Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

TEMPLE

Temple of Baalat Gebal, Byblos (4th millennium b.c.e.) (Phoenix Data Systems, Neal and Joel Bierling)

Western Wall, lower levels of which contain the sole surviving portions of the Herodian expansion
of the Second Temple at Jerusalem (Phoenix Data Systems, Neal and Joel Bierling)

A sacred, demarcated place. The English term derives from Lat. templum, a place set aside for the purpose of augury (Varro De ling. lat.; cf. “contemplate”). A Greek cognate, témenos, was a precinct, a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god; the term now means the platform on which the temple building stands — an architectural structure that separated the building off from common, everyday activities (cf. Sum. temen, a heaped-up pile of earth, as in É-temen-an-ki, the “House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth,” the Neo-Babylonian ziggurat and traditional tower of Babel).

The Babylonian temple unites the three primary world regions in the cosmos — sky, earth, and underworld — with a central pillar connecting the three zones (cf. temen-abzu, “Foundation of the Abyss”). Egyp. ḥwt nṯr signified the manor or mansion where the god lived and where his ritual worship took place. Inscriptions call the Ptolemaic period temple of Edfu the “Foundation Ground of the Gods of the Beginnings”; the inner sanctum itself was called the “High Seat,” the mythical mound of primordial creation, the most powerful and sacred earthly place imaginable.

Several Hebrew words designate the temple in the Bible. Heb. hêḵāl (Akk. ekallu, from Sum. é-gal, “great house,” thus “palace”). Heb. hêḵāl is frequently used for shrines, high places, etc. prior to the temple of Solomon, but also for the heavenly sanctuary (Isa. 6:1). Most common in the OT are bêṯ YHWH, “house of Yahweh,” and bêṯ ʾĕlōhîm, “house of God.” Heb. miqdāš is used for the Jerusalem temple (cf. 2 Chr. 36:17, bêṯ miqdāš, “house of holiness”).

Sacred space became so regarded because it is where the primordial acts of creation occurred, and where a prophet or king met with deity. Because the earthly temple is built on the pattern of a heavenly model, it represents the heavenly prototype established on earth. The earthly temple incorporates, encompasses, encloses this space, and passes on its power to humankind through their contact with the temple. In general this occurs through ritual, a highly prescribed, detailed set of instructions and actions, controlled by priestly functionaries, possessed of the authority of deep antiquity, and requiring exactitude and care in its performance. The temple cannot be approached or entered casually, without proper authority and without extensive ritual preparations (e.g., washing, anointing, donning of clean, ritual clothes).

Symbolism

“Temple” thus means an association of symbols and practices connected in the ancient world with both natural mountains or high places and built structures. These symbols include the cosmic mountain, the primordial mound, waters of life, the tree of life, sacral space, and the celestial prototype of the earthly sanctuary. These practices, which can be called the temple ideology, emphasize spatial orientation and the ritual calendar; the height of the mountain/building; revelation of the divine prototype to the king or prophet by deity; the concept of “center,” according to which the temple is the ideological, and in many cases the geographical, center of the community; the dependency of the well-being of the community on proper attention to the temple and its rituals; initiation, including dramatic portrayal within the temple of the cosmogonic myth as the primary vehicle of ritual; extensive concern for death and the afterlife, including burial within the temple precincts; sacral (covenant-associated) meals; revelation in the inner sanctum to the king or prophet by means of the Tablets of Destiny; formal covenant ceremonies in connection with the promulgation of law; animal sacrifice; secrecy; and the extensive economic and political impact of the temple on society.

The two most important features of temples are the mountain and heaven. In the Babylonian creation account, Enuma Elish, when the waters of chaos subsided following their defeat by the forces of cosmos (Marduk), there appeared a mound of earth, the primary and primordial mound of creation, where the deity first appeared. This mound became transformed into the sacred mountain, the most holy place on earth, the archetype of the temple. In virtually all cultures, temples are either the architectural representation of the primordial mound, or of a world mountain, or some combination of the two.

