership and revolted against the establishment in a civil war .In the fall/winter of 67 AD a brutal civil war broke out in Jerusalem and Judea between the revolutionaries and those who wanted to maintain peace with Rome. Jerusalem was eventually divided into three factions led by [1] Eleazar, who was over the Zealots [2] John of Gischala, who was over the Galileans, and [3] Simon, who was over the Idumeans. It remained this way until the city was destroyed.The conditions were awful. In one night 8500 people were killed, and their bodies were cast outside of Jerusalem without being buried. The outer temple was “overflowing with blood” and the inner court even had pools of blood in it.Homes and gravesites were looted Josephus wrote about that historical fact affirming what John was prophesizing about. This is fromJosephus "Galilee from end to end became a scene of fire and blood; from no misery, no calamity was it exempt…One could see the whole lake red [The Sea of Galilee-PT] with blood and covered with corpses, for not a man escaped. During the following days the district reeked with a dreadful stench and presented a spectacle equally horrible. The beaches were strewn with wrecks and swollen carcasses."



John of Gischala, the leader of one of the factions, confiscated the sacred vessels of the temple: “Accordingly, drawing the sacred wine and oil, which the priests kept for pouring on the burnt offerings, and which was deposited in the inner temple, [John] distributed them among his adherents, who consumed without horror more than a hin in anointing themselves and drinking (Wars, 5:13:6).Josephus

Under the reign of Claudius (i.e. 45 AD) famine “was of long continuance. It extended through Greece, and even into Italy, but was felt most severely in Judea and especially at Jerusalem, where many perished for want of bread” [quote from George Peter Holford in 1805]. This famine was recorded by Eusebius [early church father], Orosius [3rd century Christian historian], and Josephus, who related that “an assaron [about 3.5 pints] of corn was sold for five drachmae” (in the heyday of ancient Greece in the 4th century BC one drachmae was the daily wage for a skilled worker). This brings to mind Revelation 6:6, where under the third seal judgment it is said that a denarius (or a typical daily wage) would only purchase a quart of wheat. This situation was said by Josephus to have climaxed during the five-month siege on Jerusalem in 70 AD


In spring 69 the advancing Roman army forced Simon ben Giora to retreat to Jerusalem,[4] where he camped outside the city walls and once again began harassing people. Within Jerusalem, John of Giscala had set himself up as a despotic ruler after overthrowing lawful authority in the Zealot Temple Siege. In order to get rid of him, the Jerusalem authorities decided to ask Simon to enter the city and drive John away. Acclaimed by the people as their savior and guardian, Simon was admitted.[5] With fifteen thousand soldiers at hand Simon soon controlled the whole upper city and some of the lower city. John held parts of the lower city and the temple's outer court with six thousand men and a third splinter group of twenty-four hundred men controlled the temple's inner court.[6] Factions fought vigorously over the control of Jerusalem, always trying to destroy each other's grain stores to starve each other into submission.[4] This internal fighting later proved disastrous: not only was this a sabbatical year (with less grain available), but the city was under siege by the time the harvest began.[6] Nevertheless, of the leaders of the rebellion, Simon in particular was regarded with reverence and awe.[7] By his authority, coins were minted declaring the redemption of Zion.[8]

Josephus “So all hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine; and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged. The seditious…as not enduring the stench of the dead bodies…had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath. However, when Titus, in going his rounds along those valleys, saw them full of dead bodies, and the thick putrefaction running about them, he gave a groan…and such was the sad case of the city itself (Wars, 5:12:3-4).”
Josephus provides the following figures from the Jewish war: 1,000,000 perished in the siege, 347,000 perished in other places. Of the remainder, 97,000 were carried into captivity and 11,000 starved through neglect or sullen refusal of food.

History…particularly distinguishes two instances of this calamity, which occurred before the commencement of the Jewish war. The first took place at Babylon about A. D. 40, and raged so alarmingly, that great multitudes of Jews fled from that city to Seleucia for safety, as hath been hinted already. The other happened at Rome A.D. 65, and carried off prodigious multitudes. Both Tacitus and Suetonius also record, that similar calamities prevailed, during this period, in various parts of the Roman empire. After Jerusalem was surrounded by the army of Titus, pestilential diseases soon made their appearance there to aggravate the miseries, and deepen the horrors of the siege. They were partly occasioned by the immense multitudes which were crowded together in the city, partly by the putrid effluvia which arose from the unburied dead, and partly from spread of famine.


Titus reportedly refused to accept a wreath of victory, as there is "no merit in vanquishing people forsaken by their own God".[4]

The Jewish rebellion against Rome began in 66 AD and in February of 67 Nero formally commissioned Vespasian to put down the revolt. It ended in August-September of 70 AD with the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem so the actual war covers a period of time of basically 42 months or 3.5 years which equals the time given for the great tribulation.


Josephus So now the last hope which supported the tyrants and that crew of robbers who were with them, was in the caves and caverns underground; whither, if they could once fly, they did not expect to be searched for; but endeavored, that after the whole city should be destroyed, and the Romans gone away, they might come out again, and escape from them. This was no better than a dream of theirs; for they were not able to lie hid either from God or from the Romans.

On July 31, 70 AD, after a five month siege, the Romans succeeded in penetrating the final wall around Jerusalem and burned the temple to the ground. Tens of thousands of Jews were killed, but the surviving Jews retreated to the Upper City of Jerusalem, where many continued to plunder, ambush, and assault their fellow Jews. The victims were too weakened by famine to resist, and quite a few were killed senselessly. Josephus tried to persuade them to surrender to the Romans and spare what was left of the city, but he was only laughed at. Josephus records that some put on happy faces “in expectation, as they said, of death to end their miseries.” Many Jews sought refuge in the caves and underground caverns, hoping to remain hidden once the Romans would reach the Upper City, as Josephus records

The Romans not only ravaged and leveled Jerusalem, but during the next three years they rooted out the Jews who had fled Jerusalem and attempted to hide out in various pockets of resistance in the Dead Sea areas. The famous hill fortress of Masada was the last to be taken by the Romans in April 73 AD, where 960 Jews committed mass suicide.

[steve53]

The city of Jerusalem was only assailable on the north side. Shaped like a triangle, the other two sides bordered steep canyons. In some places, three walls protected it.
The Second Temple was in the Upper City. As it held the high ground and was symbolically important, Titus concentrated on taking it first.
After it was taken, many Zealots took refuge in the Palace of Herod, which was about fifteen acres in size, and surrounded by high and strong walls. It was also located in the Upper City.
This, too, fell, and Titus mopped up the rest of the city.

It was a Sabbatic year, but they had two years to store grain and supplies, and, in the midst of a war of aggression (by the Romans) the rules of the Sabbatic would have been little observed. It was the fighting of rival Zealot factions led by John and Eleazor that led to the destruction of much of the stores of corn, which were placed around the west and south bases of the temple's outer walls.