the temple in antiquity - ancient records and modern perspectives

THE RELIGIOUS STUDIES MONOGRAPH SERIES

NIBLEY ON THE TIMELY AND THE TIMELESS Classic Essays of Hugh W. Nibley

DEITY AND DEATH Selected Symposium Papers

edited with an introduction by Spencer J. Palmer

THE GLORY OF GOD IS INTELLIGENCE Four Lectures on the Role of Intellect in Judaism

by Jacob Neusner

REFLECTIONS ON MORMONISM Judaeo-Christian Parallels

edited with an introductory essay by Truman G. Madsen

LITERATURE OF BELIEF Sacred Scripture and Religious Experience edited with a preface by Neal E. Lambert

THE WORDS OF JOSEPH SMITH Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses

compiled and edited by Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook

BOOK OF MORMON AUTHORSHIP New Light on Ancient Origins

edited with an introduction by Noel B. Reynolds

MORMONS AND MUSLIMS Spiritual Foundations and Modern Manifestations edited with an introduction by Spencer J. Palmer

THE TEMPLE IN ANTIQUITY Ancient Records and Modern Perspectives

edited with an introductory essay by Truman G. Madsen

Edited with an Introductory Essay by Truman G. Madsen

VOLUME NINE IN THE RELIGIOUS STUDIES MONOGRAPH SERIES

Religious Studies Center Brigham Young University

Provo, Utah

Copyright © 1984 by Religious Studies Center

Brigham Young University

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-73586 ISBN 0-88494-518-9

First Printing, 1984

Produced and Distributed by BOOKCRAFT, INC. Salt Lake City, Utah

Lithographed in the United States of America PUBLISHERS PRESS Salt Lake City, Utah

RELIGIOUS STUDIES CENTER BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

General Director: Robert J. Matthews

Directors:

Bible: Judaeo-Christian: World Religions: Church History: Ancient Studies:

Book of Mormon:

Richard Lloyd Anderson Truman G. Madsen Spencer J. Palmer Larry C. Porter C. Wilfred Griggs H. Donl Peterson

Contents

Preface ix

Introductory Essay 1

1 What Is a Temple? ..... 19 Hugh W . Nibley

2 Looking Backward 39 Hugh W . Nibley

3 The Common Temple Ideology of the Ancient Near East 53 John M . Lundquist

4 The Temple and Other Sacred Places in the Ebla Tablets 77 Mitchell J. Dahood

5 The Priestly Tabernacle in the Light of Recent Research 91 Frank Moore Cross, Jr.

6 The Temple and the Holy Mountain 107 Richard J. Clifford

7 New Temple Festivals in the Temple Scroll 125 Jacob Milgrom

8 Jachin and Boaz in Religious and Political Perspective 135 Carol L. Meyers

9 The Temple and the Synagogue 151 Shaye J. D. Cohen

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Contents

10 The Temple as a House of Revelation in the Nag Hammadi Texts 175 George MacRae

Notes on the Contributors 191

Subject Index 197

Scripture and Pseudepigrapha Index 201

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Preface

The symposium which was the stimulus of these essays was held at Brigham Young University in March of 1981. The title "The Temple in Antiquity" gave us sufficient range to invite papers on both pre- and post-Christian approaches to temples and temple ritual. Participants were selected for their competence in specialized areas. Some bridges were drawn—more of them in the aftermath question-and-answer sessions than in the formal papers—to temple-building doctrines and practices of the Latter-day Saints.

Three papers have been added to the symposium presentations. (1) Hugh Nibley's essay "What Is a Temple?" He has added to it an updated semiautobiographical essay of reflections on world ritual and temple. The second paper is more than a supplement to his own work; it provides an overview in a multicultural perspective of the other specialized papers of the series. Hence these two essays are placed first in this volume. (2) An outstanding paper by Carol Meyers focusing on the pillars of the ancient Temple of Solomon. And (3) a typological study of temples in the Near East by John M . Lundquist. A precis of his doctoral thesis, it combines recent scholarship on temples with relevant archaeological findings in the Middle East.

Most of the contributors are "test-minded." Their skills are linguistic, historical, and at some points archaeological. Another discipline might have been represented. Comparative anthropologist Professor Merlin H. Meyers was asked to expand themes which his students encounter in his lectures: (1) that elements or features of temple rites and ordinances, as we know them, are found with remarkable similarity among people of diverse cultures throughout the world; (2) that these rituals create and recreate the categories (concepts, ideas, images) through which men perceive reality and thus provide force and direction for the transformation of lives; (3) that temple rituals are storehouses of

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Preface

information, and in them is manifest knowledge of the most profound concerns of a people, which is divulged only in the appropriate setting to those of "clean hands and pure hearts." Other commitments prevented his preparation of a formal manuscript on these themes.

Like the contributors to Reflections on Mormonism, an earlier volume in this series, these participants had no agenda except to express themselves on assigned topics. Their views are their own. Some possible parallels to Mormonism are sketched in my introductory paragraphs, but the wider and deeper implications of their conclusions are left to the comparison-minded reader.

Except where otherwise noted, biblical passages in these papers are translations from the Hebrew Bible. The numbering of the verses is sometimes slightly different from that of the King James Version.

T .G .M.

Introductory Essay

The and

Temple the Restoration

Truman G. Madsen

" . . . my holy house, which my people are always commanded to build unto my holy name" (D&C 124:39)

In an unpublished manuscript titled "Sacred Space in the Fourth Gospel," W . D. Davies writes: "For many Jews in the

first century, as ever since, Yahweh, Israel, and the land—a land which finds its quintessence in Jerusalem and the temple-were joined together by what has been called an unbreakable umbilical cord. This meant that for many religious Jews, the Land Jerusalem and the Temple were of central if not essential importance." Elsewhere Davies shows the duplication of these ideas in "an American key" in Mormonism.1

The history of the Latter-day Saints is indeed a history of temples. That history recapitulates much Judeo-Christian experience. Joseph Smith established temples in the faith that he was reestablishing them preparatory to the eventual temples of both the old and the new Jerusalems. He did not teach that this was a

The Temple in Antiquity

luxurious importation on the restored gospel. It was its center and capstone "to usher in . . . a whole and complete and perfect union, and welding together of dispensations" (D&C 128:18).

Repeatedly the Restoration assumes "the ancient order," 2

"the order pertaining to the Ancient of Days," 3 and the "ancient order of things." 4

The earliest documents of the Restoration movement are replete with references to consecrated land, to Zion, and to "the Lord's house." For converts these became an instant and urgent priority. Even before adequate meeting places or chapels were established, temple land was dedicated at Kirtland, Ohio, in 1833 (D&C 94, 95) and at Adam-ondi-Ahman and Far West, Missouri, in 1838 (D&C 115:7-16). In each case exile followed. In Kirtland, Ohio, in 1836 a "preparatory temple" was completed. From meager resources and with little understanding of the whys, Latter-day Saints of multiple religious and ethnic backgrounds undertook the task amidst severe opposition. ( " O Lord, . . . thou knowest that we have done this work through great tribulation"— D&C 109:4-5.) They often labored like Nehemiah "with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other." Great dedication is in the record—theirs and that of the temple. But it was soon desecrated and the people dispersed. Within a decade it happened all over again at Nauvoo, Illinois. After only six weeks of ceremonial use, the magnificent Nauvoo Temple was reduced to rubble by arson, and the people dispossessed of homes and land. The trauma in the loss of two spiritual lodestones—comparable to the double tragedy of Jewish history that the First and Second temples were desecrated and destroyed—did not diminish the vision. Soon after the vanguard company of pioneers arrived in the Great Basin, Brigham Young pushed his cane into the alkaline soil and said, "Here we will build the temple of our God."

The Temple as Center

The centrality of the temple in the Mormon ethos can be seen in other ways.

Latter-day Saints are characterized as city builders and colonizers, as founders. Their communities are seen as a "near-

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The Temple and the Restoration

nation" amidst nations. But for Joseph Smith no city or nation was truly a stronghold of Zion that was not crowned by a temple.

Latter-day Saints are characterized as mission-minded on a worldwide scale. Yet Joseph Smith said in 1841 that "labor on the temple would be as acceptable to the Lord as preaching in the world." 5

Latter-day Saints are committed to the truism that "a man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge." 6 "The glory of God is intelligence" (D&C 93:36). The university in Nauvoo remained an embryo while the temple was completed. For Joseph Smith there were modes of light and truth—"necessary instruction" -which could be manifest only by participation in ordinances in a sacred place. These, he said, were "things spiritual, and to be received only by the spiritual minded." 7

Latter-day Saints are recognized as highly organized in a church structure that is elaborate and closely knit. Yet twelve years after its establishment Joseph Smith would say, "The Church is not fully organized, in its proper order, and cannot be until the Temple is completed, where places will be provided for the administration of the ordinances of the Priesthood."8

Latter-day Saints are known for their insistence on "first principles and ordinances" in response to the atonement of Christ: faith and repentance leading to water baptism and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. But for Joseph Smith these are first steps toward "those last and more impressive ordinances" of the temple.9 All offices and ordinations in the priesthood, even the highest, are preliminary to "that which was lost unto you or which he hath taken away, even the fulness of the priesthood" (D&C 124:28). The fulness of the priesthood is received only by the faithful in the house of the Lord. " I f a man gets a fullness of the priesthood of God, he has to get it in the same way that Jesus Christ obtained it, and that was by keeping all the commandments and obeying all the ordinances of the house of the Lord ." 1 0

Latter-day Saints are recognized as a people of consecrated joy, even defiant rejoicing and ceremonial feasting, who "offer up their sacraments" (see D&C 59:9) in the manner of the ancient feasts and who live in the prophetic vision of the eventual mes-

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sianic banquet. For Joseph Smith the fulness of joy is associated with "the temple of the most high God." Temple dedications were "an event of the greatest importance to the church and the world in making the saints in Zion to rejoice, and the hypocrite and sinner to tremble." 1 1

Latter-day Saints are known for coping with crisis—for "taking care of their own." How, then, could they build temples which were a steady drain of treasure and labor? (Joseph said of the temple blessings, "The rich can only get them in the Temple, the poor may get them on the mountain top as did Moses ." ) 1 2 The admonition was, "Let the Temple be built by the tithing of my people." 1 3 And so it was. "Neither planting, sowing, or reaping" was permitted to interfere.14 It is clear that tithing—doubled in labor—was a sacrifice for all. But it was disabling to none. The economic consequences, some immediate, were beneficial. "Some say it is better to give to the poor than build the Temple. The building of the Temple has sustained the poor who were driven from Missouri, and kept them from starving; and it has been the best means for this object which could be devised. " 1 S " I t shall not impoverish any man but enrich thousands,"1 6 said the Prophet.

In sum, Joseph Smith affirmed, " W e need the temple more than anything else." 1 7

A Prerequisite?

In Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism one may pose an ultimate question: Is any rite, let alone any temple rite, a prerequisite of or instrumental to salvation? For all three traditions the contemporary answer is, in the last analysis, "no . "

Orthodox Judaism, since Talmudic days, teaches that "the righteous of all nations will have a share in the world to come." More recently this has been interpreted to mean the righteous of all religions.18 It follows that many—Gentile as well as Jew—may be granted redemption while totally ignorant of the laws and rites binding upon the observant Jew. This includes the orthodox hope of an eventual renewed temple cultus.

Roman Catholic and Eastern traditions, for all their sacerdotal

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emphasis, affirm that many who have never sought the holy sacraments may nevertheless receive salvific grace. In certain circumstances, for example, they are assumed to be "baptized by desire." Ronald Knox once summarized the Catholic universal vision by expressing the hope that "many a non-Catholic will show up in heaven with an R. C. tag." 1 9 Salvation, in short, will not require sacramental channels.

For Protestantism, the dctctrine of sola fide eliminates the need for any outward signs or works, even those of water baptism or the Lord's Supper. Faith in Christ is sufficient and all-sufficient for salvation. And all "works," including sacerdotal works, are "dead" or, at most, an outward sign.

This is not, of course, to say that any of these religious traditions abandon ritual. There have been ebbs and flows and liturgical revivals, the invocation of experimental additions and subtractions, embellishments and reductions. The twentieth century has witnessed extensive analyses of the functions of ritual—functions, however, which since the Enlightenment are thought to be detached from anything final or fixed. Their justification is construed in terms of historical, social, psychological, symbolic, and existential accounts.20

Eternal Sanctions

Joseph Smith taught that for the ordinances of the temple there were eternal sanctions. These were instituted, set, prepared "before the foundation of the world.' ' This is not to say that there is a Platonic archetype or pure form of the temple that transcends all earthly particulars. It is instead to say, with many strands of Jewish and Christian expectation, that the earthly and heavenly are counterparts.

The Restoration posits an "order of the House of God," a premortal order introduced repeatedly in the world and now "renewed and confirmed" (D&C 84:48). Men do not here begin in the goodness of God. They continue in it (D&C 86:11). They are not born into the kingdom of God, but reborn into it (John 3:5). "Being born again comes by the Spirit of God through ordinances," 2 1 which are essential and exceptionless. Ordinances

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confirm faith in God and his Anointed One; they also enliven it. They signalize the flow of Divine grace in one's response to the Divine. They also transmit and intensify it "grace for grace." Joseph Smith called these the "powers of godliness."

In its patterns of worship, therefore, the temple is, from beginning to end, Christological. Explicit and implicit to everything that is said in Mormon sacred texts is that this temple allegiance is rooted in the New Testament era itself. But outside of Mormonism the New Testament interpretation is dominated by the view that holy places, the temple most of all, are replaced by the Person of Jesus Christ. The most extreme form of this view denies any "geographic theology" and insists that, whatever "sentimental attachment" remained in Paul to the "Temple built with hands," Jesus was and remains the "only true Temple." 2 2

Let us briefly outline New Testament evidence that both Jesus and the temple are "true."

Jesus and the Temple

Jesus "taught daily in the temple" (Luke 19:47). He spoke of the temple as "my house" (Matthew 21:13) and as "my Father's house'' (John 2:16). Literally and symbolically he cleansed it (see Luke 19:45). Some scholars interpret these incidents as Jesus' act of making the temple his own, others as symbols of repudiation.23 He was condemned because he spoke of destroying and rebuilding "this temple"—the temple of his own body. Of the Herodian Temple he said, "There shall not be left one stone upon another" (Mark 13:2; Matthew 24:2; Luke 21:6). That can be read as the foreshadowing of the negation of a defunct system, or as an affirmation of the renewed temple—the rebuilding, stone on stone, of the house that was left unto them "desolate" (Luke 13:35).

It is sometimes said that the temple cultus belongs not to Judaism, certainly not to rabbinic Judaism, but to a more primitive period. It can be allegorized. But as Louis Jacobs writes, "The idea of a rebuilt Temple in which animal sacrifices are offered [does not] seem to us the highest to which our religion can aspire." 2 4

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But what did Jesus really have to do with the ritual system of temple?

Scholars have observed, especially in connection with the Fourth Gospel, that participation in all of the patterns of the temple cultus are demonstrated in Jesus' life, and especially in the final week of his life. On his last visit Jesus gave directions for the offering of the Passover lamb. 2 5 It has even been urged that the Jewish lunar year-cycle, with its temple feasts, sacrifices, and ceremonies, is reflected in perfect sequence in the Gospel of John from chapters 13 to 20.

It is written that Jesus wept over Jerusalem. " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" (Luke 13:34.) Why gather? Joseph Smith's reply:

It was the design of the councils of heaven before the world was, that the principles and laws of the priesthood should be predicated upon the gathering of the people in every age of the world. Jesus did everything to gather the people, and they would not be gathered. . . .

The main object [of gathering] was to build unto the Lord a house whereby He could reveal unto His people the ordinances of His house and the glories of His kingdom, and teach the people the way of salvation; for there are certain ordinances and principles that, when they are taught and practiced, must be done in a place or house built for that purpose.2 6

In the Gospel of John we read that in an upper room (on Mount Zion?) Jesus said to Peter that the acceptance of the ceremonial washing of feet was essential. Peter's refusal would mean "thou hast no part [elsewhere translated inheritance] with me" (John 13:8). That is strong language. Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible notes that this washing "was the custom of the Jews under their law; wherefore, Jesus did this that the law might be fulfilled" (JST, John 13:10). Some scholars see this as a custom which Jesus replaced. In the Restoration it is both a preface to and an echo of sacred temple rites; a proper prologue of Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17 (which is a prayer for unity of


Master and disciple as well as of disciple and disciple), and an example of subservience by a true and suffering servant. But it is more. It was given that they might"be clean every whit, " 2 7 a condition which apparently neither their faith nor their baptism had thus far fully achieved.

The Restoration movement universalizes temple ordinances. All "hard cases" are included—not by exceptionalizing the instruments of God's grace but by revitalizing them, rooting them in the authorities who "hold the keys." Temple ordinances are and will be available both on this side and the other side of the veil to all the family of man who have ever lived or ever will live. Thus the acts and atonement of Jesus Christ may reach consciously and voluntarily to all mankind. "This doctrine appears glorious, inasmuch as it exhibits the greatness of divine compassion and benevolence in the extent of the plan of human salvation."28

What is said here of washing applies likewise to ritual ablutions, anointings, covenant-makings, and searings.29

Anointing

In the epistles of John (1 John 2:27) there is reference to an anointing the faithful have received which "teacheth you of all things.'' The writer pleads with them to remember this anointing, which "is truth." In the earliest manuscripts the Greek word for this anointing is unique; it occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It connotes an unguent or "smearing," or figuratively an endowment of the Holy Spirit or a consecration to a religious service. Some scholars suggest that it refers to a ritual use of oil. But it has often been read to mean "to appoint" or "to elevate." 3 0 By either reading, here is a ritual act among Christians—among the Johannine community-which is distinct from baptism and which for the writer of the epistle involves a communion or connection with God which teaches or assures. Its meanings are summed up by the admonition "abide in him [Christ]." 3 1 (Compare D&C 88:1-5; 124:124.) In the Restoration this is distinct from the "anointing . . . with oil" spoken of by James, which is for the healing of the sick (James 4:14-15).

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The Doctrinal Matrix

Undergirding all this is what might be called an axiom of continuity between the mortal and immortal spheres. It makes five doctrinal assumptions which are foreign to the philosophical garnishing of both Jewish and Christian thought after the third century: (1) The Divine realm is everlastingly involved in space and time. Both are to be sacralized. (2) The world of spirits is near and (though in subtle ways) tangible, not a remnant of superstition or a metaphor. (3) Freedom and the capacity for receiving a full measure of God's truth, way, and life do not end at death. (4) "The elements are the tabernacle of God" (D&C 93:35). "The spirit and the body [together] are the soul of man" (D&C 88:15). Earthly sacramental acts aim at the transformation of the flesh as well as of the spirit. And finally, (5) "In my Father's house are many mansions" (John 14:2)-here as hereafter there are many kingdoms and levels of spiritual attainment. When one asks "Wil l all mankind be saved?" the proper question should in fact be " T o what degree?"

To the Hebrews

After the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, many Jews anticipated a heavenly city and a heavenly temple which would appear on earth more magnificent than any of its predecessors. Some Dead Sea Scroll fragments record the same hope. 3 2 It was to be erected by divine decree and intervention. Some aspects of Midrashic and rabbinic thought teach that this temple will somehow be "brought" from heaven.

The undergirding theme of the book of Hebrews is that Jesus Christ, by his life and atonement, renews priesthood, law, ritual, and covenant. The temple may be still standing when he returns. But if the only temple now available is in heaven, then Christ is, in fact, offering sacrifice there. The book draws exact parallels between earthly and heavenly temples. Levitical priests, it says, functioned in the earthly sanctuary. Now Jesus, the great High Priest, ministers in the heavenly temple. 3 3

With a reverence for the older temple cultus, its meanings, sac-


rifices, covenants, and functions, the book of Hebrews teaches of Messiah, the Christ, who fulfills temple traditions by becoming their perpetual minister through his bloody covenant and through a heavenly temple ministry.

It has been difficult for scholars to reconcile these chapters with the premise of Christ's "once for all" sacrifice (Hebrews 10:10) on earth. And stranger still to think of anything heavenly needing sanctification, cleansing, and sacrifice. But for Hebrews, Jesus is clearly an active and heavenly high priest; the imagery includes the recognition of angels who attend this sacred service.

Orthodox theology today speaks of Christ "as very God of very God. ' ' The writer of the book of Hebrews—in the manner of the Restoration—holds that Jesus was indeed Son, Firstborn, Son of Man, Messiah, High Priest, and Apostle. But the writer did not impose the creedal suppositions of the third century.

Hebrews stresses further the prominence of the Melchizedek Priesthood. Melchizedek figures in both Jewish and Christian art through the centuries. But as a source of ordination rights (rites) and powers, his role is obscured. The book of Hebrews makes him, as Albright believed, a legitimate king-his very name meaning "my king is righteousness."

Joseph Smith taught, in defiance of biblical scholarship of his day, that the passage "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8) referred to Melchizedek and not to Jesus. But the book goes on to make Jesus the fulfillment, not only of the Melchizedek-type, but also of Abraham and of Moses.

Sacrifice Restored

Similarly, Joseph Smith taught that there were higher ordinances, including sacrifice, for which Moses tried in vain to prepare his people.

These sacrifices, as well as every ordinance belonging to the Priesthood, will, when the Temple of the Lord shall be built, and the sons of Levi be purified, be fully restored and attended to in all their powers, ramifications, and blessings. This ever did and ever will exist when the powers of the

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The modern command to build a temple describes it as:

A house of prayer, A house of fasting, A house of faith, A house of learning, A house of glory, A house of order, A house of God.

(D&C 88:119.)

In all these roles or functions it is a house of covenant, and through all these modes a house of sanctification. "Holiness" is a term itself derived from the concept of ritual purity. One must be properly prepared thus to participate in official acts in the presentation or representation of divine service. The idea of makom kadosh or holy house has Old Testament precedent, not only for the building but for the entire covenant-community. In the writings of Paul, as of Peter (see 1 Peter 2:4-9), this house is the focal point for priestly entry, for consecration (both temporal and spiritual). The "chief cornerstone" of the temple, as of the service, is the Messiah himself.35

The idea of the temple as a house of prayer and fasting has roots in the ancient order of prayer in which God's name prevails (see 1 Kings 8:28-29). The orthodox Jewish prayer quorum or minyan is traceable at least as far back as the Babylonian captivity. And the book of Daniel (6:10) spoke of his praying toward the temple three times daily, a practice later encouraged by Joseph Smith.3 6

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Melchizedek Priesthood are sufficiently manifest; else how can the restitution of all things spoken of by the Holy Prophets be brought to pass. It is not to be understood that the law of Moses will be established again with all its rites and variety of ceremonies; this has never been spoken of by the prophets; but those things which existed prior to Moses' day, namely, sacrifice, will be continued.34

Elemental Functions


Proxy Baptism for the Dead

Baptism for the dead, so convention has it, was a non-Christian aberration, perhaps with prior connections to Jewish tomb feasts or burial rites. But historically the evidence can be summed up thus: There is no evidence of this practice among non-Christians. And there is some evidence, in addition to the statement in 1 Corinthians 15:29, that proxy baptism for the dead was practiced among and by early Christians. Indeed, in the iconography, in the typology, and in the baptismal instruction of the early church fathers one may discern at least two different sorts of initiation: one through water baptism, and the other through certain initiatory oblations and anointings and baptism for the dead. 3 7

Proxy Ordinances

That men and women are privileged to "go through'' each and all of the patterns and ordinances for and in behalf of their deceased families and others is unusual in contemporary religious practice. But, again, the proxy and representational ideas are not at the periphery of early Jewish and Christian practice; they are at the core. In the ancient temple, the high priest stood in sacred vestments on the most sacred of ground (the Holy of Holies) on the most sacred of days (the Day of Atonement) and spoke the most sacred of words (the Tetragrammaton). And he did all this representing the whole house of Israel, who stood thus before God as if they were one man. The Holy of Holies registered or recorded their acts, and the act of cleansing the sanctuary through genuine repentance and sacrifice involved the idea of the "merit of the fathers," as it did the idea of atonement. The related New Testament phrase that has become a prime text in the Restoration is the statement in Hebrews that "they [the dead] without us should not be made perfect" (Hebrews 11:40). (The RSV says "apart from us they should not be made perfect.")

As for Christian understanding, the substitutionary or representational or ransom theories of atonement all presuppose one principle: Christ can merit and mediate for us, speak for us, act for us. Obadiah's expression "saviours . . . on mount Zion"

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(1:21) is, after all, plural. And in Christ's image and through his sanctions and keys and authorities, the faithful may act officially for others. " W e are commanded to be baptized for our dead, thus fulfilling the words of Obadiah, when speaking of the glory of the latter day: 'And saviors shall come up on Mount Zion.' " 3 8

The Apocalypse

The locus classicus of the temple vision tied to future culmination is the Revelation of John. The Messiah—the Lamb of God—comes down from heaven. The dispersed of Israel are gathered. The church is arrayed like a bride for her husband (Revelation 21:2). Celestial and terrestrial are somehow fused. The New Jerusalem becomes the center of a newly created earth as the preface to a new era, a theocratic community. And the Father and the Lamb as well as the faithful become temples.

The apocalypse lends itself to fanciful and exaggerated readings. But one theme is inescapable: The temple and its liturgy are the apex of man's earthly quest for the heavenly, and of the heavenly transformation of the earthly.

Indeed, the promises given the seven churches in the Apocalypse, each one beginning " T o him that overcometh," are promises that can be superimposed fittingly on the sequences described in traditional and modern temple worship. 3 9

The Seven Promises

1. The Tree of Life Promise (Revelation 2:7): Paradise, spoken of in the Apocalypse, may well refer to Genesis 2:9 and the tree of life in the midst of the Garden. Jewish teaching anticipates that the tree of life will reappear in the messianic era. The book of Revelation identifies the tree of life with and/or places it in the midst of the temple. Pseudepigraphical sources teach of the eventual role of the Levite priests (whom Joseph Smith said will offer anew in the temple an "offering in righteousness"—D&C 13:1, 84:31; 124:39): they will officially remove the threatening sword and cherubim and allow the saintly to eat of the tree of life with its variety of fruits.40

2. The Crown of Life Promise (Revelation 2:10): The imagery

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of royalty, of scepter, of dominion, of crown, of coronation, runs through the entire book of Revelation. Kingship associated with the priestly roles of Israel is presented in a temple context. The opposite of such a crown is "the second death." The seal, or "sealing in one's forehead," scholars see as associated with security, with victory, with culmination. In the Restoration these sealing powers are reserved for the temple.

3. The Hidden Manna and the New Name Promise (Revelation 2:17): This manna, some biblical scholars conclude, is "from the tree." To partake of or share in it is to "partake of the divine nature" (see 2 Peter 1:4). Many commentators find here sacramental or eucharistic overtones (see John 6). Again the tree of life is transplanted to the temple and with it the nourishment process.

Names in Jewish thought are theophoric, thought to be all but identical with the personality.41 To "hold" fast to the name of Christ is to take upon oneself the burdens and characteristics of Christ in covenant-relationship. Anciently the name of God was spoken only by the high priest annually within the Holy of Holies. In other traditions the name of the Messiah was supposed to be engraved on a stone in the temple. Apocalyptical literature speaks of "plants of renown," renowned men who were surnamed as of Israel. Those thus marked or sealed belong to the glorified Messiah, who in the naming process glorifies them. 4 2

4. The Rod (elsewhere translated scepter) and Morning Star Promise (Revelation 2:26-28): Authority is promised here as it is received "of my Father"; also the "morning star." Here again the Messiah, or king of Israel, bears the scepter of rule, which ultimately draws together all forms of rule. The promise of power to rule is now shared and legitimized by the Father and the Son— the power to shepherd as Christ does, but also to shatter (see verse 27). Here is portrayed the military and political Savior of Israel arising from Jacob as from Judah. He is fully King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and to his faithful ones are promised kingship and lordship in his likeness. One reading of the gift of the morning star (compare 2 Peter 1:19) is that it is the Son of God himself (Revelation 22:16).

5. The White Raiment Promise (Revelation 3:5): For the Reve-lator, to be acknowledged before the Father in the presence of his

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angels is to be reclothed. Jewish tradition stressed the priestly shawl, the priestly robes in the temple, and (among the Essenes) white garments which were a symbol of inner purity. The Book of Life idea is traceable to Daniel. The related passages on books of remembrance are often seen as the list or registry of those of righteous destiny. Such lists on ancient parchments could be immersed in liquid, hence erased. Ritual ablutions completed by clothing in clean clothes characterize early Jewish and Christian practice. But for the Revelator, as for Joseph Smith, the robes of those in the community of the faithful are delivered by the Messiah for his worthy representatives. This is on a day of fulfillment and of spiritual triumph.43

6. The Pillar in the Temple Promise (Revelation 3:12): " I [will] make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out." Written on "the pillar" is the name of God and of the City of God and of the New Jerusalem "which comes down from heaven." In Jewish sources it is said that the Levites were entrusted with the "keys" of the temple, with power to overpower or bind both the evil and the good. (Joseph Smith taught that temple ordinances were given "in order that [one] may be prepared and able to overcome all things" and may learn to "prevent imposition'' by the forces of darkness and evi l . ) 4 4 In one strand of rabbinic thought God will restore all crowns to mankind which have been withdrawn from them. 4 5 The "being written on" recalls the promise of Jeremiah (31:33) that " I will put my law in their inward parts'' (cf. Hebrews 8:10, 10:16). It was proof of citizenship in the heavenly city. The victory of Christ becomes the victory of Christ's sons.

7. The Promise of a Feast, a Messianic Banquet, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Revelation 3:20-21): " T o him that over-cometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne." The promise is not for the lukewarm but for the fully regenerate. To be anointed is to have one's eyes opened "to the glory of the kingdom" and then to become partaker or "to share" thereof. Such promises are not made on faith alone, but to those whose faith has brought them the mark of the prize of the high calling of Christ. He who will rule and reign forever now promises that his own will

15


rule with him, will be with him. And one high symbol of that invitation to share is in the glorious consummation of a feast. Those who have come up through affliction, who have not been defiled, who have had their faith and love tested, are "called, and chosen, and faithful" (Revelation 17:14).4 6 They are they who have fully embraced and been embraced in the holiness of God in his sanctuary.

Conclusion

One might trace in detail the counterparts and implications of these patterns in the sacred texts of the Restoration. Enough has been outlined to underscore a simple conclusion: Within the Jewish-Christian tradition one may find the doctrinal and ritual core of the ceremonials of modern Mormon temples. Whatever else Latter-day Saint temple worship may seem to simulate, its deepest roots and closest ties are here. In fact, Mormon understanding of temples may well be closer to normative Judaism and first-century Christianity than either of these traditions is presently close to the other. The Mormon temple faith is at once biblical, messianic, and millennial. The papers in this volume are a beginning toward identifying and relating some of these roots and ties.

Notes 1. "Israel, the Mormons and the Land," in Truman G. Madsen, ed.,

Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels, Religious Studies Monograph Series, vol. 4 (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1978).

2. History of the Church 4:492. 3. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt

Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1938), p. 237. Hereafter cited as Teachings. 4. Ibid., p. 223. 5. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, comps. and eds., The Words of

Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the

16


Prophet Joseph, Religious Studies Monograph Series, vol. 6 (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1980), p. 70.