The mountain and the temple are inseparable (Isa. 2:2-3). All of those features which cause/create/determine the sacredness of the mountain are attached to the temple, and determine its architecture, symbolism, and ritual. The Egyptian Step Pyramid of Zoser was an architectural realization of the primordial hill, later modified into the true pyramid. The canonical foundation ceremonies for temples in ancient Egypt included the ritual of “hoeing the earth” which is directly related to the concept that the temple is the upward architectural extension out of the primeval waters of creation leading up into the sky above the primordial mound.

In ancient Judaism a foundation stone appears in the place of the primeval mound. According to Midrash Tanḥuma (Ked. 10) the foundation stone is in front of the ark, which spot is the foundation of the world. This foundation stone played the same role as the primordial mound in Egypt: it was the first solid material to emerge from the waters of creation, and it was upon this stone that the deity effected creation. According to Jewish legend, it was this primordial rock on which Jacob slept, at the place he subsequently named Bethel (Gen. 28). This same rock then came to be placed in the inner sanctum (dĕḇîr) of Solomon’s temple. According to Islamic tradition, it is this same rock from which the Prophet Mohammed ascended into heaven, over which the Dome of the Rock is built.

The mountain, a powerful earthly center and point of contact with the heavens, became a gathering place for the celebration of seasonal rituals and for renewal ceremonies at the New Year. A main purpose of the New Year festivals was to rededicate the temple, to reestablish and reaffirm the people’s connection with the gods in the heavens. Numerous reliefs depict the processions of kings and nobles, approaching the city in order to attend the New Year festivals, where rededication of the temple would signal the resumption of cosmic union and harmony.

The vegetation that the creative waters produced, which can be equated with the “trees of life,” was luxurious, pristine, and life-giving. This symbolism is exceptionally vivid in OT references to the messianic temple of the end time (e.g., Ezek. 47:1, 12). Other sources indicate that these waters flowed out from under the inner sanctum, and were in fact held or capped in place by the foundation stone. Temple architecture, paintings, and reliefs depict the “primordial landscape,” the world as it was in the beginning — mound, water, and trees of life (or other vegetation) in or near the inner sanctum.

Not only do creation and life come up out of the depth; they come down from the sky, from the heavens, the classic dwelling place of the gods. The basic idea is that there exists in the sky a perfect place, the “city” of the gods. The goal of human life is both to establish contact with this place and to return to it after death, thus to share in the life of the gods. The primary way by which the gods share with humans the knowledge of this place, and information on how one gets there, is through the temple.

The god reveals to a king or prophet the architectural plan for the earthly temple, which is a replica of the heavenly temple. Exod. 19, 25 provide the classic pattern: the prophet ascends the holy mountain, where he is shown a “pattern” (Heb. taḇnîṯ) of the heavenly temple to examine (25:9) in order to transfer its architecture to the earth. The Apostle John is transported to the mountain to view the heavenly city of Jerusalem, which in the context of the book of Revelation is one vast temple (Rev. 21:10, 15), prior to its restoration to the earth at the end of time (cf. Ezek. 40:2-3).

The innermost sanctuary of the temple, the most holy place, is a model on earth of the place where God lives. He does not live in the earthly temple’s most holy places; this is clear from Exod. 19:18, 20, where the Lord descends out of heaven onto the mountaintop. The deity offers a glimpse into this heavenly place through the inner sanctum of the temple, where his presence is experienced by the prophet or the king on special occasions.

But how does one reach heaven? The answer is to be found in the mountain — the archetype and prototype of the built temple. Exod. 19 points conveniently and profoundly in the right direction. The way up the mountain involves ritual, or rites of passage, through which the prophet mediates knowledge of God to the people who have been prepared by this ritual to approach the holy place. In many of the great religious traditions, the gods were thought to live on a mountain, or to descend from heaven to a mountain, there to meet with those who have made the arduous journey to the center to be instructed. The mountain is the center because it is the first place of creation. It is the vertical pole connecting the heavens with the earth, the navel of the earth. To become one with God, one must join God at the mountain. The journey to the mountain and the ascent once one has reached its base are arduous, fraught with dangers and obstacles (cf. the labyrinthine nature of ritual initiation). This is the symbolism of Exod. 19–24.

