Chapter Twenty Four - Quick Notes and Facts

• The most earthshaking (almost literally so) event in Judaism between the Exile in 580 BC and the Holocaust was the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. It forced Judaism to completely realign its worship and practice without the practice of Temple sacrifice. Because of the perceived necessity of the Temple to Jewish religious life, the absence of it called into question the viability of the faith itself. Read Matthew’s commentary on the Temple, written about ten years after its destruction in this light.


• “The desolating abomination” recalled the statue of Zeus set up in the Temple during the Greek occupation of Jerusalem. The rededication of the Temple, after the Maccabean revolt forms the basis for the feast of Hanukkah. These events took place about 160-170 years before Jesus' birth.


• One of the most significant crises in the early church was the delay of the return of the Lord. We expect it to be ages until he comes. They were mystified it had taken more than a decade or two. (And at the point Matthew's Gospel was written, it had been about fifty years.)

This relief from the Victory Arch of Titus shows the looting of the Jerusalem Temple. Titus later became a Roman Emperor himself. The Arch still stands in Rome, helping to bring this long ago event into our present.