Jerusalem, the temple, and the holy place

Background

• [DOCUMENTED FACT]The Jerusalem temple was destroyed in AD 70. Josephus provides the principal narrative account; the event is also attested in Roman sources and in archaeology.
• [HISTORICAL]Antiochus IV desecrated the Jerusalem temple in the second century BC; 1 Maccabees and Josephus describe it, and many readers treat it as the near referent of Daniel's language.
• [DOCUMENTED FACT]The site is presently occupied by the Haram al-Sharif / Temple Mount complex, including the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, under arrangements that are politically contested.

What stands out

• [OBSERVATION]Daniel's language has at least one clear historical antecedent (Antiochus) and is nonetheless applied forward in Matthew 24:15. The text itself models re-application.
• [OBSERVATION]2 Thessalonians places the figure in 'the temple of God' without stating which temple or whether the term is used structurally.
• [OBSERVATION]Revelation 11 speaks of measuring a temple after the date most scholars assign to Revelation, which is itself part of the dating dispute.
• [OPEN QUESTION]Do these four passages describe one desecration, two, or a pattern? Merging them is a decision, not a reading.

Why some people connect these

• —INTERPRETIVE CONNECTION — Proposals for a rebuilt temple exist in public organisational form and are documented as proposals. Their existence is a fact about advocacy; it is not evidence about fulfilment.
• [OPEN QUESTION]Does a fulfilment require a physical building? Readings that answer this before pointing at events are much easier to weigh than ones that answer it afterwards.
• [OPEN QUESTION]If 'temple of God' is used of the church elsewhere in the same author's letters, does 2 Thessalonians 2:4 require a building?

Another way this is read

• [COMPETING INTERPRETATION]Preterist readers apply Matthew 24:15 to the events of AD 66-70 and treat the Olivet warning as fulfilled in that generation.
• [COMPETING INTERPRETATION]Futurist readers hold that Daniel 9:27's covenant and mid-week cessation have no completed historical counterpart and require a future temple or its equivalent.
• [COMPETING INTERPRETATION]Historicist and idealist readers read the temple language ecclesially, as desecration of the community rather than a building.

What we don't know

• [DOCUMENTED FACT]The present arrangements on the site are a matter of public record. What they mean, if anything, for these passages is exactly what people disagree about.