I guess I understand the above to be inferring that you didn’t see any prophecy as speaking to anything beyond the Roman Empire. Thus, I used not only the 70 A.D. date but also the 130 A.D. date to refer to the Bar-Kochba rebellion and the subsequent exile of Jerusalem’s Jewish inhabitants. I assumed that you saw that.

My point was only to question the assumption that biblical prophecy typically has multiple fulfilments, or that we should look for an ‘ultimate fulfilment’ beyond the immediate historical setting. However, I also do not think that NT eschatology is fulfilled entirely within the horizon of judgment on Jerusalem (the AD 130 date doesn’t make any difference here). Following a well-established OT pattern, the NT also foresees judgment on the enemy of God’s people, the instrument of judgment on Israel, which is Rome. This takes us well beyond AD 130 to the less clearly defined second horizon of the collapse of the Roman imperial cult, etc.

I guess in these comments I heard you arguing for th 70 A.D. date, specifically when you said “why shouldn’t Jesus be speaking only about 70A.D.?”

Yes, but Jesus is not the only voice in NT eschatology. I don’t think Jesus looked much beyond the first horizon of judgment on Israel. The church in the Roman world, however, had a different perspective. Paul doesn’t entirely lose sight of the fate of Jerusalem, but he is also preoccupied with the threat posed to his churches in the Gentile world by pagan opposition. He looks, therefore, to the second horizon of the vindication of the suffering churches of the Roman world and the overthrow of their enemies. My suggestion (and it’s only a suggestion at this point) is that the early fathers in effect shared this eschatological frame of reference: their experience is faith is shaped by the overarching hostility of Rome.

You make the important point about history being the criterion for judging the application of prophecy. I would make a couple of comments in response to your argument about the abomination of desolation.

First, there are questions to consider regarding exactly how Jesus reuses narratives in Daniel that originally referred to the religious-political crisis provoked by Antiochus. My assumption is that Jesus understood very well that Daniel was not attempting to describe the Roman invasion of Judea - that is simply outside his frame of reference. But Jesus himself reinterprets Israel’s situation in the first century AD in the light of Daniel’s prophetic imagination. By drawing on the familiar, and powerfully evocative, detail of the abomination of desolation he is saying in effect that Jerusalem will face a pagan incursion like that faced in the second century BC, with a similar outcome. Of course, this is a hermeneutical assumption over which we may disagree. My point is only that I think Jesus uses the apocalyptic detail to invoke a larger narrative structure about apostasy, judgment and restoration.

In any case, the raising of the Roman standards and the offering of sacrifices in the temple area is not so far from Antiochus’ action in setting up an altar to Zeus. It’s interesting that Josephus also saw a fulfilment of Daniel’s prophecy in the events of the war, though in his view it was the Jews not the Romans who committed the sacrilege.

Secondly, Jesus repeatedly and crucially links his prophecies to the circumstances of first century Israel. Your historical standard should also oblige us to look for a fulfilment of these prophecies in the lifetime of the generation that Jesus addressed. Jesus was answering his disciples’ question about when the temple would be reduced to ruins. Whatever he meant exactly by the abomination of desolation, it has to be located historically in the events of the war against Rome, events that would directly impact the generation of Israel that he so virulently condemns in Matt. 23. Otherwise, in my view, we destroy the historical (and indeed spiritual) integrity of the passage.

I haven’t got time at the moment to look at Ezekiel 38. Perhaps we can come back to that later.