Has the Old Covenant been 'revoked'?
Christ fulfilled the Mosaic Covenant and established the New Covenant. Any other interpretation else is 'another gospel.'
Christ fulfilled the Mosaic Covenant and established the New Covenant. Any other interpretation else is 'another gospel.'
‘Never Revoked’
In 1980, John Paul II claimed that the Mosaic Covenant was “never revoked.”1
Since then, this statement—which was, in fact, simply a passing statement in the context—has been treated as if it were an ex cathedra definition through which all doctrine must be understood; and alternatives are dubbed “supersessionism” or “replacement theology,” and treated as if they are condemned heresies.
A common way to defend this “dual covenant” theology is by reference to St Paul’s words:
“For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.” (Romans 11.29)
However, this is a misapplication of the text. St Paul is not affirming the ongoing validity of the Mosaic Law or Covenant. In Romans 9–11, he explains how God remains faithful to his promises to the Jews—not by preserving the Old Covenant, but by offering them grace through the New Covenant in Christ.
The “calling” remains, but the means of salvation is not the Mosaic Covenant: it is Christ.
What was the Mosaic Covenant?
The Old Covenant, given to Moses at Mount Sinai, consisted of the Law—ceremonial, judicial, and moral—accompanied by promises and threats based on its observance.
According to the Old Testament itself, the Jewish people repeatedly broke this covenant and failed to keep the Law. On very many occasions, Holy Scripture notes that the Jewish people themselves made the Covenant “void”. While God permitted them to return to the Mosaic Covenant even after betraying him, he also promised a new covenant with them, which would replace “the covenant which they made void,” and which would not be subject to their voidability:
“I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Juda: Not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt […] But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel.” (Jer. 31:32).
The Epistle to the Hebrews makes this future transition explicit:
Now in saying a new, he hath made the former old. And that which decayeth and groweth old is near its end. (Hebrews 8.13)
As Cornelius a Lapide notes, even rabbinical sources acknowledged that the Messias would bring a new Law and Torah to replace the old. This is echoed in Midrash Rabbah, which distinguishes between the current Torah and “the Torah of the Messias,” without any indication that the former would continue unchanged.2
Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfilment of Jewish prophecies
Jesus Christ, coming at the expected time—recognised as such even by the Jews—fulfilled all that the Law and the Prophets foretold concerning the Messias. He established his Church upon St Peter and the Apostles as the Messianic Kingdom of God on Earth.
He inaugurated a New Covenant in his blood, which both the Prophet Jeremias and Rabbinic sources expected of the Messias. This fulfilled and terminated the Mosaic Law, such that its continued observance was without salvific value (and in time also became an implicit denial of the New Covenant).
Such is the infallible teaching of the Council of Florence and of Catholic tradition, as we shall see.
Was the Church a Gentile affair?
From the beginning, the Christian proclamation was a Jewish affair—although “Jewish” in a different sense to how the term is used today. The Jewish Apostles began preaching the advent and redemption wrought by the Jewish Messias in Jerusalem itself,3 where thousands of Jews were baptised.4 Even many of the Jewish priests accepted that Jesus as the Christ.5 From there, the preaching extended to the Gentiles, fulfilling the vocation of the Jewish people to be a “light to the Gentiles.”6
The fruit of this “light” was the fulfilment of various messianic prophecies amongst the Gentiles, including:
The banishment of idolatry7
The worship of the God of Abraham8
The recognition of the Jewish Messias as their King.9
St Athanasius underscores the profound irony: the Jews, called to be the light to the Gentiles, deny that the world has been illuminated by the very light that proceeded from themselves:
[T]hey see the heathen forsaking idols and setting their hopes through Christ on the God of Israel; why do they yet deny Christ Who after the flesh was born of the root of Jesse and reigns henceforward? Of course, if the heathen were worshipping some other god, and not confessing the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses, then they would do well to argue that God had not come.
