Is Trajan the abomination of desolation?

[Charles Wilson]

The correct answer here is that the "Abomination of Desolation, standing where he ought not..." , is the Greek General Demetrius Eucerus (Josephus, Ant..., 13 -14).

Mark 13: 14 - 17 (Moffatt):

[14] But whenever you see the appalling Horror standing where he has no right to stand (let the reader note this), then let those who are
[15] in Judaea fly to the hills; a man on the housetop must not go down into the house or go inside to fetch
[16] anything out of his house, and a man in the field must not turn
[17] back to get his coat. Woe to women with child and to women who give suck in those days !

Why should there be WOE distributed to women with child and to women who give suck in those days?
'Cos this comes from a History of JANNAEUS, not the history of some savior-god!

Look it up! Play Match-'em-Up if you like!

This is about Jannaeus getting his ass kicked by Demetrius Eucerus at Shechem, near the Temple at Gerizim, which Jannaeus wishes to annex into the creation of the Return of a Greater Israel.

CW

[StephenGoranson]

Are you serious that gMark referred to that past event?!

[Secret Alias]

You don't know this forum. The clown car crash of pseudo-Biblical interpretation.

[Secret Alias]

“Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”

Difficult if not impossible to make (a) an event in 20 - 21 CE or 30, 33 CE connect with (b) Trajan in 98 - 117 CE. Josephus:

In the same manner Daniel also wrote about the empire of the Romans and that Jerusalem would be taken by them and the temple laid waste [in 70 CE]. All these things, as God revealed them to him, he left behind in his writings, so that those who read them and observe how they have come to pass must wonder at Daniel’s having been so honoured by God.” [Ant 10]

Origen's interpretation https://books.google.com/books?id=J-xeO ... el&f=false

[neilgodfrey]

I have a question for those who take the abomination of desolation, or desolating sacrilege in Mark 13.14 (or Matthew 24.15) to refer to the statue of Hadrian or the temple of Jupiter or something else in the reign of Hadrian such as the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

On this reading, to what does Mark 13.1 refer:

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” 2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

This would seem to refer to the temple and the buildings which were destroyed in 70 CE in the fist Jewish War. The temple was not rebuilt after the first war, so it would seem that Mark 13.1 would have no clear referent to events in the second war. Did Mark's Jesus (or Matthew's) 13 refer to events about 60 years apart in chapter 13, conflating events of the two Jewish Wars? That is, of course, possible. Does it seem likely to you?

Best,

Ken

On any reading -- and I am one of those guilty of see-sawing between post 70 and post 135 dates for Mark -- Mark 13:1 is a reference to the 70 destruction. The reason for that interpretation is the narrative setting.

If we interpret Mark as some sort of "shell-shock" response to the destruction of 66-70, we have a problem if we also think that Mark used writings of Josephus. (I'm thinking of Duran's Power of Disorder. -- though Sinouhe, for one, is not impressed with this interpretation) If Mark was using Josephus (and I'm thinking here of Josephus's Cassandra story of the Jesus ben Ananias fiasco) then Mark is not writing in the immediate aftermath of the war but some time afterwards. (I'm assuming "Mark" would have learned the information and other details about the war from Josephus and not other sources.) Would not one think that such a time lapse would have given him and his audience opportunity to come to terms with the consequences of the war at least to the extent that he is not likely to be writing in a "shell-shock" bewilderment still trying to make sense of it all?

The aftermath of the 66-70/73 CE war did see outbreaks of wars and rumours of wars and possibly three messianic pretenders rising up, leading to more bloodshed, from Mesopotamia to Cyrene. There is some evidence that his violence was the consequence of dashed hopes for a rebuilding of the temple. (Trajan had reneged on what was taken to be a promise to rebuild it.)

(Some readers will know that I am not very strongly persuaded by the claims that the first Jewish war was related to messianic movements, but that the evidence of popular messianism are more discernable after the war.)

