In the Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24:15, Jesus warns his followers that there will be a sign which implies the coming destruction of Jerusalem. He called in “the abomination of desolation” and references the OT prophet Daniel. Many believed that Daniel’s prophecy about a desecration of the temple was fulfilled in 167 BC, when Antiochus Epiphanes, a descendent of that Greek conquest by Alexander the Great, invaded the temple, erected an altar to Zeus and sacrificed pigs on it. Thus making it defiled. Jesus used this common image from an Old Testament background to describe a similar event which would happen sometime after his prophecy. So what event could he have been predicting?
There are many theories about what the sign could have been. It would need to be something that preceded the siege of Jerusalem and its destruction in 70 AD to fit the context. Anything that would indicate the certainty of Rome’s devastating response to the Jewish rebellion could have served this purpose. Some scholars theorize that the advancing Roman armies that would lay siege to the city, could be anticipated as a force that would eventually desecrate the sanctuary. However, intra-Jewish fighting between forces seeking to rebel and those hoping to stay aligned with Rome brought large scale death to the city long before the Roman legions arrived. In particular, Jewish forces pushing for rebellion (“zealots”) waged a bloody conflict in an around the temple (ca. 66 AD.) During this battle blood flowed through the temple in a way that could have not only brought defilement but would have prefigured the devastating nature of the war to come.
Flavius Josephus (37-100 AD), was an ancient Jewish century historian whose writing forms some of our most important knowledge of first century Jewish culture. He wrote about the Jewish rebellion against Rome in 66 AD, which culminated in the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 70 AD in his book, The Jewish Wars. Several passages cast interesting insight into way in which this bloody civil war could have been viewed as a sign that would warn of coming destruction. In this sense, the conflict instigated by the zealots could have been viewed as an “abomination of desolation” and served as a warning that it was time to quickly exit the city.
Jewish Wars iv.3.12. “When any of the zealots were wounded, he went up into the temple, and defiled that sacred floor with his blood, insomuch that one may say it was their blood alone that polluted our sanctuary.”
J.W. iv.5.1. “They ran through those with their swords who desired them to remember the relation there was between them, and begged of them to have regard to their common temple. ….And now the outer temple was all of it overflowed with blood; and that day, as it came on, they saw eight thousand five hundred dead bodies there.“
J.W. iv.5.2 “They proceeded to that degree of impiety, as to cast away their dead bodies without burial, although the Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun. I should not mistake if I said that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the destruction of the city, and that from this very day may be dated the overthrow of her wall, and the ruin of her affairs, whereon they saw their high priest, and the procurer of their preservation, slain in the midst of their city.“
The Fourth Century church historian, Eusebius wrote that many Christians who were living in Jerusalem fled the city because they had been warned by an “oracle.” Perhaps, they read or remembered the words of Jesus in the Olivet discourse and fled the city after this, or some similar incident.
H.E. ii.5.3. “But the people of the church in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation, vouchsafed to approved men there before the war, to leave the city and to dwell in a certain town of Perea called Pella.“