6. Teachings, p. 217. 7. History of the Church 5:1-2. 8. Teachings, p. 224 (28 April 1842). 9. Ibid., p. 362.

10. History of the Church 5:424. 11. Journal History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

(unpublished mss., LDS Church Archives), 6 January 1842. 12. History of the Church 4:608. 13. Teachings, p. 230; cf. D&C 97:10-14. 14. Teachings, p. 196. 15. Teachings, p. 329. 16. See " A Few Items from a Discourse Delivered by Joseph Smith," 19

July 1840, LDS Church Archives, Manuscript D, 114, Box 4, Folder 4. 17. Journal History, 4 May 1844. 18. See C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, A Rabbinic Anthology (New York:

Schocken Books, 1974), p. xiv. 19. Related to the author by the Jesuit priest Gustave Weigel. 20. See, for example, Abraham Kaplan, "Explanations of Ritual," Presi

dential Address, Israel Philosophical Association, May 1983. 21. Teachings, p. 162. 22. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (London, 1955). 23. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible

(Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday and Company, 1970), p. 172. 24. Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology (New York: Behrman House, 1973), p.

300. 25. See "Jewish Background to Christian Worship" in R. J. Beckwith, The

Study of Liturgy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 42. 26. Teachings, p. 308. 27. Ibid., p. 91. 28. Ibid., pp. 191-92. 29. In 1835 Joseph Smith spoke of "the order of the house of God,"

including the ordinance of washing of feet, as "calculated to unite our hearts, that we may be one in feeling and sentiment, and that our faith may be strong, so that Satan cannot overthrow us, nor have any power over us here" (Teachings, p. 91; cf. D&C 88:138-41).

30. Geza Vermees, Jesus the Jew (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), p. 92. 31. Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, Anchor Bible (Garden City,

N.Y. : Doubleday and Company, 1982), pp. 341-49. 32. See R. Williamson, "Platonism in Hebrews," Scottish Journal of

Theology 16 (1963):418-19.

17


33. It was customary for centuries to suppose that "the (one) temple" was the temple in Jerusalem and that Jewish faith made no room for others. But now at Arad a temple has been uncovered known to be contemporary with Solomon's temple. Its design includes an altar and a first tent or curtain, then a second curtain, and a holy of holies. Y. Aharoni, "Arad: Its Inscriptions and Temple," Biblical Archaeologist 31 (1968): 18-27.

34. Teachings, p. 173 (5 October 1840). 35. See B. Gartner, The Temple and the Community and the Qumran and

the New Testament (Cambridge, 1965). 36. Teachings, p. 161. 37. Roger J. Adams, "The Iconography of Early Christian Initiation:

Evidence for Baptism for the Dead" (unpublished ms., 1977); Hugh Nibley, "Baptism for the Dead in Ancient Times," Improvement Era 51-52 (Dec. 1948-Apr. 1949): passim; Bernard M. Foschini, "Those Who Are Baptized for the Dead," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 13(1951):328-44.

38. Teachings, p. 223. 39. See James E. Talmage, The House of the Lord: A Study of Holy

Sanctuaries, Ancient and Modern (reprint ed.; Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1962); Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980).

40. Testament of Levi 18:9-12. 41. See Joseph Smith's dedicatory prayer at the Kirtland Temple (D&C 109)

and the response, "My name shall be here" (D&C 110:7; cf. 1 Kings 8:29). 42. See J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation (Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday

and Company, 1975), p. 400. 43. Joseph Smith's translation of the New Testament parable of the marriage

supper notes that those who are "called" but not "chosen" are those who "do not have on the wedding garment" (JST, Matthew 22:14).

44. Teachings, p. 91; Words of Joseph Smith, p. 21. 45. Sabbath 88a, in The Babylonian Talmud, trans. Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein,

vol. 1 (London: Soncino Press, 1938), p. 418. 46. Compare Teachings, p. 42.

18

1

What Is a Temple?

Hugh W. Nibley

Through a century and a half Latter-day Saints have become familiar with the impact of temple building and temple worship within their own culture. But if there is one man who has taught them the cross-cultural precedents of this center of Mormon faith and practice, it is the dean of Mormon historians, Hugh W. Nibley. Twenty-five years ago, in anticipation of the dedication of the London Temple, he wrote an essay under the title "The Idea of the Temple in History." In this paper, renamed and reprinted here, he documents the ambivalence of the church fathers toward the Jerusalem temple—was it good riddance or tragic loss? He traces attempts to allegorize it or to relocate the sacred center as the church or the holy sepulchre. He has extended his study to comparative and patternistic methods which show a diffusion of temple ideas throughout all the cultures of the world. Implicitly he deals with "the question of priority" and in a variety of studies shows that the complex of Mormon temple architecture, symbolism, and ritual process cannot be found in

19


Those Church Fathers, especially of the fourth century, who proclaim the victory of Christianity over its rivals constantly

speak of the Church as the competitor and supplanter of the Synagogue, and modern authorities are agreed that in ritual and liturgy the Christian Church grew up "in the shadow of the Synagogue." 1 This is a most significant fact. While the Temple stood the Jews had both its ancient ordinances and the practices of the Synagogue, but they were not the same. The Temple was unique, and when it was destroyed the Synagogue of the Jews did not take over its peculiarly sacred functions—they were in no wise authorized to do so. 2

The Loss of the Temple

Is it not strange that the Christian Church should take its ritual and liturgy from the Synagogue rather than the Temple? The ready explanation for that was that the Temple had been destroyed by God, the Old Law abolished, and a spiritual Temple—a much higher and finer thing—had taken its place.3 But if God had abandoned the Temple, he had no less abandoned the Synagogue-why copy it? If a "spiritual" Temple was so much superior to the crass physical thing, why did the Christians go out of their way to borrow equally physical Jewish and Gentile rites and practices of a much lower origin? Those same churchmen who expressed a fastidious disdain for the crude and outmoded rites of the Temple at the same time diligently cultivated the rites of the Synagogue (at best a second-class Temple) with a generous and ever-increasing intermixture of popular pagan practices.4

Plainly the Christian world was not satisfied with the rhetorical abstractions of a purely spiritual successor to the Temple. But if

20

the milieu of Joseph Smith's own time and place. The closer similarities can be found in antiquity.

T.G.M.

What Is a Temple?

the boast of the Church was that it took up and continued where the Old Law left off, why did it not continue along the line of the Temple rather than of the Synagogue?5

The answer is, as we shall see below, that the Primitive Church did just that, while the later Church, by all accounts a totally different thing, tried to and failed, attempting for a time to establish its own substitutes for the Temple. St. Jerome argues that if the Jews had the Temple, the Christians have the Holy Sepulchre, and asks, "Doesn't the Holy Sepulchre of the Lord appear more venerable to you?" 6 This was no empty rhetoric. The Christians of the fourth century looked upon the Holy Sepulchre in dead earnest as the legitimate successor of the Temple. The great bishops of the time protested loudly but in vain against the fixed idea that to be really saved a Christian had to visit Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre,7 and many modern studies have shown that the appointments and rites of the Holy Sepulchre represent a conscious attempt to continue the ways of the Temple. 8 Only later was the doctrine cultivated that any church might be considered as equivalent to the Temple, and it never proved very convincing. St. Ambrose was the first Christian writer to call a church a temple, and the editors of the Patrologia, commenting on this, remind us that a church is definitely not a temple in the sense of Solomon's Temple. 9 Rome itself, after centuries of bitter rivalry, was unable to supplant Jerusalem as the supreme object of the pilgrim's desire. 1 0 Early Christian liturgies reveal a constant concern to reproduce physically something as near as possible to the Temple rites of Jerusalem. The bulk of the liturgy is taken up with the Davidic Psalms, the old ritual texts of the Temple; from the introit to the acclamation of the final Psalm (Ps. 150), the imagery is that of the Temple; the priests are regularly referred to as Levites, and the Bishop (though his office and title derive from the Synagogue and not the Temple) is equated with Aaron the High Priest. Students of Christian ritual and liturgy agree today that no church possesses anything near to the original rites and ordinances of the Primitive Church; they point to the "gaping holes" in Christian ritual, and describe at length how through the centuries these have been filled with substitute material from Jewish, classical, and

21


Germanic sources.11 It was not a satisfactory arrangement: the shadow of the Temple never ceased to disquiet the churchmen, who almost panic at the suggestion that the Jews might sometime rebuild their Temple. 1 2 For since the traditions of conventional Christianity are those of the Synagogue, they could no more compete with a true Temple than the Synagogue itself could.

What Makes a Temple? The Cosmic Plan

Though the words Synagogue, Ecclesia, and Temple are commonly employed by the Doctors of the Church to designate the religions of the Jews, Christians, and Pagans, respectively, still the authorities do not hesitate to apply the word Temple both to the Temple of the Jews and to their own churches.13 If there are unholy temples, there are also holy ones: what makes a temple different from other buildings is not its sacredness, but its form and function.

What is that form? We can summarize a hundred studies of recent date in the formula: a temple, good or bad, is a scale-model of the universe. The first mention of the word templum is by Varro, for whom it designates a building specially designed for interpreting signs in the heavens—a sort of observatory where one gets one's bearings on the universe.14 The root tem- in Greek and Latin denotes a "cutting" or intersection of two lines at right angles, "the point where the cardo and decumanus cross," hence where the four regions come together,15 every temple being carefully oriented to express "the idea of pre-established harmony between a celestial and a terrestrial image." 1 6 Eusebius expressed the idea clearly long ago when he said that the Church was "a great Temple, which the divine W o r d . . . had established upon earth as the intellectual image of the celestial pattern,... the earthly exemplification of celestial regions in their revolutions, the supernal Jerusalem, the celestial Mt. Zion," etc. 1 7 Varro himself says that there are three temples, one in heaven, one on earth, and one beneath the earth.18 In the universal temple concept these three are identical, one being built exactly over the other, with the earth temple in the very middle of everything representing "the Pole of the heavens, around which all heavenly motions revolve,

What Is a Temple?

23

the knot that ties earth and heaven together, the seat of universal dominion." 1 9 Here the four horizontal regions meet and here the three worlds make contact. Whether in the Old World or the New, the idea of the three levels and four directions dominated the whole economy of the temples and of the societies which the temples formed and guided. 2 0

The Temple at Jerusalem, like God's throne and the Law itself, existed before the foundations of the world, according to the Talmud. 2 1 Its middoth or measurements were all sacred and prescribed, with strict rules for orientation.22 Its nature as a cosmic center is vividly recalled in many medieval representations of the City of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre, which are shown as the exact center and navel of the earth.23 It was in conscious imitation of both Jewish and Christian ideas that the Moslems conceived of their Kaaba as

not only the centre of the earth, it is the centre of the universe Every heaven and every earth has its centre marked by a sanctuary as its navel At each of them the same ceremonies are carried out that are carried out at the Kaaba. So the sanctuary of Mecca is established as the religious centre of the universe and the cosmic significance of any ritual act performed there is clearly demonstrated.24

What is bound on earth is bound in heaven. From the Temple at Jerusalem went forth the ideas and tradi

tions which are found all over the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem worlds. Thus the earliest Christian rites and buildings show a marked concern for orientation, commenting on which Voelkl observes:

It is usual for people to locate themselves with reference to some immovable point in the universe.... The dogmatic tendency of the first centuries which created the "holy line" pointing East.. . reached its final form in the mystical depths of Scholasticism.25

What began as tangible reality petered out in the abstractions of the schoolmen, but the source of the idea is unmistakably the Temple.


The Place of Contact

As the ritual center of the universe, the Temple was anciently viewed as the one point on earth at which men could establish contact with other worlds. This aspect of the Temple idea has been the object of intense research in the past decade. It is now generally recognized that the earliest temples were not, as formerly supposed, dwelling places of divinity, but rather meeting places at which men at specific times attempted to make contact with the powers above. "Though in time it became the dwelling of the divinity," according to Contenau, "originally it may have had the aspect of a temple of passage, a place of arrival " 2 6 The temple was a building

which the gods transversed to pass from their celestial habitation to their earthly residence The ziggurat is thus nothing but a support for the edifice on top of it, and the stairway that leads from the same between the upper and lower worlds. 2 7

In this respect it resembled a mountain, for "the mountain itself was originally such a place of contact between this and the upper world." 2 8 A long list might be made of holy mountains on which God was believed to have talked with men in ancient times, including "the mountain of the Lord's house." 2 9 A great many studies have appeared in the 1950s describing the basic idea of the temple as a sort of antechamber between the worlds, and particular attention has been given to the fact that in both Egypt and Mesopotamia temples had regular wharves for the landing of celestial barks. 3 0

An investigation of the oldest temples, those represented on prehistoric seals, concludes that those high structures were also "gigantic altars," built both to attract the attention of the powers above (the burnt offering being a sort of smoke signal, as it were) and to provide "the stairways which the god, in answer to these prayers, used in order to descend to the earth.... He comes bringing a renewal of life in all its forms." 3 1 From the first, it would seem, men built altars in the hopes of establishing contact with heaven, and built high towers for the same purpose (see Gen. 11:4).

24

What Is a Temple?

As the pivot and pole of the universe, the Temple is also peculiarly tied to the North Star, around which all things revolve. 3 2 At the same time, it is the place of meeting with the lower as well as the upper world, and the one point at which passage between the two is possible.3 3 That is why in the earliest Christian records the gates and the keys are so closely connected with the Temple. Scholars have often noted that the keys of Peter (Matt. 16:19) can only be the keys of the Temple with its work for the dead. 3 4 Many studies have demonstrated the identity of tomb, temple, and palace as the place where the powers of the other world are exercised for the benefit of the human race. 3 5 In the fourth century there was a massive and permanent transfer of the pilgrim's goal from temples to tombs, though the two had always been connected.36 Invariably the rites of the Temple are those of the ancestors, and appropriately the chief character in those rites is the first ancestor and father of the race. 3 7

Naturally the Temple at Jerusalem has been studied along with the rest, and it has been found that its rites fit easily and naturally into the general pattern.38 Professor Albright, while noting that Solomon's Temple was not of pagan origin, describes it as a point of contact with the other world, presenting "a rich cosmic symbolism which was largely lost in later Israelite and Jewish tradition."3 9 That is, the farther back we go in time, the more uniform is the concept of the Temple among the ancients as a whole, with everything pointing to a single tradition. Albright duly comments on the twelve oxen as the cosmic symbol of the circle of the year and the three stages of the great altar as representing the three worlds. 4 0

The Ritual Drama

The rites of the Temple are always a repetition of those that marked its founding in the beginning of the world, telling how it all came to be in the first place. The foundation of the sanctuary coincides with the foundation or creation of the earth itself: "The first fixed point in the chaotic waters. . . is the place of the sanctuary, which becomes the earthly seat of the world-order, having its palladium in throne and altar. The foundation of the sanctuary, therefore, coincides with the creation."4 1 After a life-

25


time of study Lord Raglan assures us that when we study all the rituals of the world we come up with the discovery that the pristine and original ritual of them all, from which all others take their rise, was the dramatization of the creation of the world. 4 2

And Mowinckel sums up the common cult pattern of all the earliest civilizations: "It is the creation of the World that is being repeated." 4 3

This creation drama was not a simple one for, as the above authorities remind us, an indispensable part of the story is the ritual death and resurrection of the King, who represents the founder and first parent of the race, and his ultimate triumph over death as priest and King, followed by some form of hieros gamos or ritual marriage for the purpose of begetting the race. 4 4

All this has become stock-in-trade of students of comparative religion today, but at the beginning of the century nobody knew anything about it. We find this now familiar "Year-Drama" with its familiar episodes wherever we turn—in the Memphite Theology of Egypt (recently held to have had great influence on the Hebrew religion), in the well-documented Babylonian New Year's rites, in the great saecular celebration of the Romans, in the ritual beginnings of Greek drama, in the temple-texts of Ras Shamra, in the Celtic mythological cycles, or in the Medieval Mystery plays. 4 5 And if we ask why this drama is performed, we always get the same answer, according to Mowinckel: "Because the Divinity—the First Father of the Race—did so once in the beginning, and commanded us to do the same." 4 6

The Temple drama is essentially a problem-play, with a combat as its central theme. The combat at the New Year takes various mimetic forms throughout the world—games, races, sham-battles, mummings, dances, plays, etc.—but the essential part is that the hero is temporarily beaten and overcome by death: "The K i n g . . . is even trampled upon by the powers of chaos, but he rises again and puts the false king, the false Messiah, to death." 4 7 This resurrection motif is absolutely essential to the rites, the purpose of which is ultimate victory over death.

The Initiation

But the individual who toiled as a pilgrim in a weary land to reach the waters of life that flowed from the Temple was no mere

26

What Is a Temple?

27

passive spectator. He came to share in all the blessings of knowledge and regeneration. It was not just the symbolic immortality of a society that was sought, but the personal attainment of eternal life and glory by the individual.48 This the individual attempted to achieve through a process of initiation. "Initiation," writes Professor Rostovzeff, "is notoriously a symbol of death,.. . the symbolic act of death and rebirth, resurrection."49 The essence of the great rites that marked the New Year (in Israel as elsewhere the one time when all were expected to come to the Temple) was "transition, rite de passage, succession of lives, following the revolutions of Nature"—though it should be noted that the revolutions of nature definitely did not furnish the original pattern for the thing.50 The actual initiation rites have been studied often and in detail, and found to exhibit a very clear and consistent pattern. We can give but one illustration here, taken from a short but remarkable writing by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem, a particularly valuable witness, since he is the last Church Father to be in close contact with the old Jerusalem rites.

The general impression one gets from reading the long discussions in the Talmud is that people in the Temple at Jerusalem spent most of their time at baptisms and ablutions. Certainly baptism is one specific ordinance always mentioned in connection with the Temple. "When one is baptised one becomes a Christian," writes Cyril, "exactly as in Egypt by the same rite one becomes an Osiris." Not only does Cyril recognize the undeniable resemblance between the Christian and non-Christian rites, but he also notes that they have the identical significance, which is initiation into immortality.51 The baptism in question, Cyril explains, is rather a washing than a baptism, since it is not by immersion. It is followed by an anointing, which our guide calls "the antitype of the anointing of Christ himself," making every candidate as it were a Messiah.5 2 Elsewhere he describes this rite specifically as the anointing of the brow, face, ears, nose, breast, etc., "which represents," he says, "the clothing of the candidate in the protective panoply of the Holy Spirit," which however does not hinder the initiate from receiving a real garment on the occasion.53 Furthermore, the candidate was reminded that the whole ordinance "is in imitation of the sufferings of Christ," in which "we suffer without pain by mere imitation his receiving


of the nails in his hands and feet: the antitype of Christ's sufferings." 5 4 Bishop Cyril further insists that Moses and Solomon had both been duly baptized in this manner: "After being washed in water, he (Moses) was anointed and called a Christ, because of the anointing which was a type. When Solomon came forth to be king, the High Priest anointed him, after a bath in Gihon. This again was a type. But with us these things are not a type but a reality." 5 5 From his last remark it is plain that the early Christians actually performed the rites described. The Jews once taught that when Michael and Gabriel lead all the sinners up out of the lower world, "they will wash and anoint them, healing them of their wounds of hell, and clothe them with beautiful pure garments and bring them into the presence of God . " 5 6 These things are often referred to in the earliest Christian writings, but were soon lost in a manner we must now describe.

Loss and Diffusion of the Temple Ordinances

No one can consider the temples and their ancient rites (at which we have merely hinted in these pages) without asking how they came to be both so widespread and so corrupt in the world. Let us first consider the question of corruption.

1. It can be shown that both the Jews and Christians suffered greatly at the hands of their enemies because of the secrecy of their rites, which they steadfastly refused to discuss or divulge. 5 7

When the key to the ordinances was lost, this very secrecy made for a great deal of misunderstanding and above all opened the door to unbridled fraud: every Gnostic sect, for example, claimed to have the lost rites and ordinances, the keys and the teachings, as they had been given to the Apostles and Patriarchs of old. 5 8

2. It is doubtful if a religious organization ever existed which did not have its splits and factions. Now a common cause of schism, among both Jews and Christians, was the claim of a particular group that it alone still possessed the mysteries.5 9

Hence from early times many competing versions of the true rites and ordinances have been current.

3. Even in good times, the rites like the doctrines inevitably become the object of various conflicting schools of interpretation

28

What 7s a Temple?

and become darkened and obscured as a result. Indeed, it is now generally held that mythology is simply an attempt to explain the origin and meaning of rituals that men no longer understand.60

The clouding and corruption of ritual is apparent in the oldest texts known, 6 1 and painfully so in Jewish and Christian literature. The Talmud tells of a pious Jew who left Jerusalem in disgust, saying, "What answer will the Israelites give to Elijah when he comes," and asks why the scholars don't agree on the rites of the Temple. 6 2 For in Jewish and Christian tradition alike, it is Elijah who is to come and restore the rites of the Temple in their purity.

4. The early Fathers had a ready explanation for any suspicious resemblances between Christian and non-Christian practices. The former, they explained, had come down from the ancient Hebrews and were thus really much older than their pagan counterparts, which had been borrowed or stolen from them. Actually there is a great deal of evidence for the widespread usurpation of the Temple rites at a very early time. One would hardly expect people to view their own highest rites as stolen and their highest god as a usurper, yet wherever we look that is what we find. Every major mythology tells of the great usurper who rules the world and who upon examination turns out to be the father and founder of the race!6 3

Since we cannot here treat them individually, we must be content to note that the archetype of all usurpers is Nimrod, who claims kingship and priesthood by right of "the cosmic garment of Adam,' ' which his father Ham stole from Noah. 6 4 When in turn Esau, that other great hunter, by a ruse got this garment from Nimrod, he sold it as a "birthright" to Jacob, and then tried to get it back again "and force his way into the Temple," according to the Leptogenesis.65 Early Jewish and Christian traditions report that Nimrod it was who built the Tower of Babel, the first pagan temple, in an attempt to contact heaven; it was he who challenged the priesthood of Abraham; it was he who built the first city, founded the first state, organized the first army, ruling the world by force; he challenged God to an archery contest and, when he thought he had won, claimed to be no less than God's successor.66 The interesting thing is that all his activities center

29


around the Temple, whose rites and whose priesthood he boldly attempts to seize for himself.

5. The same comparative studies that discovered the common pattern in all ancient religions—a phenomenon now designated as "patternism"—have also demonstrated the processes of diffusion by which that pattern was spread throughout the world—and in the process torn to shreds, of which recognizable remnants may be found in almost any land and time. It would now appear that the early Fathers were not far from the mark in explaining the resemblances: the rites do look alike wherever we find them, however modern Christians may insist on denying the fact, for they all come from a common source.67 The business of reconstructing the original prototype from the scattered fragments has been a long and laborious one, and it is as yet far from completed. Yet an unmistakable pattern emerges more clearly every day. This raises the question of priority: How did the Mormons get hold of the Temple idea?

The Question of Priority

Let the reader study some photographs of the Salt Lake Temple, a structure whose design the Mormons believe to have been revealed to the Prophet Brigham Young. Consider how perfectly this edifice inside and out embodies the Temple idea. The emphasis on the three levels is apparent at once; the orientation is basic—every pioneer community, in fact, was located and oriented with reference to the Temple as the center of Zion; the crenelated walls and buttresses are familiar from the oldest monumental temples as "the pillars of heaven"; the series of stars, moon, and sunstones on the buttresses indicate the levels of celestial glory; at the lowest point in the Temple is a brazen sea on the back of twelve oxen, and there are the waters through which the dead, by proxy, pass to eternal life, the Gates of Salvation; on the center of the west towers is the North Star and its attendant constellation, a symbol recognized throughout human history as depicting the center of time and the revolution of the universe; the battlements that impart a somewhat grim air to the building signify its isolation from a hostile world; on the

30

What Is a Temple?

31

main tower the inscription in gold "Holiness to the Lord" serves notice that this place is set apart from the world of mundane things, as do the gates that shut out all but a few; yet the Temple itself is a reminder that none can receive the highest blessings without entering its portals—so that the whole human race shall eventually repair hither, either in the flesh or by proxy. Within the building, as many visitors have seen before its dedication, are rooms obviously appointed for rites rehearsing the creation of the world, the fall of man, and his final exaltation.68

But it is the actual work done within the Temple that most perfectly exemplifies the Temple idea. For here all time and space come together; the barriers vanish between this world and the next; between past, present, and future. What is bound here is bound beyond, and only here can the gates be opened to release the dead who are awaiting the saving ordinances. Here the whole human family meets in a common enterprise; here the records of the race are assembled as far back in time as they go, for a work performed by the present generation to assure that they and their kindred dead shall spend the eternities together in the future. All time becomes one and the worlds join hands in this work of love, which is no mere mechanical bookkeeping. The work of the Temple is exciting, and through the years has been rewarded and stimulated by many marvelous blessings and manifestations. In a very real sense all humanity participates in the same work of salvation—for we cannot be saved without our fathers, nor they without us. It is a grandiose concept. Here for the first time in many centuries men may behold a genuine Temple, functioning as a Temple should—a Temple in the fullest and purest sense of the word.

Are we to believe that this uniquely perfect institution was copied from any of the thousand-and-one battered remnants of the Temple and its ordinances that have survived in the world? The fundamental nature and far-reaching implications of the Temple idea are just beginning to dawn upon scholars in our own day; nothing was known about them a hundred years ago— indeed, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that Christian churches, in competitive zeal to return to the ways of the Primitive Church, began to orient their buildings.6 9 Through-


out this brief study we have indicated that surviving remnants of the Temple concept and rites may be found wherever there is religion and cult in the world. It is not surprising, therefore, that merely by looking about him one may discover all sorts of parallels to Mormon—or any other!—practices. Thousands of American Indians and Pacific islanders, including many of the greatest chiefs and wise men, have become Mormons in their time and engaged in the work of the Temple. They have been quick to detect the often surprising parallels between the rites of the Temple and the traditions and practices of their own tribes— though those have been guarded with the greatest secrecy. Far from being disaffected by this discovery, these devoted workers have rejoiced that at last they could understand the real meaning of what they had inherited from their fathers, corroded as it was by time and overlaid with thick deposits of legend and folklore. Among the first to engage in the Latter-day Temple work were many members of the Masons, a society that "is not, and does not profess to be, a religion," 7 0 but whose rites present unmistakable parallels to those of the Temple. Yet, like the Indians, those men experienced only an expansion of understanding.71

So universally is religious ritual today burdened with the defects of oddness, incongruity, quaintness, jumbled complexity, mere traditionalism, obvious faking and filling in, and contrived and artificial explanations, including myths and allegories, frankly sensual appeal, and general haziness and confusion, that those regrettable traits have come to be regarded as the very essence of ritual itself. In contrast we find the Latter-day Saint rites, though full, elaborate, and detailed, to be always perfectly lucid and meaningful, forming an organic whole that contains nothing incongruous, redundant, or mystifying, nothing purely ornamental, arbitrary, abstruse, or merely picturesque. No moral, allegorical, or abstruse symbolism has been read into these rites; no scholars and poets have worked them over; no learned divines have taken the liberty to interpret them; they have never been the subject of speculation and theory; they show no signs of invention, evolution, or elaboration. Josiah Quincy said that the Nauvoo Temple "certainly cannot be compared with any ecclesiastical building which may be discerned by the natural

32

What Is a Temple?

Notes 1. O. Marucchi, Handbuch der christlichen Archaeologie (Einsiedeln:

Benzinger & Co., 1912), p. 25. 2. On the uniqueness of the Temple, Megillo I, xi (L. I. Goldschmidt, Der

Babylonische Talmud [Haag: M. Nijhoff, 1933] III, 567f.). 3. A very common theme. Thus Eusebius says (Eccl. Hist. X, 4, 69) that the

Church is the intellectual image of the Temple. Moses entering and leaving the Holy of Holies is for St. Gregory "the mind as it enters and leaves a state of contemplation"; the gold on the garment of the High Priest is the gleam of intellect, etc. (Epist. xxv, in Migne, Patwlogiae Latinae 77:474, 471).

4. St. Ambrose is a good example. See H. Leclerq, in F. Cabrol & H. Leclerq, Dictionnaire d'Archaeologie Chretierme et de Liturgie VI, 485-88.

5. An instructive parallel is furnished by Islam, where the Mosque follows the pattern of the Synagogue, as Christian churches do, while the Kaaba, a wholly different institution, represents the Temple (see below, note 24); E. Lambert, "Le Synagogue de Dura-Europos et les Origines de la mosque," Semitica III (1950): 67-72.

6. St. Jerome, Epist. xlvi, in Migne, Patrol. Lat. 22:486. 7. Thus Gregorius Nyssenus, Epist. ii, in Migne, Patrol. Graec. 46:1012,

1016. 8. See below, note 23. When St. Helen built the great church "at the very

spot of the Sepulchre" to contain the wood of the cross, she actually called it "the

33

sight," 7 2 and architects have said much the same about the Salt Lake Temple. That is high, if unconscious, tribute, advertising the clear fact that in establishing their Temples the Mormons did not adopt traditional forms: with them the Temple and its rites are absolutely pristine. In contrast the church and temple architecture of the world is an exotic jumble, a bewildering complex of borrowed motifs, a persistent effort to work back through the centuries to some golden time and place when men still had the light.

In the fourth decade of the nineteenth century the idea of the Temple suddenly emerged full-blown in its perfection, not as a theory alone, but as a program of intense and absorbing activity which rewarded the faithful by showing them the full scope and meaning of the Plan of Salvation.


New Jerusalem, in opposition to the old one, which had been deserted," Socrates, Eccles. Hist. I, 17.

9. Ambrose, Epist. xx, n. 2, discussed in Migne, Patrol, hat. ll:307f. 10. H. Hubert, in Revue de VHist. des Religions, 1899, pp. 246f. St.

Maximus, Homily 72, in Patrol, hat. 57:405-6, expresses the sense of competition.

11. The "gaping hole" ("trou beant") is H. Leclerq's expression, op. cit. VI, 480. On the filling in, L. Duchesne, Origines du Culte Chretien (Paris: Fontemoing, ed., 1898), pp. 8ff.; and more recently, J. Lechner & L. Eisenhofer, Liturgik des romischen Ritus (Freiburg: Herder, 1953), pp. 5-6, 191ff.

12. The ardent desire to lay the ghost of the Temple once and for all is apparent in Cyprian, Adv. Judaeos, in Patrol. Lat. 4:716f., 739, 741; Lactantius, De vera sapientia IV, xiv, ibid. 6:487; Athanasius, De incarnat. verbi, in Patrol. Graec. 25:165; Epiphanius, Adv. haeres. I, 2, 24, ibid., 41:392-93; Basil, Comment, in Isaiam ii, ibid., 24:249, etc.

13. It is rare to call a church a temple, but it causes no offense. Zeno was opposed to building imposing churches "because such a thing is not a real temple;... the faithful people are the real Temple of God" (Lib. I. Tract, iv, in Patrol. Lat. 11:356). Athanasius says the true Holy of Holies is Heaven itself, not those "temples of churches erected by men" (Quaestiones in Epist. Pauli, in Patrol. Graec. 28:769). Socrates reports that a pagan temple (naos) was converted into a Christian church (Hist. Eccl. IV, 24). But the terms are used freely and interchangeably.