The mountain (the temple) is “the meeting place of heaven and earth.” Through its origins in the underworld, as symbolized in the primordial mound of creation, it also unites the three world regions: underworld, earth, heaven. A central axis or pillar uniting these three zones provides a means of access to and through them by prophets (cf. Gen. 28:10-12, 18-19, 22; esp. v. 17).

Jerusalem Temple

All of this symbolism is applied in some way in the Bible, the intertestamental literature, and postbiblical Jewish literature to pre-Solomonic high places and shrines (including the tabernacle), and to the temple of Solomon itself in its three manifestations: the original structure, the Zerubbabel postexilic reconstruction, and the Herodian expansion. Basic to temple ideology is the act of appearing, “before the Lord” (e.g., 1 Sam. 7:6); the phrase (Heb. lipnê YHWH) is a technical formula stemming from the basic conception of temple as dwelling place, and related cultic activity can be considered an indication of a temple at the site.

The primary difference between the pre-Solomonic temple shrines and sanctuaries and the temple of Solomon itself is that, with the advent of dynastic kingship in Israel, the people of Israel had to build an appropriate national, dynastic temple, “like all the nations” (1 Sam. 8:5), to give divine legitimacy to the dynasty. Israel had made the transition from a chiefdom to the state, in political terms, and needed all the accoutrements of state polity. Chief among these was a great national temple, to be built in the national, holy city.

The temple of Solomon was completed in 953 b.c.e., destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 587, rededicated by Zerubbabel in 516, dramatically expanded during the reign of Herod the Great, beginning in 20 b.c.e., and destroyed by the Romans under Titus in 70 c.e.

No architect is named, but in the ancient Near East gods and kings were regarded as architects and builders. Kings received architectual plans from gods through vision, often while spending the night in a sanctuary. The plan of his temple was revealed to Solomon during a night in the sanctuary at Gibeon (2 Chr. 1:7-13). According to the ancient pattern, the king went to the Lebanon for building materials, chiefly the precious cedar (2 Chr. 2:3-10[MT 1-9]). He also received technical assistance from Phoenician craftsmen there (1 Kgs. 7:13-14, 45), which justifies the assumption that the final product was architecturally and, in terms of decoration, Phoenician, or perhaps Phoenico-Egyptian, or Syrian (parallels have been drawn to Temple D in Middle Bronze Age Ebla, to the 9th-century Neo-Hittite temple at Tell Taʿyinat, and Late Bronze temples excavated at Emar). Nothing remains today of the temple of Solomon, or of any of its successors, with the exception of the Herodian platform, most famously the Western Wall.

The primary building material was finely dressed ashlars, prepared in an off-site quarry. The entire inner building was lined with cedar, then gilded. Gilded olive-wood doors formed the entrances to both hêḵāl and dĕḇîr. According to the Chronicler, a veil of blue, purple, and crimson linen, with cherubim embroidered on it, was hung immediately before the ark of the covenant, separating the dĕḇîr from the hêḵāl (2 Chr. 3:14).

The temple was a tripartite structure, on a straight axis; it consisted of three distinct architectural units, and the worshipper would enter at the front door and proceed on the same line to the rear sanctuary. The three units were the ʾûlām, “porch” or “vestibule”; the hêḵāl, “cella” or “nave” (this word came to be used for the entire building); and the dĕḇîr, the inner sanctuary or most holy place. The length of the temple was 60 cubits, its width 20 cubits, its height 25 cubits. The ʾûlām was 20 cubits wide and 10 cubits long, the hêḵāl was 40 cubits long, and the dĕḇîr was a cube, 20 cubits on each side. The inner sanctuary was thus 5 cubits shorter than the rest of the building, presumably because the inner sanctuary stood over the rock of foundation, the original place of creation in the cosmogony. The dĕḇîr housed the ark of the covenant, with typical Near Eastern protective cherubim standing over it, thus forming the cosmic throne of the deity. The hêḵāl housed the lampstand, the table of showbread, and other ritual objects described for the tabernacle. A three-story annex surrounded the hêḵāl and the dĕḇîr, but not the ʾûlām.