But if the heathen are honoring the same God Who gave the law to Moses and the promises to Abraham—the God Whose word too the Jews dishonored, why do they not recognize or rather why do they deliberately refuse to see that the Lord of Whom the Scriptures prophesied has shone forth to the world and appeared to it in a bodily form? Scripture declares it repeatedly. ‘The Lord God has appeared to us,’ and again, ‘He sent forth His Word and healed them.’ And again, ‘It was no ambassador, no angel who saved us, but the Lord Himself.’
The Jews are afflicted like some demented person who sees the earth lit up by the sun, but denies the sun that lights it up! What more is there for their Expected One to do when he comes? To call the heathen? But they are called already. To put an end to prophet and king and vision? But this too has already happened. To expose the God-denyingness of idols? It is already exposed and condemned. Or to destroy death? It is already destroyed.
What then has not come to pass that the Christ must do? What is there left out or unfulfilled that the Jews should disbelieve so light-heartedly? The plain fact is, as I say, that there is no longer any king or prophet nor Jerusalem nor sacrifice nor vision among them; yet the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of God, and the Gentiles, forsaking atheism, are now taking refuge with the God of Abraham through the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.10
Thus the Church was revealed as the prophesied means by which the Jews were to be the light to the nations, and of reconciling all men—Jew and Gentile alike—with one another and with God, as members of Christ’s mystical Body.
This reconciliation, however, may be the source of some of the problems.
The exclusion of the Gentiles
Pope Pius XII, citing Ephesians 2:14–16, taught:
[B]y His blood, [Christ] made the Jews and Gentiles one, “breaking down the middle wall of partition... in his flesh” by which the two peoples were divided; and that He made the Old Law void “that He might make the two in Himself into one new man,” that is, the Church, and might reconcile both to God in one Body by the Cross.11
This is what Pope Pius XI meant when he said: “Spiritually, we are all semites.” Christians have not replaced for Jews, but are rather the body of men—made up of Jews and Gentiles together—who are the heirs to what the Old Covenant foreshadowed, and thus the true children of Abraham by faith.12
But this reconciliation—and the idea that the Mosaic Covenant has been fulfilled in a body uniting both Jews and Gentiles—is precisely what the opponents of so-called “replacement theology” refuse to accept.
The insistence on a “dual covenant” ultimately amounts to a demand for a continuing covenant with God apart from the Gentiles—a rejection of the unity established in Christ and realised in the Church, and recalling the recurring scriptural theme of a refusal to share such a special status with others.
But no-one is proposing that Gentiles have replaced the Jewish people as God’s chosen people: the true picture is that those who do not accept their own Messias have refused to remain as God’s chosen people in the Covenant as it exists today: a Covenant between God and all men, in Christ.
Is Judaism the religion of the Old Testament?
What we have just described—the founding of the Church by Christ and the inauguration of the New Covenant—was not the establishment of a non-Jewish religion in opposition to the Jewish religion. It is rather the continuation and elevation of the religion of the patriarchs and prophets. It is the fulfilment of the promises made to Abraham, and the universalisation of what was foreshadowed in type and figure, now brought to supernatural completion and made available for all men.
However, the implication is clear: if the Church is the true heir of the Old Testament religion, then post-Christian Judaism is not. This remains true regardless of any future conversion of the Jews, or any role that God may yet have for them.
This truth appears in two principal respects.
First: The Old Law was fulfilled and therefore finished
The Mosaic Covenant, the Law and its rites were instituted to prefigure Christ’s coming, his sacrifice and his Church—just as the Church’s rites signify those same fulfilled realities today. Once these promises had been fulfilled, the Covenant, Law and rites ceased—not through being destroyed, St Thomas writes, but “as being fulfilled through Christ’s Passion, being instituted by God as a figure of Christ.”13
This was also taught infallibly by the Council of Florence:
[The Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes, and teaches that the legal prescriptions of the Old Testament or the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, holy sacrifices, and sacraments, because they were instituted to signify something in the future, although they were adequate for the divine cult of that age, once our Lord Jesus Christ who was signified by them had come, came to an end and the sacraments of the New Testament had their beginning.14
The Old Covenant was founded on the Mosaic Law as one of its essential conditions. Once that Law was fulfilled and brought to an end by Christ, the Covenant itself necessarily ceased. Any claim to the contrary contradicts Scripture, tradition, and solemn magisterial teaching.