14. Varro, Ling. Lat. VII, 6-9; discussed by S. Weinstock, "Templum," in Romische Mittheilungen XLVH (1932): 100-101. Cf. A. Jeremias, Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur (Leipzig, 1913), pp. 146, 185.

15. O. Richter, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencycl. d. Altertumswissenschaft XVI, i, 563; Jeremias, loc. cit.

16. A. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des Alten Orients (Leipzig, 1916), 3rded., pp. 49ff.

17. Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. X, 4, 69. 18. Ling. Lat. VII, 8. 19. A. Jeremias, in C. De la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte

(Tubingen, 1925) I, 513. The concept is fully discussed by E. Burrows in his chapter in S. H. Hooke, ed., The Labyrinth (London: SPCK, 1935).

20. It should be borne in mind that ancient society was sacral in structure. One of the best discussions of the Temple concept is by Zelia Nuttall, The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations (Peabody Museum Papers, vol. 2, 1901).

21. Pesachim IV, iv (Goldschmidt, II, 512). 22. Erubim V, i (Goldschmidt II, 186-90). "Middoth, or the Measurements of

the Temple," Palest. Explor. Fund Quart., 1886, pp. 92ff., 224ff.; 1887, pp. 60ff., 116ff.

23. "The Middle of the World, in the Holy Sepulchre," Pal. Expl. Fund Quart., 1888, pp. 260ff. For illustrations, K. J. Conant and G. Downey, "The

34

What Is a Temple?

Original Buildings at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem," Speculum 31 (1956): 1-48.

24. G. E. von Grunebaum, Mohammedan Festivals (New York: Schuman, 1951), p. 20.

25. L. Voelkl, "Orientierung im Weltbild der erster christlichen Jahrhunderte," Rivista di Arceologia Cristiana XXV (1949): 155.

26. G. Contenau, Le Deluge Babylonien, etc., p. 246. 27. A. Parrot, Zigguvats et Tour de Babel (Paris: A. Michel, 1949), p. 208. 28. Contenau, loc. cit. 29. H. Frankfort, Birth of Civilisation in the Near East (Garden City:

Doubleday, 1956), p. 56, n. 5. P. Amiet, "Ziggurats et 'Culte de Hauteur' des Origines a l'Epoque d'Akkad," Revue d'Assyriologie XL VII (1953):23-33.

30. A. Parrot, "La Tour de Babel et les Ziggurats," in La Nouvelle Clio IV (1950): 159; Herb. Ricke, "Bemerkungen zur Aegyptischen Baukunst des alten Reiches," I, in Bez'tr. zurAeg. Bauforschung u. Altertumskunde, Heft 4 (Zurich, 1944).

31. Amiet, op. cit., p. 30; A. Parrot, Ziggurats, etc., p. 209; especially see H. J. Lenzen, Die Entwicklung der Zikurrat von ihren Anfdngen bis zur Zeit der III Dyn. von Ur (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1941), for the altar idea.

32. H. Kees, Aegypten (Munich: Beck, 1933), p. 298; A. Jeremias, Handbuch, etc., pp. 33, 53, 125, 236, 343; for Israel, R. Eisler, Jesus Basileus ou Basileusas (Heidelberg, 1930), II, 670.

33. E. Burrows, "Problems of the Abzu," Orientalia I (1932): 231-56, and in Hooke, op. cit., pp. 49ff. The concept is very familiar to classical students, Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire III, 2021f.; O. Richter, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencycl. XVI, i, 561-63.

34. The classic study is Kohler's in Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft VII (1906):215ff.; more recently O. Cullmann, Urchristentum und Gottesdienst (Zurich: Zwingli-Ferlag, 1950), 274f.; Aug. Dell, "Mt. 16:17-19," in Ztschr. f. NT Wiss. 15 (1914):27ff.; H. Gunkel, Zum Religionsgeschichtliche Verstandnis des Neuen Testaments (Go'ttingen, 1903), p. 73, n. 7; A. Sulzbach, "Die Schliissel des Himmelreiches," Ztschr. f. NT Wiss. IV (1903): 190-93.

35. A. Moret, Histoire de I'Orient (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1941) I, 218-37, 365, 377. The theme is treated at length in Hooke, op. cit.

36. This is strikingly depicted in John Chrysostom, Sermo post redi turn, in Patrol. Graec. 52:440.

37. A convenient presentation of this much-treated theme is Otto Huth, Janus (Bonn, 1932), passim.

38. The chapter by A. R. Johnson in S. H. Hooke, Labyrinth, is devoted to this theme.

39. W. F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1942), pp. 154-55, 88-89, 167. -

40. Ibid. 41. A. J. Wensinck, "The Semitic New Year and the Origins of

Eschatology," in Acta Orientalia I (1922): 160.

35


42. Lord Raglan, The Origins of Religion (Thinker's Library; London: Watts, 1949), pp. 58-69.

43. S. Mowinckel, Religion und Kultus (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck, 1953), p. 76.

44. Hooke, op. cit., pp. 99-107; Wensinck, op. cit., pp. 160, 183; Mowinckel, op. cit., pp. 73-76.

45. T. Gaster, Thespis, Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Near East (New York: Schuman, 1950), compares the ritual dramas of Ras Shamra, the Hittites, Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews, English Mummer's plays and Christian hymns.

46. Mowinckel, op. cit., p. 94. 47. Wensinck, op. cit., pp. 184-85. 48. Illustrated by the Babylonian formulae, e.g., "If he go to the house

(temple) of the Seven, he will attain perfection." "If he go to the city of Babylon, trouble of a day, peace of a year," etc., given by T. G. Pinches, in Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, X, 12.

49. M. I. Rostovzeff, Mystic Italy (New York, 1927), pp. 76-78. An initiation is "really a preenactment of death and of the rising which it is desired should follow death," A. P. Elkin, The Australian Aborigines (Sydney, 1st ed.), p. 159.

50. This important fact is emphasized by C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Literature (Rome: Pontif. Inst. Bibl., 1949), p. 57.

51. St. Cyril, Catechesis xxi, Mystagogica iii, in Patrol. Graec. 33:1088. J. F. Maternus, in Patrol. Lat. 12:1031, also comments on the perfect identity of Christian and Egyptian initiation rites, and attributes it to the plagiarism of the latter.

52. Cyril, op. cit., 1077f. 53. Ibid., 1089; on the real garment, 1078; cf. Tertullian, De bapt., c. 13. 54. Ibid., 1081. 55. Ibid., 1093, 1068. 56. R. Akiba, cited by S. A. Horodezky, in Monatsschr. f Gesch. u. Wiss.

des Judentums LXXII, 505. 57. Thus Minucius Felix, Octavius, 9-10. 58. H. Nibley, The World and the Prophets (Salt Lake: Deseret Book

Company, 1954), pp. 59-62. 59. This fact is noted in Theodosius, Selecta de religione decreta, in Patrol.

Lat. 13:533-37. 60. Gaster, op. cit., p. 49: "The function of Myth is to make articulate the

durative significance of the ritual." C. Gordon, op. cit., p. 7: "As a rule, when a ritual is associated with a myth or legend, the ritual is the older, for the myth or legend tends to be an explanation of the already existing ritual."

61. Even in the Pyramid Texts the "others say" formula occurs. "The two plumes on his head are Isis and Nephthys... but others say that the two plumes are the two very large uraei... and yet others say that the two plumes are his eyes," etc. E. A. W. Budge, Papyrus of Ani (New York: Putnam's, 1913) III, plate 7, line 32.

36

What Is a Temple?

62. Pes. VI, iii-iv (Goldschmidt II, 573). In his famous letter to Gubbio in A.D. 416, Innocent I complains that "when everyone feels free to observe... whatever practices he likes, we see established observances and ways of celebrating of diverse nature.... The result is a scandal for the people who, not knowing that the ancient traditions have been altered by human presumption, think.. .that the Apostles established contradictory things...." Patrol. Lat. 20:551f.

63. That is why, e.g., the Priestly Corporation of Heliopolis had to sit in judgment yearly to clear the dubious title of Pharaoh and Osiris (R. Anthes, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 13 [1954]:49-50, 191f.); that is why the kingly title in Mesopotamia "carried in some degree the taint of usurpation, especially in early times" (H. Frankfort, op. cit., p. 80); and why Prometheus can call Zeus himself a sham and a usurper (Aeschylus, Prometh. Bound, lines 937-43, 953-63); and why Loki can alarm Othinn and the gods by threatening to reveal their secret—that they are frauds (Poetic Edda, Lokasenna).

64. For a preliminary account see H. Nibley, Lehi in the Desert and the World of the Jaredites (Salt Lake: Bookcraft, 1952), pp. 160-64. "Cosmic garment" is the designation of A. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament, etc., p. 159.

65. Quoted in R. Eisler, op. cit., I, 525; cf. Book ofJasher XXVII, 2, 7, 10; VII, 24-27.

66. H. Nibley, in Western Political Quarterly II (1949):339ff. 67. From the first the emergence of the pattern has alarmed Catholic divines,

whose explanation of the widespread uniformities of ritual and liturgy has been that they exist only in the imaginations of scholars. Thus W. Paulus, "Marduk Urtyp Christi?" Orientalia, no. 29 (1928); J. de Fraine, "Les Implications du 'patternism,' " Biblica 38 (1956):59-73. While the ancients freely admitted the parallels and explained them as borrowings by the heathen from remnants of earlier dispensations of the gospel, the modern Catholic church, denying all dispensations but one, ignore the teachings of the Fathers and leave "patternism" unexplained.

68. For the most recent illustrations, see Improvement Era 59 (April 1956):228ff.

69. L. Voelkl, in Riv. Arch. Crist. 25 (1949): 155. How little aware even scholars are of the Temple concept in our own day is apparent from Brother S. B. Sperry's "Thoughts on Ancient Temples and Their Functions," improvement Era 58 (1955):814ff. If a modern Mormon student knows so little of the ideas here discussed, what are the chances of the Elders of over a hundred years ago knowing anything at all about them?

70. E. L. Hawkins, in Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, VI, 120.

71. Hawkins, loc. cit., describes Freemasonry as "a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." Pending the exhaustive study that the subject deserves, we will only say here that an extensive reading of Masonic and Mormon teachings and history should make it clear to any reader that the former is the shadow, the latter the substance. The one is literal, the other allegorical.

72. J. Quincy, Figures of the Past (Boston: Little, Brown, 1901), p. 389.

37

2

Looking Backward

Hugh W. Nibley

In his volume The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, Nibley describes in great detail initiation and ritual and coronation procedures among the Egyptians. The appendix in this book includes temple-related lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem and other early documents. In the present essay Nibley provides a context for this study and his many others which, almost without his being aware of it, have formed the background of his temple preoccupation over three decades. He shows how incredibly mixed and diffuse and varied are traditions growing out of temple worship in the religions of the Far East, as with those of the Middle East. The power of the temple idea to invade the minutest detail of life is demonstrated. Inconclusive though many scholarly studies remain about a philosophy or matrix to make sense of all the data, Nibley believes there are connections and symmetries and correspondences which again point to one conclusion: historically, civilizations—indeed civilization itself—have revolved around the temple. This essay

39


The preceding article in this volume was written twenty-five years ago when the London Temple was dedicated. Since

then the "scientific" study of ancient temples has completed a full circle—back to where it started some three hundred years ago. We hasten to explain.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was the habit of English country gentlemen, fired with the scientific interests of the former century and the romantic sensibilities of the latter, to survey, sketch, describe, and speculate about the many and mysterious prehistoric stone circles, avenues, passage-graves, and mounds on their estates and elsewhere. In their papers read before local learned societies and in their letters to antiquarian journals, they debated endlessly without reaching any consensus of agreement as to whether those often imposing monuments were the work of some mysterious unknown race or that of the ancient Britons, Druids, Romans, Saxons, or Danes. But on one thing there was almost unanimous agreement, namely, that the most impressive of the structures were temples. In the light of local folktales and legends, immemorial rustic seasonal festivities, and other quaint customs and observances, supported by occasional illuminating passages from classical and medieval writers as well as the Bible, they could imagine vast concourses of people gathering at these great ceremonial centers at times set by sun, moon, stars, and the growing and harvesting seasons, to celebrate a new lease on life for the individual and the society.

I have called those studies "scientific" because they were undertaken in the same spirit, employed much the same methods, and reached the same conclusions as those of the present generation of researchers, who insist that they are scientific. Here, for example, is a.recent cover story from the (very)

40

and his preceding one provide an omnibus introduction to the more specialized studies that follow.

T.G.M.

Looking Backward

41

Scientific American (July 1980), in which the author expresses the same conviction as did Sir William Stukeley and John Aubrey in the mid-seventeenth century. He finds "a succession of what we can only call cathedral architects" at work in the third and fourth millenniums B.C. "Most emphatically," he writes, these "megalithic rings in general [were] sacred and secular meeting places," and he sees "an impelling faith" behind the immense effort and skill that produced them- "some powerful religious belief including belief in an after-life.'' He notes that though the building activity stopped by 1000 B.C., "the general population" retained folk-memories of what went on, and he finds it "more than possible that the Druidic priesthood . . . used them as temples." Finally he notes that even Christian churches in some places did not disdain to build upon their ruins.

After the eighteenth century less and less attention was paid to the megalithic complexes, upon which little remained to be said until new lines of research could be opened up. The first forward step was taken by philology, predictably enough, since the learning of the times was classical and biblical. The British presence in India set such researches in a new and fruitful direction by creating a general interest in the glamour and color of the mysterious East, and by calling the attention of scholars to strange texts in strange languages. By the middle of the nineteenth century comparative philology had become the queen of studies, thanks to the great Max Mueller, who believed that he had discovered in Sanskrit the parent and original of all the Aryan family of languages from India to Ireland, and in the Vedas "the primal form of their mythology and religion." For the ancient texts on which all such study was necessarily based were profoundly religious documents, combining myth, ritual, pious exercises, edifying doctrine, and bits of history.

Shortly before Mueller, Jacob Grimm, in gathering material for his great Deutsche Grammatik, introduced the comparative study of folktales, folk songs, myths, customs, arts, and artifacts (Grimm's Fairy Tales have proven to be as scientifically relevant as Grimm's Law). In the process he anticipated the conclusion of Max Mueller, that if everybody from Ireland to India spoke related languages it was because originally they were all one and


the same family, living in the East. Mueller held that what survived of their religion represents a letdown and deterioration from a higher order of things, an archaic original of monotheistic persuasion, from which historic religions betray a moral and intellectual decline. This is a position being taken by some eminent scholars today. Mueller's Oxford colleagues E. Tylor and Andrew Lang felt that the master was too much under the literary influences of an earlier day (e.g., Herder), and, discounting the old romantic idea of a primal "nature mythology," gave second billing to myth, viewing it as an attempt to explain cult and custom, which really had priority. After the mid-nineteenth century, evolution of course became the answer; religion, like everything else, must necessarily have had a primitive beginning —for Lang it was in primitive magic. For Theodor Waitz it was a primitive obsession with ghosts and spirits. Herbert Spencer made it a fixed principle, universally received, that religion is superstition and superstition is primitive, and that evolution required a steady ascent from religion towards the pure light of ever more rational thinking, culminating in the modern civilized man.

At the turn of the century the watchwords were animism and totemism, which for many years explained everything for many students. The determination to reduce religion, like everything else, to scientific laws actually led to simplistic solutions, and with the desire for more thorough and methodical special studies the wide-ranging pronouncements of deep-browed armchair scientists were supplanted by a swelling outpouring of regional monographs and statistical studies aspiring to the status of exact science. The great biologist J. Arthur Thompson made sport of the excesses of the solemn "brass instrument school," laboriously compiling endless columns of figures giving the physical and mental measurements of tribes and races, which in the end could tell the student no more than a casual association with the natives in question would have provided. Given patience and a body, it was no great task for a thousand investigators to fill the books and journals with information, but beyond the most pedestrian generalities no real progress was made. As Theodor Gaster observes, "It was Frazer more than anyone else who first

42

Looking Backward

sought to classify and coordinate this vast body of material." Today most of Frazer's main assumptions and conclusions have been discredited—for example, the "magical" origins of religion, which Gaster calls "a mere product of late nineteenth-century evolutionism"; the principle of "homeopathy," by which the magical action produced a real counterpart; the yearly celebrations of the death and rebirth of vegetation, which neglected the more immediate human experience of life and death; the obsession of an earlier time with solar religion; and above all the idea of a "primitive" level of culture which remains undefined but is the same everywhere and always, the word being worked to death by Frazer's colleagues (e.g., J. Harrison), many of whom never laid eyes on a primitive. Yet most of these discredited ideas are still accepted and taught in schools everywhere.

To explain the remarkable resemblances between the prehistoric ritual centers and their rites separated by thousands of miles and as many years, Frazer and others took for granted that at a certain stage of evolution the human mind spontaneously fell into the thought patterns that would produce identical myths and rules independently in various parts of the world. Diffusionism was rejected and still is by many. This interesting psychological explanation got some support from the famous psychologist C. G. Jung, a diligent student of ancient myth and religion. Just as in the process of evolution creatures retain vestigial organs from earlier times, so the mind, Jung insisted, being subject to evolution like everything else, retains in its unconscious what he calls "archetypes" or "primordial images." They are as natural "as the impulse of birds to build nests, and present the mind with whole mythological motifs," which lead to stories and dramatizations. Where do they come from? "They are without known origin," writes Jung, "and they reproduce themselves in any time or in any part of the world' ' - don't ask how. Thus "the hero figure is an archetype which has existed since time immemorial,'' though as to "when and where such a motif originated... we do not even know how to go about investigating the problem." So the cause of evolutionism is saved if we do not ask too many questions.

43


C P . Thiele, a Dutch theologian, came closer than anyone else since Max Mueller to combining vast scope and detail of information with meaningful summaries, striking a balance between the old romantic school of Herder, Mueller, and Andrew Lang, and the pedantically limited studies of single tribes, families, and problems, which became as numerous as they were trivial. Few have equalled Thiele's learning, but how to take account of all that data in a convincing summary with meaningful conclusions is a problem of more urgency now than ever. A promising new development, the T V documentary, seeks to address the public on a high and authoritative level while keeping everything simple and clear, covering an immense expanse of knowledge while giving an understandable presentation of general principles.

The present writer struggled with the problem prematurely, of course, growing up on Spencer's First Principles, H. G. Wells, and T. H. Buckle, and practically memorizing Spengler. The first half of the twentieth century produced pretentious works purporting to convey all knowledge to Harry Elmer Barnes, the University of Chicago Syntopicon, big "Western Civilization" college texts, the Cambridge histories, various encyclopedias, the Columbia University Chapters in Western Civilization, and so forth. More impressive were the big corroborative works combining contributions of leading scholars in different areas. Such a one was Chantipie de la Saussaye's Lehrbuch der Religionsges-chichte, which the present writer acquired hot off the press and perused with dogged diligence—to no avail! The facts were there, but they added up to nothing. The compilers followed the Baconian gospel, that one has simply to collect the facts and let them speak for themselves. However one may accuse the over-eager and ill-prepared of leaping to conclusions, it is precisely that leap that the scholars have never been able or willing to make; for when they finish collecting and typing their notes, they see nowhere to go—but more notes. Will Durant was a full-time philosopher who gathered nine volumes on the history of Western civilization. And what did the philosopher learn from that? Nothing at all that we had not already heard.

44

Looking Backward

45

A good example of this is Joseph Campbell, one of the latest and best popularizers, who assures us that he is bringing together for the first time "a single picture of the new perspectives... in comparative symbolism, religion, mythology, and philosophy, by the scholarship of recent years." This is merely an updating of the old game, reaching exactly the same conclusions as Grimm, Max Mueller, and the rural clergymen who studied the old stones of the English countryside, that "the comparative study of the mythologies of the world compels us to view the cultural history of mankind as a unit," in which the various motifs, instead of being of wildly exotic, endlessly varied, and without number, as one would expect (and as German scholars once described them), are really "only a few and always the same." The old biblical picture now emerges as the latest scientific discovery.

The boldest and clearest recent statement embracing the world landscape of culture and religion is in the works of M . Eliade, and he brings it all back to the Temple. "The Temple , . . . preeminently the sacred place, . . . a celestial prototype" and holy mountain, typifies "the act of Creation... [which] brought the ordered cosmos out of chaos"; it is the scene of the sacred marriage, the ritual confrontation with evil appearing as the dragon, serpent, or other figures of death and destruction, ending in the victory of the King, whose triumphant coronation inaugurates the New Year and a new age of the world. The Combat is an expression of that "ambivalence and polarity" which characterize the rites in which all things must have their opposite, and where an atoning sacrifice is necessary "to restore the primal unity'' between God and man, and enable the latter to regain the divine presence. The whole, according to Eliade, is suffused with "memories of paradise," the loss of which is the result of sin, converting this world into a testing ground in which "suffering always has meaning."

Thus Eliade shows us how the studies of two centuries have steadily converged on the Temple. But before Eliade, your humble informant was bringing out much of the picture in a doctoral thesis which disturbed and puzzled his committee in the 1930s. In 1940 a section of the Pacific Coast Meeting of the American Historical Association slept through a discourse on the


feasting of the multitudes at the holy places, and in the following year a like gathering of the American Archaeological Association in San Diego listened with remarkable composure to a paper on "National Assemblies in the Bronze Age . ' ' This is to show for the record that we were getting in on the ground floor. An article comparing the earliest Roman rites to those all over the ancient world was held up by World War II (which was then considered more urgent), not appearing until 1945 (in the Classical Journal). At that time I had been to the Temple only twice, once when I was seventeen and again when I was twenty—both times in something of a daze. So it was not until I moved to Utah and started going to the Temple and wrote a mini-series in the Improvement Era on "Baptism for the Dead in Ancient Times" (1948) that it ever occurred to me that any of what I had been doing had anything to do with Joseph Smith. Beginning to see the light, I started pulling out the stops in a Pi Sigma Alpha lecture given during the centennial celebration of the University of Utah in 1950. Entitled "The Hierocentric State,'' it was expanded and published the following year in the Western Political Quarterly.

The dedication of the London Temple in 1958 produced, on request, the first part of this effusion (reprinted as chapter 1 of the present volume). This was followed in 1958-60 by a study in the Jewish Quarterly Review on "Christian Envy of the Temple," demonstrating that "where there is no Temple there is no true Israel," and showing how the Christian churches have always missed the Temple while retaining various survivals of it in their rites and liturgies. In 1966 we discussed those migratory temples, wheeled and domed structures, that moved over the steppes of Asia, and how they took their bearings on the universe, remaining holy centers in spite of their mobility—like the Ark of the Covenant (Western Political Quarterly, 1966). An article on "Jerusalem in Christian Thought" in the first edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica (1973) dealt with the role in history of the well-known idea of Jerusalem as the Holy Center of the World, thanks to the presence of the Temple, and sketched the fierce competitive drives of Christians, Moslems, and Jews to possess it. In the same year, in a study ambitiously titled "The Genesis of the Written Word ," we pointed out that the oldest written docu-

46

Looking Backward

merits of the race are temple records. The rich Egyptian documentation justified writing about The Egyptian Endowment (1975), and comparing it in an appendix with some of the ordinances and doctrines contained in the Manual of Discipline (IQS) from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Odes of Solomon, the Pearl, the Pistis Sophia, and Cyril of Jerusalem's Lectures on the Ordinances (mid-fourth century). An important performance which has very ancient parallels throughout Asia as well as the Near East was "The Early Christian Prayer Circle" (BYU Studies, 1978). A long series of articles in the Improvement Era (1968-70) called attention to sacrificial aspects of the later Temple ordinances as anticipated in the "arrested" sacrifice of Abraham himself, of Sarah (in Egypt), and of Isaac. Finally, the book Abraham in Egypt (1981) describes ties between Egyptian and Israelite wisdom and doctrine, a subject being much studied by scholars at the present time.

To resume our story, imaginary reconstructions presented over the past three hundred years of great gatherings of people at imposing ceremonial complexes for rites dedicated to the renewal of life on earth are, over that long stretch of time, surprisingly uniform. In spite of the accumulation of evidence, there has never been a drastic reversal or revision of the picture, which always remains the same.

1. First, we still have the tangible evidence, the scenery and properties of the drama: megaliths; artificial giant mounds or pyramids amounting to artificial mountains; stone and ditch alignments of mathematical sophistication, correlating time and space; passage graves and great tholoi or domed tombs; sacred roads (often discovered from the air); remains of booths, grandstands, processional ways, and gates—these still survive in awesome combination, with all their cosmic symbolism.

2. In the second place is the less tangible evidence of customs, traditions, legends, folk festivals, ancient writings, and so forth, which when put together conjure up (with considerable authority, thanks to their abundance and consistency) memories of dramatic and choral celebrations of the Creation; ritual contests between life and death, good and evil, and light and darkness, followed by the triumphant coronation of the King to rule for the New Age, the

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progenitor of the race by a sacred marriage; feasts of abundance attended by ancestors and spirits; covenants; initiations (including baptism and clothing); sacrifices and scapegoats to rid the people of a year of guilt and pollution; and various types of divination and oracular consultation for the new life cycle. And what is being emphasized today, after centuries of converging studies, is that they were all doing it, everywhere!

3. To these types of evidence must be added the most impressive—and neglected—of all, those "spin-offs" of the Temple which have long attracted my interest as such. The "spin-offs" are things not essential to the Temple's form and function, but the inevitable products of its existence. To begin with, there was an urgent need of accommodations for all those pilgrims from far away; hence those booths, memorialized in the Hebrew Festival of Booths, remains or records of which we find in many parts of the world. Our words hotel and hospital go back to those charitable organizations which took care of sick and weary pilgrims to the holy places—the Hospitalers of the Crusades offered hospitality also under the name of Templars, for it was travelers to the Temple that they were aiding and protecting. Since all who came had to bring food for the festival as well as animals for offerings and sacrifice, those who lived a great distance (more than three days away in Israel; see Deut. 14:22ff.; 26:12ff.), finding the transport of such items of great difficulty, could instead bring the money value of those offerings to the Temple, which thus became a place of exchange and banking —our word money comes from the Temple of Juno Moneta, the holy center of the Roman world. Along with that, the bringing of a variety of different goods and products from widely separated places inevitably gave rise to a lively barter and exchange of goods, and everywhere a fixture of the great year rites was the yearly fair, the market-booths of the merchants added to those of the visiting pilgrims, with artisans, performers, and mountebanks also displaying their wares.

The main action at the Temple was the actio, for which the Greek word is drama, with parts played by priestly temple actors and royalty. Creation was celebrated with the Creation Hymn or poema—the word poem means, in fact, Creation—sung by a

48

Looking Backward

chorus which, as the name shows, formed a circle and danced as they sang. Since nothing goes unchallenged in this world, a central theme of the Temple rites was the dramatization (often athletic) of the Combat between the powers of life and death which could take many forms—wrestling, boxing, dueling, foot or chariot races, beauty contests to choose a queen, competitions in song and dance. The Temple was the original center of learning, beginning with the heavenly instructions received there. It was the Museon or home of the Muses, each representing a branch of study, and the scene of learned discussions among the wise men who from the earliest recorded times would travel from shrine to shrine exchanging wisdom with the wise, as Abraham did in Egypt. For the all-important setting of times and seasons, careful astronomical observations were taken and recorded at the place with mathematical precision, while the measurements of fields and buildings called for sophisticated geometry followed by great architectural and engineering skill that commands the highest respect to this day. The Garden-of-Eden or Golden-Age motif was essential to this ritual paradise, and the Temple grounds contained all manner of trees and animals, often collected with great botanical and zoological zeal from distant places. Central to the Temple^ school for the training of priests and nobles was the great library containing both the holy books revealed from on high, whether as divine revelation or as star readings (both declared the glory of God), and the records of human history including the "Books of Life ," the names of all the living and the dead— genealogy. Aside from memorials kept in writing (the art, as we have seen, originating in the economy of the Temple) were the ancestral pictures-statues, busts, and paintings giving inspiration to the fine arts. The purpose of the rites being to establish and acknowledge the rule of God on earth through his agent and offspring the King, who represented both the First Man and Everyman, the Temple was the ultimate seat and sanction of government; our government buildings with their massive columns, domes, marble and bronze, and so forth are copies of classic Greek and Roman temples. The meeting of the people at the holy place made the New Year the time for contracts and covenants, and all of these were recorded and stored in the

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temple, which was of course the seat of law, both for the handing down of new laws and ordinances by divine authority and for the settling of disputes between mortals. The King was a Solomon sitting as a Judge on the occasion, as one who had been tested to the limit and, after calling upon God from the depths, had emerged triumphant, worthy to lead the army of the Lord to spread his rule over the as yet unconquered realms of darkness beyond the holy influence of the Temple.

All of these matters and much, much more this writer has treated somewhere or other. The fact that the one thing they all have in common is the Temple is enough in itself to indicate that the Temple is the source, and not one of the derivatives, of the civilizing process. If, as noted above, "where there is no Temple there is no true Israel," it is equally true that where there is no true Temple, civilization itself is but an empty shell—a material structure of expediency and tradition alone, bereft of the living organism at its center that once gave it life and brought it forth.

Since the Temple is the parent and original, it is only to be expected that one should find ruins and fragments of it surviving everywhere, along with more or less ambitious attempts to recapture its lost glory and authority. And since Evil cannot create or beget but can only pervert, corrupt, wrest, and destroy what Good has accomplished, it is not surprising that the most depraved of practices take their rise in the Temple. Let us recall that the mysterious "Watchers" in Enoch's day carefully kept the ordinances that had come down from Adam, and claimed sanctity by reason of possessing a knowledge which they had completely subverted. How roundly Isaiah rebukes and denounces the ordinances of the Temple—the new moons, the fasts, the prayers, the offerings, and so on, when performed by the Jews in the wrong spirit! While the Temple still stood in Jerusalem, the brethren of Qumran looked forward for the coming of "a true Temple" after God's own heart. When Satan assayed to try the Lord, it was to the pinnacle of the Temple that he took him; did the Evil One, then, have access to the holy place? For answer we need only recall that Jesus declared that the House of his Father had been turned into a den of thieves as he drove the money changers from its courts—a reminder that

50

Looking Backward

large financial institutions today, as well as government buildings, occupy structures faithfully copied from the classical fanes of ancient temples and add to the bronze and marble the sanctimonious hush of holy places. Thus the Temple economy has been perverted along with the rest.

When the symbolic killing and eating of beasts were supplanted by lustful and vengeful rites of human sacrifice; when the feasts of joy and abundance became orgies, and the sacred rites of marriage were perverted to the arts of the temple hierodules; when the keepers of the records and teachers of wisdom became haughty and self-righteous scribes and Pharisees-then was demonstrated the principle that any good thing can be corrupted in this world, and as Aristotle notes, as a rule, the better the original, the more vicious the corrupted version. When "two men went up into the Temple to pray" (Luke 18:10), both were ostensibly going about their devotions; yet the one was bringing hypocrisy and vanity into the holy place. So we might seriously consider the proposition that whatever we see about us in the way of the institutions of civilization, good or bad, may in the end be traced to the Temple.