The text of Mark is loaded with doublets, with ironies and double-meanings. I see the narrative of Jesus in this gospel as little more than a personification of an ideal Israel who, because of the sins and blindness of those within, is crucified and buried. (His tomb carved out of a rock is a play on Isaiah's passage that speaks of the temple becoming a tomb -- as per Karel Hanhart.) The resurrection of Jesus is nothing other than what the "real Israel" has now become -- a spiritual nation, gone ahead into the "land of the gentiles".

The destruction under Hadrian was the cruelest dashing of hopes insofar as it was the dashing of the last hopes for a rebuilding of the temple and restoration of the "Jewish nation".

As you can probably guess, there is much more behind the above scenario than I have spelled out here. If a chief source for Mark was Josephus, then we are looking at a date no earlier than in the late, not early, 70s. But if Mark was written in the later 70s, how do we account for the failure of this writing to make any discernable impact in the historical record until the mid second century?

If we read Mark's Jesus as a personification of the Jewish people (idealized), then does that not suggest that the author has had time to reflect on events and to let them develop in his mind in a new theological scenario? If we also take Mark as expressing some dislocation, some failure to fully grasp the shock of the disruption, then does that not also suggest that he is writing very close on the heels of the disaster?

Given, as I said, Mark's penchant for ironies and doublets, are the above questions reconciled by placing Mark post 70, thinking through the meaning of all that has happened, in the meantime watching the aftermath play out with renewed and even greater violence against the Judeans infused with messianic and temple-rebuidling hopes, and writing in the immediate aftermath of the events of 135?

[Giuseppe]

The division of the garments appear to have been regulated by Hadrian.

[Charles Wilson]

You don't know this forum. The clown car crash of pseudo-Biblical interpretation.

Don't be so hard on yourself, Stephan.

[Charles Wilson]

Are you serious that gMark referred to that past event?!

Very, very certain, SG.

It is my opinion - and the opinion of a few others - that the NT is a CONSTRUCTION, built out of parts from other Stories. One of the Stories (to me...) came from the descriptions of the Temple Slaughter of 4 BCE, where Herod has been moved to the Palace in Jericho, away from Jerusalem. There was a Coup planned for this Passover in 4 BCE. Herod has ordered the deaths of his enemies but if the Priesthood has its way, Herod will be out of the picture and in three days the old Temple will be destroyed and a new Temple, not built by human hands, will be built, to be Re-Dedicated at the Weekly Sabbath that follows.

SEE:
Josephus, Antiquities..., 2, 1, 3 and surrounding Texts and Wars..., 17, 9, 3 and surrounding Texts.

It reads as if the NT is the Internal version of Josephus et. al. Josephus has been appropriated and rewritten. The Original was the Story of a Priest of the Mishmarot Service Group "Immer" (Strong's H564, Identical with the Hebrew "Lamb", Strong's H563). The Original was also the Story of a youth who comes to us as "Peter".

There are two Stories of two Passovers which have been telescoped into one story. The Priest of Immer gets renamed as "Jesus" and becomes a savior-god, loyal to Rome.

It's there, SG, it really is there. One of the Stories comes from the Story of Immer, acknowledging the Hasmoneans and Jannaeus.

Luke 2: 36 - 37 (RSV):

[36] And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phan'u-el, of the tribe of Asher; she was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years from her virginity,
[37] and as a widow till she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.
[38] And coming up at that very hour she gave thanks to God, and spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

This is Salome, SG, and not "Salome Alexandra". Salome, wife of Jannaeus.
Can you find her in this Text? Can you find your way to Revelation and the half hour silence in Heaven?

Best,

CW

[StephenGoranson]

Anna is Salome?
gMark refers to a past event?

[Sinouhe]

If we interpret Mark as some sort of "shell-shock" response to the destruction of 66-70, we have a problem if we also think that Mark used writings of Josephus. (I'm thinking of Duran's Power of Disorder. -- though Sinouhe, for one, is not impressed with this interpretation)

I have never read this book and didn't even know it. It was not me.