Origen, a third century church father from Alexandria (ca. 182-251 CE), is typical of many commentators and apologists in the early church who take the two events of Jesus' death and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and link the two in a relationship of cause and effect. The destruction of the Temple is understood as God's punishment of his people Israel for the rejection of their Messiah. This Christian interpretation of history thus connects the charge of deicide, that Jews are responsible for Christ's death, with a supersessionist theology that the church has replaced Israel.
In the excerpts below from his apologetic writing "Against Celsus" it should be noted that Celsus was not Jewish but a pagan philosopher. He evidently took up Jewish objection to Christian claims in his writings to which Origen is responding.
Contra Celsum
I challenge anyone to prove my statement untrue if I say that the entire Jewish nation was destroyed less than one whole generation later on account of these sufferings which they inflicted on Jesus. For it was, I believe, forty-two years from the time when they crucified Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem. . . . For they committed the most impious crime of all, when they conspired against the Savior of mankind, in the city where they performed the customary rites which were symbols of profound mysteries. Therefore, that city where Jesus suffered these indignities had to be utterly destroyed. The Jewish nation had to be overthrown, and God's invitation to blessedness transferred to others, I mean to the Christians, to whom came the teaching about the simple and pure worship of God. (4.23)
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Again, when he says, "Those who crucified your God himself, suffered no harm for doing so," he supposes that it is the body of Jesus extended on the cross and slain, and not His divine nature, that we call God; and that it was as God that Jesus was crucified and slain. As we have already dwelt at length on the sufferings which Jesus suffered as a man, we shall, purposely say no more here, that we may not repeat what we have said already. But when he goes on to say that "those who inflicted death upon Jesus suffered nothing afterwards through so long a time," we must inform him, as well as all who are disposed to learn the truth, that the city in which the Jewish people called for the crucifixion of Jesus with shouts of" Crucify him, crucify him," [Mt. 25:25] preferring to have the robber set free, who had been cast into prison for sedition and murder and Jesus, who had been delivered through envy, to be crucified,-that this city not long afterwards was attacked, and, after a long siege, was utterly overthrown and laid waste; for God judged the inhabitants of that place unworthy of living together the life of citizens. And yet, though it may seem an incredible thing to say, God spared this people in delivering them to their enemies; for He saw that they were incurably averse to any amendment, and were daily sinking deeper and deeper into evil. And all this befell them, because the blood of Jesus was shed at their instigation and on their land; and the land was no longer able to bear those who were guilty of so fearful a crime against Jesus. (8.42)
Origen lived and wrote roughly 200 years after Jesus' death and the destruction of the Temple in the Jewish-Roman war and it needs to be stressed is that it is his construal of the events of crucifixion and destruction which becomes a supersessionist theology. The building blocks for this interpretation of history, however, are drawn from the New Testament (and other places such as some of Josephus' writings).
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