Did Joseph Smith reinvent the Temple by putting all the fragments-Jewish, Orthodox, Masonic, Gnostic, Hindu, Egyptian, and so forth-together again? No, that is not how it is done. Very few of the fragments were available in his day, and the job of putting them together was begun, as we have seen, only in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Even when they are available, those poor fragments do not come together of themselves to make a whole; to this day the scholars who collect them do not know what to make of them. The Temple is not to be derived from them, but the other way around. If the Temple as the Latter-day Saints know it had been introduced at any date later than it was, or at some great center of learning, it could well have been suspect as a human contrivance; but that anything of such fulness, consistency, ingenuity, and perfection could have been brought forth at a single time and place-overnight, as it were—is quite adequate proof of a special dispensation.

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3

The Common Temple Ideology of the Ancient Near East John M. Lundquist

Historical understanding of temples is one thing; typological analysis is another. In the present paper John Lundquist presents a scholarly account of common elements that permeate temple traditions throughout the Near East. This framework or set of categories, "an undergirding pattern or process," has eighteen facets. Four of these are presented in detail here: (1) the idea of the cosmic mountain (compare Clifford's paper); (2) the idea of the emerging of sacred space from the creative waters; (3) the idea of the waters of life, the sacred spring, or the waters of creation; and (4) the association of the temple with the tree of life. These themes or motifs can be found, all of them, in the Old Testament. But Lundquist shows that they are also part of a larger pattern which can be traced throughout literature and buildings of the ancient Near East. The discerning reader will recognize them in a variety of expressions in the literature unique to the Latter-day Saints—the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the creation narratives of the books of Moses, Enoch, and Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. This

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discussion also gives a more expansive meaning to Joseph Smith's 1843 statement, "Jerusalem must be rebuilt, and the temple, and water come out from under the temple, and the waters of the Dead Sea be healed."

T.G.M.

This article is dedicated to Professor Hugh W. Nibley

The underlying thesis of this work is that in the ancient Near East up to approximately late Hellenistic times, there was a

common ritual language and praxis centered around great temples, a common "temple ideology," which transcended language and cultural and political boundaries and which survived the rise and fall of empires.1 Although there can be no doubt that there were broad areas of cultural and religious uniqueness which distinguished one ancient Near Eastern culture from another, this temple ideology would have been largely understood across cultural boundaries. Peter Brown has written that "ancient religion revolved around the great temples." 2 And Jonathan Z. Smith would add that "the old imperial cosmological language was the major mode of religious expression of the archaic temple." 3 This paper will attempt to lay the foundations for a more elaborate description of the basic elements of the "old imperial cosmological language" of the religion that "revolved around the great temples." It is assumed here that we are dealing with a remarkable manifestation of cultural continuity in ancient times. Jacob Milgrom has written, "Presumed is that the ancient Near East was a cultural continuum where forms and ideas were exchanged without resistance unless they clashed with the value system of the borrowing culture."4 It is my contention that the temple as an institution and the cult associated with it constitute one of the most interesting examples of such continuity.

The central result which this and the above-quoted studies

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The Common Temple Ideology of the Ancient Near East

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hope to achieve is the construction of a model that can be tested by other scholars on Near Eastern examples as well as on temple complexes in other parts of the world, ancient and modern. As one scholar has put it, "Model building is the cutting edge of current social science theory: models identify the interaction of parts in an on-going structured process." 5 This same scholar has suggested a five-point procedure for the construction of a model which can be used to illuminate a given problem in civilizational studies: " ( 1 ) identification of the key unit of study, the largest functional whole; (2) construction of model; (3) identification of a large number of empirical examples of the key unit; (4) testing of the model against those empirical examples; and (5) refinement of the model." 6 In the present paper the temple represents the key unit of study; the typology presented in these pages is the model. My earlier studies (see notes 1 and 10) contain large numbers of empirical examples which validate the individual points of the model, and this paper will attempt to summarize the most important and compelling evidence for its first four points. The step of model refinement will be left to future studies. It is the model, the typology, that attempts to define and describe "the old imperial cosmological language... of the archaic temple." The existence of such a model will then hopefully "stimulate empirical testing and refinement'' on the part of other interested scholars.7

I am convinced that the typology herein presented can be applied far beyond the geographical and chronological boundaries of the ancient Near East. One of the potentially most fruitful fields for the application of the typology is American Indian myth and ritual. My own preliminary study has demonstrated the relevance of applying the model to Lakota (Oglala Sioux) ritual practices. This application, however, will be left for a later phase of this research (see note 7).

It is very difficult to accurately comprehend the complete range of ancient Israelite temple traditions. The reasons for this difficulty are the exceptionally difficult nature of the Old Testament textual evidence and the almost total lack of archaeological evidence that can unequivocally be related to the


Bible text. Most remarkably, of course, there are no archaeological remains of the Temple of Solomon or any of its successors. There are, however, very pronounced traditions in the later Jewish sources about Israelite temple practices and architecture, the judicious use of which, along with the Masoretic text itself and comparative archaeological evidence, does allow us to place the Solomonic temple within the "common temple ideology of the ancient Near East." This I will attempt to achieve in the present study.

Snyder states that the ultimate value of a good model rests in its "explanatory power in dealing with a set body of data." Such value is ordinarily lost when the model is based on a single a priori idea which is used to explain all phenomena, as in the astronomical determinism of various past authors. The explanatory power can also be lost if the model is based on the "laundry list" approach, "because the items on such lists are chosen arbitrarily and do not reveal the on-going historical processes behind them. A properly constructed model will point beyond the surface to the underlying patterns and processes; it will explain as well as identify." The typology that I have constructed attempts to avoid both these dangers. It is neither guided by a single, all-encompassing leitmotif that attempts to explain all phenomena, nor is it merely a "laundry list," an ad hoc or hodgepodge list of motifs that "seemed to fit."

The typology that I present in this paper was generated empirically from a study of the cylinder inscriptions of the Sumerian king Gudea, of the city of Lagash, which have long been recognized for the invaluable light they throw on ancient temple-building practices. On this subject Arvid Kapelrud has written that "his inscriptions give a vivid picture of the ideology behind the temple building, and they are the best examples which can be found on Sumerian soil." 8

Another very valuable series of studies on the temple have appeared over the past two decades from the pen of Geo Widen-gren. In 1960 he published a study of the basic elements of temple worship in the ancient Near East.9 This article touches on a number of the points I develop in the typology, among them an interpretation of the symbolic meaning of the ziggurat, the impor-

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tance of the determination of destinies, the cosmic orientation of shrines, the importance of the abyss, the tree of life and the ritual reproduction of the primordial landscape, and the importance of sacred space.

The Temple: A Preliminary Typology

1. The temple is the architectural embodiment of the cosmic mountain.

2. The cosmic mountain represents the primordial hillock, the place which first emerged from the waters that covered the earth during the creative process. In Egypt, for example, all temples are seen as representing the primordial hillock.

3. The temple is often associated with the waters of life which flow from a spring within the building itself-or rather the temple is viewed as incorporating within itself such a spring or as having been built upon the spring. The reason that such springs exist in temples is that they were perceived as the primeval waters of creation, Nun in Egypt, abzu in Mesopotamia, tehom in Israel. The temple is thus founded upon and stands in contact with the waters of creation. These waters carry the dual symbolism of the chaotic waters that were organized during the creation and of the life-giving, saving nature of the waters of life.

4. The temple is associated with the tree of life. 5. The temple is built on separate, sacral, set-apart space. 6. The temple is oriented toward the four world regions or

cardinal directions, and to various celestial bodies such as the polar star. As such, it is, or can be, an astronomical observatory, the main purpose of which is to assist the temple priests in regulating the ritual calendar. The earthly temple is also seen as a copy or counterpart of a heavenly model.

7. Temples, in their architectonic orientation, express the idea of a successive ascension toward heaven. The Mesopotamian ziggurat or staged temple tower is the best example of this architectural principle. It was constructed of three, five, or seven levels or stages. Monumental staircases led to the upper levels, where smaller temples stood. The basic ritual pattern represented in these structures is that the worshippers ascended the staircase


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to the top, the deity descended from heaven, and the two met in the small temple which stood at the top of the structure.

8. The plan and measurements of the temple are revealed by God to the king or prophet, and the plan must be carefully carried out. The Babylonian king Nabopolassar stated that he took the measurements of Etemenanki, the temple tower in the main temple precinct at Babylon, under the guidance of the Babylonian gods Shamash, Adad, and Marduk, and that "he kept the measurements in his memory as a treasure."

9. The temple is the central, organizing, unifying institution in ancient Near Eastern society.

a. The temple is associated with abundance and prosperity; indeed, it is perceived as the giver of these.

b. The destruction or loss of the temple is seen as calamitous and fatal to the community in which the temple has stood. The destruction is viewed as the result of social and moral decadence and disobedience to God's word. 10. Inside the temple, images of deities as well as living kings,

temple priests, and worshippers are washed, anointed, clothed, fed, enthroned, and symbolically initiated into the presence of deity, and thus into eternal life. Further, New Year rites held in the temple include the reading and dramatic portrayal of texts which recite a pre-earthly war in heaven; a victory in that war by the forces of good, led by a chief deity; and the creation and establishment of the cosmos, cities, temples, and the social order. The sacred marriage is carried out at this time.

11. The temple is associated with the realm of the dead, the underworld, the afterlife, the grave. The unifying features here are the rites and worship of ancestors. Tombs can be, and in Egypt and elsewhere are, essentially temples (cf. the cosmic orientation, texts written on tomb walls which guide the deceased into the afterlife, etc.). The unifying principle between temple and tomb is resurrection. Tombs and sarcophagi are "sacred places," sites of resurrection. In Egyptian religion the sky goddess Nut is depicted on the coffin cover, symbolizing the cosmic orientation (cf. "Nut is the coffin."). The temple is the link between this world and the next.


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12. Sacral, communal meals are carried out in connection with temple ritual, often at the conclusion of or during a covenant ceremony.

13. The tablets of destiny (or tablets of the decrees) are consulted in the cosmic sense by the gods, and yearly in a special temple chamber, ubsukinna in the temple of Eninnu in the time of the Sumerian king Gudea of Lagash. It was by this means that the will of deity was communicated to the people through the king or prophet for a given year.

14. God's word is revealed in the temple, usually in the holy of holies, to priests or prophets attached to the temple or to the religious system that it represents.

15. There is a close interrelationship between the temple and law in the ancient Near East. The building or restoration of a temple is perceived as the moving force behind a restating or "codifying" of basic legal principles, and of the "righting" and organizing of proper social order. The building or refurbishing of temples is central to the covenant process.

16. The temple is a place of sacrifice. 17. The temple and its ritual are enshrouded in secrecy. This

secrecy relates to the sacredness of the temple precinct and the strict division in ancient times between sacred and profane space.

18. The temple and its cult are central to the economic structure of ancient Near Eastern society.

19. The temple plays a legitimizing political role in the ancient Near East.10

Summary of Evidence for Points 1 to 4 of the Typology

1. The temple is the architectural embodiment of the cosmic mountain.

This point on the list is so commonplace that it has become a cliche within Near Eastern scholarship. The theme is extremely common in ancient Near Eastern texts, as I pointed out in "What Is a Temple? A Preliminary Typology," and, for the Old Testament, in "Temple Symbolism in Isaiah." Characteristic phrases from the inscriptions of Gudea of Lagash call the temple


that Gudea was commanded to build "a temple (Sumerian e, 'house') like a mountain in heaven and earth which raises its head to heaven," 1 1 "like a mountain of lapis-lazuli, standing on heaven and on earth," 1 2 "the temple, its facade was a great mountain founded in the earth," 1 3 and "the temple, like a great mountain is built up to heaven. " 1 4 The persistence with which the Old Testament tradition associates the Temple of Solomon with Mt. Sinai and all the sanctity that it represented is quite remarkable. One of the most archaic epithets applied to the Lord in the Bible is zeh sinay, "the One of Sinai,'' appearing in Judges 5:5 and Psalm 68:9. 1 5 Dr. Freedman further writes of the Sinai phenomenon that "the preservation of the terminology and its adaptation to other sanctuaries in other places is typical of the conservatism of all religious groups, and only serves to emphasize the antiquity and tenacity of these original traditions. Parallel to this phenomenon is the persistent assertion, found in several early poems,. . .that Yahweh came from Sinai." 1 6

The cosmic mountain can thus be a natural mountain that is transformed into the cosmic sphere, as in Israel and Canaan. As such it would correspond to the definition given by Andrzej Wiercinski that the cosmic mountain "may be externally represented by a distinguished natural mountain on which the archetype of the Cosmic Mountain has been socio-culturally superprojected."17 Richard Clifford calls the cosmic mountain "a place set apart because of a divine presence or activity which relates to the world of man—ordering or stabilizing the world, acting upon it through natural forces, the point where the earth touches the divine sphere." 1 8 The cosmic mountain can also be, as in Egypt and Mesopotamia, a manifestation of the primordial mound or hillock of creation, that is, in Wiercinski's words, "Primary earth which emerged from the waters of primordial Chaos due to a creative deed of the Highest Deity." 1 9 As such, it fits the description of Maurice Canney, who called the cosmic mountain the "mole hill which grew into a mountain." 2 0 And this brings us to the second point in the typology.

2. The cosmic mountain represents the primordial hillock, the place which first emerged from the waters that covered the earth during the creative process. In Egypt, for example, all temples are seen as representing the primordial hillock.

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The Eninnu Temple, built by Gudea of Lagash, is depicted as arising out of the primordial water (Sumerian abzu, English abyss) and raising its head to heaven.2 1 This same temple is called the "foundation of the abyss," a phrase that connects it with the most ancient, sacred temple in the Sumerian tradition, the temple of the abyss of the Sumerian god of the sweet water abyss, Enki, at Eridu, on the southernmost reaches of the Euphrates River. 2 2

Sumerian building traditions make it clear that it was necessary to sink the foundations of the temenos or temple platform deep into the abzu or primordial abyss. 2 3 The temple was thus founded in and rose up out of the primordial waters of creation.

A number of Neo-Sumerian temple hymns employ the terminology du6-ku, "holy mound" in reference to several chief shrines, including the Eunir, or ziggurat of the city of Eridu. 2 4

The hymn to the aforementioned temple shows a most interesting poetic juxtaposition of the first two words of lines 4 and 5. Line 4 begins "Abzu, shrine" (abzu es), while line 5 begins "House, holy mound" (e du6-ku), where es and e are synonymous pairs and abzu and du6-ku are synonymous.2 5 Thus the abzu is also called "holy mound," which I believe supports my contention that in the Sumerian tradition the temple/mountain is seen as arising from the primordial mound.

Another hymn, to a temple in Ur, uses the phrase "Shrine, pure place, earth of A n " in reference to the temple. The same phrase, "earth of A n " (i.e. , Anu, the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon), occurs in a lexical text where the phrase, in Akkadian, is equated with Uruk, the Sumerian city where a great temple/ ziggurat to Anu was built beginning about 3400 B.C.26 The phrase "earth of A n , " when connected with the proto-ziggurat built in the Anu precinct at Uruk, capped by the White Temple about 3000 B.C., gives yet further support to the equation primordial mound (which arises out of the abzu) = mountain/temple.27

Along these same lines Henri Frankfort wrote of "the ziggurat, the massive temple tower, which stood for the 'mountain,' as a symbol of the earth, the Netherworld, or the place of sunrise."2 8

The conception that temples are the architectural representation of the primordial mound is quite clearly expressed in Egyptian documents and architecture from the earliest times. According to Frankfort, "Everywhere the site of creation, the first


land to emerge from chaos, was thought to have been charged with vital power." And thus "each and every temple was supposed to stand on i t ." 2 9 The step pyramid introduced by Djoser in the Third Dynasty was an architectural realization of the primordial hill, which was then modified into the true pyramid in the Fourth Dynasty,"the specific Heliopolitan form of the Primeval Hill, the Benben." 3 0 Egyptian cities in which prominent shrines stood were called names which hearken back to the belief that they originated in the primordial mound: "Memphis was called 'The divine emerging primeval island,' Thebes 'The island emerging in Nun [Egyptian Nun is the god which represents and embodies the waters of creation] which first came into being when all other places were still in obscurity,' Hermonthis 'the high ground which grew out of Nun.' " 3 1 Other Egyptian texts address Thebes as "the primordial mound, which was placed in Nun in the beginning, of whose earth all land was made." The primordial hill itself is described as "the divine hill," "the great hill of the first time," "the hill which was given from Nun at the beginning when there was neither heaven nor earth nor underworld," "the emerging island which stretched its head out of Nun," or"the island of flames. " 3 2

This same ideology is graphically portrayed on the walls of the Ptolemaic period temples at Edfu and elsewhere in Egypt, where, according to A . J. Spencer, "Practically every temple or shrine of this period was considered a replica of the first temple, built upon the primeval mound in the midst of the water of Nun." 3 3 Most importantly, though, as in Mesopotamia, it is not the temple in general that is viewed as the incarnation of the primordial mound, but the holy of holies within the temple. It was the cult room of the Assyrian deity Assur's main temple in the Assyrian capital that was called "house of the Great Mountain of the Lands" from the time of Sargon II onward. 3 4 Similarly, in the Neo-Sumerian temple hymns we read that the determination of destinies is carried out in du6-ku, the "holy mound." 3 5 We know from other Mesopotamian texts that there was a chapel in many if not all temples, called in Sumerian ub-su-kin-na and in Akkadian parak simati, "chamber of destiny." It was in this chamber that the "determination of destinies" for the year took place. Van

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Driel presents evidence to indicate that the room in the temple complex at Assur, the Assyrian religious capital, designated " o " by the excavators, was in fact the cult room of the god Assur, a room described in an inscription of Esarhaddon as "the inner cultroom, where Assur, my lord, lives." Further inscriptional evidence from Esarhaddon demonstrates that there was a parak simati or ub-su-kin-na in this chapel.3 6 Thus I believe that we can establish for Mesopotamia the equation Primordial mound = cosmic mountain = holy of holies.

This same equation is even more strongly attested for Egypt, where it is documented both textually and architecturally. Mohiy el-Din Ibrahim writes:

The basic plan of an Egyptian temple is logical and comprehensible. The Holy of Holies was a small dark room in the central axis of the temple towards the back. It thus appears as at the end of a long road which passed through the forecourts and narrowed through porticoes and halls until the hidden shrine was reached. This road also mounted steeply in the case of the pyramid temples and the rock temples, less noticeably in other cases. But at every door we find a few steps or a ramp to mark the rise. For the Holy of Holies was ideally conceived as the primeval hill, the first land to arise from the waters of chaos on the day of creation. Since all that exists had gone forth from this spot, it was a centre of immeasurable potency well suited for the manifestation of a divinity. 3 7

Professor Reymond, writing of the same temple complex, also notes that "the adyton of the historical temple at Edfu was regarded as the god's 'genuine Great Seat of the First Occasion.' " 3 8

If we consider the ancient biblical and the Jewish traditions, we find that there are emphases on mountains, land, and the foundation rock of the Jerusalem temple as having come forth first from the waters of creation. We find reference to the primordial waters of creation, the abyss or deep, in Genesis 1:2, where the Hebrew word tehom is the functional equivalent of the abzu in Mesopotamia and the Nun in Egypt. Dry land appears in


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verse 9 of the creation account. Elsewhere in the Old Testament we see that the ancients viewed the mountains as the earth's pillars, submerged in the waters of tehdm, and that it was the mountains which first appeared as the waters of the abyss receded. We see this idea in Psalm 104:5-8, and in Proverbs 8:24-26, which reads, in the NAB translation:

24. When there were no depths (Heb. tehomoth) I was brought forth [speaking of Wisdom], when there were no fountains or springs of water:

25. Before the mountains were settled into place, before the hills, I was brought forth;

26. While as yet the earth and the fields were not made, nor the first clods of the world.

Wensinck, writing of this passage, states that "the sequence of the different acts of the creation is consequently this: the Ocean, the mountains being immerged in it, the earth and her ways. So the first solid spots in the Ocean [tehdm] are the mountains; after them the earth is created. The mountains consequently possess the characteristic, belonging to the navel, of being the parts of the earth which have been created before the rest." And further, "It will be clear that the foundations of the earth are the mountains which were let down into the primeval flood before the creation of the earth." 3 9 The mountains thus serve the same role in the Old Testament as the temple explicitly plays in the Sumerian tradition, where it is called the "foundation of the earth." The Sumerian word for foundation is temen, which can probably be viewed as an historical predecessor of the Greek word temenos, which gives us the tern root of our word "temple." 4 0 In the Sumerian tradition, the temenos or foundation of the temple is seen as being "sunk down into the abyss." Elsewhere it is said that the temenos of the temple was sunk into the abyss, and stood "like great pillars." 4 1 In the biblical tradition, then, mountains are viewed as the first solid structures to emerge from the waters of creation, and are viewed as the "foundations [pillars] of the land." The sanctity of certain mountains in the biblical tradition, primarily Sinai, is transferred to the temple, particularly to the temple mount in Jerusalem. (Of course, not all mountains are


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assumed to possess such sanctity, as we read in Psalm 68:17: " W h y look you jealously, you rugged mountains, at the mountain God has chosen for this throne, where the Lord himself will dwell forever?") It is in this sense that the temple mount comes to be viewed as the first spot to have emerged from the waters of creation. And in this latter sense we have a match with the views described above for Mesopotamia and Egypt. As Burrows writes, "Palestinian stone takes the place of Mesopo-tamian reed-mat and earth." 4 2

The Jewish tradition makes explicit the connection between the temple and the first spot of ground to have emerged from the tehdm. A famous Midrashic passage states:

Just as the navel is found at the center of a human being, so the land of Israel is found at the center of the world. Jerusalem is at the center of the land of Israel, and the Temple is at the center of Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies is at the center of the Temple, the Ark is at the center of the Holy of Holies, and the Foundation Stone is in front of the Ark, which spot is the foundation of the world. 4 3

The biblical tradition focuses thus not on the mound or hillock of creation, but on the rock, which rock is specifically associated in late traditions with the temple in Jerusalem and with the first ground to emerge from creation. W . Brede Kristensen has given a valuable summary statement of the theology behind the concept of primordial hillock or rock:

This is the background of the sacredness of the bamoth. Related to this is the notion of the hill of Creation, where life arose in the beginning. The earth height which came up out of the primeval waters was the place where the earth began to live. There life arose and from there it spread. The life of the cosmos is thus conceived as the life of the earth. The light myth is also connected with this notion of the creation of the world; from the (sun) hill the sun arose in the beginning. The Egyptian texts call the day of Creation 'the day of the elevation of the earth' [Book of the Dead 1:19]. The height or hill as a sacred place is thus the place where


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the life of the earth reveals itself, the place of divine revelation in general. Here the altar was built, the altar which according to ancient belief was sacred because it represented the dwelling place of God, the altar which itself was the image of the high place.44

3. The temple is often associated with the waters of life which flow from a spring within the building itself—or rather the temple is viewed as incorporating within itself such a spring or as having been built upon the spring. The reason such springs exist in temples is that they were perceived as the primeval waters of creation, Nun in Egypt, abzu in Mesopotamia, tehom in Israel. The temple is thus founded upon and stands in contact with the waters of creation. These waters carry the dual symbolism of the chaotic waters that were organized during the creation and of the life-giving, saving nature of the waters of life.

If the basic validity of the above point in the typology can be granted, then it is obvious that water symbolism, in most cases connected with the underground waters of creation, is going to be very widely attested in ancient ritual, and especially in temple-associated ritual. I have given considerable documentation for this phenomenon elsewhere.4 5 Here I would like to approach the evidence from a slightly different perspective. Hugh Nibley has given a description of ancient hierocentric shrines which I think captures the essence of the role that water would have played: "At every hierocentric shrine stood a mountain or artificial mound and a lake or spring from which four streams flowed out to bring the hfe-giving waters to the four regions of the earth. The place was a green paradise, a carefully kept garden, a refuge from drought and heat. Elaborate waterworks figure conspicuously in the appointments and the rites of the holy place." 4 6 We have here a description of what another scholar has referred to as "a sort of landscape of 'the first time.' " 4 7 In other words, we can expect temple ritual to incorporate and to celebrate, architecturally and ritually, those views of primeval beginnings that were transmitted in the cosmogonic texts of each tradition.48 Water symbolism is perhaps the most central theme in these texts.

In the three major traditions that are under discussion here, the Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Israelite, lustration ( "ho ly" )


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water is viewed as coming from deep springs of water that originate in the abyss, and, in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian traditions, the waters of abzu and Nun are associated respectively with the Tigris/Euphrates and Nile rivers. The latter are then channeled by means of pipes, ducts, or other water conduits, such as the famous Nilometers in Egypt, directly into the holy of holies of the sanctuary, there to be available for lustration or drinking.4 9 Also in the Jewish tradition, post-biblical sources relate the waters of tehdm, trapped under the Rock of Foundation in the Holy of Holies of the temple, to libation festivals connected with the Feast of Tabernacles.5 0

One of the most interesting ancient expressions of the association of temple and primeval waters is found in the account of the temple of Atargatis in the north Syrian town of Hierapolis by the Syro-Greek writer Lucian. He reports that the inhabitants of the city believed that their temple had been founded over a "chasm" which, following the end of the great Flood, had opened up in the city and had swallowed up the flood waters. It was Deucalion, the Greek Noah, who then built altars and a temple on the spot of the chasm. In order to memorialize this event, the inhabitants of the entire area of north Syria would go twice yearly in formal processionals to the sea where they would fetch water that would be returned to the temple and poured into the crevice inside the temple. 5 1 According to Albright, "The annual ceremony in which water was brought from the sea and poured into this fissure shows that some connection was thought to exist between the latter and the subterranean source of fertihty-bringing fresh water in the Great Deep." 5 2

Finally, an image from a Neo-Sumerian temple hymn underscores both the centrality of water in temple symbolism and the interrelatedness of this theme with other temple symbols, in this case the cosmic mountain: "Temple, at its top a mountain, at its bottom a spring." 5 3 Gragg's note to this line explains that "the image of our present line would be then to the effect that the temple rises up like a mountain at its top, but reaches down to the springs of fresh water at its bottom." 5 4

4. The temple is associated with the tree of life. The tree, like the water, is an integral part of the "primordial

landscape," and as such plays a large role in the mythology and


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ritual of ancient Near Eastern temple symbolism. It is important to note that, in Mesopotamia at least, we are not dealing with "a specific botanical species nor . . . a single mythic or cultic entity." 5 5 Many different species or parts of trees are mentioned in ancient Near Eastern texts within the context of what we may call the "sacred tree," or "tree of life." Generally speaking, the tree of life grows up out of the primordial waters of the abyss, and thus there is an intimate mythological and cultic connection between the tree and the waters of life. A characteristic expression of this relationship appears in the inscriptions of Gudea of Lagash, in Cylinder A , where the temple that he is building is compared to the kiskanu [a tree of unknown botanical derivation] of the abyss, whose top was raised over the lands." 5 6

Another famous Sumerian incantation text states:

In Eridu in a pure place the dark kiskanu grows; Its aspect is like lapis lazuli branching out from the apsu. In the place were Ea holds sway, in Eridu full of abundance His abode being in the Underworld, His chamber a recess of the goddess Engur In his pure house is a grove, shadow-extending, into whose

midst no man has entered; There are Samas and Tammuz. 5 7

As Widengren has demonstrated, we are dealing here with a cultic tree, located in the temple, within a garden setting, the tree being cultically represented just as we know that the apsu or "sea" was cultically represented in the temple. 5 8 There is abundant evidence that ancient Near Eastern temples were conceived as fertile, green, well-watered paradises, as the quotation from Nibley above implies. The source of this fertility was the sweet water of the abyss, and it is natural that a tree that has the power to bestow life would be seen as growing up out of the waters. There is extensive evidence in the inscriptions of Gudea and elsewhere that gardens were grown in the temple vicinity.5 9

One inscription calls a temple "the House of the Plant of L i f e , " 6 0

and elsewhere Widengren expresses the opinion that the two cult symbols of the abyss or sea and the tree would have generally been represented in Mesopotamian temples.6 1 The natural


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extension of this idea is that the priest or king in the Mesopota-mian cult is often referred to as a "gardener." "This mythical conception receives its symbolical expression in the cult by means of a special cult tree, planted in a grove near the sanctuary. The guardian and waterer, the gardener and libation priest at once, is the king. He performs certain acts of libation with the view of revivifying this tree, which is also the visible symbol of the dying god, who is called back to l i fe . " 6 2 According to Thorkild Jacob-sen, the original purpose of the Giparu (strictly speaking, the residence of the en or entu priest or priestess in Mesopotamia), which in a wider sense stands for the cultic spot where the sacred marriage is carried out, was that of a storehouse of crops, particularly the date clusters.63 To be sure, the date palm plays a large role in Mesopotamian cylinder seals that depict cultic activity, especially during the Akkad period, where, according to York, " A tree is frequently seen in adoration or worshiper scenes behind the major deity, providing a visual termination for the scene while at the same time corroborating the holy nature of the tree." 6 4

It is a twig from the tree of life that the king or priest holds as his sceptre. Late pseudepigraphal sources attribute Moses' rod to a branch taken by Adam from the tree of good and evil before he left the garden of Eden. 6 5 In a different setting, Baal, the Canaanite deity, depicted on a stone stele found in 1932 at Ras Shamra just southwest of the Baal Temple on the acropolis, carries what might be interpreted as a budding cedar tree in his left hand, while below him on the stele are depicted the mountains, where his temple is situated,66 and beneath the mountains the watery abyss. If this interpretation of this stele is correct, we would have depicted on it all of the main symbols discussed thus far in this typology, with the unifying principle of the temple represented by the find spot of the stele.6 7

Another symbol associated with the tree of life is the food of life. Thus in the famous Myth of Adapa we find this passage:

The food of life they placed before him, but he did not eat. The water of life they placed before him, but he did not drink. 6 8


In the Gilgamesh Epic Gilgamesh seeks the plant that will make him young again, apparently not only for his own benefit, but also so that he can bring the plant back to Uruk and there allow the inhabitants of the city to eat also. In order to reach the plant, Gilgamesh apparently has to descend into or through a kind of tube or water pipe, which leads down into the sweet water, where the plant can be found. 6 9

All of the above motifs are found in the Old Testament, and several of them unite in Moses, "the ideal model of the Israelitic [sic] ruler, uniting in his person the three offices of the Israelitic king, priest, and prophet, and thus being the pattern of the sacral kingship in Israel." 7 0 Moses received the rod and the tablets from God, just as the Sumerian king Enmeduranki received the cedar staff and the tablets of destiny in the ubsukinna, or holy of holies of the temple of Ebarra in Nippur, thus symbolizing his enthronement. 7 1 We have clear evidence in the Old Testament for springs of water within the temple (see Isa. 30:25; Joel 3:18; Ezek. 47:1; Zech. 14:8; Ps. 46:5), and references to trees growing within the sanctuary (Ps. 92:13-15; 52:10). Of course, we must distinguish in the ancient world between natural, growing trees, and artificial cultic trees, the latter suggesting "a transplantation symbolic of the constant renewal of vegetation and source of animal l i fe . " 7 2

Ancient Near Eastern temple ritual knew both live gardens with trees growing within the temple precinct and cultic, artificial trees that stood in groves or within the temple and transmitted the same symbolism as five trees. The Old Testament prophets were especially clearly aware of the distinction between these types of trees, as we see in Isaiah 40:19-20 and 41:7-8, and in Jeremiah 10:2-4, where cultic trees of the type we see pictured on Mitanni-style cylinder seals and in Assyrian art are denounced.7 3 But from the references in the Psalms quoted above, as well as the numerous prophetic references where the Messiah is called a "shoot" or a "branch" (Isa. 4:2, 11:1, 37:31, 53:2; Jer. 23:5, 33:15; Zech. 3:8, 6:12), we know that there was something within the mainstream of the prophetic Israelite tradition that could relate positively to these symbols. Of course, we have in the tabernacle menorah, housed in the temple itself, an extraordinary example of an Israelite transformation of the tree-of-life motif.7 4

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Many, if not all, of the above-mentioned Old Testament references are eschatological in nature, and one of the most interesting of this genre is Ezekiel 47:12, where, within the context of the eschatological temple, the trees that are described are watered by the spring of water that flows from underneath the temple. These are obviously trees of life, providing perpetual supplies of hfe-giving food and healing benefits as well . 7 5 All of the above symbolism is joined most remarkably in the pseudepigraphal Testament of Judah:

This branch of God the Most High and this fountain giving life unto all.

