This phrase "abomination of desolation" (KJV, NASB, NKJ), "desolating sacrilege" (RSV, NRS), or "desolation of desolation" (NIV)—which appears five times in the Bible—translates the Hebrew expression hashshiqquts meshomem, which is first mentioned in Dan 9:27; in it Daniel prophesizes the coming of "a prince" who shall establish in a wing of the temple this "an abomination of desolation." This prediction is repeated in 11:31 and 12:11. The expression describes an object that is utterly hateful to God, something that desecrates and makes unclean but, in this case, with appalling and devastating horror ("of desolation"). The expression is echoed by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse when he describes to his disciples the signs of "end of the age."
Most commentators associate the fulfillment of Daniel's prediction with the events of 167-164 BC. In 168 BC the Seleucid ruler, Antiochus IV had tried to invade Egypt. Just outside Alexandria, however, he was met by his old friend the Roman envoy Popilius Laenas, who ordered him to turn around home. Antiochus asked for time to seek counsel with his advisors, whereupon Laenas drew a circle in the sand around the king and said, "As long as you give me an answer to take back to the Senate before you leave the circle."
When news of this reached Jerusalem, the Jews thought it opportune to oust and replace Menelaus, the high-priest appointed by the king and believed by many Jews to be apostate, with their own candidate. Already smacking from the humiliation, Antiochus took a very dim view of this rebellion. On his way back from Egypt, he vented his displeasure by demolishing the walls of Jerusalem and looting the Temple treasury. The former agreement which allowed the Jews independence to administer the Temple according to their customs was revoked and Jerusalem was reconstituted as a Hellenistic city. The Temple was turned over to the cult of Olympian Zeus (which was identified with the Syrian god Ba'al Shamen, "lord of heaven"1) and, beginning December 167, the altar of the burnt-offering in the Jerusalem Temple was desecrated by having pagan sacrifices made upon them. 1 Maccabees 1:54-64 reports this tragic event:
On the fifteenth day of Chislev in the year 1452 the king built the appalling abomination on top of the altar of burnt offering; and altars were built in the surrounding towns of Judah and incense offered at the doors of houses and in the streets. Any books of the Law that came to light were torn up and burned. Whenever anyone was discovered possessing a copy of the covenant or practicing the Law, the king's decree sentenced him to death. Month after month they took harsh action against any offenders they discovered in the towns of Israel. On the twenty-fifth day of each month, sacrifice was offered on the altar erected on top of the altar of burnt offering. Women who had had their children circumcised were put to death according to the edict with their babies hung round their necks, and the members of their household and those who had performed the circumcision were executed with them.
Yet there were many in Israel who stood firm and found the courage to refuse unclean food. They chose death rather than contamination by such fare or profanation of the holy covenant, and they were executed. It was a truly dreadful retribution that visited Israel.
One of those who stood firm and aghast at the blasphemies was a priest, Mattathias Hasmon, in the little town of Modi'in. He had five sons, one of whom was later nicknamed Maccabeus. In response to the apostasy forced upon them, they fled to the hills and raised a rebellion—what is called the Maccabean Revolt—that would end this desolation, three years later.3
The expression—this time as a translation of the Greek to bdelygma tes eremoseos—is picked up by Jesus when, in response to his prediction that "no one stone [of this Temple] will be left on another," the disciples asked him when these things will happen. Among the signs of those coming days, Jesus said, "So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination of desolation' spoken of through the prophet, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains'" (Matt 24:15; Mk 13:14; Luke reports the discourse but records only "you will know that its desolation is near" 21:20). According to Jesus, then, the Temple will (again?) be defiled by such an abomination before the end comes.
Many difficulties attend the interpretation of this so-called Olivet Discourse (for which see the commentary on the individual passages). What is particularly interesting, however, is the parenthetical remark, "let the reader understand," in Mt 24:15 & Mk 13:14. Jesus' words would originally have been directed at "listeners." Here they are addressed to "readers." This assumes that the authors, Matthew and Mark, or the common source they used, felt that what Jesus was saying is particularly important now at the point of its writing. Were the circumstances at the time of its writing down such as to encourage the writer/s to think that a/another "abomination" was about to precipitate?4 If so when did this happen?
Many living in Palestine who survived the years of Emperor Gaius's reign from 37-41 AD must have felt that they came within a hair's breadth, for Jews, of another "abomination of desolation" befalling them and, for Christians, of Jesus's prophecy being fulfilled.
