Fascinating

Light From the Past

Israel has recently put on display coins which archaeologists have recovered from the Temple Mount. These are issues which date from the time of the Roman siege and razing of the Temple in AD 68--70.

The destruction of Jerusalem in general and the Temple in particular represented the only eschatological judgement human history has seen since Noah's Flood. It was the last days of the Jewish Kingdom and the Old Covenant. Foretold repeatedly by the prophets, it was finally announced as imminent by John the Baptist and confirmed as final and irrevocable by our Lord in the last days of His life upon earth. There had been no divine judgement like it previously; there has been none like it since.

Therefore, archaeological discoveries of the occasion are always of great interest. Josephus describes the fire that raged as the Temple burned to be so hot that metal construction melted. Seventy coins within the temple precincts at the time of the siege have been put on public display in Jerusalem. Some are melted, underscoring the extremities of those days.

The coins sit inside a glass case, some melted down to unrecognizable chunks of pockmarked and carbonized bronze from the flames that destroyed the Temple.

"These really show us the impact of the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century," said Gabriela Bijovsky, an antique coin expert from Israel Antiquities Authority. "These are a very vivid, dramatic example of that destruction."

"The most important coins we have are from those last four or five years of the rebellion against the Roman army, and one coin we found was actually minted very close to the destruction of the Second Temple," she said. The coins were excavated from an ancient street below the Temple Mount, experts said. Archaeologists had to sift through debris and remove boulders thrown off the Temple Mount during the Roman raid before they found the road and the hoard of coins.

What is equally intriguing, however, is the international or global range of coins discovered in Jerusalem at that time:

The coins are part of a larger exhibition in Jerusalem's Archaeological Garden, showing a collection of antique coins that have been uncovered over the past three decades.

The exhibition shows not only coins minted in Jerusalem during the rebellion but also European, North African and Persian coins that were found around the holy site from various periods.

"This just shows the international character of the city," Katz said. "It shows the importance of Jerusalem to generations of people ... the importance of Jerusalem never faded away for Jews, Christians and Muslims," she said.

Jerusalem was truly the spiritual centre of the ancient Roman world as both Jews and God-fearers went on pilgrimage to the holy city to worship the Lord. It was no backwater--a key reason why the Roman imperium could not allow a revolt in Galilee and Judea to be uncrushed. The scorched earth and razing policies of the Roman retaliation are testament to the wider influence of Jerusalem throughout the Empire.

Above this political perspective, however, lies the overarching purposes of God. The Commonwealth of Israel was to be terminated forever. An end had to be made--and so the Romans acted as God's servants to carry out exactly what His hand and His purpose had predestined to occur.