A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  Exploring Culture 14.1 Jerusalem and the Lureof the “Holy Cross”

  Devout men and women had been making the voyage to see this piece of timber since the mid‐fourth century CE. Whether these visitors were being sold a fraudulent experience can certainly be debated since no one in the Roman Empire – Christian, Jew, or other – ever cared to talk about the “true cross” until four hundred years after Jesus’ death. In fact, the earliest testimony historians have been able to find which refers to it dates to the mid‐fourth century CE. There is every reason to be skeptical about whether Christians actually discovered a real board, a plank, or splinter from the felled first‐century tree that had been used in Jesus’ crucifixion.

  Still, tradition can be a powerful way to create a community among believers, especially those who are scattered over long distances. That is what happened among Christians of the Mediterranean who, after the mid‐fourth century, pined to see Jerusalem and worship with fellow Christians at the site where they believed Jesus was resurrected. The faithful who made the journey, must have been overwhelmed with bliss. What we know from our contemporary textual sources is that it could also bring out the worst in people.

  According to the Latin travel journal of one wealthy woman, Egeria, who sailed from the western Mediterranean to Jerusalem in the late fourth century CE, deacons at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher had to act as ersatz bouncers to keep pilgrims from pirating pieces of the cross. Egeria notes that, on one specific occasion, “one [of the pilgrims] bit off a piece of the holy wood and stole it away. For this reason,” she explained, “the deacons stand around and keep watch in case anyone dares to do the same again” (Travels 37.2, trans. by J. Wilkinson [1971]).

  By Justinian’s time, when the anonymous pilgrim from Piacenza visited Jerusalem, reverence still pulled people to this supposed fragment of the “true cross” – and the nature of the visit had become even more theatrical. “You can see the place where [Jesus] was crucified,” our anonymous pilgrim reports, “and on the actual rock there is a bloodstain.” The wood of the cross itself was kept in the courtyard of the basilica in a small side room. “We venerated it with a kiss,” the pilgrim says. This ritual of adoration extended to “the title [plaque] which [the executioners] had placed over the Lord’s head, on which they wrote ‘This is the King of the Jews.’” It also included “the sponge and reed mentioned in the Gospel [on which Jesus had been offered a drink of wine]” and “the onyx cup which [Jesus] had blessed at supper” (Account of the Piacenza Pilgrim 20, trans. by J. Wilkinson [1977]).

  A generation later, in 612–614 CE, when Jerusalem was taken by the Sasanian army, the Christian pilgrim‐industry was thrown into disrepair. It also lit a fuse under the Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–640 CE) to plot to recapture the city.

  The Temple Mount in Jerusalem at the dawn of the seventh century CE

  Jews who saw or heard Christians processing around Jerusalem must have been both fascinated and frustrated. While Christian pilgrims and pious residents were marching from Constantine’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher to Justinian’s New Church, stopping at other holy sites inside and outside the city walls, the most sacred site for Jews, the ruined Temple Mount, remained an urban eyesore (Figure 14.1). Justinian’s own massive New Church, perched on its natural and man‐made hill, not only towered over the city. It looked down on this urban scar, an open wound for many members of the Jewish community who stood in the shadow of the Temple platform and Justinian’s Jerusalem.

  Figure 14.1 The Temple platform, where two Jewish Temples once stood until the second was destroyed by a Roman army in 70 CE. Almost every Christian Roman emperor from the politically accommodating, like Constantine, to hard‐liners like Theodosius chose to leave it barren and desolate. In doing so, all asserted the political and cultural superiority of Christianity over Jewish history by leaving this important Jewish worship place in ruins. Beginning with the Umayyad ruler ‘Abd al‐Malik, Muslim rulers of Jerusalem – looking to distinguish themselves from other “People of the Book” – would communicate the same message taking a slightly different approach. Instead of leaving the platform in ruins, ‘Abd al‐Malik would erect the shrine, the Dome of the Rock, directly in its center. By the tenth century CE, a mosque would be constructed nearby (off to the right). The site is known in Arabic as Al Haram al Sharif (“The Noble Sanctuary”).

  Photo credit: Author’s photo, 2007.

  This urban effect had been carefully stage‐managed and planned. Both the Christian emperor Constantine and the Christian Justinian had decided not to invest any of the empire’s money in the ruined Temple Mount. In doing so, they argued with their silence, as countless Christian writers would allege in their sermons and writings, that Jesus’ death had rendered Jewish worship obsolete and outdated.

  In Justinian’s time, these were not novel ideas; they already had a long history. Ever since the first Gospel had been composed, sometime around 70 CE and attributed to an author named “Mark,” Jesus’ followers had wrestled with the Jewish roots of their movement. Debates about how much or even whether Jesus’ Jewish and gentile followers should embrace Jewish ritual and tradition led to periods of vicious in‐fighting. These conflicts would become particularly acute during the first‐century war with Rome. They would also plan the seeds of the pernicious anti‐Jewish ideology which would circulate later.