Then shall the sceptre of my kingdom shine forth, and from your root shall arise a stem;

And from it shall grow a rod of righteousness to the Peoples, to judge and to save all that call upon the Lord. 7 6

Geo Widengren has written that we find in ancient Near Eastern temples two modes of symbolism, cosmic symbolism and paradise symbolism.7 7 The full working out of the extensive symbolism associated with ancient Near Eastern temples, as my typology implies, discloses additional symbolic modes, including socio-legal, communal, and what, for want of a better term, I will call "salvational" modes. I have focused in this paper on an expansion of Widengren's categories of cosmic and paradise symbolism. It is apparent that there is a remarkable interlocking and interrelationship, symbolic and cultic within the temple, around the issues of cosmic mountain, primordial hillock, primordial waters, and sacred tree. This relationship is so integrated that it becomes generative, and thus predictable. I started with the idea of model building relative to the "old imperial cosmological language of the archaic temple." We have here a beginning, at least, toward meeting the need Widengren expressed to develop "an exhaustive account of the extremely rich symbolism of the Mesopotamian [I would say the ancient Near Eastern] temple." 7 8

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Notes 1. I have recently written two articles in which I attempt to demonstrate the

applicability of an extensive typology to the various temple traditions of the ancient Near East. In the first of these I presented a fifteen-item typology, along with evidence from ancient sources that I believed supported the applicability of each item on the list. In the second article I attempted to relate certain items of a revised typology to temple symbolism in the book of Isaiah. In this article, not wishing to merely repeat what has already appeared, I would like to lay a stronger theoretical foundation for the necessity of such an approach to ancient temples as I have given expression to in the above articles, and present what seems to be, after a longer preoccupation with the theme, the most compelling evidence from ancient sources that supports the validity of points 1 to 4 of the typology. Space prevents more extensive coverage of the entire typology at this time. See "What Is a Temple? A Preliminary Typology," The Quest for the Kingdom of God: Studies in Honor of George E. Mendenhall (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983), pp. 205-19; and "Temple Symbolism in Isaiah," Isaiah and the Prophets, ed. Monte S. Nyman (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University), forthcoming.

2. Quoted in Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity, vol. 23 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), p. 186.

3. Ibid., p. 187. 4. "The Concept of Ma'al in the Bible and the Ancient Near East," Journal

of the American Oriental Society 96 (1976): 241. 5. Lee Daniel Snyder, "Modeling and Civilization: Can There Be a Science

of Civilization?" Abstract for International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilization, typescript, 1981.

6. Ibid. 7. Evidence for these studies is drawn primarily from ancient Western Asia,

that is, from those civilizations which fell within the cuneiform language tradition, from Egypt, and from Israelite/Jewish traditions. One of the most remarkable features of this evidence is continuity over time, as far as the typology is concerned. This continuity can best be characterized by reference to the range of time represented by the third millennium B.C. inscriptions of the Sumerian king Gudea of Lagash and the first millennium B.C. Babylonian creation/temple myth, Enuma elish, both of which provide important evidence for the validity of the typology (similar continuity can be demonstrated in Egypt between the Fifth and Sixth Dynasty Pyramid Texts and the Late Period/Ptolemaic Edfu temple texts). See Black Elk, The Sacred Pipe, Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, ed. Joseph Epes Brown (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971); James R. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, ed. Raymond J. De Maillie and Elane A. Jahner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980); Michael E. Melody, "Lakota Myth and Government: The Cosmos as the State," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 4 (1980): 1-19, with many references; and Lee Daniel Snyder, "Modeling and Civilization: Can There Be a Science of Civilization?" typescript, 1982, pp. 1-2.

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8. "Temple Building, A Task for Gods and Kings," Orientalia 32 (1963): 58.

9. "Aspetti simbolici dei templi e luoghi di culto del vicino oriente antico," Numen 7 (1960): 1-25; this article is summarized in Geo Widengren, Religionsphanomenologie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1969), pp. 328-39.

10. See John M. Lundquist, "The Legitimizing Role of the Temple in the Origin of the State," Society of Biblical Literature 1982 Seminar Papers, no. 21; ed. Kent Harold Richards (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, Society of Biblical Literature, 1982), pp. 271-97.

11. F. Thureau-Dangin, Die Sumerischen und Akkadischen Konigsin-schriften (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1907), p. 113; hereafter this work will be abbreviated SAK.

12. Ibid., p. 117. 13. Ibid., p. 119. 14. Ibid., p. 123. 15. See the discussion in David Noel Freedman, Pottery, Poetry, and

Prophecy (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1980), pp. 83, 105. 16. Ibid., pp. 136-37. 17. "Pyramids and Ziggurats as the Architectonic Representations of the

Archetype of the Cosmic Mountain," Katunob 10 (1977): 72. 18. The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and in the Old Testament (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 113-14. 19. "Pyramids and Ziggurats," p. 71. 20. "The Primordial Mound," Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and

Oriental Society 24 (1935): 26. 21. SAK, p. 113. 22. Ibid.; also E. Douglas van Buren, "Foundation Rites for a New Temple,''

Orientalia 21 (1952): 293. 23. A. Falkenstein, "Sumerische Bauausdriicke," Orientalia 35 (1966): 236. 24. Ake W. Sjoberg and E. Bergmann, The Collection of the Sumerian

Temple Hymns, Texts from Cuneiform Sources 3 (Locust Valley: J. J. Augustin, 1969), pp. 17, 50.

V

25. A. Deimel, Sumerisches Lexikon, II/3 (Rome: Verlag des Papstl. Bibelinstitutes, 1934), p. 459.

26. Sjoberg, Sumerian Temple Hymns, pp. 23, 75. 27. Maurice Canney, "The Primordial Mound," pp. 30-31. 28. Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949),

p. 323.

29. Ibid., pp. 151-52.

30. Ibid., p. 153.


31. Ibid., p. 380. 32. Canney, "The Primordial Mound," pp. 32-34. 33. "The Brick Foundations of Late-Period Peripteral Temples and Their

Mythological Origin," Glimpses of Ancient Egypt, Festschrift H. W. Fairman, ed. John Ruffle and others (Warminster: Aris and Philips, 1979), p. 133.

34. G. van Driel, The Cult of Assur (Assen: Van Gorcum and Comp. H. V., 1969), pp. 34-36.

35. Sjoberg, Sumerian Temple Hymns, pp. 31, 101. 36. The Cult of Assur, pp. 36-37. See also A. Falkenstein, Die Inschriften

Gudeas von Lagas, Analecta Orientalia 30 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1966), p. 141.

37. "The God of the Great Temple of Edfu," Glimpses of Ancient Egypt, 170.

38. E. A. E. Reymond, The Mythical Origin of the Egyptian Temple (New York: Manchester University Press, Barnes and Noble, 1969), p. 316; see also pp. 46, 47, 59, 266.

39. A. J. Wensinck, The Ideas of the Western Semites Concerning the Navel of the Earth (Amsterdam: Johannes Muller, 1916), p. 2.

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40. See A. Deimel, Sumerisches Lexikon, III/l, p. 206; and Henry George Liddell, Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968; commonly cited as LSJ), p. 1774. See also W. B. Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), p. 369.

41. A. Falkenstein, "Sumerische Bauausdrucke," p. 236. 42. Eric Burrows, "Some Cosmological Patterns in Babylonian Religion,"

The Labyrinth, ed. S. H. Hooke (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1935), p. 55.

43. Midrash Tanhuma, Kedoshim 10, quoted in Map Is Not Territory, p. 112.

44. The Meaning of Religion, pp. 106-7; emphasis added. 45. "What Is a Temple? A Preliminary Typology"; "Temple Symbolism in

Isaiah.'' 46. "The Hierocentric State," Western Political Quarterly 4 (1951): 235. 47. Mohiy el-Din Ibrahim, "The God of the Great Temple of Edfu," 170. 48. For a description of the architectural realization of mythical views in Late

Period Egyptian temples, see the articles by Ibrahim, cited above; also J. Spencer, "The Brick Foundations of Late Period Peripteral Temples and Their Mythological Origins."

49. For Mesopotamia see W. F. Albright, "The Mouth of the Rivers," The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 35 (1919): 161-95; and, for a Babylonian incantory text associated with the Esagila in Babylon which demonstrates the above symbolism, see Sidney Smith, "The Babylonian Ritual for the Consecration and Induction of a Divine State," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1925), pp. 37-59. For Egypt see

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Robert A. Wild, Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Sarapis, Etudes Prelim, aux Religions Orient, dans l'Empire Romain, 87 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981).

50. Raphael Patai, Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1947), pp. 24-59.

51. De Dea Syria, 13. See also R. A. Oden, Jr., Studies in Lucian's De Dea Syria, Harvard Semitic Monographs, 15 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977), pp. 24-36.

52. W. F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 5th ed. (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1968), p. 192.

53. Gene B. Gragg, The Kes Temple Hymn, in The Collection of the Sumerian Temple Hymns, p. 170.

54. Ibid., p. 183. 55. H. York, "Heiliger Baum," Reallexikon der Assyriologie und

vorderasiatischen Archaologie, 4 (1975): 270. 56. SAK, pp. 112-13. 57. W. F. Albright, "The Mouth of the Two Rivers," pp. 163-64. 58. Geo Widengren, The King and the Tree of Life in Ancient Near Eastern

Religion, King and Savior IV (Uppsala: A. B. Lundequistska Bokhandeln, 1951), pp. 7-9.

59. Widengren, The King and the Tree of Life, p. 10. 60. Ibid. 61. Religionsphanomenologie, p. 332. 62. Widengren, The King and the Tree of Life, p. 19. 63. Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian

History and Culture, ed. William L. Moran (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 375-76.

64. "Heiliger Baum," p. 273. 65. The King and the Tree of Life, p. 38. 66. We must distinguish, in many ancient traditions, between natural

mountains, viewed as the dwelling place of the deity, and their earthly counterparts,"temples made with hands.'' In Syria and Palestine, where natural mountains are commonplace, the distinction between mountain and temple is obvious, as in Baal's home on Mount Sapon, juxtaposed to his earthly temple in the city of Ugarit. The earthly temple is of course homologized (to use Eliades's terminology) to a mountain. In Mesopotamia, where natural mountains are rare, man-made mountains were constructed, the ziggurats, and these were placed in direct juxtaposition to the temple within the sacred precinct, as we see in the Assyrian temple-building tradition and in the E-sagila in Neo-Babylonian Babylon. See Kurt Bittel, "Hittite Temples and High Places," pp. 66-67; Frank Moore Cross,' "The Priestly Tabernacle in the Light of Recent Research, " p . 174; and David Noel Freedman, "Temple Without Hands," pp. 21-29 in Temples and High Places in Biblical Times, Proceedings of the Colloquium in Honor of the Centennial of Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion (Jerusalem: Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology, 1981).


67. Claude F. A. Schaeffer, "Les Fouilles de Minet-el-Beida et de Ras-Shamra," Syria 14 (1933): 122-24; J. Gray, "Ugarit," Archaeology and Old Testament Study, ed. D. Winton Thomas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 147-48.

68. The King and the Tree of Life, p. 34. 69. James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old

Testament (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), pp. 96-97; The King and the Tree of Life, pp. 32-33.

70. The King and the Tree of Life, p. 39. 71. Ibid., pp. 39-40. 72. M. E. L. Mallowan, "Excavations at Brak and Chagar Bazar," Iraq 9

(1947): 139. 73. "Excavations at Brak and Chagar Bazar," p. 140. 74. Carol Meyers, The Tabernacle Menorah, ASOR Diss. Ser., 2 (Missoula,

Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976); Geo Widengren, Religionsphanomenologie, p. 339.

75. The King and the Tree of Life, pp. 36-37, 48-53. 76. Ibid., p. 54. 77. Religionsphanomenologie, p. 335. 78. Ibid.

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4

The Temple and Other Sacred Places in the Ebla Tablets Mitchell J. Dahood

The Mormon dispensation approach to history tends to reverse some evolutionary accounts of the development of the temple idea: the building of altars, the offering of sacrifice, the sanctuary-sense, and the conviction of both sacred space and sacred time all predate in some form, on the Mormon view, the biblical record. Furthermore, the intertwining of the temple idea with the types and shadows of messianic expectation predates, in Mormon understanding, the Mosaic period. The discovery of tablets by the thousands in Upper Syria which can be dated at least a thousand years earlier than Moses holds a significance, therefore, of first importance. Though the records are mainly of commercial transactions, they are fingerprinted, so to speak, with religious and social and cult practices of the time. Mitchell Dahood's skill in Northwest Semitic languages is demonstrated here with examples of sacred names, cult practices, and beliefs which clearly reflect ancient pre-Israelite temple construction and traditions of sacrifice and ceremonial enactment. Not all of Dahood's linguistic connections and derivations are presently

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The texts of the state archives of Ebla, being primarily administrative and economic documents, do not specifically

deal with the city's religious life. Nevertheless, one can glean information of great value concerning the religion of Ebla around 2,500 B.C. from a number of particular tablets of the Hall of Archives L. 2769, and also from the documents taken all together. A good idea of the popular religious feeling can be gained from the thousands of personal and place names representing the seventy years or so covered by the tablets. When they are eventually published, the literary texts which have been identified thus far will also afford insight into the religious sentiments of the educated people at Ebla. Clear light on the official religion and the daily cult comes from the four tablets published in 1979 by G. Pettinato in a study entitled Culto ufficiale ad Ebla durante il regno di Ibbi-Sipis (=Oriens Antiquus XVIII [1979]: 85-215, with twelve photographs). These four tablets list offerings of sheep made to various deities by the king and members of the royal family during the different months of the year. Since these tablets indicate where these offerings were presented, one can get a good idea of the sacred edifices at Ebla, and Pettinato's index of "houses, edifices" (page 215b) distinguishes eight different locales where sacrifices were offered or rites performed.

Inasmuch as the archaeologists have unearthed no sacred buildings from the same period as the tablets, we must thank the tablets themselves for the information that many temples existed at Ebla dedicated to individual gods and goddesses. There were also chapels in the administrative buildings. The following discussion limits itself mainly to the four cultic texts mentioned above, and aims to develop some of the points touched upon by Pettinato in his monograph, and especially pages 113-16, which are dedicated to "Luoghi di culto."

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verifiable, but the foundations of further study are here apparent.

T.G.M.

The Temple and Other Sacred Places in the Ebla Tablets

79

The ordinary term for "temple" is always written in Sumerian as e d i n g i r, "house of the god." But how was it read in Semitic Eblaite? In the bilingual lexical lists, the Sumerian e is left untranslated since the scribes assumed that the Eblaite equivalent was too well known to be spelled out. In 1977 G. Pettinato and I jointly published a short article entitled "Ugaritic rsp gn and Eblaite rasap gun^m)1^1"1 in which we used Eblaite e-dra-sa-ap gii-nu10 to supply the missing vowels of Ugar. bt rsp gn, "the temple of Resheph of Gunu." In our discussions I argued that Ugar. bt, the counterpart of Sum. e, warranted the translation of Sumerian e in our text as Eblaite bet; but Pettinato refused to concede this because e does not appear translated in the Sumerian-Eblaite bilinguals. Though I insisted that he was being too pernickety, he would not allow the purported Semitic equivalent bet to appear in the article. This difference of opinion doubtless stems from differing conceptions of the linguistic relationship existing between Eblaite and the other Semitic languages. Though theoretically classifying Eblaite as Paleo-Canaanite, Pettinato is not disposed to treat it as Ugaritically and Hebraically as I would prefer.

The plural form e-e d i n g i r - d i n g i r, "the temples of the gods," occurs in TM.75.G.1764 rev. I 18-19; 2075 obv. IX 15-17; 2238 rev. IV 1-2, and seems to imply that each of the deities receiving cultic offerings has his or her own temple. Some of these tablets, however, explicitly state that the worship of one god sometimes took place in a temple dedicated to another divinity. Thus according to TM.75.G.2238 obv. I 10-16, the god Hadda received offerings from the king in the temple dedicated to the god Kura: "two sheep for the god Hadda on the part of the king as a good-will offering (nidba) in the temple of Kura during the feast of the ingathering ('a-si-pii)."

This raises a question concerning the identification of the god Qura. Pettinato writes, "Kura, un dio molto venerato ad Ebla, dal carattere a me oscuro, e presente in tutti e quattro i testi ripetute volte." 2 An insight into this god's character may be afforded by TM.75.G.2238 rev. II 26'-III 2, 10: 1 a - 3 u d u sv u - d u8-masv

tug:du8 e ^ [u- ra] , "Seven sheep as 'tax' of the ropemaker to the temple of Qura." That a ropemaker should specifically be obligated to furnish sheep for sacrifice in the temple of this deity


HU

suggests comparison with the root gwr, "to twist", preserved in Arabic as qawrun, "a kind of rope," and in Isaiah 59:5, w equre 'akkabis3 ye'er'ogu, "and they weave spider-threads." Hence qura may tentatively be identified as the god of weaving-or rather the goddess of weaving as the feminine ending of qura points to the gender of the divinity. The worship of such a deity makes sense in a city like Ebla, where textiles and metalworking were the two chief industries.

To facilitate our understanding of the semantic transition from gur, "thread," to qilrd, "Goddess Thread," it may be helpful to discuss the god ^r-mu in Materiali epigrafici di Ebla (hereafter MEE) 1, n. 1008, and in the personal name i-ti-ir-mu, "With me is Irmu," in MEE 1, n. 1494. Who is this god whose name is written ir-mu? The answer is probably supplied by Habakkuk 1:16:

'al-ken yezabbeah lehermo wiqatter fmikmarto kibahemmah samen helqo uma'akalo beri'ah Therefore he sacrifices to his Net, and burns incense to his Dragnet, for by these his livelihood is rich, and his food succulent.

Commentators4 who seek to explain this passage find the statement "He sacrifices to his Net" puzzling because they do not recognize that hermo is the divinized Net; in other words, biblical hermo supplies the initial consonant of Eblaite dz'r-mu/hirmu/ * 'Net, ' ' and i-ti-ir-mu/'ittT-hirmu/"With me is Net ." This may be employed as an example of mutual elucidation: the divine status of ^'r-mu helps interpret Habakkuk 1:16 hermo as "his Net ," which in turn furnishes the initial consonant of dz'r-mu.

One gains a further insight into the Canaanite concept of divinity when examining TM.75.G.2238 obv. XII 27-31, 2 u d u d AMA-ra dsz4-se-/u/sfseru/"two sheep (in the month) AMA-ra for Siseru." Identification of the deity siseru does not come readily, but comparison with the biblical sdser, "red dye, vermilion" (Jer. 22:14; Ezek. 23:14), may prove suggestive. Since vermilion


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in antiquity was gained from the dried bodies of the females of a scale insect, kermes ilices, which lives on certain oaks on the shores of the Mediterranean and adjacent parts of the Near East,5

siseru may have been the divinized kermes ilices. The enormous shipments of multi-colored garments registered in the administrative and economic tablets point to the importance of dyes in the textile operations of Ebla, and since Canaanite red or purple robes were famous in antiquity, the divinization of this source of prosperity becomes comprehensible. Just as the Chaldaean invader offered sacrifices to his Net because it rendered his life prosperous (Hab. 1:16), so the Eblaites brought sheep to be sacrificed to siseru in return for the luxury that this deity provided. One might also direct attention to the deity witnessed in the personal name isx-gi-bii-du/yisgi-putu/''Lofty is Royal Purple" 6

where put is identified with Ugar. pwt, "red, purple dye . " 7

According to TM.75.G.2075 obv. I 24-11 4, 13 u d u e dni-da-kul r x l K I e n nidba^ d i n g i r - d i n g i r , ''thirteen sheep were brought by the king to the temple of Nidakul in honor of all the gods." Perhaps the most frequently mentioned deity in these four cultic texts, Nidakul is described thus by Pettinato: " A most venerated divinity at Ebla, Nidakul is so unknown to me that I cannot even be sure of the reading. He appears alone, but more frequently his name is followed by the name of a place." 8 Since the Sumerian sign NI has also the vocalic value i-, one may read the divine name di-da-kul and compare it with Genesis 2:14, hiddeqel, "the Tigris river," and hence normalize Sumerian i-da-kul as Semitic hiddaqul, whose meaning might well be "The Voice (thunder) brings j oy . " What sustains this reading and identification is the information that the divinized Syrian river dba-li-ha receives "one sheep for Palih in the two chapels of Qura" (TM.75.G.2075 obv. V 24-27), as does the divinized Euphrates dba-ra-du ma-du, "The Great Cold River," 9 which receives two sheep as an offering from the queen (TM.75.G.2075 obv. IV 28-V 3). If both the Balih and the Euphrates were revered as deities by Eblaite royalty, it stands to reason that the equally important Tigris would have been divinized. Accordingly the reading hiddaqul, "the Tigris," commends itself.10


Another of the cultic places discussed by Pettinato11 is gi-na-u, occurring in TM.75.G.2075 obv. VII 12-14, l u d u gi-na-ii da-dam-ma, "One sheep for the cell of Adamma." Pettinato renders gi-na-u "la cella" without, however, excluding the meaning of "regular offering," one of the meanings of Akk. ginu. Since he can propose no explanation for his correct rendition "la cella," it would not be irrelevant to cite Genesis 6:14, 'aseh leka tebat 'ase-goper qinmm ta'aseh 'et-hattebdh, "Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make the ark with cells." 1 2 Plural qinmm, from gen, "nest," which here has the specific meaning "cells" or "rooms," can supply the explanation for Eblaite gi-na-u, to be normalized qinnahu, "for his cell"; the suffix is the anticipatory -hO, 1 3 referring to the god Adamma.

In some ways the most informative passage in these cultic texts is TM.75.G.2238 obv. XII 21-26, 1 u d u ki-s u r s i d u - s i- d u e n - e n en-na-yd s u - d u 8 , "One sheep for the chapel of the laments for the kings Ennaya has delivered." 1 4 When this information is connected with that furnished by TM.75.G.1763 obv. Ill 7-10, s i - d u - s i - d u e n - e n m s^k i r i, "laments for the kings in the garden," it would appear that the above-mentioned chapel was situated in the garden where the former kings were buried. As Pettinato observes, "The addition of in )f text 1 further specifies the place of the cult of the dead: the garden seems, in fact, to be the burial place of Ebla's kings. This calls to mind the g i - d e n - k i, 'the reed-bed of Enki,' mentioned in the texts of Urukagina of Lagash as the burial ground of the inhabitants of Lagash." 1 5 Thus these tablets furnish valuable information about the rites for the deceased and about their belief in the afterlife, as well as about the funeral practices of the Eblaites.

These mourning rites for the deceased may consequently point to the correct interpretation of the divine name su-ha, which, in the second cultic tablet studied by Pettinato, receives the offering often sheep in the sixth month, i z i - g a r (TM.75.G.2075 obv. VI 22-24). Reading the name as Sumerian, Pettinato understands dsu-ha as "the fisher god ." 1 6 But if taken as Semitic, dsu-ha

u ~ 7 u signifies the "goddess of the Pit"; in Hebrew the cognate noun

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sahat often designates the netherworld in poetic texts (e.g., Job 17:15).

It was not only the goddess of the underworld who received offerings, however. The administrative text MEE 2, 40 rev. Ill 12-14 lists "11 double fabrics, 11 Aktum fabrics, 11 precious and multicolored robes for the dead in Abaddan (mi-ti a-ba-da-nu)." One cannot be sure of how to interpret this text, but it would seem that at certain recurrences garments were put in the tombs for the dead. Just as the dead were considered to need food and drink, as established by archaeological finds, so too they may have been thought to need protection against the elements of the netherworld.

The translation of mi-ti a-ba-da-nu as "the dead in Abaddan" is based on the equation of the latter with the Hebrew (and exclusively Hebrew) 'abaddon, SL poetic term for the netherworld occurring in the Bible six times. Once this identification is made, then it becomes possible to analyze mi-ti as the stative participle of mwt, "to die," and comparable to the Hebrew met. Should doubts remain about this interpretation, then Psalm 88:11-12 may help dispel them: "Is it for the dead (metfm) that you work wonders? Or will the Shades arise to praise you? Is your loving-kindness recounted in the grave, your fidelity in Perdition ('abaddon)?" These lines begin with metfm and close with 'abaddon, an inclusio that contains the components of the Eblaite construct chain miti-'abaddan. One could scarcely wish for a neater instance of a biblical passage serving to clarify a third-millennium text from northwestern Syria.

In many of his writings, George Mendenhall stresses that in the ancient as well as the modern Near East it is not continuity but change that needs to be explained.1 7 A further illustration of this truth is provided by the mysterious practices described in Isaiah 65:3-4:

A people who provoke me to my face, continually;

offering sacrifices in the gardens,1 8

and burning incense on incense-altars;19


who sit among the graves, and amid the hewn rocks 2 0 pass the night;

who eat the flesh of pigs, and the broth21 of unclean meat is what they consume.22

Commentators have not succeeded completely in interpreting the significance of these rites and actions described by the prophet, but the association of gardens and graves recalls the mourning for the deceased kings in the gardens of Ebla, and both passages must now be studied jointly.

The tenacity of religious traditions and practices illustrated by this comparison has a counterpart in the division of Ebla into four quarters, each with its own gate dedicated to the tutelar deity of that quarter. Thus Ebla had four gates respectively dedicated to Dagan, Sipish, Rasap, and Baal, 2 3 and one supposes that each quarter had its own temple as well . 2 4 In the middle of the first millennium B.C. the Phoenician city of Sidon was also divided into four quarters, smm 'drm = svmm rmm, "Magnificent Heaven" or "Heaven Most High"; 'rs rspm, "Quarter of Resheph"; sdn msl, "Sidon of the Ruler," and sdn sd, "Sidon of the Field." 2 5 Each quarter had its own temple, and one may suppose that at Ebla a temple graced each precinct even though the temples of the archive period have been destroyed, leaving no archaeological traces. From a later period, however, circa 2,000 B.C., three temples and a sanctuary have been uncovered. In his study " L e temple dans la Syrie du Bronze Moyen," P. Matthiae compares the structure and function of temple D of Tell Mardikh, dating to circa 2,000 B.C., with temples of the same period from other sites in northern Syria and Palestine such as Tell Atshanah, Byblos, Hazor, Megiddo, and Tell Balatah (Shechem). He correctly concludes as follows:

En concluant, le theme architectural du temple en premier lieu dans sa qualification spatiale, mais aussi dans ses exigences fonctionelles par suite des conditionnements sociaux, regit dans le milieu paleosyrien du Bronze Moyen une formulation douee d'aspects profondement unitaires, qui lient les experiences de la Syrie du Nord a celles de la Palestine centreseptentrional. Sans que ces aspects se rai-

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dissent en une canonisation typologique, et peut-etre juste-ment pour cette raison, l'experience de la architecture re-ligieuse de la Syrie du Bronze Moyen vient se placer dans le cadre historique du developpement de la civilization architecturale syrienne comme un moment particulierment significatif, ou se retrouvent les matrices plus pures et plus vraies de la conception, sans doute original, mais d'une originalite enracinee dans l'histoire, du temple de Jerusalem. 2 6

The quadripartite division of Sidon continues the third-millennium tradition that has come to light with the epigraphic and archaeological finds at Ebla. The comparison of ka ra-sa-ap, "Gate of Rashap" in TM.75.G.1438 with 'rs rspm, "Quarter of Rashap" in Phoenician 2 7 is surely striking and confirms Mendenhall's observation that continuity in the Near East-and, I would further specify, continuity in Canaan—needs no explanation. Of course the four-gate motif elicits Genesis 2:10, which describes the four headsprings issuing from the Garden of Eden.

Moving beyond these four cultic texts, we can learn more about sacred constructions from those administrative and economic texts which mention toponyms whose first component is the Sumerian e, read bet, "house, temple," in Eblaite. Thus e su-mii™ (MEE 1, n. 1671) seems to signify "Temple of the Name," and bespeaks the local veneration of the divinized Name that corresponds to the veneration manifest in the personal names tii-M-sum, " M y good is the Name" (MEE 1, n. 722, 760), and is-ma-sum, "The Name hears" (MEE 1, n. 5088). The toponym e-ba-n-um^ (MEE 2, 40 rev. IV 10), "Temple of the Creator," reveals the belief in a Creator god that has its counterpart in ba-ra-gu10 (MEE 1, n. 1671), "The Voice has created," and the PN ib-ta-ra-gii (MEE 2, 7 obv. XIV 14), "The Voice has created for itself.'' A similar reverence for the Creator is manifested by the place name e-mu-n-icf1 (TM.75.G.1444), "The Temple of the Greener," where the form mu-ri-iq is analyzed as the hiphil participle of the root wrq, "to be green," hence "the one who makes green." That this was the function of the Creator may be inferred from Genesis 1:30, "And to all the beasts of the earth


and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has breath of life in it—(I give) every green plant (kof yereq 'eseb) for food" (cf. Gen. 9:3).

From the biblical point of view, perhaps the most dramatic place name is MEE 1, 6523 = TM.76.G.525 rev. VII e-da-bar™, "Temple of the Word ," wherein da-bar is equated with the Hebrew (and rarely Phoenician) dabdr, "word ." In other terms, the Word, the Logos, was already divinized in third-millennium Canaan. When I pointed out this startling name to one of my Roman colleagues, he exclaimed, " I don't know what da-bar means here, but I do know it cannot mean 'Word ' !" What is the likelihood of this signification here? Several considerations come to mind. In the bilingual vocabulary TM.75.G.2284 rev. VII 2-3, Sumerian e m e - b a l a , "translator," is rendered into Eblaite as ta-da-bi-lu/tadabbiru/ from the root dbr, "to say"; hence tadabbiru would literally be "a reworder," not a bad definition of"translator.'' Then there is the personal name da-bi-ru in MEE 2, 2 obv. XII 5. In form it is the qal participle, and it will be recalled that in the qal conjugation of this root Hebrew preserves only the qal participle. Consequently this root is witnessed in Eblaite, and since the five phonemes of dabar answer to the biblical dabdr, "word ," one can safely interpret e-da-bar1® as "Temple of the Word ."

