See That You Are Not Led Astray: A Study of Matthew 24 and Luke 21

The Doctor:   The year one hundred trillion? That’s impossible.

Martha:           Why? What happens then?

The Doctor:   We’re going to the end of the universe.

Doctor Who S3 E11, ‘Utopia’ (2007)

All right, let’s jump in. You may want to grab a Bible first – or two, actually, for ease of comparison – but who am I kidding, you’re probably reading this on your phone and not feeling inclined to go on a reconnaissance mission to the bookshelf before you scroll onwards. On your own head be it; I can’t promise this isn’t going to get confusing if you don’t have the text at hand to consult.¹

In Matthew 24, Jesus tells his disciples that not one stone of the Temple will be left upon another, and they subsequently ask him two questions: when will these things be, and what will be the sign of his coming and of the consummation of the age? In Luke 21, Jesus tells his disciples that not one stone of the Temple will be left upon another, and they subsequently ask him two questions: when will these things be, and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?

 

This depiction of the sack of Jerusalem was labelled Francesco Hayez on Wikimedia Commons, but I don’t know whether that’s the artist or the uploader, and have no further information at all. Still, it’s definitely the sack of Jerusalem, because look, there’s the menorah.

In both cases, Jesus doesn’t answer the question immediately: he begins with a warning not to be led astray by false messiahs, or alarmed by wars and unrest, which must take place before the end. There’ll be conflicts between nations, earthquakes, famines. And then, according to Matthew – Greek τότε (tóte), which is ‘then’ in the sense of ‘at that time’ rather than ‘after that’ – then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and there’ll be betrayal and false prophets and lawlessness all over the shop. But in Luke, before all these things they will seize you and persecute you and deliver you up to synagogues and prisons and drag you before kings and governors.

So which is it? Does the persecution come at the same time as the false messiahs and wars and earthquakes, or before it? Or, are we in fact talking about two different waves of persecution here? Is Jesus giving two different, albeit similar, answers to two different questions?

Well, let’s keep reading. Both descriptions of persecutions mention proclamation of the gospel and survival through endurance, and then the paths diverge again. In Matthew, Jesus refers to a future time when the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel will stand in the Holy Place. In Luke, he refers to a future time when Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies. That’s not the same thing, is it? The advice Jesus goes on to prescribe is much of a muchness in both circumstances – let those in Judaea flee to the mountains; alas for those pregnant or nursing infants at that time – but it doesn’t follow that the same event is being described in each case, especially given some of the details that each gospel author includes in his description. Matthew says there will be great tribulation such as has never happened since the beginning of the cosmos, nor could happen again. Now, the use of the phrase ‘great tribulation’ in the New Testament is super interesting – but don’t let me get distracted. Where were we? Right, yes, so the great tribulation Matthew describes is so bad that if it weren’t cut short, no flesh would be saved;² but for the sake of the elect, cut short it will be. Luke, meanwhile, talks of days of vengeance, to fulfil all that is written; great distress upon the earth (or ‘land’); wrath against this people. They will be violently killed and led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

So the distress Matthew is talking about is whole-world stuff; tribulation unparallelled at any time, anywhere, with the survival of all flesh on the line. The distress Luke is talking about, on the other hand, seems clearly concentrated on the Jewish nation (‘this people’) and its homeland. Two different events. Now, this makes sense of the time discrepancy we had earlier: what Matthew is talking about will occur at the same time as the false messiahs and wars and earthquakes and stuff; what Luke is talking about will occur before all these things. Neat, right? And what’s even neater is that we can match this up with history. The time when the Jews were led captive among all nations and Jerusalem was given over to Gentile occupation was in 70 CE, when the future Roman emperor Titus besieged the city – surrounded it with armies, as it were – and sacked it. According to the historian Josephus, 1.1 million people died in the siege, and ninety-seven thousand were taken into captivity (the reason there were so many people in the city is because the siege began in the middle of Pesach, so all these Jews who’d gone up to Jerusalem for the festival suddenly found themselves trapped).³ The city was destroyed, and, just as Jesus predicted, the Temple was thrown down. And without wanting to get too embroiled in modern politics, to this day, Jerusalem has not been returned to the possession of the Jewish people. The times of the Gentiles, we may conclude, are not yet fulfilled. Note the until there: at some point, it follows, the times of the Gentiles will be fulfilled, and Jerusalem will no longer be trampled underfoot by those to whom God did not give it.

