Beg pardon if this comment has been raised before since I have not read every post in this thread, but my question is how this passage could relate to what we know about any Jewish temple. That question surely has some potential relevance to how we assess the date of the letter.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Sun Sep 24, 2017 8:25 pm 2 Thessalonians 2.1-4:
2.1 Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, 2 that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.
Is this the kind of thing an author would say while the temple actually lay in ruins? Or is this evidence that the letter predates 70? Does not the author come across as innocent of the knowledge that the temple had been destroyed? Or is a rebuilding implied in this text somehow? Are there examples of this kind of writing about the temple from after its destruction?
The sort of temple where we imagine a god sitting on his throne is a Greek or other non-Jewish one. The architecture of a Jewish temple does not allow for a throne for a god, unless you take that to be the "mercy seat" behind closed curtains, but I think that's not an appropriate throne from all we read about it.
I don't know how to visualize anyone "taking his seat in the [Jewish] temple of God showing himself to be God."