Among all the documents which comprise the New Testament canon, and indeed among the other extant writings of the sub-apostolic age, there is no description of the terrible events which attended the defeat of Israel's cause against Rome, or of the fortunes of the Palestinian Christians amid the convulsion and overthrow of their nation's life, neither is there any conscious reference to the significance of the catastrophe for Christianity. Indeed, so complete a silence is maintained in these primitive documents that on their testimony alone nothing would be known of the disaster which overwhelmed Israel in A.D. 70.
The fact of this remarkable silence raises a twofold problem, namely why the Jerusalem Christians themselves left no record of their fortunes or indications of their mental and emotional reaction to such a tremendous experience, and what was the reason which led to the Gentile Christians apparently to allow so epoch-making an event as the destruction of the citadel of Judaism and the disappearance of the Mother Church to pass uncommemorated. We clearly have here a problem which demands a thorough and extensive investigation, for the a priori presumption must be, in the light of our forgoing studies, that here we have to do with a matter which is inextricably bound up with the issues at stake in the crisis of A.D.55-66.
The fact of this remarkable silence raises a twofold problem, namely why the Jerusalem Christians themselves left no record of their fortunes or indications of their mental and emotional reaction to such a tremendous experience, and what was the reason which led to the Gentile Christians apparently to allow so epoch-making an event as the destruction of the citadel of Judaism and the disappearance of the Mother Church to pass uncommemorated. We clearly have here a problem which demands a thorough and extensive investigation, for the a priori presumption must be, in the light of our forgoing studies, that here we have to do with a matter which is inextricably bound up with the issues at stake in the crisis of A.D.55-66.
- from pages 167-168, The Fall of Jerusalem