St Thomas explains further that all religious rites are professions of faith: but to continue observing the rites of the Old Law is to deny the truth of Christ and the Christian religion.15 A religion that makes such denials is not a continuation of the formerly true religion; it is a false religion.
Second: There is one Covenant, in Christ
The Old Covenant was provisional. It was not meant to endure after Christ established the new and eternal Covenant in his blood.
We have already seen that observing the Law and rites of the Mosaic Covenant constitutes a profession of faith which contradicts the Gospel. This is why the Council of Florence condemns, in even stronger terms, the idea that these rites and Laws could lead to salvation:
Whoever, after the passion, places his hope in the legal prescriptions and submits himself to them as necessary for salvation and as if faith in Christ without them could not save, sins mortally.
It does not deny that from Christ’s passion until the promulgation of the gospel they could have been retained, provided they were in no way believed to be necessary for salvation. But it asserts that after the promulgation of the gospel they cannot be observed without loss of eternal salvation.
Therefore it denounces all who after that time observe circumcision, the sabbath and other legal prescriptions as strangers to the faith of Christ and unable to share in eternal salvation, unless they recoil at some time from these errors.
Therefore it strictly orders all who glory in the name of Christian, not to practice circumcision either before or after baptism, since whether or not they place their hope in it, it cannot possibly be observed without loss of eternal salvation.16
This declaration leaves no room for so-called dual-covenant theology, nor for the continued observance of the Law and its rites without peril to the soul.
In addition to teaching that Christ’s Passion “made the Old Law void,” Pius XII also cited Pope St Leo the Great teaching the same:
“[B]y the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ.
“For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area—He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the House of Israel—the Law and the Gospel were together in force; but on the gibbet of His death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race.
“‘To such an extent, then,’ says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, ‘was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from the many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as Our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom.’
“On the Cross then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death, in order to give way to the New Testament of which Christ had chosen the Apostles as qualified ministers.17
This cessation of the Mosaic Law, and the Covenant that depended on it, was symbolised at Christ’s death by the tearing of the veil of the Temple (mentioned by all three synoptic Gospels). It was also demonstrated prior to 70 AD in various supernatural ways, as recorded both by The Talmud18 and by Josephus.19
The consistent witness of Sacred Scripture is that, as Our Lord declared, “No man cometh to the Father but by me,” namely Jesus Christ himself (John 14:6), and that “Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).
St. Peter, speaking to the Jews, proclaims: “There is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
St Paul insists that “by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified” (Rom. 3:20), and that “the law was our pedagogue in Christ […] but now that faith is come, we are no longer under a pedagogue” (Gal. 3:24–25).
The Church Fathers affirm the same. St Justin Martyr writes:
A covenant which comes after […] has put an end to the previous one […]. An eternal and final law—namely, Christ—has been given to us.20
God is not the one who broke his promises
What we have seen so far is not evidence that God reneged on his promises in the Mosaic Covenant. Rather, it shows that he gloriously fulfilled them, bringing the Old Covenant to completion in the New in Christ.
Further, the Old Covenant did not merely foreshadow the coming of Christ—it itself commanded its subjects to receive him:
The Lord thy God will raise up to thee a PROPHET of thy nation and of thy brethren like unto me: him thou shalt hear. […]
I will raise them up a prophet out of the midst of their brethren like to thee: and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him.
And he that will not hear his words, which he shall speak in my name, I will be the revenger. (Deut. 18.15, 18-19)
Moreover, the purpose of the Law was to teach mankind—as the pedagogue mentioned by St Paul—both the depth of our misery (through our inability to fulfil the Law itself) and our need for a Redeemer. The Mosaic Covenant did not justify by the Law alone, but by preparing souls—through sacrifice and obedience—to receive grace through anticipatory faith in the promised Redeemer. Without that grace, the Law was powerless to save.
