About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Olivet Discourse

Encyclopedia : O : OL : OLI : Olivet Discourse

Major events in Jesus' life in the Gospels
This box: [ view] • [ talk] • [ edit]
The Olivet discourse is a passage found in the Synoptic Gospels of Mark (at [Mark 13]) and of Matthew (at [Matthew 24-26:1]), occurring just before the narrative of Jesus' passion begins with the Anointing of Jesus, and in the narrative is a discourse or sermon given by Jesus on the Mount of Olives, hence the name. The remarkably similar discourse appearing at the same narrative location in the remaining Synoptic Gospel - that of Luke (at [Luke 21]) - is thought by most scholars to be intended to be the same event, but those Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy argue that this cannot be so because the discourse in Luke is set on the Temple Mount instead; in the eyes of Christians believing in inerrancy, Jesus gave the same talk, at roughly the same time, in two different locations. According to most textual scholars, the versions of the discourse in Matthew and Luke are based on the version in Mark.

The discourse contains a number of statements which at face value appear to refer to future events, and most modern Christians interpret as having been intended as prophecy. The topics involved are:

  1. The future destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem
  2. Tribulation amongst the nations of the world
  3. Cosmic signs of an impending coming of the/a Son of Man
According to many scholars, the dating of the Gospels makes it likely that the first few of these prophecies are cases of vaticinium ex eventu - prophecy being made by the Gospel authors after the events had already happened. The setting on the Mount of Olives is also thought by some scholars to have not been incidental, but a quite deliberate echo of a passage in the Book of Zechariah which refers to the location as the place where a final battle would occur between the Jewish Messiah and their opponents.

Contents

Content of the discourse

The Destruction of the Temple and Its Signs

According to the narrative of the synoptic Gospels, a (anonymous) disciple remarks on the greatness of Herod's Temple, a building thought to have been some 15 stories high and likely to have been adorned with gold, silver, and other precious items (Kilgallen 245). However, the narrative goes on to state that Jesus says that not one stone would remain intact in the building, and the whole thing would be reduced to rubble. In the synoptics, when the disciples ask for a sign to look out for that the event would be imminent, Jesus first warns them about things that would happen that should not be interpreted as signs, and instead just as birth pains (some older translations read sorrows): The synoptics go on to state that Jesus then warned the disciples that the sign would be them seeing the Abomination of Desolation where it does not belong. The Gospel of Mark cryptically adds that the reader would understand what this meant, but explains no further. This is generally considered to be a reference to a passage from the Book of Daniel ([Dan 9:27],[11:31],[12:11]) where an anointed one arrives, is cut off, and subsequently another group arrive, desolating Jerusalem and setting up an abomination in the Temple. Although the passage in the Book of Daniel claims to be a prophecy dictated to Daniel by Gabriel during the Babylonian captivity, most scholars believe that the Book was pseudepigraphically written in the mid second century BC, and that rather than being a genuine prophecy the passage was a vaticinium ex eventu, written as a polemic against the shrine to Zeus set up in the temple in 168 BC by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, which had a Pagan altar added onto the Altar of Holocausts (Brown et al. 624 and Miller 44). Exactly how the synoptics meant it to be reinterpreted or interpreted, however, is a matter of debate; some Christians think it to be a successful prophecy about Titus' destruction of the temple in 70AD, see Preterism, and others think it to be a reference to a future Antichrist, while many scholars see it as another vaticinium ex eventu about Caligula's attempt to put a statue of himself or of Jupiter into the temple in 37-41AD (Brown 144).

The Tribulation

As well as the destruction of the temple, Jesus is described by the synoptics as warning that when the abomination of desolation is seen, the denizens of Judea should flee to the mountains as a matter of such urgency that they shouldn't even return to get things from their homes, or turn round just to pick up a coat. Jesus is also described as warning that if it happened in winter, things would be even more intolerable, and that either way things would be singularly dreadful, and worse than anything that had gone before. More specifically, Jesus is portrayed as fleshing out these vague references to a situation by stating that the sun would darken, and the moon would not give off light, that the stars would fall, and the powers that are in heaven would be shaken. Noticeably, a literal reading of this would contradict modern scientific understandings of gravity and the universe in general - stars cannot fall because fall has no meaning in homogeneous and isotropic space, which is what the universe appears to be; however it fits well with scientific thought in the first century.

The statements about the sun and moon sound quite apocalyptic, and many Christians have interpreted this as a prediction of the end of the world. Technically, it appears to be a quote from the Book of Isaiah (at [Isaiah 13:10]), where it is used in a manner that most scholars regard as obviously being intended as a metaphor, and is in a passage clearly concerning the fall of Babylon. The stars falling from the sky is also a quotation from the Book of Isaiah, though taken from a different passage ([Isaiah 34:4]), which is generally discussing how, in the eyes of the author, God's judgement would occur on all the nations of the world. Some scholars think that the intended audiences of the Synoptic Gospels were meant to be aware that these were quotations, and where they were from, and that by using these two quotations together, the Roman domination of Israel was deliberately being compared to that during the Babylonian captivity of six centuries previous, and that it was being predicted that the Roman empire would fall, and the domination end, just as Babylon had.