Two hollow, cast-bronze pillars stood in front of the ʾûlām, named Jachin (the southernmost) and Boaz (the northernmost); the temple was oriented toward the east (cf. Ezek. 8:14-16). The pillars carried cosmic connotations, founding the temple in the underworld while uniting it with the heavenly sphere. The names of the pillars symbolized the cosmic, universal rule of Yahweh and of the Davidic dynasty that the building of the temple founded and legitimized: Jachin meant that Yahweh founded the dynasty and the temple, while Boaz meant that Yahweh’s power emanates from the temple. It was in front of these pillars that King Josiah recovenanted the people of Judah following the cleansing and restoration of the temple (2 Kgs. 23:2-3; cf. Joshua at Shechem, Josh. 24:25-27).

The overall impression of the temple precinct in Jerusalem in the time of Solomon is that of a Near Eastern cosmic temple, sitting on top of the sacred mountain — the ultimate architectural expression of the heavenly temple revealed on the mountain of God and built after the pattern revealed there (Exod. 25:8-9). The primordial waters of the abyss from the time of creation were harnessed, present in the symbolism of the bronze sea. Everywhere were sacred trees and life-giving vegetation, both real-life and decorative (the walls of the nave and inner sanctum were carved with cherubim, palm trees, and flowers, then gilded), representing the “primordial landscape,” the state of the world at the creation.

That phase of Solomon’s temple that was rebuilt by the Jewish people returning from Babylonian Exile (known as the Second Temple) was much less grand than the original had been, due to the poverty of the people (Hag. 2:1-3). It was the decree of the farsighted Persian king (Ezra 6:1-5) that initiated the process of rebuilding. The temple was to be a 60 cubit wide by 60 cubit high house of God, constructed of ashlars and timber. Here sacrifices and burnt offerings were to be brought, and the gold and silver vessels taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar returned.

The Herodian phase of the Second Temple consisted primarily of the extension of the temple platform to vast proportions (144,000 sq. m. [172,000 sq. yd.] — the largest sacred temenos in ancient times), the additions of several courtyards, and the use of enormous quantities of luxury building materials, primarily gold, in the decoration of the edifice. Knowledge of the Herodian temple comes from the NT, several intertestamental writers, Josephus, and the Mishnah.

The destruction of the temple in 70 c.e. was a catastrophe which still hangs over the Judeo-Christian world and, from the perspective of that tradition, over all humankind. The great European cathedrals of the Gothic Age were thoroughgoing attempts to replicate the ideology of the temple in all its details, but, for a variety of reasons, could not be successful in that enterprise. The same can be said for the Jewish synagogue and the primary mosque/shrines of Islam, the architecture and symbolism of which are pervaded by temple symbolism. The catastrophic nature of the destruction of the temple is easy to understand in terms of the fundamental religious assumptions that underlie the building of temples.

Bibliography. J. Gutman, ed., The Temple of Solomon (Missoula, 1976); M. Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel (1978, repr. Winona Lake, 1985); C. T. R. Hayward, ed., The Jewish Temple (London, 1996); V. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and North-west Semitic Writings. JSOTSup 115 (Sheffield, 1992); J. M. Lundquist, “Biblical Temple,” OEANE 1:324-30; The Temple: Meeting Place of Heaven and Earth (London, 1993); J. Maier, “The Architectural History of the Temple in Jerusalem in the Light of the Temple Scroll,” in Temple Scroll Studies, ed. G. J. Brook (Sheffield, 1989), 23-62; R. Patai, Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual, 2nd ed. (New York, 1967).

John M. Lundquist

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

TEMPLE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)