However, since the coming of the Messias and the promulgation of the Gospel, such anticipatory faith is no longer possible: the figure has given way to the reality, and justifying faith must now be directed to Christ as he has been revealed. The Mosaic Covenant has been fulfilled, and therefore brought to an end. Anyone who still seeks justification through it is rejecting the anticipated redeemer, and placing himself under a covenant that can no longer save without him. Further, he is taking on a yoke he cannot bear:
I testify again to every man circumcising himself that he is a debtor to do the whole law. (Gal. 5.3)
[W]hosoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all. (James 2.10)
In short, this is to embrace a Law that accuses and condemns: without faith and grace, it cannot be observed, and instead serves as a testimony against those who reject the Redeemer it once foreshadowed.
Further, the Mosaic Covenant itself warns of terrible punishments for disobedience (Lev. 26)—warnings which, after 70 AD, appear to have been fulfilled to the letter.21 Those who wish to say that the Mosaic Covenant and its promises were never revoked do not seem to recall these promises.
Both Old and New Testaments affirm, failure to observe the whole Law brings condemnation. Now that the Messias has come, seeking justification through the Mosaic Law or Covenant is both futile, and a dangerous rejection of grace. The Old Covenant was fulfilled in Christ and brought to an end.
Like a caterpillar that gives way to a butterfly, the Mosaic Covenant has no independent existence as the Mosaic Covenant now that it has fulfilled its purpose. There is no separate path of salvation for the Jews, nor for anyone, apart from Christ and the Church. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism—and one New and Eternal Covenant in Christ and his Church.
Conclusion
However, the rupture is even deeper than it may appear.
Some assume a continuity between Judaism today and the religion of the Old Testament, by those who have “simply” failed to recognise Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ.
However, this overlooks the reality that what we call “Judaism” today is nothing of the kind. It is not simply the continuation of the pre-Christian Jewish religion, which was centred on animal sacrifice, the Levitical priesthood, and the Temple. That religion ceased to exist in AD 70, when the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. Without priesthood and sacrifice, the cultic heart of the Mosaic Covenant was gone.
This is why Christ, on two occasions in the Book of the Apocalypse, refers to those “who say they are Jews and are not.”22 (Apoc. 2.9, 3.9)
Thus, what we call “Judaism” today is a new religion: it could be called a version of the pre-Christian religion, but reimagined for a world without the Temple or sacrifice, and based not on the rites and sacrifices of Moses, but on the teaching of the Rabbis and the “Sages”—and continuing in their opposition to Jesus of Nazareth and the emerging Christian Church.
In the next part we will examine this religion, its origins and what “providential purpose” it has in the world today.
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“[T]he law shall go forth out of Sion, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.” (Micheas 4.2)
“They therefore that received his word were baptized: and there were added in that day about three thousand souls.” (Acts 2.41)
“And the word of the Lord increased: and the number of the disciples was multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly. A great multitude also of the priests obeyed the faith.” (Acts 6.7)
“And now saith the Lord, that formed me from the womb to be his servant, that I may bring back Jacob unto him, and Israel will not be gathered together: and I am glorified in the eyes of the Lord, and my God is made my strength.
“And he said: It is a small thing that thou shouldst be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to convert the dregs of Israel. Behold, I have given thee to be the light of the Gentiles, that thou mayst be my salvation even to the farthest part of the earth.” (Isaias 49.5-6)
Behold my servant, I will uphold him: my elect, my soul delighteth in him: I have given my spirit upon him, he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
He shall not cry, nor have respect to person, neither shall his voice be heard abroad. The bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not quench, he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not be sad, nor troublesome, till he set judgment in the earth, and the islands shall wait for his law.
Thus saith the Lord God that created the heavens, and stretched them out: that established the earth, and the things that spring out of it: that giveth breath to the people upon it, and spirit to them that tread thereon.
I the Lord have called thee in justice, and taken thee by the hand, and preserved thee. And I have given thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles: That thou mightest open the eyes of the blind, and bring forth the prisoner out of prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. I the Lord, this is my name: I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to graven things. (Isaias 42.1-8)
“And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will destroy the names of idols out of the earth, and they shall be remembered no more.” (Zacaharias 13.2)
“… the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the covering waters of the sea.” (Isaias 11.9)
“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared in the top of the mountains, and high above the hills: and people shall flow to it.