In that one sentence, then, Luke’s taken us all the way from 70 CE to a date that’s still future for us in 2019. And at that point he starts talking about signs in heaven and terror on earth and the powers of the heavens being shaken and the Son of Man coming on the clouds with glory – all your classic day-of-the-LORD stuff.⁴ Matthew brings up all the same things, but he says they will come straight after the ‘great tribulation’ he described. So now we have three reasons why Matthew’s ‘great tribulation’ is not the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans: first, because it will happen directly before the sun and moon go dark and the stars fall and all that jazz; second, because it’s unparallelled tribulation on a worldwide scale, involving all flesh, not just the Jews; and third, because its inaugurating event is the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the Holy Place, which doesn’t match up with what Titus did at all. Daniel’s abomination of desolation, if you didn’t know, is very definitely Antiochus IV Epiphanes – like, so very definitely that the standard position of scholarship on the matter is that the pertinent sections of the book of Daniel, much as they purport to be prophecy from long before Antiochus’ rule (which was 175-164 BCE, whereas Daniel claims to date from the sixth century BCE), must actually have been written afterwards, because they record the relevant events so accurately. (I mean, accurate prophecy, fancy that.) Antiochus was a ruler in the line of Seleucus, one of Alexander the Great’s generals who inherited a chunk of his empire after he died, and he did some really horrible stuff to the Jewish people, including killing lots of them, but he didn’t sack Jerusalem or destroy the Temple or send them all into captivity or any of that. He did defile the Temple, so that the prescribed sacrifices couldn’t be made for three and a half years, but that’s really not the same thing at all.⁵

 

A bust of Antiochus IV in the Altes Museum in Berlin, apparently; thanks to Yair Haklai, who kindly licensed this photograph for use under the terms found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bust_of_Antiochus_IV-Altes_Museum_(Berlin).jpg.

You’ll have spotted that, by the time Jesus was chatting to his disciples on the Mount of Olives, Antiochus was long dead, and so it’s pretty obvious that the abomination of desolation Jesus was referring to wasn’t him per se but rather some future antitype.⁶ And since there hasn’t been a Holy Place for an abomination to stand in since Titus destroyed it, it’s equally obvious that the event Jesus was describing definitely can’t have happened yet. So this all fits very nicely with what we’ve seen to the effect that Matthew 24 is dealing almost entirely with stuff that’s still future for us now, whereas Luke deals with some stuff that’s past for us. Take another look at the warning of persecution in Luke: Jesus tells his disciples, they will deliver you up to the synagogues. That’s got to be talking about persecution of Christians – specifically Jewish Christians, or else what authority would a synagogue claim over them – by other Jews, which can only have been happening before 70 CE: after that, the Jews were really not in such a position as to be persecuting anybody. The description of persecution in Matthew, on the other hand, makes no such reference, but rather speaks of being hated by all nations.⁷

What, you may ask, about the declaration, in both Matthew 24 and Luke 21, that this generation will not pass away until all these things take place? Surely, in light of that, it can’t have been so far in the future? Well, for starters, that declaration comes after the bit about the heavens being shaken and the Son of Man coming on the clouds, which I think we’d all agree definitely hasn’t happened yet, so shifting some of the other stuff that’s mentioned back to the first century doesn’t actually help. The solution here comes in the meaning of the word translated ‘generation’. It’s Greek γενεὰ (geneà), which, if I were to coin a new English term to capture the sense of it, I’d want to translate ‘begettage’: it refers to a group of people who have something in common by virtue of their birth, as it were, perhaps because they were all born about the same time – hence ‘generation’ – or alternatively because they were all born from one ancestral origin. (English ‘generation’ and ‘genetic’ are both derived from the same Proto-Indo-European root as γενεὰ.) That latter concept tends to be rendered ‘race’, which I think we can all agree is a bit of a yucky term, but until ‘begettage’ catches on, we’ll have to make do. In any case, the point is, the timing problem is solved if we take γενεὰ to be carrying the second meaning here. Jesus is saying that the ancestry-defined group around him, the Jewish people, will not pass away until these things have taken place. In other words, I know I said the Temple’s going to be utterly destroyed, and I know I said that some really horrible stuff is going to happen to those in Judaea, but please don’t think that any of that will spell the end for the Jewish nation: they’ll be preserved until my return. Be assured of that, Jesus says. My word stands firmer even than heaven and earth, he says.

