Jesus of Nazareth: From His Transfiguration Through His Death and Resurrection

by Pope Benedict XVI

  While this vision of things to come is expressed largely through images drawn from tradition, intended to point us toward realities that defy description, the difficulty of the content is compounded by all the problems arising from the text’s redaction history: the very fact that Jesus’ words here are intended as continuations of tradition rather than literal descriptions of things to come meant that the redactors of the material could take these continuations a stage further, in the light of their particular situations and their audience’s capacity to understand, while taking care to remain true to the essential content of Jesus’ message.

  It cannot be the task of this book to enter into the text’s many detailed problems of redaction criticism and history of transmission. I shall limit myself to exploring three aspects of Jesus’ eschatological discourse in which the underlying intentions of its composition become clear.

  1. The End of the Temple

  Before returning to the words of Jesus, we must cast a glance at the historical events of the year 70. The Jewish War had begun in the year 66, with the expulsion of the procurator Gessius Florus and the successful resistance to the Roman counterattack. This was not merely a war of Jews against Romans: in broader terms, it was a civil war between rival Jewish factions and their ringleaders. This was what accounted for the full horror of the fight for Jerusalem.

  Eusebius of Caesarea (d. ca. 339) and—from a different perspective—Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403) tell us that even before the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem, the Christians had fled to the city of Pella beyond the Jordan. According to Eusebius, they decided to flee after a command to do so had been communicated to “those who were worthy” by a revelation (Hist. Eccl. III/5). Epiphanius, on the other hand, writes: “Christ had told them to abandon Jerusalem and go elsewhere, because it would be besieged” (Haer. 29, 8). In fact we find an instruction to flee in Jesus’ eschatological discourse: “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be . . . then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. . .” (Mk 13:14).

  It cannot be determined which event or reality it was that the Christians identified as the sign of the “abomination that makes desolate”, precipitating their departure, but there was no shortage of possible candidates—incidents in the course of the Jewish War that could be interpreted as this sign foretold by Jesus. The expression itself is taken from the Book of Daniel (9:27, 11:31, 12:11), where it referred to the Hellenistic desecration of the Temple. This symbolic description, drawn from Israel’s history, is open to a variety of interpretations as a prophecy of things to come. So Eusebius’ text is thoroughly plausible, in the sense that certain highly regarded members of the early Christian community could have recognized in some particular event, “by a revelation”, the sign that had been foretold, and they could have interpreted it as an instruction to begin their flight.

  Alexander Mittelstaedt points out that in the summer of 66, the former high priest Annas II was chosen, together with Joseph ben Gorion, as director of military operations for the war—the same Annas who a few years earlier, in A.D. 62, had decreed the death of James, “brother of the Lord” and leader of the Jewish Christian community (Lukas als Historiker, p. 68). The appointment of Annas could easily have been interpreted by the Jewish Christians as a sign for them to leave. Admittedly, this is only one hypothesis among many. The flight of the Jewish Christians nevertheless reinforces with great clarity the Christians’ rejection of the “Zealot” reading of the message of the Bible and of Jesus himself: their hope is of an altogether different kind.

  Let us return to the Jewish War. Vespasian, who had been put in charge of the operation by Nero, suspended all military action when the emperor’s death was announced in the year 68. Soon afterward, on 1 July 69, Vespasian himself was proclaimed the new emperor. So he assigned the task of conquering Jerusalem to his son Titus.

  According to Flavius Josephus, Titus must have arrived at the gates of the Holy City just at the time of the Passover feast, on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, and therefore on the fortieth anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion. Thousands of pilgrims were pouring into Jerusalem. John of Gischala, one of the rival leaders of the rebellion, smuggled armed fighters, disguised as pilgrims, into the Temple, where they began to massacre the followers of his opponent, Eleazar ben Simon, and so once again the sanctuary was defiled with innocent blood (cf. Mittelstaedt, Lukas als Historiker p. 72). Yet this was only a foretaste of the unconscionable cruelties that ensued as the fanaticism of one side and the mounting anger of the other spiraled into ever-increasing brutality.

