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The Fall of Jerusalem and the ‘Abomination of Desolation’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

C. H. Dodd
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Extract

The Gospel according to Luke contains two passages which allude, with some particularity, to a forthcoming siege and destruction of Jerusalem; viz. XIX, 42–4, XXI, 20–4.

The latter of these two passages (with which we may conveniently begin) stands in a context where Luke, to all appearance, is using the Gospel according to Mark as a source. The Marcan parallel to Luke XXI, 20–24 forms part of what is often called the ‘Synoptic Apocalypse’, or, more appropriately, the ‘Apocalyptic Discourse’, since its literary form is not that of an apocalypse; it is in the main a Mahnrede making use of apocalyptic motives, and concluding with a few sentences of straightforward prediction in the apocalyptic manner (XIII, 24–7).

Type
Papers Presented to N. H. Baynes
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 1-2 , November 1947 , pp. 47 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © C. H. Dodd 1947. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Some MSS. differ.

2 Codex Sinaiticus reads ἔρημον.

3 The reference here, as all through this article, is to Swete's text of the LXX. The Hebrew and English arrangement of chapters differs, sometimes substantially.

4 All the inhabitants under the age of 17 were sold into slavery: Josephus, , BJ VI, 418Google Scholar.

5 In view of these passages, Wellhausen's suggestion that καὶ τὰ τέκνα σον ἐν σοί represents an Aramaic circumstantial clause, ‘thy children being in thee’ does not commend itself.

6 χάραξ is properly a ‘stake’: Hellenistic writers use it collectively for a ‘palisade’. Josephus uses the more correct χαράκωμα (BJ v, 269 etc.), as does Symmachus in his version of Jeremiah. The Septuagint always has χάραξ. The word does not occur in the NT outside this passage.

7 i.e. presumably as David did when he captured the city from the Jebusites. The Massoretic text has a different reading (דזד for דזד).

8 To a Christian reader—at least to one acquainted with Paul's theology—the ‘fulfilment of the times of the Gentiles’ might suggest the progress of Gentile Christianity (cf. Romans XI, 25–6). But no such idea has influenced Luke's text, where we have, without any modification, the prophetic conception of Gentile oppression of the Holy City in retribution for its sins.

9 It is difficult indeed to see how, with its well-established associations, the expression could suggest to any instructed ‘editor’ the idea of ‘Jerusalem encircled by armies’. Luke was probably not a Jew, but he knew his Septuagint too well to fall into such an error. He preferred his own source.

10 It is widely held that the Marcan oracle of the βδέλυγμα ἐρημώσεως is closely related to the prediction of the ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀνομίας in 2 Thessalonians, II, 3–10. Some connection there may be, but it is hazardous to identify the two figures, or to find in 2 Thessalonians a key to the ‘apocalypse’ of Mark XIII. The ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀνομίας is an ‘antichrist’ figure, combining traits of Beliar in the Testament of Dan with those of ‘Lucifer’ in Isaiah XIV, 12–14—to go no further into his manifold antecedents. It is not clear that the βδέλυγμα ἐρημώσεως is properly an ‘antichrist’ at all. If so, he comes on the scene too early, for the only proper setting for ‘antichrist’ in the Marcan sequence of events (so far as it conforms to apocalyptic tradition) is at XIII, 22, where his place seems to be taken by a plurality of ‘pseudochrists’.