Palestinian Christianity and the Caligula Crisis. Part I. Social and Historical Reconstruction

Abstract

In ordering that his statue be erected in the Temple in Jerusalem (39/40 CE) the emperor Caligula precipitated the first potentially cataclysmic events in Palestine since the inception of Christianity. The impact of this episode on the development of Christianity therefore requires treatment such as it has not hitherto received. The silence of Christian and non-Christian Jewish, as well as pagan, sources on the effect of the crisis on Palestinian Christianity require that our reconstruction depend on analogous situations and inference from what is known of the events and of the nature of primitive Christianity. In Part I Taylor argues that the crisis would have seemed the probable occasion of the fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of the Temple, which would be followed by his eschatological return and the estab lishment of God's kingdom. If the desecration of the Temple was the necessary pre cursor to this, the Christians would not have sought to impede it. Furthermore, the popular movements ranged against the Roman forces would have required leadership whose activities challenged Christian professions about Jesus, and whose authority the Christians could not have acknowledged. The crisis would therefore have alien ated the Christians within Palestinian Judaism, and exposed their beliefs to falsification. In Part II Taylor examines the eschatological discourse in Mark 13, and argues that it is substantially a Christian response to the Caligula crisis. The expecta tion of idolatrous desecration of the Temple before its destruction, and the experience of alienation and persecution, and of heightened eschatological anticipation, reflect the period when the Roman advance was awaited. The recognition that the end was not yet, with consequent separation of the profanation of the Temple from the escha tological return of Christ, reflects the aftermath when the Palestinian Christians were adjusting to the delay in the parousia of Christ.