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The Abomination Of Desolation
Accordingly, in April of A.D. 70 Titus invested Jerusalem. But so confident were the Jewish people of the invincibility of the city that on the very eve of its investment large numbers of Jewish pilgrims went up there as usual for the Passover festival. Their presence in the city once it was closely besieged added to the difficulties of the defence. The defence was already embarrassed by the rivalry between the three factions mentioned above. But the Zealot leader Eleazar was overcome by John at the Passover season; and thereafter John and Simon were united in defence of the city and temple.
As the siege wore on, the horrors of famine, and even cannibalism, were added to the hazards of war, but the defenders had no thought of capitulating, least of all when Titus, using Josephus as his interpreter, urged the advantages of timely surrender upon them. On July 24 the Romans captured the fortress of Antonia. Twelves days later the daily sacrifices in the temple were discontinued. On August 27 the temple gates were burnt; two days later, on the anniversary of the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 587 B.C., the sanctuary itself was set on fire and destroyed. By September 26 the whole city was in Titus' hands. It was razed to the ground, only three towers of Herod's palace on the western wall being left standing, with part of the western wall itself.
According to Josephus, Titus wished to save the temple, but was unable to prevent his soldiery from venting their vengeful wrath on the structure which had been the core of the resistance during the siege. This was no doubt the account which Titus wished to be believed in the cooler reflection of later years, and Josephus, the grateful client of the Flavian dynasty, gave it the required publicity. But an interesting variant has come down to us in a historical fragment preserved by Sulpicius Severus (c. A.D. 400):
Titus first took counsel and considered whether he should destroy so magnificent a work as the temple. Many thought that a building which excelled all mortal works in sacredness ought not to be destroyed, for if it were saved, it would serve as a token of Roman moderation, whereas its destruction would display an eternal mark of savagery. But others, on the contrary, including Titus himself, express the opinion that the temple ought most certainly to be razed, in order that the Jewish and Christian religions might more completely be abolished; for although these religions were mutually hostile, they had nevertheless sprung from the same founders; the Christians were an offshoot of the Jews, and if the root were taken away the stock would easily perish.
Whatever Titus himself thought, there were no doubt many who cherished this hope. But they were doomed to disappointment. The temple outlived its usefulness. Christianity, of course, was essentially free from the trammels of the old sacrificial system; but so was all that was best in Judaism.
When the temple area was taken by the Romans, and the sanctuary itself still burning, the soldiers brought their legionary standards into the sacred precincts, set them up opposite the eastern gate, and offered sacrifices to them there, acclaiming Titus as imperator (victorious commander) as they did so. The Roman custom of offering sacrifice to their standards had already been commented on by a Jewish writer as a symptom of their pagan arrogance,* but the offering of such sacrifice in the temple court was the supreme insult to God of Israel. This action, following as it did the cessation of the daily sacrifice three weeks earlier, must have seemed to many Jews, as it evidently did to Josephus, a new and final fulfillment of Daniel's vision of a time when the continual burnt offering would be taken away and the abomination of desolation was set up.^
The capture and sacking of the city was accompanied by indiscriminate slaughter; large numbers of the population were enslaved, others were destined for gladiatorial games, while seven hundred were reserved for Titus's triumphal procession.
* The Qumran commentator on Habakkuk 1:16
^ Daniel 8:11 ff.; 9:27; 11:31; 12:11. Josephus evidently recognizes the fulfillment of these prophecies in the events of A.D. 70 (War vi. 94, 311, 316)
ISRAEL AND THE NATIONS by F.F. Bruce. Pgs 223-224.