On this day
in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is handed over by Jewish priests and Pilate to be
crucified. He is mocked by soldiers and those
who passed by: “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three
days, save yourself, and come down from the cross.” However, when Jesus cried aloud and breathed
his last, the curtain of the temple was torn (σχίζω) in two from
top to bottom. There is a parallel with
the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan by John the Baptist, where the heavens are
torn apart (σχίζω) and a voice from heaven says, “This
is my beloved Son.” The irony, though,
is at the cross the Roman centurion—and not the priests —confesses, “Truly this
man was God’s Son.” Jesus, bread and
wine, the Eucharist, and the significance of the temple are moving westward.
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| Stone of Anointing in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher located west of the Temple Mount. |
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| This woman was doing something and walking right towards me. She also walked right up to me. |
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| Faces in the Holy Sepulcher. |
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| More faces in the Holy Sepulcher. |
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| Here is a side chapel within the Church of Holy Sepulcher where I participated in the Eucharist. Although I enjoyed my visit to the Old City and the Temple Mount, this chapel holds a special and unique sense of God's presence. |
The splitting of the veil of the temple is discussed in early Christian and Jewish literature. Tertullian held the view that the Holy Spirit tarried in the temple before the advent of Christ (Adv. Jud. 13). In the Testament of Benjamin, the temple veil is to be torn, and the Spirit of God will move on to the gentiles as fire poured out (9:4). In Didascalia Apostololurum 23.6.5 states that the Lord “rent the veil, and took away from it the Holy Spirit” and poured the Spirit upon the Gentiles, thus fulfilling Joel 2:28, “I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh.”
ReplyDeleteA later Jewish source states that when the Roman Titus entered the temple, he profaned the Holy of Holies and drew his sword and cut the curtain separating the sanctuary from the Holy of Holies (b. Git. 56b).
DeleteMelito of Sardis explains,
DeleteFor when the people did not tremble, the earth shook.
When the people did not fear, the heavens were afraid.
When the people did not rend their garments, the angel rent his own.
When the people did not lament, the Lord thundered from heaven,
and the Most High gave voice.
According to the Jerusalem Talmud,
ReplyDeleteForty years before the destruction of the Temple, the gates of the Temple would be closed, but in the morning they would be open. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakki, a disciple of Hillel, said to the Temple “why do you frighten us? We know that you will end up destroyed. For it has been said, ‘open you doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars’” (y. Yoma 6:3).
Before the destruction of the Temple, the Roman historian Tacitus (ca. 100 CE) said that,
Armies were seen to clash in the sky with flashing arms, and the Temple shone with sudden fire from heaven. The doors of the shrine suddenly opened, a superhuman voice was heard to proclaim that the gods were leaving, and at once there came a mighty movement of their departure (Histories 5.12).
According to the Jewish historian Josephus, on the Feast of Pentecost,
The priests were going by night into the inner [court of the] temple, as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations, they said that, in the first place, they felt a quaking and heard a great noise, (300) and after that they heard a sound as of a great multitude, saying, “Let us remove hence” (J.W. 6.299-300).