“And many nations shall come in haste, and say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob: and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth out of Sion, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.” (Micheas 4.1-2)
Cf. Isaias 54.2-3, 66.19-20, as well as all the texts of the Old Testament that speak of the kings of the nations submitting to and serving the Messias.
Rabbi Nissan Dovid Dubov writes, from the Jewish perspective:
“All the nations of the world will recognize Moshiach to be a world leader, and will accept his dominion.”
‘What Is the Jewish Belief About Moshiach (Messiah)?’ Chabad.org.
Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, n. 32.
The full text is as follows:
Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we are all Semites.
Is this anecdotal text genuine? It was published in newspapers France and Belgium in 1938, although it does not appear on the Vatican website, or in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. It was not reported by Osservatore Romano or the Vatican Radio, according to John Connelly, who adds:
Oesterreicher did include the little-known remarks of Pius XI to Belgian pilgrims in 1938. “It is not possible for Christians to participate in anti-Semitism,” the pope had said. “Anti-Semitism is inadmissible. We are spiritually Semites.” Oesterreicher portrayed these words as exemplifying the pope’s solidarity, and argued that Pius had gone beyond biblical language to turn explicitly against the racist formulation. But he also noted less-known segments of the pope’s statement that cast doubt on this interpretation. “The promise was made to Abraham and his progeny,” Pius had continued, noting that “Paul’s text… does not use the plural, but rather the singular. This promise is recognized in Christ, and by Christ in us we are members of his mystical body. By Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham.”
Pius XI’s references were to the letter to the Galatians, in part Paul’s polemic with other Christians of Jewish origin. A question Oesterreicher did not pose was this: If Christians are spiritually Semites, who then are the Jews? By implication, it would seem they are “ethnic” Semites, outside the body, disinherited; and if they evoked solidarity in Pius, it was the solidarity of a lost kinship. Jews as a living people were absent from the words the pope uttered to the Belgians. Some historians now project the words of Pius XI as an important statement in defense of the Jews, but at the time they were not published in the Vatican press, nor read on Vatican Radio. Karl Thieme accused Oesterreicher of wishful thinking. “Impromptu statements made to pilgrims, regardless how heartfelt,” he wrote, “are no substitute for a statement by the [church’s] teaching authority!”
John Connelly, ‘Nazi Racism & the Church: How converts showed the way to resist,’ Commonweal, 12 February 2012.
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia IIae, Q. 103, A. 4, Ad. 1
Council of Florence, ‘Bull of union with the Copts,’ Session XI, 4 February 1442.
“All ceremonies are professions of faith, in which the interior worship of God consists. Now man can make profession of his inward faith, by deeds as well as by words: and in either profession, if he make a false declaration, he sins mortally. Now, though our faith in Christ is the same as that of the fathers of old; yet, since they came before Christ, whereas we come after Him, the same faith is expressed in different words, by us and by them. For by them was it said: ‘Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,’ where the verbs are in the future tense: whereas we express the same by means of verbs in the past tense, and say that she ‘conceived and bore.’
“In like manner the ceremonies of the Old Law betokened Christ as having yet to be born and to suffer: whereas our sacraments signify Him as already born and having suffered. Consequently, just as it would be a mortal sin now for anyone, in making a profession of faith, to say that Christ is yet to be born, which the fathers of old said devoutly and truthfully; so too it would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old fulfilled with devotion and fidelity. Such is the teaching Augustine (Contra Faust. xix, 16), who says: ‘It is no longer promised that He shall be born, shall suffer and rise again, truths of which their sacraments were a kind of image: but it is declared that He is already born, has suffered and risen again; of which our sacraments, in which Christians share, are the actual representation.’
St Thomas, ibid.
Council of Florence, ibid.
Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, nn. 29-30
For example, The Talmud identifies four supernatural signs that indicated the end of God’s favour on the Temple religion about forty years before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD—and therefore, at around the time of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection:
“The western light” (the centre lamp of the Menorah) extinguishing itself, whereas previously it had been maintained longer than would be natural.