Nor should this equation cause surprise in view of the Canaanite divinization of ni-um, "Orac le ," Heb. ne'ilm, witnessed in the toponyms zu-ba-ne-um10, "Return, O Oracle!" (TM.75.H.1591 obv. XIV 11); ba-ha-ne-umKI, "The Oracle has inspired" (MEE 1, 737); and wa-li-ni-umKI, "Kinsman is the Oracle" (MEE 2, 32 obv. VI 6 ) . 2 8 Thus the Eblaites raised to divine status the Voice (gu), the Voice (qalu), the Name (sum), and the Oracle (ne'ilm), as well as the Word (dabar).

In summary, the relatively few published tablets from Ebla have yielded a surprisingly rich harvest of information regarding the importance of the temple in the religious and civic life of the Eblaites in the middle of the third millennium B.C. The religious traditions documented at Ebla did not die out with the subsequent destructions of the city, but lived on in Canaan and

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Notes 1. Orientalia 46 (1977): 230-32. 2. "Culto ufficiale ad Ebla durante il regno di Ibbi-Sipis," Oriens Antiquus

18 (1979): 106. It should be noted that this study also appeared as a separate monograph, whose page numbers differ from those in Oriens Antiquus.

3. It may be observed here that the Hebrew 'akkabis, "spider," occurs as the place name a-ga-ga-bi-isK1 in Eblaite texts Materiali epigrafici di Ebla (hereafter MEE) 1 [= G. Pettinato, Catalogo dei testi cuneiformi di Tell Mardikh-Ebla] (Napoli, 1979), pp. 6523, 6527. The identification looks convincing because of the doubling of the second consonant of Heb. 'akkabis in syllabic a-ga-ga-bi-isK'. To name a city "Spider" fits in with the spinning interests of the Eblaites and with their worship of the goddess of weaving, Qura. In other terms, both members of the hapax phrase qure 'akkabis, "spider-threads," in Isaiah 59:5 are found separately in the Ebla records, a further indication of the close lexical kinship between Eblaite and biblical Hebrew. For a semantically comparable toponym one might compare biblical ma'aleh 'aqrabbim, "Scorpion-pass," in Judges 1:36; Numbers 34:4; Joshua 15:3.

4. For example, W. S. McCullough, Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, K-Q, 540b, under "Figurative use of 'net,' " writes, "The meaning of Hab. 1:16 ('He sacrifices to his net') is obscure," and A. Vaccari, La Sacra Bibbia VII (Firenze, 1955), p. 351, describes the expression as metaphorical. The Ugaritic personal name bn hrm (UT, 400 I 9) may now be interpreted "Son of Net"; contrast F. Grondahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit (Roma, 1967), p. 136.

5. Consult R. A. Donkin, "The Insect Dyes of Western and West-Central Asia," Anthropos 72 (1977), 847-80, esp. 859-65.

6. In G. Pettinato, Testi amministrativi della biblioteca L. 2769 = MEE 2 (Napoli, 1980), text 8 obv. I 8. In text 7 rev. IX 13, pu-ud-ku/put-gu/ "Royal Purple is the Voice," may semantically be compared with the biblical name 'elipaz, "My God is refined gold" (Gen. 36:4; Job 2:11), and with the Eblaite toponym gii-ba-zuKI/gu-pazu/ "The Voice is refined gold" (MEE 2, 41 obv. IV 4). Cf. also i-a-bu-du^/ya-putu/ "Ya is royal purple," in TM.75.G.2377 obv. V 7, published by A. Archi, Studi Eblaiti 1/7-8, 1979, p. 108.

7. Cf. Cyrus H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1956; hereafter cited as UT), Glossary, no. 2031.

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remained part of the cultural milieu from which both the Old and New Testaments emerged. Today we are still indebted to the ancient Canaanites for making the temple a focal point of their religious lives.


8. "Culto ufficiale," p. 107. 9. As I noted in La Civilta Cattolica, 17 May 1978, p. 335, the Eblaite

syllabic spelling ba-va-du reveals the etymology of the much-debated Heb. perat, Akk. purattu, and Arab, jurat, all names for the Euphrates in which the process of assimilation has obscured to the lexicographer's view the underlying root brd, "to be cold." In his book Ebla: Un impero inciso sull'argilla, which appeared in December 1979 (Milano: Mondadori), Pettinato also sees in ba-ra-du the explanation of Akk. purattu and Arab, fuvat, but omits to mention the biblical perat (p. 268).

10. In the Hebrew Bible hiddeqel, "the Tigris," is mentioned but twice, in Genesis 2:14 and Daniel 10:4, and while there can be no doubt about its identification, the Masoretic vocalization hiddeqel does seem strange and yields to no satisfactory analysis. The adoption of the Eblaite vocalization would result in the reading hiddaqol and the tentative interpretation "the Voice (thunder) brings joy." In this instance Hebrew supplies the consonants and Eblaite the vowels to the clarification of both spellings.

In his article "Diffusione del culto di dNI-da-kul" in Studi Eblaiti 1/7-8 (1979): 105-13, A. Archi thinks that dNI-da-kul is probably to be read i-da-kul but doubts that its Semitic character can be easily proven (p. 106). Since the other two divinized Syrian rivers receiving offerings in these cultic texts turn out to be Semitic—namely ba-ra-du and ba-li-ha/paliha, the former signifying "cold" and the latter "the cleaver" from plh (cf. Ps. 141:7, kemo poleah uboqea' ba'ares, "like water which cleaves and makes a valley in the land")—the prospects of the name of the Tigris being Semitic look promising. In fact, since the etymology of the river hitherto spelled Balih turns out to be the Semitic plh, "to cleave," perhaps we should begin writing it Palih, just as scholars are gradually shifting from Hammurabi to Hammurapi in view of the Ugaritic spelling 'mrp'i, "Hammu is the Healer," the name of the last king of Ugarit, which was destroyed circa 1190 B.C.

11. "Culto ufficiale," p. 115. 12. The New English Bible renders these clauses "Make yourself an ark with

ribs of cypress; cover it with reeds," emending MT qinnim, "nests, cells," to qanim, "reeds"; seeL. H. Brockington, The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament: The Readings Adopted by the Translators of the New English Bible (Oxford-Cambridge University Presses, 1973) p. 1. It would appear that Eblaite qinna is antagonistic to this emendation.

13. Consult Gesenius-Kautzsch, Hebrew Grammar, § 131 n. 14. For the philological explanation of this version, see Pettinato, "Culto

ufficiale," p. 115. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., p. 110. 17. Most recently in his article "The Ancient in the Modern—and Vice

Versa", in Louis L. Orlin, et al., eds., Michigan Oriental Studies in Honor of George C. Cameron (Ann Arbor, 1976) pp. 227-53.

18. Though some versons render "in gardens"—omitting the article of baggannot (e.g., New International Version)—the prophet had specific gardens

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in mind. The feminine plural ganndt,"gardens,'' now appears as the place name ga-na-atK! in the Ebla tablet TM.75.G.2377 obv. II 8, published by A. Archi in Studi Eblaiti 1/7-8 (1979): 108.

19. For this definition of lebenfm, see M. Dahood, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 22 (1960): 406-8.

20. Reading ben surim for unexplained MT bannesunm, as proposed by me in Catholic Biblical Quarterly 22 (1960): 408-9, and accepted by C. Westermann, Das Buch Jesaja (Altes Testament Deutsch, 1966), p. 316, n. 2, and W. Baumgartner, Hebraisches und aramaisches Lexikon mm Alten Testament^ (Leiden: Brill, 1967), p. 118b. In the emergent parallelism of b/fbn in baqqebarim uben surim one recognizes as well the poetic breakup of the construct chain *qeber sur, "tomb hewn in the rock" (cf. Isa. 22:16).

21. Though the Ketiv hasperaq, "fragment," the Qere reads mrq, "broth," which is also found in IQIs a from Qumran. In the bilingual vocabulary TM.75.G.2000 rev. Ill 29-30, Sumerian a-h a "decoction/broth of fish," is translated into Eblaite as tam-n-gu/tamnqu7"broth," which obviously derives from the same root witnessed in Heb. meraq, "broth."

22. Commonly understood as "their vessels," ke/ehem is better taken as the chiastic counterpart of first-colon 'okelim; this chiastic parallelism thus matches that of vs. 4a. On the word-pair 'akal//kalah in Jeremiah 30:16, as well as in 10:15 and Lamentations 4:11, see my note in Verus Testamentum 27 (1977): 482, and M. Baldacci, Bibbia e Oriente 22 (1980): 237-42, on Job 21:23, 25.

23. Cf. G. Pettinato, Rivista degli studi orientali 50 (1976): 11. The reading of the fourth gate cited here, k a - si-alKI, "rione della citta," has been subsequently corrected by Pettinato to ba-al, an error owing to the similarity of the signs si and ba.

24. See P. Matthiae, ibid., pp. 16-22. 25. Consult J. T. Milik, Biblica 48 (1967): 597-98. 26. In Compte rendu de la vingtieme rencontre assyriologique internationale

organisee a Leiden du 3 au 7 juillet 1972 sous les auspices du Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten (Nederlands Historisch-Archeologisch Instituut te Istambul, 1975), p. 72.

27. For the text and translation with commentary, see H. Donner and W. Rollig, Kanaaniiische und aramaische Inschriften, I, text 15; and II, pp. 23-24.1 understand the plural rspm in the phrase 'rs rspm as the plural of majesty, hence the translation as singular "Quarter of Rashap."

28. Compare su-bi-guKI, "Return, O Voice" (MEE 1, n. 6522) and Ugar. tbg, "Return, O Voice!" in UT, 2068:21, whose analysis compares with that of the PN tbil, "Return, O II!" in UT, 1082:2.

The Priestly Tabernacle in the L of Recent Research Frank Moore Cross, Jr.

Modern scholars who have imposed a multiple-strand analysis on the book of Exodus have often held that the tabernacle idea was "read back" by pious and priestly editors generations later. Here, Frank Cross presents evidence to the contrary, demonstrating that Moses built and used the tabernacle in the wilderness as a "place of meeting," as an abode of Jehovah, as a place of washing and anointing, as a holy oracle so sacred that the unholy were forbidden to approach it or touch its furnishings. He also presents the evidence of other discoveries, archaeological and textual, which point to ancient sources for the temple and tabernacle complex of ideas.

n 1947 I undertook to revise the standard view of the Priestly .Tabernacle (described in Exodus 25-31, 35-40) as it had

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developed in nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship.1 This view, which still represents the consensus of European scholars, holds that the Priestly account of the Tabernacle was the creation of a Priestly school which flourished after the fall of the First Temple, a fanciful vision designed for the future, projected back on Mosaic times—a "pious fraud." In 1947 there seemed to be new ground upon which to reconsider the historicity of the Tabernacle traditions. Advances in tradition-critical analysis, and in the history of West-Semitic religion, have provided data which have shown repeatedly that the Priestly tradent (carrier of tradition) drew on older documents in his edition of the Tetrateuch.2 Such documents are of various date, and, from the point of view of recent scholarship, were often used improperly to recreate Patriarchal or Mosaic times. Their misuse, however, was naive or unknowing, not the product of intentional fraud, pious or impious. Indeed, in my view, the description of the Tabernacle is derived from an older document belonging to the Temple archives, utilized by P ( = the Priestly tradent) and turned to narrative use, first to reconstruct the commands of the deity as to the nature of the sanctuary to be built, and then to recount, in monotonous repetition (characteristic of P ) , the carrying out of these directives in the construction and establishment of the Israelite cultus.3 While the Tabernacle as described in the document incorporated in the Priestly strata is perhaps too complex and richly ornamented to reflect a tent shrine of the Mosaic age, the description does appear to reflect an actual tent-shrine at some stage in the evolution of the tent sanctuaries used in early Israel. I have argued that the most likely candidate was the Tent of Yahweh erected by David in conscious imitation of Israel's earlier shrines of the Ark and its cherubim throne. Further, it seemed clear as long as thirty years ago that the Tabernacle as described in P features many Canaanite or old West-Semitic elements not found in the Temple of Solomon, elements most unlikely to be introduced in a fantasy of late, orthodox priests.

In the last years new data have accumulated which, in my view, tend to confirm the essential historicity of the Priestly

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Tabernacle, at least as a shrine which existed at some stage in Israel's early cultus, and which, perhaps more importantly, give insight into its origin and the meaning of its symbols and design.

1. The Tabernacle described in Exodus is richer and more elaborate than a simple nomad's tent or a booth housing a portable palladium of battle. Here the scholars of a past generation were correct, even if the conclusions they drew were wrong. Four sets of curtains were spread over a wooden skeleton of qera-sim, latticework frames,4 constituting a rectangular enclosure of two rooms. The structure has the proportions of three cubes, a double cube for the holy place and a single, perfect cube for the most holy place, ten cubits to each dimension.5 The floor plan (but not other dimensions) has the same proportions as the Temple of Solomon if we ignore the Temple's porch, 'uldm. The floor plan of the Temple's holy place and its most holy place consisted of three squares, twenty cubits to a side, two squares constituting the holy place, one square the holy of holies.

The parallel proportions of the inner rooms of the Temple and Tabernacle cannot be explained as chance. Evidently one has influenced the other or both derive from an older model. In the understanding of the Priestly tradent the proportions are derived from a tabrtit, a model of the cosmic Tabernacle of Yahweh. This dualism of earthly/cosmic is characteristically Canaanite. The Canaanite temple was founded on New Year's Day, identified with the foundation of the cosmic temple at creation, confirming the victory of the Divine Warrior over his enemies, who represent chaos and death. Reflecting the same dualism, each mountain on which a sanctuary was built was identified with the cosmic "mount of possession," hr/gr nhlt, upon which the deity established his royal shrine or cosmic government.6 For example, Zion is once given the epithet yarkete sdpon, literally "Far North," comparable to the Sidonian sacred precinct called samem romfm, "High Heaven." 7 The epithet has generally been taken as an identification of Zion with Mount Sdpon, the cosmic/earthly mountain of Ba'l-Haddu. However, it can apply equally to Mount Amanus, truly the "Far North," the traditional mountain of 'El, also referred to straightforwardly in Isaiah


14:13: " I shall be enthroned in the mount of the council (of 'El) in the distant north (yarkete sdpon)."8

We are inclined, therefore, to understand the proportions of both the Tent and the Temple as derived from an older mythic convention, the earthly shrine as a microcosm of the cosmic shrine. This need not mean that the precise measurements of the Tabernacle and Temple stem from a common source. The Priestly tradent may have calculated, so to speak, the measurements of the Tabernacle by reducing the measurements of the Temple, reckoning on the assumption—or knowledge—that both followed traditional proportions. Equally plausibly we could argue that the Temple in its basic floor plan preserved the proportions of the Davidic sanctuary, the first shrine of the empire, as it preserved much of the iconography of the older shrine. In any case the earthly shrine was conceived as preserving the proportions of the cosmic abode of deity in reduced measure.

2. In pursuing the question of Canaanite elements in the Priestly Tabernacle I wish to examine the term geres used of the rigid structure of the tent. Some have seized on this feature to insist that the Tabernacle is a "portable t emple , " an anachronistic conception which could have come into existence only after the building of the Temple of Solomon. The term geres /gars is used of a divine abode only in one other context: it is used, probably in the plural, in the description of the tent of 'El, the father and judge of the Canaanite pantheon. Here there can be no doubt. The term geres in particular points to the authenticity of the Priestly Tabernacle as an old tent shrine, not a temple in sheep's clothing. Frequently, the tent of 'El appears in stereotyped language in scenes of the meeting of the council of the gods. Here we find the formulaic pair: d/td and grs. The former term clearly means tent, as shown by my former student and present colleague Richard Clifford, referring in particular to its use in the 'Aqhat Epic in parallel to 'ahalima.9

The abode of the god 'El warrants further description. 'El's tent is pitched in the far north, in Mount Hamon, whence 'El's epithet Ba'l Hamon. At the same time he dwells "in the midst of the sea," that is, on the mount out of which spring the sources of

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the cosmic rivers (mabbike naharemi), in the midst of the fountains of the double-deep ('apiqe tihamatemi). Several mythological themes come together here. The mount is the mountain of the assembly of 'El, biblical har md'ed. Here also is the garden of God where grew the cedars of 'El, biblical 'arze 'el.10 The cosmic river springing up from the underworld is also "Judge River," tapit nahar, as in Mesopotamia the place of the river ordeal, the place of questioning or judgment, as one enters the underworld, whence the term se'ol.11

The curtains of the Tabernacle were fourfold. The innermost curtain of linen decorated with cherubim, traditional guardians of 'El's throne, is called the miskdn, "tabernacle" par excellence, as opposed to the outer three, properly the tent. This usage may be compared with the Aramaic term mskn' used in an inscription from Hatra applied to the forbidden, innermost part of a sanctuary (as shown by Delbert Hillers). 1 2 Above a set of curtains of goats' hair, the usual stuff of tents, there is a set of curtains of sheepskin dyed red, a motif which survives in Arab portable shrines of red leather.13 The outermost curtain is made of tahas skins. The term tahas has been a source of great puzzlement. It has a perfectly simple etymology, being cognate with Arabic tuhas, a word applied to small cetaceans, notably the dolphin.1 4

An enormous amount of effort and ingenuity has been expended by Semitists in searching for an alternate etymology. In 1947 I favored an Egyptian derivation—apis a//er.15 For a time there was an Akkadian etymology—until Assyriologists discovered the putative etymon did not exist, its origin stemming from the misreading of a syllabic value. We are left with dolphin skins. One may easily see why dolphins' hide appeared undesirable or unavailable for the manufacture of a desert tent. So far as I am aware, the first English version to give up the struggle and translate "dolphin" was the New Jewish Publication Society Translation. I must say that I find it hard to believe that priests bent on producing a fraudulent description of Moses' Tabernacle would have chosen dolphin skin for outer curtains. However, once the connection between the Tent of 'El and Israel's tent-shrine is recognized, the difficulties dissolve. 'El's abode "in the


midst of the sea" at the "fountain of the double-deep" provides the proper setting for a tent of dolphin skins. The dolphin is, of course, a favorite motif in Phoenician art, both on the mainland and in the Punic colonies where it is associated with 'El and Tannit.

The ties between the iconography of Canaanite 'El and the iconography of the Tabernacle are striking. Representatives of the god 'El both at Ugarit and in the Punic West portray him as an old man with a long beard, wearing a high conical hat, ordinarily horned. While ancient and benign in physiognomy, he also appears powerful and vigorous. Characteristically this bearded god sits on a cherubim throne, his right hand lifted in blessing.1 61 believe that the cherubim throne, which if Eissfeldt is right has its origin in the Shiloh cultus, is ultimately derived from the typical iconography of 'El . 1 7 This is wholly fitting if I am correct in identifying most if not all of the Patriarchal epithets of God as epithets of 'El: ( ' el)'o/ am, "the ancient god," is an epithet used in Canaanite, Phoenician, and in the Punic West, as well as in Genesis; biblical melek 'dl am "ancient king," now appears in a recently published Ugaritic text applied to 'El. A similar liturgical name of 'El is malk 'dbu sanima, "king, father of years." This in turn is reminiscent of biblical 'el gibbdr 'abi 'ad, "El the warrior, eternal father,"1 8 and of the white-haired "Ancient of Days" of Daniel 7. A number of other titles can be listed: ('el) sadday, "the one of the mountain;" 'el qene 'ars, "El creator of earth"; 1 9

and 'el'elohe yisrd'el, " 'El god of (the patriarch) Israel." Indeed, the epithet of the cult of the Ark, yahweh sebd'ot, may originate in an 'El epithet, ('el zu) yahweh sebd'ot, " ( 'E l who) creates the (heavenly) armies." 2 0 Continuities between the abode of 'El and the tent shrine of Yahweh therefore occasion no surprise.

I am disposed to argue, in short, that the tabnit or model of the Tabernacle is derived ultimately from mythological conceptions of the Tent of 'El. Further, the designation 'ohel md'ed, the Priestly tradent's favorite name of the Tabernacle, is to be translated "tent of assembly." In Phoenicia in the early time md'ed is used of a political assembly;21 at Ugarit md'ed is also used of the council or assembly of the gods in the mountain of 'El. 'Ohel md'ed, "tent of assembly," is thus the appropriate designation of

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'El's tent, and at the same time of its earthly counterpart, the shrine of the Israelite federation where the league council met "before Yahweh. " 2 2

3. A few words must be said about the history of Israel's tent traditions. A most extraordinary statement is found embedded in Nathan's oracle in 2 Samuel 7. Yahweh speaks in slightly prosaized poetry: "Indeed I have never dwelt in a temple (bet)... but I have moved about in a tent or in a tabernacle.'' The assertion is that Yahweh's shrine has always been a tent, and hence the king is not to build a temple. 2 3 The statement raises two questions. First of all, is it true that Yahweh's legitimate shrine24

was always a tent? One prose source in the Deuteronomistic history in fact refers to a hekal, "temple," or bet Yahweh at Shiloh, the shrine of Eli and Samuel, and no doubt a major pilgrimage sanctuary of old Israel. Other sources, prosaic and poetic, refer to the shrine at Shiloh as a tent or tabernacle. In such cases credence should be given to the poetic sources, especially if they are old. Psalm 78:60 speaks of the sanctuary of Shiloh as a "tent" and "tabernacle," and, in view of its early date, confirms the assertion of Nathan's oracle. One may compare the early hymn of the Davidic cult which refers to the shrine of the Ark at Kiryat-Ye'arim as Yahweh's miskenot, "encampment." 2 5 The second question is more important: what is the basis of the opposition by the prophet, and presumably other traditionalists in Israel, to the building of a temple or bet Yahweh to replace the old tent shrine? Clear expression of this opposition is lost in the overwriting of later generations after Solomon's temple came into being and the traditionalists' cause became moot. The opposition was strong enough in any event for David to give up his early intention and to construct a tent-shrine as the successor to Shiloh's sanctuary.

An explanation of the conflict can be found in part in the mythic background of the two types of shrines. Ba'l founded his temple on Mount Sapon in order to make manifest his establishment of order, especially kingship among the gods. The earthly temple of Ba'l manifested not only BaTs creation of order, but at the same time established the rule of the earthly king. There is thus a tie between the temple as the abode of the king of the gods


and the temple as a dynastic shrine of the earthly king, the adopted son of the god. The temple and kingship are thus part of the "orders of creation,'' properly the eternal kingship of the god of order, the eternal dynasty of his earthly counterpart. The tent of 'El reflects a different political ideology. 'El was the divine patriarch, god of the father, of the league, of covenant. 'El sits as judge in the assembly of the gods. In Israel the political counterpart was the tent of assembly, the shrine of the federated tribes bound together in a conditional covenant.

The "temple of Ba'l" and the "tent of 'E l" thus symbolize alternate political ideologies. In the rise of kingship in Israel there were those who wished Israel's old constitution to limit kingship and its cultic trappings, but others were ready to embrace Canaanite ideology of the divine king and his dynastic shrine. It is not by chance that the old royal hymn, Psalm 132, speaks of David's shrine as the miskenor, "tabernacle" (or tent-complex) of Yahweh, and stresses the conditional nature of Yahweh's covenant with the Davidic dynasty. On the contrary, the ideology of the later Davidic dynasty speaks of the eternal choice of Zion and David's seed, and the adoption of the king as son. In Psalm 89 (from an early Temple liturgy) this absolutist ideology reaches its highest pitch. After a description of the Divine Warrior slaying the dragon and estabhshing the created order, we read of Yahweh's eternal choice of David (i.e. , David's dynasty), which is unconditional and most striking: " I (the deity is speaking) will establish his hand over Sea, his right hand over Rivers; he will proclaim, 'my father art thou, my God and the Rock of my salvation'; Yea, I will make him my first born, the most high of the kings of earth.''

In fact, Israel's temple incorporated compromises between the older traditions of the league tent-shrine and the dynastic temple of Canaanite kingship. The portable Ark with its cherubim became the "center piece," usurping the place of the divine image of Canaanite temples. According to one tradition, the Tent of Meeting was taken up and placed in the Temple. 2 6 The language of tent and temple continues to be mixed in psalms of the First Temple. The conditionality of temple and dynasty -bet Yahweh and bet David-persisted, albeit intermittently, until the

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end, thanks to the prophetic and traditional insistence that kingship was forfeit when the ancient covenant was violated, and that the temple in which Israel trusted could be destroyed like Shiloh.

4. The highest development of Israel's tradition of tent-shrines of Yahweh was reached no doubt in the Davidic tent. The Tent of David was the center of an imperial cultus. It was designed as the successor of the Tabernacle of the Ark at Shiloh, the sanctuary of old Israel's most prestigious priestly dynasty.2 7 It was built at the height of David's power and glory, when his empire was fully established. Unhappily, we have no elaborate description of this Tent in the Deuteronomistic sources; however, all we can learn from brief references conforms to the Priestly descriptions of the Tabernacle. It was of sufficient size to house the Ark of the Covenant and an altar, presumably in separate rooms. 2 8 In the Tent also was kept the sacred oil used for Solomon's anointing. Two high priests, Zadok, scion of the family of Aaron and the Hebronite priesthood, and Abiathar, descendant of Moses and the priests of Shiloh, headed its cultic personnel, a grandiose scheme of David to legitimize and magnify the importance of the national shrine.

I have long favored the identification of the descriptions of the Tabernacle in Priestly sources with the Tent designed and established by David, believing it most likely that the old document utilized by P pictured the Israelite tent-shrine in its ultimate development. The richness and sophistication of the Priestly Tabernacle, which make it conform poorly with our notions of a desert tent-shrine, fit ideally into the context of Davidic Jerusalem. While it is not impossible that such a grand shrine stood at Shiloh, Jerusalem is the better candidate. A long gap in time, and probably in records, separates the shrines of Shiloh and Jerusalem, and the source of the Priestly document— if it is authentic—is surely the Temple of Jerusalem. To be sure, the tent-shrine of David is called the 'ohel Yahweh in Deuteronomistic sources, rather than 'ohel md'ed, the term used chiefly by the Priestly tradent of the Mosaic shrine. In this case the Priestly language is (as often) archaizing, I believe, drawn from the politico-religious terminology of the tribal federation and its


"tent of assembly." 'Ohel Yahweh stands, so to speak, between 'ohel mo'ed, "the tent of the council," and bet Yahweh, the "house of Yahweh," even as the Davidic tent was transitional between the tribal shrine of Shiloh and the dynastic chapel of Solomon. 2 9

In some circles the Tent of David has been regarded as insignificant—a provisional housing for the Ark until the planned, permanent temple could be built. Late tradition attributes the plan and designs to build the Temple to David, the founder of the Jerusalem cultus. These traditions need critical investigation. In the early sources, David's obedience to Nathan's proscription appears unqualified. Further, there are grounds to believe that he made no move to build a temple, not as a penance for bloodshed, but because he respected the old traditions enunciated by Nathan and chose to keep them for both pious and political reasons.

Early in Solomon's reign, indeed already in his consolidation of his realm by murder and mayhem, we note an emerging new policy and a characteristic political technique in establishing innovation. Solomon proposed to break free of all vestiges of older political forms and to establish an absolute kingship and a cultus more in keeping with his imperial and cosmopolitan tastes. Solomon early arranged the death of Adonijah, Joab, and Shimei, the latter two on David's deathbed instructions. Deathbed words whispered in secret, or last instructions, have many times over in history been fabricated or "doctored" to legitimate successors and their policies, especially policies at odds with those of their predecessors. Most recently we have witnessed Mao's last messages used to legitimate Hua and to extirpate the Chinese radicals, including Mao's widow! Inasmuch as David until his death spared Joab and Shimei, and both were threats to Solomon, Solomon's attribution of such instructions to David arouses suspicion. Certainly the official propaganda reported in Kings concerning the occasion for Adonijah's execution rings false. Abiathar was deposed, and with his fall we suspect a chief advocate for older Shilonite traditions was removed, as well as a supporter of Adonijah. Nathan the prophet disappears after the anointing of Solomon, and, hardly by chance, no effective prophetic voice was heard again in Judah during the empire.

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Moves were made by Solomon to centralize authority and minimize the independence and power of lingering tribal institutions.

The building of the Temple by Solomon must be viewed against this background. The replacement of David's Tent of Yahweh with Solomon's Temple is best viewed, I believe, as an innovation conceived by Solomon alongside his other reversals of Davidic policy and practice. Evidently he attributed the design of the new departure to David in order to disarm or mute opposition, as was his frequent tactic in other political moves. Actually the account in Kings makes no mention of David's instructing Solomon to build a temple, nor is there an account of his supplying blueprints and materials; it is the Chronicler who enlarges David's role in preparing for the building of the Temple. The Deuteronomist reports the prophecy that Solomon will build Yahweh's house as Yahweh will build David's house, but his presumption is that Solomon is carrying out the desires of David's heart, and he puts those words in Solomon's mouth.3 0 If our reconstruction is correct, Solomon's propaganda was marvelously successful, and the historical opposition between Tent and Temple was largely dissolved in Judaean tradition with the passage of time. 3 1

5. Evidence for the vitality of the Tabernacle traditions in ancient Israel may come in the future from unexpected places. One example may be given: the Samaritan shrine on Mount Gerizim.

The site of the Samaritan sanctuary has been uncovered by the archaeological mission to Shechem headed by the late G. Ernest Wright. Robert Bull directed the excavations in the field on Tell er-Ras, which have revealed an enormous platform of unhewn stones.32 The platform may be described as a half cube, 40 cubits to a side, 20 cubits high. The platform reveals no traces of a superstructure which, despite the disturbance produced by the Hadrianic temple later built on the platform, should appear if indeed a substantial temple had been erected by the Samaritans. The platform is surrounded by a temenos wall. Its dimensions are not wholly clear yet, but the north and south sides measure just over 44 meters-clearly 100 cubits according to the ordinary


cubit. One notes that this one dimension coincides with that of the Tabernacle court. However, the east and west sides of the court appear to be between 140 and 150 cubits over against the 50 cubits of these sides of the court of the Tabernacle.

Bull has described the platform as an altar; it must be said, however, that an altar of forty cubits square is impossibly large, and leaves no room for the temple of the Samaritans which, according to Josephus, was erected by the Samaritans in the late fourth century and destroyed by John Hyrcanus in 127 B.C.E. Edward F. Campbell and I have independently reached the same conclusion: the platform once held a tabernacle, or similar impermanent structure, which would have left no trace after destruction. The dimensions of the Priestly Tabernacle, 30 by 10 by 10 cubits (that is, three cubes, ten cubits to a dimension), can be fitted perfectly into the great 40-cubit-square platform, leaving a space of 10 cubits in front of the Tabernacle. Moreover, Josephus in his Antiquities33 reports a quarrel between Jews and Samaritans in which the Samaritans claimed that their sanctuary rather than the temple of Jerusalem properly conformed to Mosaic Law. The prescriptions of the Priestly Tabernacle must be meant. The Samaritans, of course, restricted their canon to the Pentateuch, so there can be little doubt if Josephus's report is accurate.

