Jesus Christ, Primitive Church, Destruction of Jerusalem
by Ulrich Utiger

Giotto di Bondone, The Crucifixion

Page description
A summary about the live of Jesus and the primitive Church of Jerusalem founded by the Apostles.

Contents of this page
The life of Jesus Christ
The primitive Church of Jerusalem

Short summary of the previous pages
We have seen that the life cycle of the angels and man is composed of the four phases of peace, sin, judgment and return to peace. Then it was shown that the whole salvation history is composed of eras with four cycles, which in turn are composed of these four phases (see Summary of Salvation History). With Jesus, the history of salvation does not concern the Israelite people anymore but introduces a new era composed of four cycles. The first cycle of this era concerns the entire life of Jesus similar to the life cycle of Adam, with which salvation history started.

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THE CHURCH DURING THE ROMAN EMPIRE

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JUDAS MACCABEUS

Page 8

4. THE ERA OF THE SPIRITUAL KINSHIP

4.1. THE LAST BIBLICAL EVENTS

The life of Jesus Christ

The era of the Israelite people ended with the arrival of the Messiah. God’s people is no longer united by a physical kinship descending from Abraham, but by a spiritual kinship descending from God the Father by Christ, who is the First-born of the Holy Spirit, thanks to whom man becomes an adoptive child of God (Gal 4:4-7; also see The spiritual rebirth).

The first cycle of this era began with the political independence of the Jews and their religious liberty, which they obtained thanks to the Maccabees and which they could still safeguard despite a new occupation of their country by the Romans in 63 BC. At the end of this first phase, Jesus is born from Mary by a virginal conception (Mt 1:18-25). He lived and worked among humans like one of them, he through whom the sky and the earth, the invisible and visible world, have been created (Col 1:16). When the time was ripe, he preached the Kingdom of Heavens and revealed the power of God through many miracles to liberate people from their daily concerns.

Though, the scribes did not accept him and tried to compromise him as heretical because he did not stem from the Jewish priestly hierarchy and accomplished his mission independently. But this was of no use and they only succeeded in compromising themselves (Mt 9:1-8; 12:1-28). This is why they sought to physically get rid of him. Finally, they arrested him and delivered him to the Roman occupant, in front of which they wrongly accused him being an adversary of Caesar. Thereafter, he was condemned to be crucified (Jn 19:12-16). This is the sin of the Jews and pagans, but, according to Jn 19:11, more the sin of the Jews.

The following anger expressed itself by a darkening of the Sun and an earthquake (Mt 27:45-51)1, although Jesus said on the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Lk 23:34). This earthquake, which possibly made neither victims nor caused much damage, is in fact only a prefiguration of a future judgment, the one of the last days, which will be provoked by the persecutions led against the last Saints (see The interference between the phases and The male Child and the rest of the children).

The phase of revival consists, of course, of the resurrection. This recall to life of Christ’s body is associated with the revivification of the Word, since Jesus is the incarnated Word (Jn 1:1-14). If therefore the arrival of the Son of God in this world means the arrival of the Word, his assassination represents the suffocation of this Word, which became invincible through the resurrection. It is important to note this, for the next cycles have a common denominator in this sense, since they also have a word – held by the Christians – that is persecuted but that resuscitates afterwards. This word is the Gospel.

The primitive Church of Jerusalem

The apparitions of the Lord during forty days (Acts 1:3) already belong to the first phase of the following cycle, as well as the Ascension (Acts 1:9-11) and the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles (Acts 2:1-12), as we are going to see on the pages Mary and the Holy Spirit. Fortified by the Spirit, they preached to the Jews, many of whom converted (Acts 2:14-3:26). The Gospel was thus first brought to them and Jerusalem still remained the religious center.

But as they rejected Jesus, the Jewish scribes did likewise deny the word of the Lord, the Gospel. This is why God abandoned his people during a certain time and chose the pagans (Rom 11:16-24), who also should hear the word of God: the scribes put St. Peter and St. John in prison, believing that without their permission they would not have the right to preach (Acts 4:1-22). The persecutions widened (Acts 5:17-41; 7:51-60), especially with Saul (Acts 8:1-3; 9:1-2), who converted though (Acts 9:3-19) and for this reason began himself to suffer the oppression by the Jews (Acts 13:44-52; 17:1-9).

This is why the anger did not delay and the word of Jesus that all the blood of the assassinated prophets would fall on the Jews and that the house of Jerusalem would be deserted and destroyed (Mt 23:33-24:2) came true: the Jewish historiographer Josephus Flavius writes in The Jewish War that a series of different insurrections of the Jews against the Roman occupant provoked a war in 66-70 AD. Towards the end of this war, Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans, which ended with the destruction of the town and the enslavement of its survivors.