“The scarlet thread” which turned white in the rites of the Day of Atonement as a sign of the forgiveness of sin, ceasing to do so
“The lots” of the Day of Atonement yielding inauspicious results in a suspiciously consistent manner (against statistical probability), contrary to the previously auspicious results
The gates of the Temple opening themselves at night, which was interpreted as a portent of coming destruction.
Similarly, it seems that the fires of the Temple were maintained through supernatural means, but that this ceased around the time of Christ’s death and resurrection.
The Sages taught: During all forty years that Shimon HaTzaddik served as High Priest, the lot for God arose in the right hand. From then onward, sometimes it arose in the right hand and sometimes it arose in the left hand. Furthermore, during his tenure as High Priest, the strip of crimson wool that was tied to the head of the goat that was sent to Azazel turned white, indicating that the sins of the people had been forgiven, as it is written: “Though your sins be as crimson, they shall be white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). From then onward, it sometimes turned white and sometimes it did not turn white. Furthermore, the western lamp of the candelabrum would burn continuously as a sign that God’s presence rested upon the nation. From then onward, it sometimes burned and sometimes it went out.
And during the tenure of Shimon HaTzaddik, the fire on the arrangement of wood on the altar kept going strongly, perpetually by itself, such that the priests did not need to bring additional wood to the arrangement on a daily basis, except for the two logs that were brought in order to fulfill the mitzva of placing wood upon the arrangement. From then onward, the fire sometimes kept going strongly and sometimes it did not, and so the priests could not avoid bringing wood to the arrangement throughout the entire day. (Tractate Yoma, 39a)
Counter-missionary rabbis unconvincingly try to present as the result of something else, such as the death of Shimon HaTzaddik (Simeon the Righteous)—despite the fact that he seems to have died somewhere between 291-273 BC:
Without the presence of Shimon HaTzaddik among them, the Jewish people were no longer worthy of the many miracles that had occurred during his lifetime. For this reason, following his death, his brethren, the priests, refrained from blessing the Jewish people with the explicit name of God in the priestly blessing.
The Sages taught: During the tenure of Shimon HaTzaddik, the lot for God always arose in the High Priest’s right hand; after his death, it occurred only occasionally; but during the forty years prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, the lot for God did not arise in the High Priest’s right hand at all. So too, the strip of crimson wool that was tied to the head of the goat that was sent to Azazel did not turn white, and the westernmost lamp of the candelabrum did not burn continually.
And the doors of the Sanctuary opened by themselves as a sign that they would soon be opened by enemies, until Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai scolded them. He said to the Sanctuary: Sanctuary, Sanctuary, why do you frighten yourself with these signs? I know about you that you will ultimately be destroyed, and Zechariah, son of Ido, has already prophesied concerning you: “Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars” (Zechariah 11:1), Lebanon being an appellation for the Temple. (Tractate Yoma 39b)
However, the identity of this Shimon is sometimes confused, and some sources seem to place his death at around 30 AD. But given all the other evidence pointing to Christ’s fulfilment of the Law, this hardly seems significant—and even lends greater weight to the suggestion we are advancing. For example, it allows this uncanny account of his final days, indicating a change in God’s attitude towards the Temple rites, in the same period of 30-70 AD:
The Sages taught: During the year in which Shimon HaTzaddik died, he said to them, his associates: In this year, he will die, euphemistically referring to himself. They said to him: How do you know? He said to them: In previous years, on every Yom Kippur, upon entering the Holy of Holies, I was met, in a prophetic vision, by an old man who was dressed in white, and his head was wrapped up in white, and he would enter the Holy of Holies with me, and he would leave with me. But today, I was met by an old man who was dressed in black, and his head was wrapped up in black, and he entered the Holy of Holies with me, but he did not leave with me. He understood this to be a sign that his death was impending. Indeed, after the festival of Sukkot, he was ill for seven days and died. (Tractate Yoma 39b)
In any case, while all this is interesting, it is important to note that we do not base our faith on what post-Temple Judaism records in its Talmud or other books.
Josephus records many strange phenomena prior to the destruction of the Temple, in his work Wars of the Jews:
3. Thus were the miserable people persuaded by these deceivers, and such as belied God himself; while they did not attend nor give credit to the signs that were so evident, and did so plainly foretell their future desolation, but, like men infatuated, without either eyes to see or minds to consider, did not regard the denunciations that God made to them.