One other set of measurements suggests the symmetry afforded if the Samaritan sanctuary followed the proportions of the Tabernacle complex. The courtyard wall rises 10 cubits above the floor of the court; the platform rises 10 cubits above the top of the courtyard wall; if one adds the height of the Tabernacle, it would rise 10 cubits above the platform. In short, multiples of 10 cubits abound.

I must add a caveat. The exposure of the Samaritan structures is very limited, and the measurements are consequently very rough. More excavations are necessary before my proposal, much less my calculations, can be considered more than suggestions for further study. We should be alerted, however, to the possibility that in the north, after the division of the kingdom of Israel, the traditions of the Tabernacle survived in more than memory. 3 4

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Notes

1. F. M. Cross, "The Tabernacle: A Study from an Archaeological and Historical Approach," Biblical Archaeologist 10 (1947): 45-68; reprinted in a slightly revised form as "The Priestly Tabernacle,'' in The Biblical Archaeologist Reader, ed. G. Ernest Wright and D. N. Freedman (New York: Anchor Books, 1961), pp. 201-28. A recent discussion and literature may be found in M. Haran, Tempfes and Temple Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford at The Clarendon Press, 1978), esp. pp. 189-204.

2. For a more general discussion of the composition of the Priestly work, see F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 293-325; and R. Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative, Harvard Semitic Monographs, vol. 22 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981), pp. 44-147 and bibliography.

3. Among the signs that P has incorporated an older document is the contrasting usage of the terms miskdn and 'ohel md'ed in chapters 26 and 36 of Exodus (where miskdn is used to the exclusion of 'ohel md'ed) and elsewhere (where 'ohel md'ed is the dominant term used). These data conform with other evidence to suggest that the old document used miskdn as its primary name for the Tabernacle (as well as the inner shrine-see Ex. 26:7; 36:14), while P used both designations, but 'ohel md'ed much more frequently.

4. A. R. S. Kennedy's reconstruction has been reinforced by the use of qrs of 'El's tent.

5. A rather different reconstruction of the proportions of the Tabernacle is suggested in a forthcoming study by Richard Friedman.

6. See at length in the monograph of Richard Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and in the Old Testament, Harvard Semitic Monographs, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).

7. See most recently Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain, p. 133, n. 40. The biblical reference is Psalm 48:3.

8. See Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 26-28, and esp. 37ff. It hardly needs to be said that sdpon in Hebrew comes to mean simply "north," and that the idiom means "the distant north." It is by no means an equivalent of Ugaritic mrym spn, the formulaic expression for the "pinnacles of the Casius," Ba'l's abode. In the Ugaritic texts, at least, the mount of assembly is never placed on Mt. Sapon; it convenes in the mount of 'El. In view of the conflation of elements of Ba'l and 'El myths in early Israelite religion, one might argue for the confusion of Sapon and the mount of 'El in later transformations of Canaanite elements in Israel's cultic ideology when the Temple replaced the Tabernacle. I am disposed to doubt such a conflation in this instance. Jerusalem in Israelite tradition is associated with "El, creator of earth,'' a tradition remembered still in pure form about 700 B.C.E. on a Hebrew ostracon from Jerusalem (N. Avigad, Israel Exploration Journal 22 (1972): 95; plate 42B: ['Ijqn'rs), as well as in expanded form in Genesis 14:19. Further, the tent tradition associated with 'El remained a powerful one among the priests and singers of the Jerusalem Temple.


9. Andree Herdner, Corpus Tablettes en Cuneiformes Alphabetiques (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1963), 19.211-14. See Richard J. Clifford, "The Tent of El and the Israelite Tent of Meeting," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 33 (1971): 221-27. In the Hittite version of an 'El myth (Ilkunirsa) the translation of his abode's designation is GI§. ZA. LAM. GAR - Akk. kustaru, "tent"; cf. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, p. 72, n. 112.

10. Ezekiel 31:8ff.; cf. Psalm 80:11. See F. M. Cross, '"el," Theologisches Worterbuch zum alten Testament, vol. 1, col. 272.

11. I have long held to this etymology in view of Akkadian use of the same root, salu, of judicial inquiry, haling to judgment, and most significantly, precisely in connection with the river ordeal.

12. "Mskn"temple' in inscriptions from Hatra," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 207 (1972): 54-56.

13. See Cross, "The Priestly Tabernacle," pp. 218ff. Of particular interest is the portrayal of a tent-shrine in bas relief from Palmyra (third to first centuries B.C.E.) with traces of red paint still adhering to it.

14. tuhas is, of course, the precise etymological reflex of Hebrew tahas in its consonantal structure. In Arabic a byform duhas is also found, presumably created by attraction to the root dhs, "fat," "fleshy," "having much vigor."

15. "The Priestly Tabernacle," p. 220, n. 21. 16. For references, see Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 35ff. 17. O. Eissfeldt, "Jahwe Zebaoth," Kleine Schriften III (Tubingen: Mohr,

1966), pp. 103-23. I should add that the typical iconography of Ba'l-Haddu portrays the divine figure standing in battle dress, thunderbolt held in his hand poised to be hurled.

18. Isaiah 9:5. 19. See note 8 above for references, including reference to the new Jerusalem

ostracon. 20. See Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 60-71. 21. The term md'ed appears as a loanword in the Tale of Wenamun, as first

observed by John Wilson. 22. See in detail Clifford, "The Tent of El and the Israelite Tent of Meeting.'' 23. A full analysis of the oracle is found in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew

Epic, pp. 241-57. See now also A. Malamat, " A Mari Prophecy and Nathan's Dynastic Oracle," in Prophecy [Fohrer Volume], ed. J. A. Emerton (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), pp. 68-82.

24. That is, a shrine of the Ark. 25. Psalm 132:7. 26. 1 Kings 8:4 = 2 Chronicles 5:5. Verse 4b is suspect-with its specifically

Priestly distinction between the priests and Levites in a Deuteronomistic work-and is established as an explicating gloss by its failure in G B L . There is no reason, however, to delete the entire verse as spurious. In his study mentioned above, Richard Friedman attempts to deal with the conflicting traditions concerning the Tent of Meeting in materials of Kings and Chronicles, and he argues that the notice in 1 Kings 8:4 is historical.

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27. On the early priestly houses of Israel, see Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 195-215.

28. The language in 1 Kings 2:30 (wyb' bnyhw 'I 'hi yhwh... kh 'mr hmlk s') is most naturally taken to mean that the altar was in the sanctuary, and that Benaiah killed Joab therein (cf. 2 Kgs. 11:13-16). In this case it is the golden altar on which Adonijah and Benaiah lay hold; the horns of the altar of burnt offering, it may be judged, would be too hot to handle much of the time.

29. The Chronicler's notion that the Tent of Meeting was at the great high place at Gibeon (1 Chr. 16:39; 2 Chr. 1:3, 6, 13) is, of course, confused and without counterpart in Kings. It may stem from his interpretation of 2 Samuel 21:9, and the assumption that Solomon would sacrifice only at a legitimate sanctuary in the period before the construction of the Temple.

30. There is a curious conflict between the Deuteronomistic account of Solomon's speech to Hiram, explaining that David was too busy with wars to build the temple (1 Kgs. 5:17), and the Deuteronomistic source in 2 Samuel 7: Iff., where David, having been given rest from his enemies, proposed to build a house for Yahweh. This is not to mention the tension between the two sections of Nathan's oracle. The Chronicler, of course, harmonizes the passages by asserting that David cannot build the house because he has "shed much blood upon the earth in [Yahweh's] sight" (1 Chr. 22:8).

31. In the discussion following a presentation of this paper, Moshe Weinfeld suggested that Amos 9:11 and Isaiah 16:5 preserve memories of the Davidic Tent of Yahweh. The expression sukkat David in Amos 9:11 refers on the surface, of course, to the Davidic dynasty to be restored. This "rebuilding" may refer either to rule again over the north (and the old empire), if the oracle is early, or, if the oracle is late, to restoration after the Exile. The choice of the term sukkah, "tabernacle," also recalls—drawing on the typology between dynasty and dynastic shrine-the Tent of Yahweh. Isaiah 16:5, with its reference to the 'ohel David, is most obscure in its context of an oracle concerning Moab, but may preserve a like reminiscence. Ezekiel's name of Jerusalem under the figure of a woman, "Oholibah," may belong to the same constellation of motifs.

32. See provisionally Robert J. Bull and Edward F. Campbell, "The Sixth Campaign at Balatah (Shechem)," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 190 (1968): 2-41; Bull, "The Excavation of Tell er-Ras on Mt. Gerizim," Biblical Archaeologist 31 (1968): 58-72; E. F. Campbell, "Jewish Shrines of the Hellenistic and Persian Periods," in Symposia Celebrating the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the American Schools of Oriental Research, ed. F. M. Cross (Cambridge: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1979), pp. 159-67.

33. 13:73ff.; cf. 13:256. 34. Let me add a final precarious postscript. The platform at Dan uncovered

by Avraham Biran apparently is roughly the same size as the Samaritan. One wonders if the platform did not once hold a structure of the dimensions of the Tabernacle, of wood or of curtains, thus leaving no trace (as at Gerizim) after its destruction. However this may be, I am strongly inclined to believe that both Bethel and Dan had roofed shrines housing their bull thrones, and that we should remember the polemical character of the Deuteronomist's depiction of them and their priesthoods.

6 The Temple and the Holy Mountain

Richard J. Clifford

In the literatures of the Judeo-Christian tradition and in other sacred texts there is a close connection between, even an identifying of, temples and mountains. "The mountain of the Lord's house" symbolizes at least three ideas: (I) Theophanies have occurred on mountaintops (Abraham on Mount Moriah, Moses on Sinai, Elijah on Mount Carmel, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration). (2) In both Eastern and Western religion one finds assumptions that elevation and height are proportioned to the thin veil that separates man from the heavenly realm. (3) The mountain peak represents a pristine and therefore undesecrated region. It is a "natural temple," a place of altar, of consecration, of ordination, even of coronation. As the modern exodus of the Mormons was anticipated, Joseph Smith said: "I want every man who goes to be a king and a priest. When he gets on the mountains he may want to talk to his God." In the present essay, Richard Clifford outlines powerful symbolic connections between the sacred mountain and the privileges of the temple in ancient Israel.

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Two mountains dominate the landscape of the Old Testament-Mount Sinai and Mount Zion. On both the Lord is

depicted dwelling in his house, appearing to his votaries in majesty, pronouncing words decisive for Israel and the nations. The two mountains are fixed points in the national story of exodus-conquest which Israel recited to express its identity as Yahweh's people. Sinai is the mountain of the beginnings, the site of the initial encounter between the just-freed slaves and Yahweh, and of the covenant that shaped that relationship. Mount Zion is the ultimate term of the great procession that led from Egypt and Sinai to the land of promise. Sinai not only dominates the Pentateuch; associated with Moses and with the Law, it plays an enormously significant role in Judaism and Christianity. Zion too has an impressive trajectory, particularly in the shaping of Jewish and Christian hope.

It is not the purpose of this paper to give an encyclopedic account of biblical beliefs about the two mountains, but, more narrowly, to describe how Israel adapted to its own uses the belief of some West-Semitic peoples that mountaintops were divine residences and places of divine disclosure.1

Israel was not unique, of course, in assigning a central place to the holy mountain and the house of the god upon it. The link between mountain and temple has been noted, for instance, by Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, and by Brigham Young, who observed that when people did not have opportunities to go to temples, they often resorted to mountaintops for worship. Among the Israelites and their neighbors of the first and second millennia B.C., the link between divine presence and mountain-tops is a well-documented phenomenon meriting careful study. We are fortunate in having preserved for us, not only the considerable biblical witness to sacred heights, but another corpus of religious literature as well, not far removed in time or place from Israel's world—the tablets from Ugarit of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. Comparison of the two literatures will sharpen our appreciation of the Bible. The Ugaritic tablets are written in a West-Semitic language that has remarkable continuities with early Hebrew poetry, not only in vocabulary, syntax, and prosody, but also in themes and

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concepts. Let us conveniently call the writers of those tablets "Canaanites," though there is evidence that the people of the city of Ugarit did not use the term Canaanite for themselves. The six major tablets of the Baal cycle, the three of the Keret cycle, and the three of the Aqhat cycle, together with the later Phoenician and biblical evidence, provide a reliable sampling of the ideas prevalent among Israel's neighbors about divine presence and mountains.

If one were to make a simple comparison of the religious institutions attested in the Ugaritic texts with those attested in the Bible, with no regard to their contexts, one would immediately be struck by the similarities of the two literatures. The major deities of the Ugaritic texts, El and Baal, dwell in a tent or palace on their mountains, celebrate banquets, sit in council with the other deities, issue decrees, receive embassies, and proclaim their kingship in thunder that shakes the mountains. So does the biblical Yahweh, mutatis mutandis.

One's first impression of striking continuities or similarities between Canaanite and Hebrew conceptions of mountains needs to be qualified by an appreciation of the discontinuities or dissimilarities between them. Only the context will provide us with a sense of the discontinuity, of the uniqueness of Israel. The context here is made up of two elements: (1) the polytheism or monotheism of the cultures; (2) the particular story involving the holy mountain, told with either mythological or "historical" emphases.

The first-mentioned determinant of the context, the polytheism or monotheism of the culture, shapes the very way people imagine the universe. In ancient Near Eastern polytheism, the ordinary religion of that time, the individual comes to terms with a variety of forces in the cosmos presenting themselves in the form of deities. Natural rhythms and events of history are perceived as the evidence of various, often competing, divine forces in precarious balance. Narratives explaining the polytheistic world (e.g., the Baal myth), are largely taken up with the conflicts among the deities and their resolutions. The mountain residences of the gods which figure importantly in the Ugaritic texts are part of the drama of cosmic conflict and


resolution, and conflict and resolution moreover that are endlessly repeated, for the deities are linked to recurring natural phenomena. In the monotheistic world of the Bible, where a single powerful deity presided, the world was interpreted independently of the conflict of natural forces. The world was attributed to a single will, not to a variety of wills presenting themselves in natural phenomena. The imagery of Israelite and Canaanite depiction of the divine could be the same, but the significance of the images would differ enormously.

The second element forming the context is the story. In the Ugaritic texts of Canaanite religion, the drama is the conflict between the higher gods of order and fertility, El and Baal along with the members of the divine assembly, and the forces of chaos, chiefly Yam (Sea) and Mot (Death). In the Hebrew story there are no competing cosmic forces since Yahweh is the only power. The drama here is an ongoing historical one in which virtually the entire emphasis is on human events. The drama is the exodus-conquest, the movement from Egypt (and Sinai) to Canaan (and Zion). The two major mountain dwellings of deity in Canaan, the quite distinct mountain of El and Mount Zaphon of Baal, seem at times in the Bible to have become the two successive mountains of the one deity Yahweh, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the procession to the land.

We turn first to the Ugaritic texts for the light they shed on the biblical texts. Two mountain dwellings of deity are prominent in the Baal myth of six tablets: the mountain where El lives in a tent dwelling and presides over the divine assembly, and Mount Zaphon, where Baal is given permission by El to build his palace after his victory over chaos.

To El, the bearded old patriarch, come the gods and their messengers with petitions and demands.

Then they (the messengers of the gods) set their face Toward El at the sources of the Two Rivers, In the midst of the pools of the Double Deep. They entered the tent of El and went into The tent shrine of the King, the Father of Years. 2

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Another text shows the mountain as the scene of the assembly of the gods where deliberations about the world take place and where decrees are issued.

. . . the meeting of the divine council (ph-'r m'd) . Then the gods were sitting to eat, The holy ones, to dine. Baal was standing at El's side.3

El lives in paradise, where life-giving waters arise to render the earth fertile. The "sources of the Two Rivers" and the "pools of the Double Deep" are borrowings from old Mesopotamian poetry descriptive of paradise, the source of hfe-giving waters. From his mountain residence El issues his decree. In two texts, goddesses praise his decree as hfe-giving and as conferring royal rule.

Thy decree, O El, is wise, Thy wisdom lasts forever. A life of good fortune is thy command.4

The biblical reflexes of the Ugaritic traditions of El's dwelling are not hard to discern, especially in the material about Mount Sinai. Moses is told to make the tent for Yahweh according to the pattern shown him on Mount Sinai (Ex. 26:30; cf. 25:9, 40; 27:8; Num. 8:4), implying that Yahweh lives in a tent on the mountain. The biblical tradition calls the tent the "tent of meeting" ('ohel md'ed), a term applied originally to the assembly of the gods (jjhr m 'd of the Ugaritic texts), but in the Bible to the meeting between Yahweh and Moses (or the people). El's residence as the source of all fertilizing waters is echoed in Genesis 2:10-14, which discusses the four rivers that rise in Eden, and in Ezekiel 47:1-12, describing the river that flows from the temple on the mountain. The decree of El, authoritative for gods and humans, finds its Old Testament reflex in the laws that are issued from Sinai.

A reminder that we are in a polytheistic context is found in the threats from Prince Sea that terrify and immobilize the assembly of the gods.

As soon as the gods saw them, Saw the messengers of Yamm,


The envoys of Judge River, The gods dropped their heads Onto their knees, Down on their princely thrones.

The mention of conflict introduces us not only to the forces of chaos, Sea and Death, but to the god who is to be victor over them, Baal, the young storm god residing on Mount Zaphon. Baal is commissioned by the assembly to combat the chaotic forces, is victorious, and returns to his mountain to build the temple that will celebrate his kingship. The biblical echoes of this part of the ancient myth seem mainly associated with Mount Zion. The palace of Baal is described in the same words as the temple of the Bible, hekdl and bet. It is likewise the site of the victory feast (see Isa. 25:6-8; chap. 55) and of the thundering forth of his kingship. The great battle of olden days took place there (Ps. 46, 48, 76). 5

Turning to the biblical texts we find many of the same phenomena of the Ugaritic texts, but now with striking new emphasis provided by the Israelite context—its monotheism and its story of exodus-conquest.

In the Bible the one Yahweh has two mountains, Sinai and Zion, and traits proper to each mountain in the Baal cycle are found in passages dealing with both biblical mountains. The apparent blending of language pertaining to the mountains of El and Baal is part of the larger phenomenon: the mixing of El and Baal language in the figure of Yahweh (e.g., Yahweh is a warrior able to tame chaotic forces and celebrates his kingship in his temple, yet he is an old patriarch who lives in a tent). The most important mode of Israelitizing the sacred mountains is through the mountains' incorporation into the national epic. Sinai is the mountain of Yahweh in the beginning, and Zion is his mountain at the end of the conquest. Yahweh is seen as moving his residence from Sinai by allowing the earthly copy of his tent, "the tabernacle of the tent of meeting" (miskdn 'ohel md'ed, Ex. 39:32; 40:6, 29) shown to Moses on the mountain (Ex. 25:9), to be carried to the land of Canaan.6 The descriptions of the march

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from the south in some early poetry (Deut. 33:2-5; Judg. 5:4-5; Ps. 68:8-9; Hab. 3) may state the same movement of Yahweh from Sinai to Canaan.

Yahweh, when you went forth from Seir, When you marched forth from the mountain country of Edom, The earth trembled, Yea, the heavens dropped water, Yea, the clouds dropped water. The mountains quaked before Yahweh, the one of Sinai, Before Yahweh, the God of Israel.

(Judges 5:4-5.)

Sinai is the mountain where God first meets Israel and its great representative, Moses. The Lord appears to Moses suddenly in a burning bush as Moses pastures his flock. Moses is charged to bring the whole people, oppressed by Pharaoh, to the same mountain to worship. In the subsequent encounters with Pharaoh, which are in effect a war between Yahweh and Pharaoh about which of the two will become the deity of the people (i.e. , who will receive their ultimate allegiance), Sinai stands as the mountain which beckons the people to leave Pharaoh's dominion and to enter Yahweh's. In the Priestly list of stations in the wilderness journey, six are allotted to the trip from Egypt to the last station before Sinai, Rephidim, and six from Sinai to the plains of Moab. 7 Sinai, which is the goal of the Hebrews while they are actually in bondage in Egypt, yields to another goal when the people are safely out of Pharaoh's domain-the mountain of Yahweh in Canaan. When Yahweh wins the people for himself by defeating Pharaoh at the Red Sea, the people encounter Yahweh in thunder and lightning on Sinai. "There was thunder, lightning and a dense cloud upon the mountain and a very loud blast of the horn. All the people in the camp trembled. Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their places at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was all in smoke for the Lord came down upon it in fire; the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln." (Ex. 19:16-18.) The storm theophany is a proclamation of divine sovereignty. The ten words and other laws—the way in


which the divine rule of Yahweh will be exercised over this people—are delivered to Moses on the mountain. The passages opening and concluding the encounter, Exodus 19:16-24 and 24:1-11, both contain hints that later liturgical celebration has influenced the account of the original event.8

It is significant that the great tent structure which Moses is commanded to build according to the pattern which has been shown him on the mountain of Sinai is consistently portrayed, not as Yahweh's dwelling on the mountain, but as his temporary dwelling on the journey. In other words, the tent structure that fits perfectly into the Canaanite picture of the god El seems redefined by Israel as deliberately portable. It seems deliberately detached from its original situs on the mountain to become the moving shrine. We should note that it functions as a temple in the wilderness and appears to have the elaborate furniture and cultus that we would expect in a god's house. In Exodus 33:7-11, the tent, which the tradition sometimes distinguishes from the tabernacle, is a place of oracle. "When Moses entered the tent (of meeting), the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the door of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, every man at his tent door. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend." (RSV, Ex. 33:9-11.) The tent is a place of oracles or divine messages which are given to Moses on behalf of the people. Oracles or decrees will be given later in the temple at Jerusalem in the form of restatements of the Sinai law, a continuation of the practice depicted in this text. Israelite tradition, then, generally remembers the tabernacle not so much as the dwelling of Yahweh on Sinai but as the portable tent shrine that was the predecessor of the temple on Zion.

Sinai is then the site of the encounter between God and the people that made the people into Israel. The thunderous celebration of royal rule, the decrees, the tabernacle, and the tent of meeting, all part of mountain residences of deity in Canaanite lore, are now part of the movement of the exodus-conquest.

There exists perhaps no better introduction to the biblical understanding of Mount Zion than the great pre-monarchic poem

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v. 13

v. 14

v. 17

v. 18

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in Exodus 15. In two matching panels the poet celebrates the victory of Yahweh with weapons of storm over the army of Pharaoh at the sea ( w . lb-12) and the immediately following procession in which Yahweh leads his people from the battle site to the god's sanctuary on the holy mountain ( w . 13-18).

From panel I:

v. 1 Sing to Yahweh, For he is highly exalted, Horse and chariotry He cast into the Sea

v. 10 You blew with your breath, Sea covered them. They sank like a lead weight In the dreadful waters.

From panel II:

You faithfully led The people whom you redeemed; You guided in your might To your holy encampment. The peoples heard, they shuddered; Horror seized the inhabitants of Philistia.

You brought them, you planted them In the mount of your heritage, The dais of your throne Which you made, Yahweh, The sanctuary, Yahweh, Which your hands created. Let Yahweh reign Forever and ever. 9

In this passage the storm god's victory over Sea that established cosmic order, as well as his victorious return to his mountain house where the newly won kingship would be proclaimed, has been adapted from the Canaanite myth. Here the victory is not against Sea but against Pharaoh's troops at the sea,


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and the procession is of course the wilderness journey from Egypt to Canaan. The mountain shrine was later understood as Zion, but originally it was probably an early shrine of the pre-David period or, equally probable, Israel conceived as a mountain.10

This passage reminds us that the old national story of exodus-conquest could be told with two differing emphases. One was the "historical" version, that is, the narrative prose of the Pentateuch and Joshua; the other, a more "mythic" version (with retention of a controlling historical impulse), as in Exodus 15 and some of the Psalms (e.g., Ps. 74, 77, 78, 89) and in Second Isaiah (e.g., Isa. 51:9-11).

Though the more mythic version of the exodus-conquest is not so familiar to us, perhaps even alien to our modern way of understanding reality, it remains important because it associates creation and kingship with the mountain. In the ancient Near East, creation often involved conflict, the taming or returning to their proper place of forces hostile to humanity, such as darkness (non-light) and formlessness (typically symbolized by the unlimited ocean). Creation or cosmogony issued not in the universe in its unpeopled physicality, as we are wont to imagine it, but in structured human society (i.e., with kingship, laws, worship systems). The defeat of Pharaoh, who had prevented the emergence of Israel as a people, could be interpreted as the defeat of chaos, while Yahweh's victory was the creation of a people. Psalms 74:12-17; 77:12-21 (EV 11-20); 78:2-38 (EV 1-37), and especially Isaiah 51:9-11 associate the redemption of Israel with creation.

Was it not you who smote Rahab? Who pierced Tannin? Was it not you who dried up Sea, The Waters of the abysmal deep? Who makes the depths of the sea a way For the redeemed to pass over?

(Isaiah 51:9-10.)

Another text associates the conquest of chaotic waters with the creation of Israel and brings in another related theme—the acknowledgment of Yahweh's sole lordship by the other heavenly beings.


I will recall the deeds of Yahweh. Yes, I will recall your wondrous act from olden days.

God, your power was over the holy ones, 1 1

What God is great as God? You are the God who works wonders You have made known among the peoples your strength. By your arm you have redeemed your people, The children of Jacob and Joseph. The waters saw you, O God, The waters saw you and were convulsed, The very deep quaked as well. Clouds streamed water, The clouds thundered,

Your way was through the sea, Your path, through the mighty waters, Your footsteps could not be seen. You led your people like a flock, By the hand of Moses and Aaron.

(Psalm 77:12-21.)

The kingship of Yahweh, the inviolability of his mountain dwelling, the triumphal procession of the victorious deity with his loyal votaries sharing in his victory-all themes associated with the palace of the deity on the holy mountain-have their roots and explanation in the Israelite understanding of the exodus and conquest.

The kingship of Yahweh is celebrated in several psalms which glorify Zion, namely Psalms 46, 48, and 76. In these psalms the victory over enemies seems to have taken place on Mount Zion itself.

In Judah God is acknowledged, In Israel great is his name. Salem became his abode, Zion, his den. There he broke the fiery arrows of the bow, Shield and spear and weapon of war.

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The bravest were stripped of spoil, Stupor overcame them, The best of the soldiers could not lift a hand. At your blast, O God of Jacob, Horse and rider lay stunned.

(Psalm 76:2-7.)

In another psalm the very buildings on the holy mountain remind the beholder of the victory of Yahweh over the forces of evil.

Great is Yahweh And greatly to be praised In the city of our God— His holy mountain, The beautiful height, The joy of the entire earth, Mount Zion, The reaches of the north, The city of the Great King. God in its citadels Is acknowledged as a refuge.

(Psalm 48:2-4; EV w . 1-3.)

The psalm goes on to relate how enemy kings advancing on the holy mountain were defeated by Yahweh's using the weapons of storm ( w . 5-9; EV 4-8); the historicizing of chaotic forces reminds one of Exodus 15. The psalm ends

Walk around Zion, Circle it, Count its towers, Take note of its ramparts... That you may tell the following generation This is God, our God forever and ever.

(Psalm 48:13-15; EV w . 12-14.)

The palace of Yahweh memorializes his total triumph over all hostile forces. The temple court complex makes visible to the worshipper the great victory that has been won and the new order that has been introduced. "Walk around Zion, circle it, count its towers. . . . 'This is our God.' " Psalm 29 puts it dramatically:

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Yahweh sits enthroned over Flood, Yahweh sits enthroned as king forever. May Yahweh give strength to his people! May Yahweh bless his people with peace!

(Psalm 29:10-11.)

That sacred dwellings on earth, with their furnishings and rituals, make present to worshippers a heavenly reality and divine activity is largely unfamiliar in our culture. Dualism or correspondence between heavenly and earthly or between primal event and present celebration was pervasive in Canaanite and biblical civilizations and must be taken seriously. The temple on Mount Zion is the copy of the real palace in the heavenly world. It copies its form. The likeness need only be a general one, a sketch. If the copy is like the reality, then it " i s " that reality; it somehow participates in it and presents it to the worshipper. In the Ugaritic texts the gods are depicted as living in palaces, eating banquets, sending messages to one another. In the biblical texts, divine activity is presented as sacral and removed from profane life. The palace of the god has become a temple, his banquet has become a sacred meal or sacrifice (sacrificium, sacrum factum, "made holy") , his message has become a sacred message. By entering the temple of Yahweh on the mountain, the worshipper is able to enter the sacral sphere and to come into touch with these realities.

Psalm 29, quoted above, portrays Yahweh as seated on Flood in victorious pose and reigning. It is followed immediately by the prayer that strength would be given to the earthly followers of the Lord, and blessing and peace. The mention of worshippers sharing in the benefits of the victorious Lord invites us to look at the way in which Israel encountered the Lord in the temple on the mountain and received the blessings of the new order.

When the people of Israel, on the appropriate feast days, were admitted to the sacred precincts of the court/temple, they would typically recite, often through singers and antiphonal response, the great deeds of Yahweh on their behalf. The "great deeds" were the national story of exodus-conquest in one of its many versions, either with a more historical emphasis or with a more mythic one (i.e. , with language of creation). Israel on these occasions "remembered" those early saving deeds which


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founded her. As the people remembered them in a solemn, liturgical way, those deeds and their saving power somehow became present to the congregation. The words of the recital "copy" the original deed. Somehow that deed is no longer in the far-distant past, inaccessible to the congregation. It is present. The book of Deuteronomy puts it this way: "The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive this day." (Deut. 5:2-3.)

Not only the recitation of the national story was important, but also the place where it was to be recited. Israel celebrated liturgically on the sacred mountain in the house of the Lord. The mountain is the end of the conquest procession, the holy mountain, "the place, Yahweh, which you have made your abode, the sanctuary, Yahweh, which your hands have established" (Ex. 15:17). It is also the place where the cosmic battle of creation and the enthronement of the victorious deity in that battle took place. It is appropriately the site where the original deed should be celebrated. Israel, standing on the holy mountain in the temple precincts, somehow relives those founding events and draws strength from that reliving. "Strength" is given to the people, the people are blessed with peace, according to the words of Psalm 29.

But even outside of festal days, the sdJom of Yahweh is given to his people, a peace that is sometimes seen most concretely in the temple and the mountain, which then radiates outward to all the people. Perhaps the most concrete instrument of the blessing of Yahweh the king is the Davidic king. Psalm 72 is a prayer for the king, who is seen to dispense to all the people that righteousness and justice with which he has been endowed. Psalm 2 shows us the same king seated on the holy mountain while the enemy kings rage against him at its base.

"Let us break the cords of their yoke, Shake off their ropes from us!" He who is enthroned in heaven laughs, The Lord mocks at them. Then he speaks to them in anger, Terrifying them in his rage,


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"But I have installed my king On Zion, My holy mountain!" Let me tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, "You are my son, I have fathered you this day."

(Psalm 2:3-7.)

Psalm 89:6-28, though it does not expressly mention the holy mountain or the temple, makes it clear that the davidide is appointed as regent over the newly ordered world and represents the kingship of Yahweh in the cosmic sense to the kings of the world. 1 2

Sometimes the peace and blessing that has been won by Yahweh and enshrined on his holy mountain is given to the people without the mediation of the Davidic king, and sometimes it is extended even to the nations beyond Israel's borders. A striking example of the blessings given to all peoples is the extraordinary poem found in Isaiah 2:2-4 (also Micah 4:1-4), which shows the nations united in peace around Zion.

