ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION
Profane idolatry in the devastated Temple, at the approach of the fall of Jerusalem, foretold by Jesus. Jesus refers to Daniel (9:27; 11:31; 12:11) with the apocalyptic warning: “Let the reader understand!” and adds the command to flee from Judea (Mt 24:15; Mk 13:14).
Daniel has the formula σιώχισμ μεσόμεν (9:27; many, after the Septuagint, Theodotion, and the Vulgate, read here also σιώχισμ, in the singular), has-σιώχισμ μεσόμεν (11:31), σιώχισμ σόμεν (12:11), in foretelling the overpowering of the Romans (9:27; according to M.-J. Lagrange, J. Göttsberger, B. Rigaux, P. F. Ceuppens, this passage also refers to Antiochus IV) or of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (11:31; 12:11). Σιώχισμ expresses the principal idea (in 1 Macc. 6:7 there appears only: “σιώχισμ”): “ignominy, horror, abominable thing”; it is a designation exercised by pagan gods or idols (1 Kings 2:5; mostly in the plural: Hos 9:10, and often in Jeremiah and Ezekiel) or of whatever is connected with idolatrous worship (Zech 9:7: the sacrificial meats). Μεσόμεν (or, in contracted form, σόμεν) is a participle of active sense: “devastator”; but, being able to be understood passively (Ezra 9:3-4: “horrified, dismayed”), the Septuagint, Theodotion, and the Vulgate translate it as a noun (“desolation” in the sense of devastation). 1 Maccabees and the first two Synoptics reproduce the formula of the Septuagint: “abomination of desolation.”
The sense is: “the idolatrous worship of a devastator” will be “set up in the holy place” (Mt 24:15) or “where it ought not” (Mk 13:14). Daniel in the three passages connects this idolatrous abomination with the cessation of the perpetual sacrifice of Israel: the desecration entails the abandonment of the Temple.
1 Maccabees 1:57 sees the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy in the “erection” of an idolatrous altar (βωμός) on the altar of burnt offerings on the 15th day of the month Casleu in 168 B.C., an altar which Antiochus IV Epiphanes dedicated to his patron god Zeus Olympios (2 Macc. 6:2), and in the sacrifice offered ten days later (1 Macc. 1:62). For Daniel, as for 1 and 2 Maccabees, this sacrilege marks the height of impiety. The Syriac version of 2 Macc. 6:2 has Ba’al šamajin; indeed σιώχισμ σόμεν seems to parody Ba’al šamajin, a Semitic equivalent of Zeus Olympios. Proposed by E. Nestle in *Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft*, 4 (1894), p. 248, this explanation of the Danielic formula is considered by J. A. Montgomery (*The Book of Daniel*, Edinburgh 1927, p. 388) the only adequate one. The abomination “was removed with the solemn purification of the 25th day of Casleu in 164” (1 Macc. 4:41-59; 6:7).
In the Gospels it is difficult to specify to which event Jesus alludes in predicting “the abomination of desolation” which “stands” (Mk has the masculine εστιγμα, a construction implying the intervention of a man) in the Temple. The Christians recognized the foretold sign by fleeing to Pella in 67 (Eusebius, *Hist. eccl.*, III, 5: PG 20, 221). In the historical cycle of the destruction of the Temple, which marks the definitive transition from Mosaic worship to the Christian dispensation, there did not occur the erection of an altar of the type of the profanation by Antiochus. The similar order (38-40 A.D.) of the emperor Caligula to erect his statue in the Temple was not carried out (Flavius Josephus, *Ant. Jud.*, XVIII, 8, 8).
Three explanations are more common regarding the event to which Jesus applies Daniel’s oracle: 1) the sacrilegious excesses of the Zealots who made the Temple their stronghold (Flavius Josephus, *Bell. Jud.*, IV, 3, 10 and 5, 1; cf. VI, 3 fig.); 2) the destruction of the Temple after the capture of Jerusalem; 3) the Roman standards, bearing idolatrous emblems, on the Temple area (Flavius Josephus, *ibid.*, V, 6, 1). The first is to be excluded because it was not of an idolatrous nature (the biblical βδελυγμα, occurring six times in the New Testament, always indicates idolatry). Against the first two is the attribute “set up,” which must refer not to events, but to a thing or person or symbol that is displayed in the Temple. Nor can they be understood exclusively as the insignia of the Roman army “set up in front of the eastern gate, while the Temple was burning, to which the soldiers offered sacrifices” (Flavius Josephus, *loc. cit.*), since Jesus gives a “sign” prior to the capture and the disaster of Jerusalem.
The key is given by Lk 21:20: “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its desolation (ἐρήμωσις) is near.” The drama of the “abomination” unfolded in various progressive stages. The first, which begins “the great tribulation,” was in 66 the appearance of the pagan insignia of the besieger Cestius Gallus, who, encamped on Mount Scopus, attacked the Temple (Flavius Josephus, *ibid.*, II, 19). At that time, because of the outrages of the Zealots, the sacrifice and worship ceased. Idolatry (“abomination”) would finally triumph in 70 with the pagan standards on the destroyed Temple, already long without an effective altar. The pagan conqueror in Jerusalem was essentially, for the Jews, an idolatrous profaner.
The formula has an eschatological reference. Jesus unites in the same prophetic framework the horrors of 66-70 and those of the persecution of the Antichrist. As Antiochus Epiphanes is the type of the Antichrist (q.v.), so the impious profanation of the “devastator,” while marking the end of the old worship, inaugurates the messianic opposition, the negative aspect of the new dispensation (cf. Rev 11:2 and Lk 21:24). The intervention of the man of sin “who takes his seat and displays himself in the temple of God” (2 Thess 2:3-4), suggested by the masculine form (εστιγμα), characterizes the transition between the two eras. As in all the Synoptic apocalypse (Mt 24; Mk 13), the perspective is twofold: the near and transitory tribulation figures and initiates the long and painful gestation of the contested kingdom of God.