  Mark’s story about Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem exposes this undercurrent of thinking, one which would swell into more open hostility against Jews in later centuries. “Mark,” written about a generation after Jesus’ death, describes what happened in Jerusalem this way: After making the tiring journey from the Galilee region, Jesus visits the Temple; but the hour is rather later, and so he plans to return in the morning. The next day, before Jesus ascends the Temple Mount – when he will famously cleanse it of its moneychangers and curse their allegedly corrupt practices – “Mark” recounts the following odd story:

  On the following day, when they came from Bethany, [Jesus] was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple…

  (Mark 11.12–14 [NRSV])

  Jesus and his disciples leave Jerusalem later that evening, but in the morning, one of them makes a shocking discovery. “Rabbi, look!” Peter calls out. “The fig tree that you cursed has withered” (Mark 11.21 [NRSV]).

  Why has Jesus taken out his hunger pains on an innocent fruit tree for not offering him breakfast? The episode is made stranger still – and Jesus’ anger, even more irrational – by the inclusion of an authorial comment: “It was not the season for figs.” Odd though it is to us, the tale must have comforted Mark’s readers and listeners. Mark’ story about the death of the tree, cursed never to bear figs again, frames Jesus’ climactic encounter with the Temple moneychangers. “Mark” has used Jesus’ interaction with the fig tree to “predict” the Temple’s destruction – not exactly a difficult bit of mental magic since the Gospel was likely written after the Roman army had already destroyed the building.

  For Jewish members of Mark’s community, people who lived through the turbulent 70s CE, “Jesus’ words” must have been comfortingly reassuring. The message that they heard in the Gospel was that Jesus “knew” the Second Temple had to be destroyed. In fact, it was as if Jesus had eerily foreseen the struggles and wars of the late first century CE, a period when every Jew in Jerusalem – not just Jesus’ followers – was now confronted with the horror of having watched a foreign army decimate their holiest site. Mark’s conviction, expressed in the vivid storytelling of his Gospel, was that the loss of the Temple was part of God’s plan.

  Even though Mark’s community never referred to itself as “Christians,” their unique explanation for understanding what happened to the Temple would morph into an
expressly Christian worldview. It would also have deleterious effects on Jewish–Christian relations. In the fourth century CE, Constantine would leave the Temple Mount barren to confirm that its fate was exactly as Mark’s “Jesus” predicted it was be. Two centuries later, Emperor Justinian created an newer, grander focal point for the city, doubling down on the specious assertion that the Christian faith had “replaced” Jewish worship.

  This long backstory helps explain why, in 630 CE, when Jerusalem was recaptured, the Christian emperor Heraclius maintained the same “Jerusalem policy” as his Christian predecessors. Heraclius had waged a heroic military campaign. Over the course of nearly six years, he and his army had repelled Sasanian forces from lands formerly controlled by Constantinople. The emperor himself is alleged to have marched into the Sasanian capital, at Ctesiphon (outside modern Baghdad), and recovered the fragments of the “holy cross of the Lord” which the Sasanian raiders had pilfered from Jerusalem (Sebeos, History 29.99, trans. by R. Bedrosian [1985]). Yet even as these pieces of wood were being gloriously restored to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher – “There was no small amount of joy on the day they entered Jerusalem,” the seventh‐century writer Sebeos reports, writing in Armenian – centuries of rubble at the old Temple Mount remained.

  The opinions of Jews who longed to recover the Temple did not matter to Christian politicians who had been raised to believe that Jesus had “predicted” its destruction all along.

  Jesus’ end‐time preaching and Jerusalem before the seventh century CE

  The events of 70 CE would shape Late Antique history in yet other profoundly important ways related to Christian hope for the Second Coming of Jesus.

  After the Roman attack, as the Temple Mount collapsed into a wasteland, a desolate site where no one could afford to be caught wandering, Jesus’ followers faced a difficult decision: Should they continue to embrace Jesus’ Jewish heritage and identify themselves as “Jews,” or should they articulate a new name for themselves, something distinct? Not coincidentally, the first appropriation of the word “Christian” by Jesus’ followers dates to this period, after 70 CE.

  A new name, however, did not soothe the crippling anxiety which many of them had about the missing Temple. “Mark” had tried to ease their concerns by suggesting Jesus had foreseen this period of difficulty, too. In a key monologue, set in Jerusalem, Jesus is alleged to have said:

  “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. … But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains. … So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”

  (Mark 13.7–8, 14, 29–30 [NRSV])

  The passage is filled with apocalyptic rhetoric. In fact, in many scholars’ opinion, it is very close to preserving the very end‐time teachings that may have earned Jesus a questionable reputation in the early first century CE. As Jesus’ speech appears here in “Mark,” however, one detail raises a red flag for historians. “Let the reader understand” is the author’s interruption, not Jesus’. It cannot be a part of Jesus’ speech because Jesus, we know, never wrote anything down.

