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92 The Significance of the Year A.D. 30

constantly in evidence in the time of Simon the never came up in the right hand of the high
Righteous) became a pattern for future signs to priest (for the period of forty years) from
the Jewish people in showing God’s appraisal of the time of Christ’s crucifixion until the com-
the Temple and its rituals. They came to believe plete destruction of the Temple in A.D 70.
that these signs showed God’s pleasure or dis-
pleasure with their activities. This is because of a Yet still, there is even more to relate from the
special sign given in the year of Simon the Righ- early rabbinical records. During that same pe-
teous’s death that showed what the “white” and riod of forty years, the doors of the Hekel
the “black” indications were intended to mean. (the doors in back of the Temple curtain that
Note how the Jewish rabbis came to understand tore in two at Christ’s precise time of death)
these things. were found to be opening of their own accord
at night during the time the Temple was off
“Our Rabbis taught: In the year in which Simon limits to the people. Josephus, the Jewish his-
the Righteous died, he foretold them that he torian, also mentioned the Temple doors
would die. They said: Whence do you know opening miraculously during the time of the
that? He replied: On every Day of Atonement an Passover season in A.D. 66. But in both the
old man, dressed in white, wrapped in white, Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, they
would join me, entering the Holy of Holies and state that this opening of the Hekel doors was
leaving it with me, but today [on that final Day of something that happened throughout the
Atonement that Simon performed his high whole period of forty years! And recall, the
priestly duties] I was joined by an old man, fact of these signs was vouched for by no less
dressed in black, wrapped in black, who en- than Yohanan ben Zakkai (the top rabbi after
tered, but did not leave with me. After the festi- the fall of Jerusalem) and he was an eyewit-
val of Tabernacles he [Simon the Righteous] was ness to all the things that had happened in the
sick for seven days and then died” (Yoma 39b Temple in those forty years before its de-
boldness and words in brackets are mine). struction.

From that moment on, the priests began to notice By reckoning all these four signs together
that the ‘lot for the Lord’ (which was the cere- (with their multiplied occurrences) as being
mony ordained in the Old Testament) would mere coincidences and that they happened in
come up one time white and one time black. But a natural and normal way is entering the
that was not all. The crimson thread would realm of patent absurdity. The odds of those
sometimes turn white and at other times it would things occurring by chance are so astronomi-
remain its crimson color. This procedure cal that to express the odds in a linear decimal
prompted the Jewish rabbis to interpret that if the fashion would stretch the limits of human
crimson thread turned white, then God approved terms to reckon it. But that these four signs
of the Day of Atonement rituals every year and were directly from God (and that their won-
Israel could then be assured that they were for- derful consistency of action was showing the
given of their sins as the Holy Scriptures stated. coming destruction of the Temple that Jesus
Thus, this traditional rite of the crimson colored foretold) is something that made sense to the
thread and the biblical ceremony of the “black” early rabbis who lived from the time of the
and “white” stones were established as official Temple’s destruction and for almost four
signs of God’s pleasure or displeasure. But note hundred years afterward. In my estimation,
this. With the year A.D. 30, the crimson thread those remarkable signs to the Jewish people
never turned white again and the white stone came through the direct intervention of God.

The Berean Voice November-December 2002