Bibliography
| Title: Jesus and the Temple, Mark and the War Secondary Title: SBL. SPS 29 Pages: 293-310 Type: Book Section Year: 1990 Abstract: "An early and strong gospel tradition claims priestly involvement in the arrest and execution of Jesus, while equally strong ecclesiastical and academic tradition places the composition of the gospel of Mark in the period around the time of the first Jewish revolt. Both of these traditions rest on historically firm foundations, and the key to unterstanding both lies in the action attributed to Jesus at Passover: his overturning of the tables in the Temple courtyard (Mark 11,15-19). Along with recent others, most notably Sanders, the paper argues that Jesus actually performed this symbolic action at the climax of his ministry, enacting a prophecy that the destruction of the current Tempel was near. In the idiom of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, it stated what Jesus had preached throughout his ministry: God's kingdom was at hand. But, contra Sanders and others, this gesture would have been widely understood by his audience as a prophecy of destruction and, concomitantly, of redemption (cf. Mark 13). Jesus' Palestinian followers preserved his prediction that the Temple's destruction would announce the coming kingdom, and linked those to evolving post-resurrection claims of the (second) coming of the glorious Son of Man. The connection between destruction of the Temple and arrival of the kingdom explains both when and why Mark wrote his gospel: shortly after the year 70, and precisely because the Temple had been destroyed and yet Jesus had not returned, Mark reasserts that the Son of Man is indeed returning, for to Mark's generation had been given the sign of the beginning of the end: the destruction of the Temple". Keywords: New Testament / Early Christianity |