Thus there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year. Thus also before the Jews' rebellion, and before those commotions which preceded the war, when the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus, 21 [Nisan,] and at the ninth hour of the night, so great a light shone round the altar and the holy house, that it appeared to be bright day time; which lasted for half an hour. This light seemed to be a good sign to the unskillful, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes, as to portend those events that followed immediately upon it.
At the same festival also, a heifer, as she was led by the high priest to be sacrificed, brought forth a lamb in the midst of the temple.
Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner [court of the] temple, which was of brass, and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by twenty men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron, and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there made of one entire stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night. Now those that kept watch in the temple came hereupon running to the captain of the temple, and told him of it; who then came up thither, and not without great difficulty was able to shut the gate again. This also appeared to the vulgar to be a very happy prodigy, as if God did thereby open them the gate of happiness. But the men of learning understood it, that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord, and that the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies.
So these publicly declared that the signal foreshowed the desolation that was coming upon them. Besides these, a few days after that feast, on the one and twentieth day of the month Artemisius, [Jyar,] a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared: I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable, were it not related by those that saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals; for, before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities.
Moreover, at that feast which we call Pentecost, as the priests were going by night into the inner [court of the temple,] as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations, they said that, in the first place, they felt a quaking, and heard a great noise, and after that they heard a sound as of a great multitude, saying, ‘Let us remove hence.’
Josephus then recounts the appearance of “Jesus, the son of Ananus,” who—despite some superficial similarities—does not seem to have had any link whatsoever with Our Lord:
But, what is still more terrible, there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple, began on a sudden to cry aloud, ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!’
This was his cry, as he went about by day and by night, in all the lanes of the city. However, certain of the most eminent among the populace had great indignation at this dire cry of his, and took up the man, and gave him a great number of severe stripes; yet did not he either say any thing for himself, or any thing peculiar to those that chastised him, but still went on with the same words which he cried before.
Hereupon our rulers, supposing, as the case proved to be, that this was a sort of divine fury in the man, brought him to the Roman procurator, where he was whipped till his bones were laid bare; yet he did not make any supplication for himself, nor shed any tears, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip his answer was, ‘Woe, woe to Jerusalem!’ And when Albinus [for he was then our procurator] asked him, Who he was? and whence he came? and why he uttered such words? he made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him.
Now, during all the time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he said so; but he every day uttered these lamentable words, as if it were his premeditated vow, ‘Woe, woe to Jerusalem!’ Nor did he give ill words to any of those that beat him every day, nor good words to those that gave him food; but this was his reply to all men, and indeed no other than a melancholy presage of what was to come.
This cry of his was the loudest at the festivals; and he continued this ditty for seven years and five months, without growing hoarse, or being tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased; for as he was going round upon the wall, he cried out with his utmost force, ‘Woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!’ And just as he added at the last, ‘Woe, woe to myself also!’ there came a stone out of one of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and as he was uttering the very same presages he gave up the ghost.
Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, Book VI, Chapter V. Trans. William Whiston. Source.
St Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Ch. 11
Consider the truly terrifying “promises” of Leviticus 26:
But if you will not hear me, nor do all my commandments:
If you despise my laws, and contemn my judgments so as not to do those things which are appointed by me, and to make void my covenant:
I also will do these things to you.
I will quickly visit you with poverty, and burning heat, which shall waste your eyes, and consume your lives. You shall sow your seed in vain, which shall be devoured by your enemies. I will set my face against you, and you shall fall down before your enemies: and shall be made subject to them that hate you. You shall flee when no man pursueth you.
But if you will not yet for all this obey me: I will chastise you seven times more for your sins. And I will break the pride of your stubbornness: and I will make to you the heaven above as iron, and the earth as brass. Your labour shall be spent in vain: the ground shall not bring forth her increase: nor the trees yield their fruit. If you walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you for your sins. And I will send in upon you the beasts of the field, to destroy you and your cattle, and make you few in number: and that your highways may be desolate.
