219 ON JESUS’ LAST WEEK(S) pleted beforehand. However, leaving aside the findings presented so far, this argument is shaky, as can be shown from the works of Jose- phus. The first title is The War of the Jews (or formerly The Capture of Jerusalem), and the content spans from the Maccabean crisis until the fall of Masada in 74 CE, Vespasian’s temple of Peace in 75, and the destruction of the Onias temple in Egypt soon afterwards. But in the Antiquities, published in 93 CE, his scope is different: this “ History of the Jews” begins with a paraphrase of the Bible from Genesis, and ends in 66, just before the events which led to the war. In his autobiography, an appendix to the Antiquities, he exposes at length his credentials as a Jewish leader, with only a casual allusion to the victory of Titus in Judea in 70 (Life § 422). So, after some 25 years, the destruction was not a major issue any more. In Against Apion, published two or three years later, Josephus writes that the priestly archives in Jerusalem had been restored, as after the previous wars (Ag. Ap. 1:34), and that sacrifices were still being offered for the emperor (2:77). Indeed, something of the Temple had survived until the Bar Kokhba war (132-135) and the founding of Aelia Capitolina 25. According to the Synoptics (Matt 24,3 and par.), Jesus foretells the ruin of the Temple to the disciples: “There will not be left here one stone upon another.” In Luke 19,41-44, he weeps over Jerusalem, but with many Biblical allusions to the ruin of 587 BCE 26. These pas- sages hardly refer to the war in 70 CE, for at that time Jerusalem was not wiped out. In Matt 24,15-16 (and par.), Jesus foretells the fulfillment of the prophecy of Dan 9,27 (Greek): “And in the Temple will be the ‘des- olating sacrilege’”. The original reference is to the defilement of the Temple in 167 BCE, when Antiochus Epiphanes ordered a monthly sacrifice on his own behalf. The Synoptics do not have a unified presentation (table 2). Matt and Mark are close to the prophecy. Two situations of major defil- ement are possible. Firstly, the attempt by Caligula around 40 CE, to have his statue set up in the Temple, but the project, which elicited universal opposition from the Jews, was interrupted by his death. The second situation was created by Hadrian’s policy to transform Jeru- See NODET – TAYLOR, Origins of Christianity, 173-177. 25 See C.H. DODD, “The Fall of Jerusalem and the ‘Abomination of Des- 26 olation’ ”, More New Testament Studies (Manchester 1968) 69-83.