Omens, Monstrosities, and Visions Preceding the Destruction of Herod’s Temple
Josephus, the Talmud, and the warnings Jerusalem ignored By: Phillip Campbell
“Take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the sufferings.”(Matt. 24:5-8).
In this passage from the Gospel of Matthew, our Lord warns the disciples of times of bitter tribulation to come. Biblical scholars have long argued about what these and the following passages refer to—some suggest they refer to the Second Coming of the Lord at the end of time, others to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. We need not commit ourselves to either, of course, for it is possible that Jesus’s words refer to both events: that in a temporal sense, His words were fulfilled in 70 AD, but in an eschatological sense, they will be fulfilled at the end of time. According to this view, the destruction of the Temple by the Romans becomes a microcosm for the dissolution of the cosmos at the end of time, and the dissolution of the cosmos is a macrocosm of the destruction of the Temple.
Throughout salvation history God has often given signs or portents of what He was about do. In the passage quoted above, our Lord specifically tells His followers to watch for certain signs so they are not caught unaware when these frightful events come to pass. In the year 66 AD, the Jews rose in revolt against the Roman Empire. It was a time of fevered messianic expectation, when many in Judea were looking for the imminent appearance of the Messiah who would drive out the Romans and redeem Israel. This was not to be; the Romans under Vespasian and Titus crushed the revolt and razed Jerusalem after a brutal siege that left 600,000 Jews dead, 100,000 more enslaved, and the Temple destroyed. The Jews caught up in this carnage had not only failed to heed our Lord’s warnings—they also ignored signs of imminent doom right before their eyes.
The Jewish historian Josephus was an eyewitness to these events, chronicling them in his book The Wars of the Jews. In Book VI, Chapter 5, Josephus has a fascinating section describing all of the signs God sent the people of Jerusalem in advance of the Roman siege to let them know of their danger. Josephus explains that God had sent the Jews numerous signs of His impending judgment, but that they had blatantly ignored them: He says:
[T]hey did not attend, nor give credit to the signs that were so evident, and did so plainly foretell their future desolation. But like men infatuated, without either eyes to see, or minds to consider, did not regard the denunciations that God made to them.1
What were some of these signs that Josephus says were so evident?
The first he mentions is a “star” that appeared over Jerusalem for an entire year. He says, “Thus there was a star, resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet that continued a whole year.”2 Most commentators are in agreement that this star “resembling a sword” and comet are one and the same phenomenon, for a sword-shaped star is an apt description of a comet. Throughout most of history, comets were considered portents of doom, for their sudden, unpredictable appearance in the night sky disrupted the perceived order of the cosmos, leading ancient peoples to interpret them as divine warnings of disasters. They were associated with impending doom, such as wars, plagues, famines, and the death of rulers. Unlike stars and planets, which moved in regular, predictable patterns, comets appeared unexpectedly, defying the understood, orderly nature of the heavens and were interpreted a signs of impending disaster. As an aside, it is interesting to note that the English word disaster is derived from Greek and Latin roots and literally means “bad star” or “evil star.” This comet is believed by most to be Halley’s Comet, which returns every 76 years and did appear in the year 66 AD at the outbreak of the revolt.
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