So there’s my case: Matthew 24 deals pretty much entirely with Jesus’ coming and the consummation of the age, aka the future day of the LORD, as per the question the disciples are recorded to have asked at the beginning of it; whereas Luke 21 deals mostly with events prior to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, as per the disciples’ different question as recorded there, with a bit about the day of the LORD at the end. I could leave things there, but I feel it would be remiss of me not to deal also with the parallel passage in Mark, namely in chapter 13. Again, Jesus predicts that the Temple will be thrown down. Again, the disciples ask two questions: this time, as in Luke, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished? So we’re expecting something about 70 CE or beforehand, and sure enough, after that initial bit about not being led astray by false messiahs, and wars, earthquakes, famines, and so forth, Jesus tells the disciples that they will be handed over to sanhedrins and beaten in synagogues: pre-70-CE persecution.

Mark then diverges from Luke, in that the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be is mentioned, rather than Jerusalem being surrounded by armies. There’s no specification of timing there, though, so we can quite happily take it that, as in Luke, Jesus is saying something about near-future events, and then moving on to talk about far-future events; it’s just that the point at which he switches from the one to the other is different. In fact, the first specification of timing we get is that in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and moon will not give its light, stars falling, powers of the heavens shaken, Son of Man coming on the clouds et cetera. Just as in Matthew, then, we’re told that this whole abomination-of-desolation business will come right before Jesus returns in full pomp and glory. I think it was worth looking at Matthew and Luke first, though, because they provide a clearer framework as to how to deal with this stuff in terms of relative timing.

The reason I wanted to write this post is because I’ve heard a lot of teaching on these passages that tries to attach a lot more of what they say to the events of 70 CE than the text really allows for. Indeed, as I’ve demonstrated, Matthew and Mark kind of don’t mention said events at all. Maybe that comes as a bit of a surprise, given that the disciples’ questions were clearly prompted by Jesus’ prediction that the Temple would fall. To be fair, if these three passages are all about the same conversation, then they would have heard everything recorded in Luke 21 at that time as well as everything recorded in the parallel passages – but that in itself makes it striking that Matthew and Mark chose to include the parts of the conversation they did. The stuff about the great tribulation and the abomination of desolation and so forth was clearly a big priority for Jesus in terms of what he wanted to get across to his disciples, if he was bringing it up as part of his answer to a different question. He wants us to understand this. And so do the gospel writers, if the way they shove in a little ‘let the reader understand’ after the abomination-of-desolation bit is anything to go by.

Why does it matter? Well, the answer’s right there: so that we’re not led astray or alarmed. Please don’t imagine that being led astray or alarmed is the preserve of those crazy types like myself who think that the Bible actually gives us some pretty specific information about the events surrounding Jesus’ return, and try to work out what said information is. On the contrary, if you can’t pin down exactly what the scriptures say about that day, and make real, robust sense of it, then you’re going to end up scared of it – because some of it is, genuinely and necessarily, really blooming scary. Or alternatively, you’ll end up ignoring the relevant scary bits of scripture, whether explicitly or just functionally. If that’s not being led astray and alarmed, I’m not sure what is.

So I hope I’ve provided a compelling framework for reading these passages, but more than that, I hope I’ve persuaded you that a compelling framework can be found, and is worth finding. By all means, disagree with me; just please don’t be fobbed off with explanations that skate over the difficult bits to the point where you’re too uncertain about how to interpret these passages to be sure whether you disagree with me or not. By all means, disagree with me; just please don’t be led astray or alarmed.

Footnotes

¹ Might I at least persuade you to open the relevant passages on your web browser? They’re Matthew 24, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+24&version=ESVUK, and Luke 21, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+21&version=ESVUK.

² The ESV says ‘no human being’, but the Greek definitely has ‘no flesh’, which is not the same thing – as I was taught, ironically, by a member of the ESV translation committee.

³ Here’s the relevant chapter: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0148%3Abook%3D6%3Awhiston+chapter%3D9%3Awhiston+section%3D3.

⁴ Seriously, go on a hunt for Old Testament passages that mention ‘the day of the LORD’ and just look at the consistency of their imagery. It blew my tiny mind.

⁵ You’re looking at Daniel 7-9 – so here’s chapter 8, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=dan+8&version=ESVUK – and, for extra context that’s not canon but still cool, do check out 2 Maccabees. Here’s a really depressing chapter about Antiochus’ suppression of Jewish practices: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Maccabees+6&version=NRSVA.

⁶ As in, the fulfilment that the type anticipated, rather than a sort of negative type that works by contrast. ‘Antitype’ can helpfully mean either: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/antitype.

⁷ And I reckon it has to be referring to persecution of Jews, not Christians, but I really haven’t got space to explain why today.