Destruction of the Second Temple in Talmudic and Christian literature: the rise of the new morality

Abstract

Jews and Christians are thought to have differed in their understanding of the Destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70ce. While Christians believed that God thus punished the Jews because they had killed his son, the rabbis allegedly used vague rhetorical devices to explain the unexplainable. In reality however, rabbinic explanation was nearly identical with that of Christians. For both the Jews and the Christians, the Destruction meant the divorce between God and Israel. In both traditions, this came about because of what had been done to a single person, neither a king nor a prophet, but a carpenter! Both traditions insisted on the unique nature and significance of a single person, as opposed to an entire nation or even humankind.

Keywords:

• Gratuitous hatred
• Sacred Divorce
• Origen
• New Testament
• national guilt