It is difficult to find any historian, ancient or modern, who could harbour good thoughts of Emperor Gaius (often better known by his nickname, Caligula) who succeeded Tiberius as master of the Roman Empire. Mentally and physically sick, he was so incompetent, wicked, and reckless—he quickly bankrupted the huge coffer Tiberius had left him. Within less than a year of his ascension the first conspiracy was hatched against him. Suetonius spent a third of his history on Gaius on describing "Gaius the Emperor" and the rest of it on "Gaius the Monster."5 But it was his obsession that he was actually divine that paved the way to the incident we are here concerned with.
In 38 AD altercations and riots broke out in Alexandria when the Jewish population there felt that the Gentiles had insulted them (the details need not detain us here). When things calmed down, two delegates—one Jewish, led by Philo and the other Gentile—set off for Rome to state their respective cases before the emperor. The Gentile delegation accused the Jews of disloyalty, for they had not held sacrifices of thanksgiving for the emperor's recovery from an illness the previous year. The Jews retorted that this was a lie, for they did, not only then but also on his accession, then in anticipation of his success in his European campaign, as well as the twice daily sacrifices that the Jewish nation has offered for the emperor since the time of Augustus. To this Gaius replied, "What is the use of that? You offered sacrifices for me, it is true, but you offered none to me!"6 Naturally, the Jewish delegation was dismissed less favourably.
Meanwhile, things were afoot in Judea. The Gentiles of Jamnia, a town of mixed Gentile and Jewish population in western Palestine, had set up an altar in Gaius's honour as they celebrated his campaign in Germany. Inflamed by such idolatrous flaunting, some Jews tore down the altar. When news of this reached Gaius, he sent his legate, Publius Petronius, to march from Syria with a force large enough to ensure success to set up a gigantic statue of himself in the Temple in Jerusalem. When Petronius reached Ptolemais, with two legions in attendance, he was met by a deputation of Jews that included many members of the Herod family and other influential leaders. They assured him that they would rather die to a man than to allow the desecration of their Temple again. A similar demonstration of national solidary against Petronius' mission occurred in Tiberias. These demonstrations so impressed Petronius about their earnest he felt it wise to delay his mission. According he wrote the emperor with the excuse that the mission might best be accomplished after the plentiful crops of the year was first harvested.7 This earned him a few months reprieve. In the end, however, Gaius's command came through ordering him to proceed straightway to Jerusalem, and that the order was to take priority over everything else. Gaius' abomination was just down the street from Judea's door.
At this point Herod Agrippa stepped in and saved the nation from the approaching disaster. According to Philo, Agrippa, who was in Rome at the time, was unaware of Gaius' second letter to Petronius; he learnt of it only when, as he paid a courtesy call on the emperor, Gaius—who had been his childhood friend—informed him of it. So shocked, Agrippa fainted on the spot. When he had recovered after a few days, he wrote the emperor a highly persuasive letter that changed Gaius' intention. Josephus' account is more flourished, telling how Agrippa entertained Gaius to a banquet so magnificent and delightful that the emperor asked Agrippa with what grant he could honour him, whereupon Agrippa asked for the order to be rescind. So ended the crisis, but not the drama. For while this was happening, the Jews in Judea had made further representation to Petronius. All these made the legate certain that any effort to enforce the setting up of Gaius' statute in the Jerusalem Temple would precipitate all-out war in the nation. Accordingly, he wrote to Gaius again proposing that the mission be aborted. This letter and Gaius' order to rescind the mission crossed another on their ways across the Mediterranean. Inflamed with anger at Petronius for his 'insubordination' when he read Petronius' letter, Gaius sent him a new message threatening the legate with death unless he redeemed his own honour by committing suicide. This letter, however, found itself in the bag of a 'postman' who got held up by bad weather and did not deliver it until three months later. Another messenger from Rome had arrived some four weeks earlier to inform Petronius that Gaius had been assassinated on 24 January 41 AD. No doubt many Jews would have seen in this God's hands honouring Petronius for his efforts in delaying and, therefore, sparing them a great disaster.