  There is no need here to consider the details of the conquest and destruction of city and Temple. Yet it may be useful to reproduce the text with which Mittelstaedt summarizes the cruel unfolding of the drama: “The end of the Temple took place in three stages: first the suspension of the regular sacrifice, by which the sanctuary was reduced to a fortress, then it was set on fire, again in three stages . . . and finally the ruins were demolished after the fall of the city. The decisive destruction . . . took place through fire; the subsequent demolition is just a postscript . . . those who survived and did not then fall victim to famine or plague could anticipate the circus, the mine, or slavery” (pp. 84-85).

  The death toll given by Flavius Josephus is 1,100,000 (The Jewish War, p. 371). Orosius (Hist. Adv. Pag. VII, 9, 7) and likewise Tacitus (Hist. V, 13) speak of 600,000 dead. Mittelstaedt says these figures are exaggerated, and it would be more realistic to assume about 80,000 dead (p. 83). Anyone who reads all the written accounts, with their tales of murder, massacre, looting, arson, hunger, desecration of corpses, and environmental destruction (everywhere within an eleven-mile radius was deforested and laid waste), can understand Jesus’ comment, based on a passage from the Book of Daniel (12:1): “For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never will be” (Mk 13:19).

  In Daniel’s text, this prophecy of doom is followed by a promise: “But at that time your people shall be delivered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book” (12:1). Similarly in Jesus’ discourse, horror does not have the last word: the days are shortened and the elect are saved. God grants to evil and to evildoers a large measure of freedom—too large, we might think. Even so, history does not slip through his fingers.

  In the midst of this whole drama, which is unfortunately all too typical of countless tragedies throughout history, a key event in salvation history took place, marking a turning point with far-reaching consequences for the entire history of religions and of the human race: on 5 August in the year 70, “the daily sacrifice in the Temple had to be abandoned because of famine and scarcity of material” (Mittelstaedt, Lukas als Historiker, p. 78).

  It is true that after the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C., the burnt offerings were suspended for around seventy years. Then for a second time, between 166 and 164 B.C. under the Hellenistic ruler Antiochus IV, the Temple was profaned and the sacrificial cult of the one God was replaced by sacrifices to Zeus. But on both occasions the Temple was restored and the worship prescribed by the Torah was resumed.

  The destruction that took place in the year 70 was definitive. Attempts to restore the Temple under Emperor Hadrian through the revolt of Bar Kochba (A.D. 132-135), and later under Julian (361), were unsuccessful. The revolt of Bar Kochba actually led Hadrian to prohibit the Jewish people from entering the area in and around Jerusalem. In the place of the Holy City, the emperor built a new one, known henceforth as Aelia Capitolina, where the cult of Jupiter Capitolinus was celebrated. “Emperor Constantine in the fourth century was the first to allow the Jews, once a year, on the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem, to visit the City in order to grieve at the wall of the Temple” (Gnilka, Nazarener, p. 72).

  For Judaism, the end of the sacrifice, the destruction of the Temple, must have come as a tremendous shock. Temple and sacrifice lie at the ve
ry heart of the Torah. Now there was no longer any atonement in the world, no longer anything that could serve as a counterweight to its further contamination by evil. What is more: God, who had set down his name in the Temple, and thus in a mysterious way dwelt within it, had now lost his dwelling place on earth. What had become of the Covenant? What had become of the promise?

  One thing is clear: the Bible—the Old Testament—had to be read anew. The Judaism of the Sadducees, which was entirely bound to the Temple, did not survive this catastrophe; Qumran—which despite its opposition to the Herodian Temple, lived in expectation of a renewed Temple—also disappeared from history. There are two possible responses to this situation, two ways of reading the Old Testament anew after the year 70: the reading in the light of Christ, based on the Prophets, and the rabbinical reading.

