Archaeological Confirmation

A couple of months ago as I was preaching through the gospel of Mark, we came across this verse, “" And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”" (Mark 13:1-2, ESV)

A recent archaeological discovery in Israel uncovered some of the ruins of the temple. Some coins were found burned and charred by the destruction that happened in A.D. 66.

You can read the article here.

Here is a portion of my sermon about the historical event of the destruction of the temple.

After Christ’s resurrection and ascension things got too tense. In Galilee a Roman leader sacrificed some bird to his false Roman gods right near the local synagogue. This violated so many Jewish laws and customs that the local Jews could take no more. The proverbial straw landed on the camel’s back. They rioted, and rebelled against the local Roman magistrate.

News of this small revolt made its way up the Roman chain of leadership a short way. A small legion of soldiers was dispatched to take care of these unruly Jews. They marched arrogantly into Galilee to subdue these pests. Little did they know that the boiling point had been reached. The local Jewish rebels organized. They ambushed the Roman soldiers and soundly defeated them.

Romans hate defeat more than they hate anything else. News of this defeat made it back to Emperor Nero. He dispatched Vespasian and thousands of soldiers to defeat all of Israel.

Vespasian marched into Galilee and quickly subdue the entire land. There was some fighting but with a vastly larger army there was not much resistance. In fact, many of the cities surrendered without fighting at all.

That fact, did not sit well with certain groups of Jews. There was one group in particular that was infuriated that Jews surrendered to Romans. This group was so extreme in its views and so passionate about Israel, they were called the Zealots. The Zealots saw the defeat of the northern region of Galilee and they headed south for Judah and Jerusalem.

The Zealots marched right in and took over Jerusalem and even the Temple. This was a huge violation of their own laws. These Zealots encouraged revolt at all costs. They supported the outright murder of not only Romans, but even their Jewish brothers who favored surrender. A sort of small civil war broke out because of these zealots.
They invited these murders into the temple. That was a big no no. They allowed any who wanted, to roam freely in the Temple. There were murders even in the holy of holies. That would have been an abomination. They even committed murder in the temple courts. Instead of following the rules of the Law they anointed their own priest named Phanni. This Phanni was no more qualified to be priest than a Roman. Some consider this the “abomination of desolation”.

Meanwhile, the Romans were not sitting idly by. Vespasian began to march on Jerusalem. Eventually, Vespasian’s son Titus takes over the assault of Jerusalem. But, the city is well fortified. There are a series of several walls that the Romans are having a hard time penetrating.

What Titus does is he has his own wall built. His soldiers build up an earthen mound to surround the city, cutting it off from everything. Then when Titus catches a Jew he has them crucified and displayed on top of this mound for all to see.
Eventually, the soldiers breech the final Jewish wall. They rush in and devastate the city. Josephus says that 1.1 million Jews were killed, 97,000 were captured. The final siege lasted 5 months. It could have been much longer but not for the grace of God.

After the fighting stopped. Titus ransacked the Temple. He took the temple treasures. In fact, if you go to Rome today you can see the Arch of Titus that was built in honor of Titus victory over the Jews in Jerusalem. On that arch is a carving of the Romans carting of the treasures of the temple.

There were a few zealots remaining who escaped from Jerusalem, they made it to an outpost near the Dead Sea called Masada. The Romans pursued. In A.D. 73 the Romans breeched the defenses there and the complete victory over the Jews was secured.

This series of events were cataclysmic for the Jewish people. They had no land. In fact, the nation of Israel would not even exist from that moment until 1948. That land was the promised land. That Temple was where God’s presence was.

What sticks out is that the cause of these catastrophic events was not the imperialstic tendencies of the Romans, it was the punishment of God upon His rebellious, sinful people. It was also, the start of an entirely new era.