That this destruction of Jerusalem and the temple is really the phase of judgment of this cycle is shown by the prophecy of the seventy weeks, which Jesus made an allusion to in his prediction on the destruction of Jerusalem by connecting the latter with the disastrous abomination (Mt 24:15). In Judas Maccabeus we have seen that this concerns a prophecy of multiple references, which thereby expresses an approximate proportion of time. We have also seen that the beginning of the seventy weeks has to be marked by an announcement (see The prophecy of the seventy years of exile). As it is, this announcement is made by Jesus (Lk 21:20-24) around 30 AD. If we equalize the variable expressed by a day of week to a month, the time that should pass from this announcement to the beginning of the last week, that is the time of sixty-nine weeks, is approximately forty years (69 x 7 = 483 months = 40¼ years). Hence this brings us directly to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

It remains to make the calculation of the last week, with a duration of seven months, in the middle of which the disastrous abomination should have been erected in the temple according to the prophecy: Josephus writes that Titus and his troops set up in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem around the feast of Easter, that is to say on April 14 of the year 70. Then they conquered the town little by little, was taken on September 8 and then entirely destroyed so that there was no longer "one stone upon another" (Mt 24:2). Josephus does not indicate with accuracy the duration of this systematic destruction, though he writes that Titus, having finished everything and honored his soldiers, went with his army to Caesarea to spend the winter there. So we can suppose that the destruction of Jerusalem may have lasted until October or perhaps even November, for at this time they certainly did not destroy a city in one day, as it is possible in present times... In sum, this makes an effective duration of approximately six to seven months for all the siege of Jerusalem.

As for the disastrous abomination, according to Josephus, there are several events that come into question for the realization of this prophecy. However the most striking is the arson of the temple, which took place on the vigil of August 10. So effectively about three and a half months passed from the beginning of the siege, that is to say from April to the profanation of the temple. The resemblance with the theoretical proportion of the prophecy is consequently rather distinct.

The destruction of Jerusalem thus constitutes the phase of judgment and is the consequence of the preceding persecutions committed by the Jews against the Christians, which forms the phase of sin. But it is necessary to also add to the phase of sin the horrible persecutions Nero ordered in 64 as consequence for the burning of the city of Rome. We will return to this on the next page.

It is therefore also easy to recognize the phase of revival: it is of course the reception of the Gospel by the pagans (Acts 10:1-11:18; 13:46-47; 22:1-21; 28:23-28), which indeed already began before the destruction of Jerusalem. This is due to the interference of the phases, which do not change abruptly, but only little by little like the seasons. The Gospel is thus resuscitated by the pagans and resembles the incarnated Word, who is dead and has become alive again (see Summary of Salvation History). And the center of the Church changed from Jerusalem to Rome, because it was the most important pagan city, where the Caesars reigned over the gigantic Roman Empire.

NOTE

In order to find this date, one has to calculate Nisan 14, the first month in spring and the fixed date of Passover, because Jesus was crucified on the preparation day (Jn 19:14 and 19:31), which is, independently from Passover, the day before Sabbath, a Friday in our terms. The Jews did calculate the beginning of a month according to new moon. This day in spring would become the first of Nisan. So one has to know when was new moon in spring and then add 14 days to this date to get 14 Nisan, which can easily be done with the help of astronomical software. An often mentioned date is 30 AD. However, the first new moon after spring was on March 22 at 10:30 pm Jerusalem time. The Jewish day already begins after twilight. Therefore the first of Nisan started on March 22 and Nisan 14 on April 5 both at 6 pm. From 6 am to 6 pm on Nissan 14 in 30 AD it was consequently April 6 according to our calendar. This was a Thursday and not a Friday. This is why it is unlikely that the crucifixion took place in that year, unless the Jews made an error in determining new moon and decided Nisan 14 to be on April 7. The year 33 AD is also often mentioned because it is a good candidate: full moon in spring was on March 19 at about 15:30. Consequently, the Jews did see the first sliver of moon only in the night of Nisan 2 and decided first of Nisan to be on March 20. April 3 was 14 days later, a Friday. On all other days from 26 to 36 AD there is no other Nisan 14 falling on a Friday. In addition, there was a partial lunar eclipse on April 3 visible in Jerusalem from moonrise on at twilight, that is the eclipse had already began and the moon was consequently red colored like blood according to prophecies. There was also a lunar eclipse in 31 AD, but this was not on a Friday, and in 34 AD, neither on a Friday and very bad visible in Jerusalem. On all other days from 26 to 36 AD there were no other lunar eclipses on Nisan 14. In addition, Phlegon Trallianus records in his Olympiades: "In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad [AD 32-33], a failure of the Sun took place greater than any previously known, and night came on at the sixth hour of the day [noon], so that stars actually appeared in the sky; and a great earthquake took place in Bithynia and overthrew the greater part of Niceaea." In speaking of a "failure of the Sun" he suggests that it was not a solar eclipse, which cannot take place during full moon. So we see that Jesus may have died on April 3 in 33 AD, although historical arguments rather favor 30 AD.