  Among the Jewish schools of thought prevailing at the time of Jesus, the only one to survive was Pharisaism, which acquired a new center in the rabbinic school of Jamnia and there developed its own particular way of reading and interpreting the Old Testament after the loss of the Temple, centered on the Torah. Only then did it become possible to speak of “Judaism” in the strict sense as a way of viewing the canon of Scripture as revelation and reading it anew in the physical absence of Temple worship. That worship no longer existed. In this sense, Israel’s faith also took on a new guise after the year 70.

  After centuries of antagonism, we now see it as our task to bring these two ways of rereading the biblical texts—the Christian way and the Jewish way—into dialogue with one another, if we are to understand God’s will and his word aright.

  Saint Gregory Nazianzen (d. ca. 390), contemplating with hindsight the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, divided up the world’s religious history into a series of phases. He speaks of the patience of God, who does not impose upon man anything too hard to understand: God acts like a good schoolteacher or a doctor. He slowly puts an end to certain customs, allows others to continue, and thus leads man forward. “A departure from time-honored, customary ways is, after all, not easy. Am I making my point? The first change cut away idols but allowed sacrifices to remain; the second stripped away sacrifices but did not forbid circumcision. Then, when men had been reconciled to the withdrawal, they agreed to let go what had been left them as a concession” (Oration 31, “On the Holy Spirit”, par. 25). From the perspective of this Church Father, even the sacrifices prescribed by the Torah appear as something merely allowed to remain—as a stage along the path to true worship of God, something temporary that had to be surpassed and was, indeed, surpassed by Christ.

  At this point the decisive question that presents itself is: How did Jesus himself see this? And how did Christians understand him? The extent to which particular details of the eschatological discourse are attributable to Jesus himself we need not consider here. That he foretold the demise of the Temple—its theological demise, that is, from the standpoint of salvation history—is beyond doubt. As evidence for this, besides the eschatological discourse, there is above all the passage about the deserted house with which we began (Mt 23:37-38; Lk 13:34-35) and the words of the false witnesses at Jesus’ trial (Mt 26:61; 27:40; Mk 14:58; 15:29; Acts 6:14)—words that reappear as a taunt at the foot of the Cross and which the Fourth Gospel places earlier, in their correct form, on the lips of Jesus himself (Jn 2:19).

  Inasmuch as it belonged to the Father, Jesus loved the Temple (cf. Lk 2:49) and taught there gladly. He defended it as a house of prayer for all peoples and tried to prepare it for that function. Yet he knew that the age of this Temple was over and that something new was to come, linked to his death and Resurrection.

  Through attentive listening and reading, the early Church had to grapple with these somewhat mysterious and fragmentary sayings of Jesus—his references to the Temple and above all to the Cross and Resurrection—piecing them together until finally it was possible to recognize the full picture that Jesus wished to convey. This was no easy task, but it was begun on the day of Pentecost, and we may say that all the essential elements of the new synthesis had already been worked out in Paul’s theology before the outward demise of the Temple.

  Regarding the relationship of the earliest community to the Temple, the Acts of the Apostles has this to say: “Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts” (2:46). So two key locations are named for the life of the infant Church: for preaching and prayer they meet in the Temple, which they still regard and accept as the house of God’s word and the house of prayer; on the other hand, the breaking of bread—the new “cultic” center of the lives of the faithful—is celebrated in their houses as places of assembly and communion in the name of the risen Lord.

  Even if up to this point there has been no explicit distancing from the sacrifices of the Law, an essential distinction has nevertheless been drawn. The place of the sacrifices has now been taken by the “breaking of bread”. Yet concealed beneath this simple phrase is a reference to the legacy of the Last Supper, to fellowship in the Lord’s body—to his death and Resurrection.

  As for the new theological synthesis that sees in the death and Resurrection of Jesus the end of the Temple’s place in salvation history, even before its outward destruction, there are two names that stand out: Stephen and Paul.