  Why does the author “Mark” interrupt this dramatic story at such a crucial point? One answer is that he wants readers to understand its relevance to their current situation. For although Jesus may have taught his disciples that the end was near in their own lifetime (“Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place”), those who lived after his execution knew differently. Nothing had happened. By choosing to dramatize Jesus’ speech now, during the war with Rome (66–74 CE), Mark reassures his community that the end was finally coming: amid the “wars and rumors of war” in the late first century CE, as “nation [was rising] against nation.”

  Whether Mark was quoting Jesus cannot be known. Actual first‐hand testimony, written down in Jesus’ lifetime, preserving Jesus’ own words, does not exist. And yet, even if we admit the limitations of our evidence, we can still draw an important historical conclusion from “Mark’s” text. By the late first century CE, some of Jesus’ followers believed that the Messiah’s return would happen in Jerusalem.

  Two decades after the Gospel of Mark was written, the author of Revelation would make a similar claim. (According to the text, the writer was a man named John from Patmos, an island off the coast of Asia Minor.) In his writings, this John describes a powerful vision that came to him:

  Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away [in advance of the Second Coming of the Messiah]. … Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true”

  (Revelation 21.1–6 [NRSV])

  As this passage shows, less than a generation after “Mark’s” time, still more followers of Jesus were convinced that the Messiah’s return was intimately intertwined with visions of Jerusalem, “the holy city.” These fantastic scenes, which the writer calls a “prophecy,” were revealed to him by God through the work of “an angel” (Revelation 1.1) – a Greek word which means messenger (aggelos [ἄγγελος] pronounced “angellos”). According to John, God’s “messenger” came to him and told him, “Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this” (Revelation 1.19).

  End‐time preaching and Jerusalem during the seventh century CE

  This text presents challenges for historians because its visions – of angels and demons and of stories loaded with symbolism – are so utterly unmoored from reality. In one chapter, combining prose and poetry, the writer invokes the help of another “messenger” to predict the downfall of “Babylon.” “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!/It has become a dwelling place of demons…” (Revelation 18.1 [NRSV]), the author wails. The reference is not to the bygone Babylonian Empire but to the world of the early Christians, living in the Roman Empire.

  The text of Revelation presents the complicated struggle of Jesus’ followers trying to find their way in the cosmopolitan world of Rome as a spiritual battle with end‐time dimensions against demonic enemies, who are characterized as being offsprings of the “whore of Babylon.”

  Six hundred years after Jesus’ alleged prediction of an imminent catastrophe (“Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place”), the belief that Christians were witnessing the final times remained a strong one. To Christians of the Emperor Heraclius’ reign, for example, the Persian capture of the “true cross” and the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem looked like an incontrovertible sign that the world was rushing fast towards its long‐prophesied doomsday.

  One writer, Theophylact Simocotta, expressed this very anxiety. Born in the late sixth century CE, in Egypt (very little about him is known outside his monumental work of history, not even his exact birth date or birth year), Theophylact lived at the time when news of the Sasanian army’s attack on Jerusalem began to spread. He also lived to see Emperor Heraclius, in 620 CE, wage a successful counter‐attack. Writing his History shortly thereafter, Theophylact uses the figure of the Sasanian King Khusrow II to reassure Roman readers that the emperor’s victory was not only foreordained; it was a heaven‐sent sign that would hasten
the end. “Be assured that troubles will flow back in turn against you Romans,” Khusrow II says. The king continues:

  The Babylonian race [the Sasanians] will hold the Roman state in its power for a threefold cyclic group‐of‐seven years [ancient Greek can express this unit of measurement in one word: hebdomad]. Thereafter you Romans will enslave Persians for a fifth group‐of‐seven years. When these very things have been accomplished, the day without evening will dwell among mortals and the expected fate will achieve power, when the forces of destruction will be handed over to dissolution and those of the better life hold sway.

  (Theophylact, History 5.15.5–7, trans. by M. and M. Whitby [1986])

  Theophylact’s readers must have delighted in the speech since they knew, from their own vantage in the middle of the seventh century CE, that Khusrow’s “prophecy” had come true. The king had died, a Christian emperor had overturned “the Babylonian race,” and Sasanian Persia no longer threatened the people of the empire.

  The emotional effect of the king’s “prophecy” must have also been reassuring, among certain Christians. For, according to Theophylact’s script, the emperor’s victory and the return of the “true cross” to Jerusalem heralded a crystal‐clear message from God: “The day without evening” – the last day – was finally near. Drawing upon belief in an imminent Second Coming, Theophylact cast a golden, almost heavenly glow on the world of the seventh‐century CE eastern Mediterranean. That light radiated upon Jerusalem.