Judea's reprieve lasted only a generation. In 66 AD riots broke out again, this time in the largely Gentile city of Caesarea. The riots snowballed into a revolt First Jewish Revolt—that swamped and swallowed up the entire nation. Though it began towards the end of Nero's reign, the violent unrest continued through the tumultuous anarchy that followed his death in 68 AD. Two emperors had come and gone, as they wrestled for the throne, and now Vitellius was fighting to stay on top. On 1 July 69 AD, however, the Roman armies occupying Egypt and Syria proclaimed Vespasian emperor. Vespasian was, then, the general charged with putting down the revolt in Judea. Leaving the revolt in the charge of his son, Titus, Vespasian left for Alexandria; the plan was for him to interrupt the flow of grains—Egypt being the 'bread basket' of Rome—to starve Vitellius into unpopularity, while his supporters, soon reinforced by similar proclamations from the armies in the Balkans and Danude, cleared the way for him ahead. On 24 October his ally Antonius Primus destroyed Vitellius' forces at Cremona; on 21 December Vitellius was discovered, tortured, torn to pieces and dispatched into the River Tiber. Having won his victory from a distance—and being a low-born career officer, having no claim to nobility—Vespasian now needed a victory that he may claim his own to gloss his fame and authority as the legitimate emperor; delaying his return to Rome he, therefore, instructed his son to win him a comprehensive victory in Judea. On the scale of Roman politics Judea was really a non-entity; the defeat of the Jewish revolt would not advance Roman imperialism by more than a fraction of an inch when most battles speed things by feet, but it would serve. When Titus finally took Jerusalem in the summer of 70 AD the physical destruction he wrought was out of proportion to the military need. Josephus reports in Jewish War that Titus had not intended to destroy the Temple, on the most magnificent buildings in the empire, but other evidences suggest otherwise. At any rate, by mid-August the Temple was desecrated again as the Roman standard was raised over it and it was razed to the ground.8 The most obvious demonstration of this abomination of desolation came a year later. With the glory of a foreign victory pinned to his lapel by his son's accomplishment, Vespasian celebrated his accession with a triumphal procession in June 71 that all of Rome turned out to see. Prominently displayed as loot and spoils of war were the golden candlestands, incense shovels, the purple veil, and other objects taken from the Jerusalem Temple. Observes Martin Goodman,
These, perhaps, were selected for their ostentatious magnificence, to delight the spectators, but there was no mistaking the symbolic significance of the last of all the spoils of victory: "a copy of the Jewish Law," that is, a scroll of the Torah. There could not be a clearer demonstration that the conquest was being celebrated not just over Judaea but over Judaism. No one in Rome could have been unaware of the likely Jewish reaction. It was after all only thirty years since Jews from many different parts of the Roman world had joined in protest at the much less serious desecration of the Temple envisaged by Gaius when he wanted his statue inserted in its precincts. It is unlikely, too, that Vespasian and Titus were insensitive to more subtle indications of the new status of Jewish religious susceptibilities: one of the insignia of the Tenth Legion (known as "Fretensis," or "of the strait"), now stationed permanently on the site of Jerusalem, was the wild boar, whose image is still to be found on many of the artefacts they produced. Of all aspects of Judaism, one of those best known to ordinary Romans was their abhorrence of pigs.9
Temples burning down, and rebuilt afterwards, were common affairs in the ancient world. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, one of the most important in Rome, was burnt down during the fight between Vitellius' and Vespasian's forces in 69 AD. Within a year, however, its rebuilding had begun. The Jews, however, were never allowed to rebuild theirs. If that was not bad enough, Jews everywhere in the Roman Empire were required to pay a two drachmas tax to the god Jupiter Capitolinus; what they once paid for the upkeep of the Temple in Jerusalem they now paid to the Roman gods. The money raised from the sales of the Temple booty funded the building of the Colosseum. The desolation and abomination continued when, six decades later, Jerusalem was rebuilt into a Roman city and renamed Aelia Capitolina, and the Roman gods worshipped on the site of the razed temple. When Christians came to power in the 4th Cent, the temple site was treated as the city's rubbish dump. In the 7th Cent the Muslims took it over and turned it into the third holiest sites of the Islamic world. The abomination of desolation stayed.
PREACHING RELEVANCE
We hope that this article gives you a helpful tour of the historical circumstances underlining the subject. While such a historical appreciation will give you greater confidence as you teach and preach, we hope you will be judicious in your application of these materials. Certainly we assume you will not drop all of this 2,600-word essay on your audience.
Resources:
Michael P. Theophilos, "The Abomination of Desolation in Matthew 24:15," Tyndale Bulletin 60.1 (2009): 157-161. ☰
Low Chai Hok ©Alberith, 2015