  Within the original Jerusalem community, Stephen belongs to the group of “Hellenists”, Greek-speaking Jewish Christians whose new understanding of the Law paved the way for Pauline Christianity. The great discourse with which Stephen seeks to present his new vision of salvation history, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, breaks off at the key point. His opponents’ anger has already reached fever pitch and is unleashed in the stoning of the messenger. The real point at issue, though, is clearly indicated in the formulation of the charge brought before the Sanhedrin: “We have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place [that is, the Temple], and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us” (Acts 6:14). It is all to do with Jesus’ prophecy concerning the demise of the Temple of stone and concerning the new and entirely different Temple, words that Stephen makes his own and openly declares in the course of his testimony.

  Even if we cannot reconstruct Saint Stephen’s theological vision in detail, its nucleus is clear: the era of the stone Temple and its sacrificial worship is past. For God himself said: “Heaven is my throne, and earth my footstool. What house will you build for me . . . or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?” (Acts 7:49-50; cf. Is 66:1-2).

  Stephen is familiar with the Prophets’ critique of the former cult. For him the era of Temple sacrifices and with it the era of the Temple itself came to an end with Jesus; now the Prophets’ words can come into their own. Something new has begun, in which the cult’s original meaning is brought to fulfillment.

  The life and the message of Saint Stephen remain as a fragment that is cut short by his stoning, although at the same time this is what brings his message and his life to their completion: in his passion he becomes one with Christ. Both his trial and his death resemble the Passion of Jesus. Like the crucified Lord, he too prays as he dies: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” (Acts 7:60). The task of fully expounding this theological vision in order to build up the Church of the Gentiles fell to another: to Paul, who as Saul had consented to the killing of Stephen (cf. Acts 8:1).

  It is not the task of this book to delineate the principal elements of Pauline theology, not even those concerned with worship and the Temple. Our concern is simply the early Church’s conviction that long before its outward destruction, the era of the Temple in salvation history had come to an end—as Jesus had declared with his references to the “deserted house” and the new Temple.

  Saint Paul’s enormous efforts to build up the Church of the Gentiles by developing a form of Christianity “free from the Law” had nothing to do with the Temple. His quarrel with the various currents within Je
wish Christianity revolved around the basic “customs” through which Jewish identity was expressed: circumcision, the Sabbath, food laws, purity regulations. While the question over the necessity of these “customs” for salvation gave rise to some fierce battles among Christians, too, leading ultimately to Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem, strangely there is not a hint to be found anywhere of a dispute over the Temple and the necessity of its sacrifices, even though, according to the Acts of the Apostles, “a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith” (6:7).

  Still, Paul did not simply ignore the question. On the contrary, the belief that all sacrifices are fulfilled in the Cross of Jesus Christ, that in him the underlying intention of all sacrifices is accomplished, namely expiation, that Jesus in this way has taken the place of the Temple, that he himself is the new Temple: all of this lies at the very heart of Paul’s teaching.

  A brief indication must suffice. The most important text is found in the Letter to the Romans (3:23-25): “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”

  The Greek word that is here translated as “expiation” is hilastērion, of which the Hebrew equivalent is kappōret. This word designated the covering of the Ark of the Covenant. This is the place over which YHWH appears in a cloud, the place of the mysterious presence of God. This holy place is sprinkled with the blood of the bull killed as a sin-offering on the Day of Atonement—the Yom ha-Kippurim (cf. Lev 16), “whose life is offered up to God in place of the life forfeited by sinful men” (Wilckens, Theologie des Neuen Testaments II/1, p. 235). The thinking here is that the blood of the victim, into which all human sins are absorbed, actually touches the Divinity and is thereby cleansed—and in the process, human beings, represented by the blood, are also purified through this contact with God: an astonishing idea both in its grandeur and its incompleteness, an idea that could not remain the last word in the history of religions or the last word in the faith history of Israel.