And if even so you will not amend, but will walk contrary to me: I also will walk contrary to you, and will strike you seven times for your sins. And I will bring in upon you the sword that shall avenge my covenant. And when you shall flee into the cities, I will send the pestilence in the midst of you. And you shall be delivered into the hands of your enemies, after I shall have broken the staff of your bread: so that ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and give it out by weight: and you shall eat, and shall not be filled,
But if you will not for all this hearken to me, but will walk against me, I will also go against you with opposite fury: and I will chastise you with seven plagues for your sins, so that you shall eat the flesh of your sons and of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, and break your idols. You shall fall among the ruins of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. Insomuch that I will bring your cities to be a wilderness: and I will make your sanctuaries desolate: and will receive no more your sweet odours. And I will destroy your land: and your enemies shall be astonished at it, when they shall be the inhabitants thereof.
And I will scatter you among the Gentiles: and I will draw out the sword after you. And your land shall be desert, and your cities destroyed. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths all the days of her desolation. When you shall be in the enemy's land, she shall keep a sabbath, and rest in the sabbaths of her desolation: because she did not rest in your sabbaths, when you dwelt therein.
And as to them that shall remain of you I will send fear in their hearts in the countries of their enemies. The sound of a flying leaf shall terrify them: and they shall flee as it were from the sword. They shall fall, when no man pursueth them. And they shall every one fall upon their brethren as fleeing from wars: none of you shall dare to resist your enemies. You shall perish among the Gentiles: and an enemy's land shall consume you.
And if of them also some remain, they shall pine away in their iniquities, in the land of their enemies: and they shall be afflicted for the sins of their fathers, and their own.
Until they confess their iniquities, and the iniquities of their ancestors, whereby they have transgressed against me, and walked contrary unto me.
Therefore I also will walk against them, and bring them into their enemies' land until their uncircumcised mind be ashamed. Then shall they pray for their sins. And I will remember my covenant, that I made with Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham. I will remember also the land: which when she shall be left by them, shall enjoy her sabbaths, being desolate for them. But they shall pray for their sins, because they rejected my judgments, and despised my laws.
And yet for all that when they were in the land of their enemies, I did not cast them off altogether. Neither did I so despise them that they should be quite consumed: and I should make void my covenant with them. For I am the Lord their God.
And I will remember my former covenant, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, in the sight of the Gentiles, to be their God. I am the Lord. These are the judgments, and precepts, and laws, which the Lord gave between him and the children of Israel, in mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses.
This does not mean that the Old Covenant itself remains in force, as a superficial reading of the chapter might suggest: on the contrary, having served its purpose, the Covenant was fulfilled, and the promises made to the Jewish people now subsist—more fully and definitively—in the New and Eternal Covenant of Christ, available both for them and for all men.
Such is the interpretation of George Haydock in his Bible, and Cornelius a Lapide in his commentary Vol. XXI, Ch. II:
“Thou art blasphemed,” that is, thou art assailed with insult and reproach, and reckoned and described by the Jews not as faithful and devout, but as impious and execrable—as an enemy, as it were, of the Law and of Judaism—because thou art a follower of Christ. But these are not true Jews, that is, not true confessors and worshippers of God, as Judas was (from whom the name "Jew" is derived), and as their fathers were, for they persecute Christ.
For, as the Apostle says (Rom. II, 28): “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly.” This is the true Jew—God’s worshipper and confessor—“whose praise is not from men, but from God.”
« Blasphemaris, » id est injuria lacesseris, et non fidelis et pias, sed quasi legis et Judaismi hostis, utpote Christi assecla, impius et execrandus existimaris ae diceris a Judais, qui so veros esse religionis Deique cultores mentiuntur. Hi enim non sunt veri Judaei, id est Deum confitentes et colentes, uti fuerunt Judas, a quo dieti sunt Judaei, aliique patres eorum, quia hi Christum persequuntur. Nam, ut ait Apostolus, Rom. II, 28: « Non qui in manifesto, Judaeus est; sed qui in abscondito, Judaeus est. » Hie scilicet verus Judaeus, Deique cultor et confessor est, «cujus laus non ex hominibus, sed ex Deo est. »