The Coming of the Son of Man

The Synoptic portray Jesus as stating that after the tribulation and ominous cosmic visuals, the/a son of man would be seen arriving in the clouds with power and with glory, and that this would be accompanied by the angels. Like the cosmic visuals mentioned previously, this also are considered by almost all scholars to have been a quotation from the Old Testament, in this case a passage in the Book of Daniel, where it appears in wider context of a discussion about a kingdom which would devour the whole world but be replaced by an everlasting kingdom of the/a Son of Man ([Daniel 7:13-14], also 2 Esdras 13:1-3), and so many scholars see the passage in the Synoptics as having been intended to refer to the Roman Empire and a prophecy of its destruction. Many Christians have seen this as a prediction of Roman tyranny being overcome by Christianity, and although in reality the Romans were overcome by a large influx of nomadic tribes from northern Europe, it is at least accurate in that it correctly predicts the end of Rome; however, many philosophers argue that the end of an Empire is one of the easiest things to predict - in many philosophies, everything that has a beginning has an end - and so does not require any divine knowledge or special prophetic skill.

Obviously by regarding it as a reference to the Roman Empire, the lack of any historic references to someone arriving after the empire's fall via clouds, and the lack of visibly large volumes of angels at the time, has made most people taking this interpretation to consider these references to also be allegorical. Consequently, amongst those Christians who prefer reading the text more literally, this is taken to refer to some other event, and a reference to a Second Coming. Although the mainstream position today, historically it was the gnostics who read the text as allegory, and the historical Christian orthodoxy favoured the interpretation that the text referred to a second coming, which caused the belief in a second coming to be one of the main points written into the standard Creeds. In modern times, supporters of the more literal readings tend to also be highly politically conservative, and such supporters have often argued that it is the UN or the EU that is the supposedly wicked empire that would devour the world.

The synoptics also describe Jesus as stating that the elect would be gathered together from across the earth and heaven; technically it states that they would be gathered from the four winds, from the furthest part of the earth to the furthest part of heaven, and so, although most scholars, and almost all Christians, read this as meaning that the gathering would include people not only from earth but also from heaven, a few Christians, mostly modern American Protestant Premillennialists, have interpreted it to mean that people would be gathered from earth and taken to heaven - a concept known in their circles as the rapture. Most scholars see this as a quotation of a passage from the Book of Zechariah in which God (and the contents of heaven in general) are predicted to come to earth and live among the elect, who by necessity are gathered together for this purpose ([Zechariah 2:10]). According to the ancient gnostics, this passage was to be interpreted as implying that the teachings of the son of man would automatically bring those who heard and fully understood them (the elect) together, in much the same way as people learning about subjects like biochemistry tend to automatically gather themselves together in places such as universities, for purely logical and functional reasons, rather than just being scattered homogeneously throughout the normal population.

Immediacy

According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus stated that the things discussed in the discourse were nigh, even at the doors, and that this generation would not pass until the things discussed in the discourse had happened. This has historically been one of the hardest passages to resolve with a literal interpretation of the text, since at face value it would seem to imply that the disciples would still need to be alive today, and so awkward legends arose suggesting that the disciples that Jesus was speaking to did not die but remain alive, eventually merging into legends like that of a Wandering Jew and of Prester John. Indeed, C.S. Lewis called this "the most embarrassing verse in the Bible" C.S. Lewis The World’s Last Night and Other Essays. More scholarly explanations for how this could be justified have concentrated on the fact that, in Koine Greek, the word used for generation can also be used to mean race, and so technically could just mean that the Jews would still be in existence, or even just that humans would be.

The problem is compounded by the fact that in one of the earliest known Christian documents, the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul seems to envisage that he and the Christians he was writing to would see the resurrection of the dead within their own lifetimes: "we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep" [4:15-17]). Many scholars argue that the Second Letter to the Thessalians was forged, essentially for the sole purpose of contradicting the first epistle. In the ancient Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is described as saying that the kingdom will not come by watching for it, and it will not be something able to be physically pointed out to tourists ([Thomas 113], see also [Luke 17:20-21], [2 Tim 2:17-18]), and that the new world is already here but that people just can't see it ([Thomas 51]).

In modern times, most scholars and Christians think that the Olivet Discourse is just using the apocalyptic language of his time symbolically, as many Jewish prophets did. Nevertheless, throughout history there have been many groups who read the discourse literally, and Christian thought has always included groups who say that the end of the world is nigh, some even giving exact dates which have since come and gone without an intervening end of world, see also Second Coming#Predictions and claims of the Second Coming.

See also

Notes

References

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: