Before Jerusalem Fell

184 BEFORE JERUSALEM FELL
“Moreover I will tell you likewise concerning the temple, how these
wretched men being led astray set their hope on the building, and
not on their God that made them, as being a house of God. . . . So
it cometh to pass; for because they went to war it was pulled down
by their enemies. . . . Again, it was revealed how the city and the
temple and the people of Israel should be betrayed. For the scripture
saith; and it shall be in the last days, that the Lord shall deliver up
the sheep of the pasture and the fold and the tower thereof to
destruction.” It is indisputably clear that Barnabas makes much of
the fact ofJerusalem’s fall as an apologetic for Christianity.
Ignatius wrote around 107. 75
And although clear and explicitly
detailed reference is not made to Jerusalem’s fall in Ignatius’s letters,
there is what seems to be an allusion to the matter. In the Epistle of
Ignatius to the Magnesians 10 we read: “It is absurd to speak ofJesus
Christ with the tongue, and to cherish in the mind a Judaism which
has now come to an end.” With the demise of the Temple, Judaism
is incapable of worshiping in the manner prescribed in the Law of
God; it has come to an end. This is used by Ignatius to enhance the
role of Christianity against that of now defunct Bible-based Judaism.
Justin Martyr wrote his The First Apology of Ju.rtin about A.D.
147.76 Thus, it is less than fif~ years past the first century. In this
work we read at 1 Apology 32:
And the prophecy, “He shall be the expectation of the nations,”
signified that there would be some of all nations who should look for
Him to come again. And this indeed you can see for yourselves, and
be convinced of by fact. For of all races of men there are some who
look for Him who was crucified in Judea, and after whose crucifixion
the land was straightway surrendered to you as spoil of war. And the
prophecy, “binding His foal to the vine, and washing His robe in the
blood of the grape,” was a significant symbol of the things that were
to happen to Christ, and of what He was to do. For the foal of an ass
stood bound to a vine at the entrance of a village, and He ordered His
acquaintances to bring it to Him then; and when it was brought, He
mounted and sat upon it, and entered Jerusalem, where was the vast
temple of the Jews which was afterwards destroyed by you.~’
75. W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Chr&irmi~ (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), p. 917.
76. Schaff, Hi.rtoV 2:716.
77. ANF 1:173.