In the days to come The mountain of the house of Yahweh will be established Higher than the top of the mountains. Lifted up more than the hills. All the nations shall flow to it, Many peoples will come and say "Come let us go to the mountain of Yahweh, To the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, That we may walk in his paths."

The passage in Isaiah just cited speaks of the glorification of the holy mountain of God in an unspecified future time. It is eschatological, that is, it speaks of a future time when Yahweh will be totally triumphant over his enemies and will introduce a new age. The new age is in some texts portrayed as relatively continuous with present realities, as in Isaiah 1:21-26, where the ideal time of Davidic Zion will be restored. In other texts it is presented as discontinuous with the present; one example is the


restoration of creation peace under the descendant of Jesse in Isaiah 11:1-9.

Given the conception of creation or cosmogony in the ancient Near East, it is not at all surprising that the holy mountain should be the place where the new age becomes visible. It is the site of creation where forces hostile to order were quelled. Though chaotic forces could gain the upper hand for a time, people believed that the high gods of order and fertility would impose order once again. Implicit in the concept of creation was the return to the original state of creation. The Garden of Eden was a place where the man ruled over a peaceable kingdom. The man named the animals; they came at his call. There was no bloodshed or violence. Even though the man and the woman sinned (Gen. 2-3) and violence and bloodshed came into the world (Gen. 4:1-16; 6:11; 9:3), the Israelite hope was that the original state would return. A good expression of this hope is in Isaiah 11:1-9.

He will judge the poor with justice, He will decide with equity for the poor of the land The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, The leopard lie down with the kid They shall not hurt or destroy In all my holy mountain.

(Isaiah 11:4, 6, 9)

Genesis 2:10-14 speaks of the river in the garden which divides into four rivers that water the four quarters of the earth. In Ezekiel's vision of the new temple on the mountain in Ezekiel 47:1-12, a river rises from below the temple and flows out to make the earth fertile. The peace and harmony of the garden of God on the mountain will return in the end.

We have seen earlier that Israel told its national story with either of two emphases, one mythic and the other historical. Zion as a future goal is portrayed with either of the emphases. The mythic emphasis, which we have just looked at, speaks of Zion as the site of the new creation with the restoration of original harmony and life. The second emphasis, the historical, speaks of Zion as the goal of the procession. This is the picture more familiar to us. The children of Israel who are dispersed look

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forward to the day of gathering when their oppressors will be defeated and they will be led home. Israel in the beginning was a people led in procession from slavery to freedom in a new land, and this movement from exile to the land and to Zion becomes a paradigm for Israel in later periods. "But Yahweh will have mercy on Jacob and again choose Israel. He will settle them on their land. Strangers shall join them and cleave to the house of Jacob.'' (Isa. 14:1.) The historical exodus has become a type of a life entrusted to God. The mountain is the goal of pilgrimage, of the final rest after escape from the dominion of evil. The mountain of God in the beginning has become the mountain of God at the end.

Notes 1. For much of the documentation in what follows, see my The Cosmic

Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972). The term "cosmic" does not refer to the once widely held opinion of semiticists that the ancients saw the whole universe as a mountain with heaven at the top, the underworld at the base, and the earth somewhere in between. Such a Weltberg is no longer generally posited by scholars.

2. This stereotyped description occurs five times in the Ugaritic texts. See further Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, pp. 48-57.

3. See ibid., pp. 42-48. 4. See ibid., pp. 55-57. 5. In the Ugaritic texts the battle between Mot and Baal takes place on

Mount Zaphon, Andree Herdner, Corpus Tablettes en Cuneiformes Alpha-betiques (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1963), 6.6.12-34. For further reading on Baal's battles on the holy mountain see Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, pp. 59-60, 143-53.

6. An important study on the tabernacle is F. M. Cross, "The Priestly Tabernacle," The Biblical Archaeologist Reader (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1961), pp. 201-28. For a recent discussion, see Richard E. Friedman, "The Tabernacle in the Temple," Biblical Archaeologist 43 (1980): 241-48.

7. For further reading on the list of stations, see F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 308-17.

8. Specifically, the shophar and possibly the "kiln" of Exodus 19:16-24, and the blood ritual and meal of 24:1-11.

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9. The translation is that of Cross, Canaanite Myth, pp. 127-31. 10. For the land of Israel conceived as a mountain, see Deut. 32:13; Ezek.

17:23; 20:40; 39:2; Isa. 11:9; 14:25. 11. For the translation see M. Dahood, Psalms II (Anchor Bible 17; Garden

City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1968), p. 230. 12. The davidide as regent of the newly formed cosmos has been demon

strated by J. B. Dumortier, "Un rituel d'intronisation: Le Ps LXXXIX: 2-38," Vetus Testamentum 11 (1961): 176-96. See also R. J. Clifford, "Psalm 89: A Lament over the Davidic Ruler's Continued Failure," Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 35-47.

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7

New Temple Festivals in the Temple Scroll Jacob Milgrom

Central to the Restoration movement is the understanding that many ancient temples, like modern ones, foreshadowed a future eschatological temple to which the Messiah will come. Thus it is implicit and explicit in Mormon expectation that the temple of Jerusalem will he rebuilt by the Jews, that a temple in a New Jerusalem will be likewise built, and that the gathering of the house of Israel, defined to include all the tribes of Jacob, will surround these world centers. In these temples every authentic ritual and practice, including sacrifice, will be reenacted, thus bringing together into one all things. Jacob Milgrom, the American expert on the Temple Scroll, here shows that its writers anticipated, a century and a half before the common era, (I) a temple structure modeled after but replacing the desecrated temple, (2) a messianic figure to manifest himself in this eventual temple, and (3) that all ancient rituals (including some feasts heretofore unheard of) would be reinstated. Milgrom has become increasingly convinced that this scroll was viewed by its writers as part of the Pentateuch or Hexateuch.

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T.G.M.


L4 rrst, some preliminary words about the Temple Scroll and JL the Dead Sea Scrolls in general. The story begins in the spring of 1947 when three shepherd youths of the Taamira bedouin tribe were scampering after their goats on the cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea and throwing pebbles after them. One of the pebbles entered the mouth of a cave, producing the telltale crash of pottery. This is how the first cave of scrolls was discovered. The scrolls were transferred to an Arab dealer who sold them to his spiritual leader, the Metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, for the sum of 24 English pounds, about $97. In 1947-48 amid the creation of the state of Israel, battle lines were drawn across the city of Jerusalem and Jewish scholars had no access to the scrolls. Consequently, the only place where they could be authenticated was the American School of Oriental Research. Photographs of some of the scrolls were taken there and sent to the doyen of archaeologists and biblicists, William Foxwell Albright of Johns Hopkins University, who verified that the scrolls were the greatest manuscript find of the century.

The scene then shifted to the United States, where the Metropolitan took them on tour in the early 1950s. But his real purpose was to sell the scrolls, because they were declared contraband by the Jordanian government and no respectable institution, no museum, would lay hands on them. An ad appeared in the Wall Street Journal dated June 1, 1954, announcing "Four Dead Sea Scrolls for sale." A meeting was arranged in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and a banker purchased them for the sum of a quarter of a million dollars. A few months later the government of Israel announced that the scrolls were safely in its hands. It turned out that General Yigael Yadin happened to be in New York on the date the ad appeared and he persuaded the banker to front for the state of Israel. Coincidentally, or providentially, his father, Eliezer Sukenik, had purchased the other three scrolls that came from that cave. Thus all the contents of that first cave were back in the land where they were discovered and in the hands of their authors' biological descendants.

Subsequently, ten more caves disgorged about a dozen more scrolls and hundreds of fragments. By the mid-fifties it was the

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general consensus that all the Dead Sea documents were known. However, there was still another scroll. It came into Israel's possession after the Six-Day War of 1967. It had been held back by that same Arab dealer, who had sequestered it in the floor of his shop in Jerusalem, presumably waiting for a higher price.

The Temple Scroll is aptly named since it features a detailed blueprint of the temple which the Qumran sect was commanded by God to build after their coming restoration to Jerusalem. What took place in this temple? Clearly, the same catalogue of festivals as ordained in Scripture. However, to our great surprise, the Temple Scroll prescribes totally new festivals that are not in the Bible at all. But to fully understand these innovations we must first focus on the sect's calendar. It is a solar calendar, one totally at variance with that of their fellow Jews. It consists of fifty-two weeks or 364 days. Its advantage is obvious. Since the year is divisible by seven, all festivals must fall on the same day of the week every year. The new festivals and their dates are outlined below:

The Calendar of Qumran According to the Temple Scroll Solar Year = 52 Weeks = 364 Days

Season = 13 Weeks = 91 Days (30+30+31)

New Temple Festivals

1. Priestly Consecration (8 Days) begins 1/1 Wednesday

2. New Barley 1/26 Sunday 3. New Wheat 3/15 Sunday 4. New Wine 5/3 Sunday 5. New Oil 6/22 Sunday 6. Wood Festival (6 Days) begins 6/23 (?) Monday (?)

We begin with New Year's Day: 1/1. On this day commenced the priestly consecration, an eight-day festival. According to the Bible, Aaron and his sons were consecrated to the priesthood following the consecration of the Tabernacle on 1/1 (Ex. 29; Lev. 8). However, the Temple Scroll decrees that this consecration was not a once-only ceremony. It was meant to recur permanently. Every priest, in every age, had to be inducted into the priesthood

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by this consecration service, and the high priest by an even more elaborate service. However, why did the Scroll choose to begin the new year on a Wednesday? After all, the beginning of the week, and hence of the world, was on Sunday. The key is their calendar. It was solar. However, in the story of creation-the first page of Genesis—we are told that the sun was created on the fourth day. How logical was their reasoning! Terrestrial time did not exist before the sun; therefore our world really began on a Wednesday.

Following the priestly consecration, the table shows a series of first-fruits festivals. Here too they follow a biblical precedent, but only partially, since Scripture ordains (in Leviticus 23), new barley and new wheat festivals fifty days apart, but not the other first-fruits festivals. Barley is the first crop to ripen. But when is its first-fruits festival to be celebrated? The scripture merely says it should follow the paschal sacrifice—specifically, mz'mmaharat hashshabbat, "the day after the Sabbath" (Lev. 23:11, 15).'This phrase is ambiguous and was subject to many interpretations. The Pharisees held that "sabbath" here meant the festival, that it falls on Nisan 16, the day after the beginning of the Passover festival. Their main rivals, the Sadducees, said no. Sabbath is the sabbath, the seventh day, and the day after the sabbath is Sunday. Thus the New Barley Festival is celebrated on the Sunday following the paschal sacrifice. Now along comes the Temple Scroll and gives a third date: not the Sunday which falls during the week of Passover but the one which follows the week of Passover. Thus the Scroll opts for the Sunday after the Sunday designated by the Sadducees. In the calendar year 1981 this would mean that the Pharisees would observe the New Barley Festival on Monday, April 20; the Sadducees on Sunday, April 26; and the Qumranites on Sunday, May 3.

Totally new, however, without any Scriptural prolepsis, are the New Wine and New Oil festivals. The "new wine" prescribed in the Scroll is nothing more than freshly pressed grapes. I understand that in Mormon scripture wine and strong drink are prohibited. But in the offering up of sacraments "pure wine of the grape of the vine" (D&C 89:5-6) is commended. In the future eschatological temple of the Mormons wine will be used, as the Scroll and as Scripture ordain.

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Whence did Qumran derive these two new festivals? Of course, they grounded them in Scripture, specifically in Numbers 18:12, which prescribes temple first-fruits offerings of grain, must (freshly pressed grapes), and oil (freshly pressed olives). However, the Scripture gives no dates. The Temple Scroll supplies them, and on logical grounds. Since fifty days separate the two grain festivals, it follows that one should also wait fifty days for the wine and fifty days for the oil. Their calculation is positively uncanny. It turns out that the dates they prescribe for the first-fruits festival coincide precisely with the ripening of these respective crops in the land of Israel. The barley ripens in early spring, wheat in the beginning of the summer, grapes in the middle of the summer, and the olives at the end of the summer.

Personally, I cannot believe that it was their invention or their revelation. In my opinion, these new festivals were not new at all but were ancient festivals which were suppressed in later scriptural records. In the ninth chapter of Judges, we read about the citizens of Shechem engaged in a wine festival in their temple, where they fomented a rebellion against their king. The fact that they organized a rebellion in the temple must mean that everyone was present there. It had to be a public festival. And that perhaps explains why this festival may have been quashed in Scripture. We know of wine festivals in the ancient Near East. And as exemplified in ancient Greece, festivals dedicated to Bacchus turned into bacchanals. The term hillulim (Judg. 9:27) and the fact that the Shechem temple was probably a pagan one point in that direction. The Canaanite wine festivals were probably of such a licentious nature that they were suppressed in the Bible, only to surface a millennium later in the Temple Scroll.

According to the table, all Qumran's first-fruits festivals fall on a Sunday. Here lies one of their lasting contributions. Bearing in mind that they observed the day of rest on the sabbath, we see that they now rested also on Sunday. Without doubt, they must be credited with being the first to institute the long weekend.

If the first-fruits festivals are fifty days apart, how can they fall on Sunday? For that to happen they should be separated by forty-nine days! This is how they counted: the first day of any new cycle was also the last day of the previous one. In that way the fiftieth day was in fact forty-nine days after the previous festival.


Qumran's calendar was helpful to me because it solved one of the great cruxes of the ancient Israelite calendar. The book of Leviticus ordains that the land should be uncultivated on the sabbatical and jubilee years (Lev. 25:1-13). This means that on the forty-ninth and fiftieth years, two years in succession, the land would be fallow. That is humanly impossible. However, Qumran has solved the problem. The biblical calendar counted the same way as Qumran, so that the forty-ninth sabbatical year and the fiftieth jubilee year coincided. And the land was to remain fallow for just one year.

What happened at these festivals? The New Wheat Festival, according to the Temple Scroll, was the annual day for the renewal of the sect's covenant, when it would swear in new members, and the old members would pledge themselves anew. This covenant renewal is described in great detail, not in the Temple Scroll but in another document from the Dead Sea, the Manual of Discipline (1QS 1:16-2:25). There is nothing like it in Judaism or Christianity, and it is to their loss. Among the Mormons there is, indeed, an annual priestly review of the members' worthiness, which in Jewish parlance would be ritual purity followed by permission to enter the sanctuary in the spirit of "renewal." Indeed, as I understand it, at the center of the Mormon sacramental system is the idea of "renewing of covenants." It is not difficult to imagine the impact that such a mass ceremony would have upon the entire community.

The first-fruits festivals which follow also had a communal impact. For example, at the climax of the New Wine Festival there was a libation for the altar, then cups of wine would be passed out to the mass of celebrants overflowing into the outer court. And then, at a given sign, they lifted their cups and recited a blessing to God, asking Him in thanksgiving and prayer for an abundant harvest. The New Oil Festival was celebrated the same way. At its climax there was libation of oil for the altar and for everyone present.

The last of the new festivals is a Wood Festival. There is no trace of it in the Pentateuch, but later books of the Bible do provide a hint. In Nehemiah, which brings us into the Second Temple days, we learn of a situation that we are quite familiar

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with—an energy shortage. Groups of rich families then took it upon themselves to donate the necessary wood supply for the temple's needs. Later the rabbis fixed the dates when these wood offerings should be brought, and ordained that the same families that had volunteered these offerings during the days of Nehemiah should continue to have this privilege ( M . Taan. 4:4). However, Qumran would have nothing of that. They believed in the democratization of Israel. The Temple would not be the reserve of the priests and the rich. All of Israel was commanded to aspire to holiness (Lev. 19:1, etc.), and so they ordained that the wood offering should be brought by all twelve tribes during a six-day festival, two tribes per day.

One may be puzzled, given their love for festivals, why they doubled up the tribes. They could have given each tribe its day and spread the festival over twelve days (as Israel did when it initiated the altar, Num. 7). However, the table reminds us that a twelve-day festival would have run into the seventh month. And they did not want a conflict with the first day of the seventh month, which Jewry still celebrates as the New Year Festival.

This is all I can discuss in the time allotted to me and I have discussed matters from only four columns of the Temple Scroll's sixty-seven!

Question: Was there an actual temple at Qumran? Answer: There was no temple at Qumran. Scholars have

thought so, but now the Temple Scroll has made it clear that there could not be any legitimate temple outside of Jerusalem-not the Jerusalem of their day, however, which they felt had become polluted. It had the wrong temple, the wrong priesthood, the wrong calendar, the wrong festivals. Their faith was that they would be restored to a destroyed Jerusalem to rebuild the temple according to their revealed blueprint. Its architectural design borrows from many prior temples, but in aggregate it is unique. For example, the square court is Ezekiel's design, but in other respects it is not Ezekiel's temple at all. The temple building itself is Solomonic; most of the other installations are not. So it is a composite, with many original elements.

Question: Is there evidence that the temple complex described in the Temple Scrolls was ever constructed?


Answer: Please bear in mind that this is a visionary temple, but not a messianic one. This temple is to be built by man, and as far as the sect of Qumran was concerned, it was going to be built tomorrow. In their view, the end of the world was imminent. And in that universal cataclysm, only the righteous of Qumran would survive. And we know from the War Scroll that the cataclysm would take the form of a forty-year war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness, in the seventh year of which the righteous would regain Jerusalem, and then, I presume, they would build this temple. There is also another temple at the end of time, a messianic temple, and it would be built not by man but by God.

Question: What was the specific role of the high priest? Is there any mention in the Temple Scroll of a Davidic king?

Answer: Two very sizable questions. The high priest is featured very prominently. So is the king. But the king is, interestingly enough, a limited monarch. I mentioned to you the Scroll's impulse toward democratization. The king had a council of thirty-six, consisting of twelve priests, twelve Levites, and twelve Israelites, which held veto powers over the king. He had to consult the council on everything. He could not declare war without its consent. This is most remarkable. Mind you, over a thousand years before the Magna Charta, the Dead Sea sectaries promote a constitutional monarch. Of course, the book of Deuteronomy also prescribes a constitutional monarch, but the Temple Scroll puts teeth into its laws by ordaining an executive body that can enforce them.

Question: What is the date of the Temple Scroll? Answer: I'm now convinced that this scroll is the oldest of the

scrolls, indeed, the very constitution of the Qumran sect. Originally I thought it was written perhaps during the Maccabean period. Now I believe it is pre-Maccabean, composed at the beginning of the second century B.C.E. Let me cite one reason for this earlier dating. One of the Scroll's purity rules states that impure skins may not be brought into the Temple city. There is no such rule in all of Rabbinic literature. However, the historian Josephus reports that in 198 B.C.E. Antiochus III confirmed the right of Jerusalem to forbid the importation of impure skins

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(Antiquities 12:146). This means that the city of Jerusalem actually enforced such a rule at the end of the third century and the beginning of the second. The rabbis know nothing of such a rule; the Temple Scroll does. This means that the Scroll must antedate the Maccabean period.

Question: Are you planning to write a book on the Temple Scroll?

Answer: No, but I have written a number of studies. A general description and evaluation of the Scroll is in the Biblical Archaeologist 41 (1978): 105-20, thus far the only thing available in English. More detailed studies are in the Journal of Biblical Literature 97 (1978): 501-23; the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 232 (1978): 25-27; and, most recently, the Jewish Quarterly Review 71 (1980/81): 1-17, 89-106. An English translation of the Scroll, edited by Yadin, will soon be published.

8 Jachin and Boaz in Religious and Political Perspective Carol L. Meyers

Two pillars flanked the entrance to the sacred center of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. Aside from their utility and beauty they had symbolic meaning, as did many other structures and appurtenances of the ancient temple. In the present essay Carol L. Meyers brings to bear recent research on these pillars which shows: (1) that the olive wood and cedar were chosen for specific and temporal reasons; (2) that the pillars were seen in cosmic perspective, somehow reflecting in a microcosm the theory of the dwelling of the heavenly realm; (3) that they were perceived as a gate to holy space and to holy time, and provided both a fortress and a sanctuary for ritual acts; and (4) that they suggested the identification of religious and political power under divine sanction (thus the temple locus and rituals legitimatized the state). This essay is published by permission of Joseph Fitzmeyer on behalf of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly.

T .G.M.

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The general fascination of traditional and critical biblical scholarship with the nature and appearance of the

Jerusalem (Solomon's) temple is epitomized in many ways by the unremitting interest in the twin pillars flanking its entrance. Over the years, countless attempts have been made to explain, describe, and otherwise comprehend these elaborately ornamented features of ancient Israel's premier religious edifice. Their enigmatic names as well as the tantalizing availability of certain kinds of archaeological data have added to the range and complexity of the scholarly discussion.1

This extraordinary attention accorded to Jachin and Boaz, which are known only from the Old Testament text and not directly from excavated materials, is the result of two interrelated difficulties. First, the text in 1 Kings 7 ( w . 15-22, 41-42), which is the major source of information about these columns, is replete with textual problems and lexical obscurities. Second, the other texts that mention them2 provide information which is often at odds with the core passage in 1 Kings 7. That this situation is to be expected, since the texts come from a span of hundreds of years during which the temple itself was altered repeatedly,3 does not diminish the difficulty in attempting to utilize all the biblical passages which mention the two pillars. As a result of these two problems, it has been virtually impossible to establish a secure reconstruction of either their appearance or, equally significant, their architectural placement and function.

Our discussion here will not add to the plethora of materials that have sought to delineate Jachin and Boaz with respect either to their form or their position. Rather, it is our contention that their significance within the Solomonic building schema can be examined apart from the obscurity of their physical existence. That does not mean that their size, shape, and situation can be ignored. Instead, it means that an understanding of their meaning and importance need not be tied to any absolute resolution of concrete details. To put it another way, the symbolic value of Jachin and Boaz can be apprehended without full knowledge of their physical reality.

That they must be examined from the standpoint of symbolism is apparent from their unique situation, both as features in the

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architectural ground plan of the Solomonic temple and simultaneously as items in the repertoire of objects and appurtenances associated with the temple's usage. While scholars have struggled to locate the pillars on the hypothetical blueprint of the Jerusalem temple, thus attributing to them some participation in the architectural realm, most have also been cognizant of the fact that their description in the 1 Kings temple passage is not included in the verses relating the structural details of the temple. Rather, Jachin and Boaz stand at the beginning of the series of bronze vessels4 made by the craftsman Hiram of Tyre, as outlined in 1 Kings 7:13-45. Seemingly without structural significance, they have been considered by a few scholars to be purely decorative or ornamental, but by most to have symbolic significance. The variety of suggestions for the latter role is noteworthy,5 indicating a strong measure of conjecture.

While the meaning of the pillars evaded the generation of scholars in the thirties and forties who investigated the Jerusalem temple in the light of Near Eastern archaeology, the existence of such pillars flanking the entrances to other sacred structures of the ancient world was established. The most notable example is the temple of Tell Tainat,6 of singular importance in its close architectural relationship to the temple described in 1 Kings. Other remains of such columns were identified in the Syro-Palestinian area. Jachin and Boaz thus could be recognized as related to features that existed in at least some other major temples of the Late Bronze Age or early Iron Age. While the most recent discussions of the twin pillars acknowledge such analogies, they admit that uncertainty about their meaning nonetheless remains.7

Such persistent uncertainty cannot be relieved at present by any fresh information available from philological study of the biblical text describing the columns, nor from evidence provided by current archaeological research. What can be done, however, to remove some of the enigma is to analyze their meaning in the context of the extended socio-political role that religious edifices played in the ancient world. Religion and ritual are not to be seen as isolated or compartmentalized features of Israelite life. Rather, the cultic ceremonies and sacred structures of ancient Israel must


be seen as part of the political ideology of the realm.8 For the period of the Solomonic temple's construction, the realm happens to be a monarchy with imperial extent.

Biblical Data

As we have asserted above, the peculiar significance of Jachin and Boaz is related to their existence simultaneously as architectural features of the temple and as bronze objects associated with the inner courtyard (hehdzer happemmit). Several features of the biblical description must be stressed in this connection.

The twin pillars stand at the entry to the 'uldm, variously translated "portico," "porch," "vestibule," or "entrance hall." 9 Whether or not they are structural is irrelevant to the fact that they are clearly associated with the 'uldm: "He set up the pillars at the 'uldm of the temple" (1 Kgs. 7:21; cf. v. 19). None of the above translations of 'uldm, however, indicates the ambivalence of its nature within the overall temple plan. Understanding this ambivalence is essential for our investigation of the pillars at the entry to the 'uldm.

The 'uldm is generally considered the outermost of the three parts of the Jerusalem temple, which seems to have had a tripartite plan similar to that of the Tainat megaron and other Syro-Hittite temples of the late second and early first millennia. Yet several features of the 'uldm must be underscored insofar as they cast some doubt on its being an integral part of the tripartite plan.

1. The side chambers of the temple, the importance of which should not be overlooked in that they represent more than twice as much floor space as the temple proper,1 0 flank only the hekdZ ("main room," "nave," etc.) and its subdivision, the d^fr ("holy of holies," "inner sanctuary," etc.). The 'uldm is thus set apart from the full temple structure.

2. The dimensions of the temple are given for the hekdJ and the d^bfr together as a unit, sixty cubits long and twenty cubits wide (1 Kgs. 6:2). The measurements of the 'uldm are listed separately for this entity, which stood "in front of the house." The implication is that the 'fiZdm is an attachment to the temple or

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"house of Yahweh," 1 1 but not an integral part of it. In this connection, note also that the temple and tabernacle have the same proportions except that the latter, a portable structure, lacks the 'uldm.

3. The entrance to the 'uldm is of a different order from the entrance to the other two parts of the temple proper. Elaborate olive-wood doors (1 Kgs. 6:31) were constructed for the entrance to the d^bfr. Cypress-wood doors were ordered for the passage into the hekdZ (1 Kgs. 6:33). Immediately following this sequence is a notice about the 'uldm which does not present a doorway, as one might expect from the flow of the text here. Rather, in a verse that is out of character with the preceding doorway passages, (1 Kgs. 6:36), the construction of the inner court is mentioned, anticipating its fuller description in 1 Kings 7:12. Instead of a presentation of an entrance to the 'uldm, which would be expected to be included in this series of doorway descriptions, another kind of information, the manner of construction of the inner court, is provided since there was no door to the 'uldm to describe.

4. Details of wood paneling for the walls, ceiling, and floor of the hekdZ and its innermost shrine (d ebfr) are enumerated in 1 Kings 6:15-20, with the gold overlay for the inner shrine also being delineated. No such information is provided for the 'uldm.

5. The lack of comparable data concerning walls and ceilings for the 'uldm is related to the manner of the latter's construction. The 'uldm is constructed of triple courses of large hewn stones surmounted by a wooden superstructure of cedar beams (1 Kgs. 7:12; cf. 6:36). 1 2 This is identical with the technique for building the great court of the palace area and also the temple court (hehazer happemmit). In other words, the construction technique of the 'uldm is linked, not with that of the internal space of the hekdl/debTr of the House of the Lord, but rather with the open or external space, the courtyards.

This series of details concerning the 'uldm indicates that it is perhaps best understood as a courtyard to the temple, the micro-cosmic House of God. Inasmuch as the temple was the earthly counterpart of God's heavenly dwelling, 1 3 it would not have been complete without that indispensable feature of a permanent Near


Eastern residence, a courtyard.14 Thus the 'u/dm needs to be defined more precisely than by such terms as "porch" or "portico." Rather it belongs to the conceptual world of courtyards. Thus pillars at its entry stand within the realm of gateposts, marking the entryway to the larger domain of the deity, which includes court as well as house proper.

Several other features of Jachin and Boaz, as delineated in the biblical text, must be stressed. These pillars, notwithstanding the difficulty in reconstructing their appearance on the basis of the 1 Kings description, were clearly imposing entities. This is so on two accounts.

First, they were of great size, the columns themselves being eighteen cubits high according to 1 Kings 7:15 (cf. 2 Chr. 3:15 and Jeremiah L X X , which record thirty-five cubits). Each column was surmounted by a capital or double capital15 of at least five cubits. They thus stood no less than twelve meters high and were nearly a meter in diameter. If these dimensions (or at least the diameter, which is the only relevant dimension in terms of archaeological remains) are compared with the measurements of analogous column bases uncovered at entryways to Semitic temples, it becomes clear that Jachin and Boaz were considerably larger. Indeed, the Solomonic temple as a whole appears to have been significantly bigger than its analogues. Tainat,1 6 for example, is roughly two-thirds the size of the Jerusalem temple of 1 Kings and lacks the side chambers which, it must be underscored, augment the size of the temple in its outward appearance.

Second, Jachin and Boaz, or at least their capitals, were extraordinarily elaborate. There is considerable latitude in the specific interpretation of the description in 1 Kings 7:16-20 and 41-42, but there is consensus that the capitals belong to the category of floral capitals that were characteristic features of monumental architecture in the biblical world. If there be any doubt as to their striking appearance, the credentials of the artisan, whose Tynan father was a "worker in bronze. . . full of wisdom, understanding, and skill" (1 Kgs. 7:14), serve to emphasize the artistry involved.

If we emphasize the striking size and appearance of Jachin and Boaz and ignore the artistic detail of the internal furnishings of the temple, we do so because of the public visibility of the

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pillars in contrast to the invisibility of the temple's interior. The temple was not a house of worship but rather a residence for God. As such, the inside of the temple was essentially off limits, unseen by the population as a whole or even by the general clergy. 1 7 The connection of the laity and of anyone but the designated priesthood with the Jerusalem temple was thus relegated to the space outside the temple proper. The courtyard of the temple was thus the focus of "public" involvement with the temple, the place of sacrifice, of justice, of song and dance, of procession.18

Aside from these pillars, a rather flat and relatively unbroken exterior would have presented itself, fortress-like, to the external viewer. 1 9 Thus the twin pillars loomed large at the entry to the temple, providing the visual link to the unseen grandeur within. Understanding their symbolic value becomes all the more critical from such a perspective, since they stood to represent to the world at large that which existed unseen within the building.

Iconographic Data

The archaeologically recovered remains of pillars flanking temple entrances have already been noted. In addition to such parallels, there are graphic renderings which depict pairs of columns on seal cylinders, brick reliefs, seals, stone vessels, and bronze gates. From earliest times, artistic convention in the Near Eastern world relied upon such depictions to convey the image of the divine dwelling reached by passage through doorposts and/or gateposts.20 In a kind of graphic synecdoche, particularly appropriate to the small-scale glyptic art in which the preponderance of such renderings are found, two vertical posts flank a scene the content of which leaves no doubt that those posts represent the sacred structure within which that scene is being enacted.

With respect to the content of such scenes, one pertinent observation can be made: the scenes are basically of two kinds, mythic and cultic. In the former instance, particularly clear in the vigorous naturalism of seals from the old Akkadian period, 2 1 a god in his cosmic setting is flanked by gateposts which are some-


times accompanied by the doorkeepers controlling the important access through these doors. The god steps out on his mountain peaks, sun rays streaming from his shoulders, master of his heavenly abode. The awesome and vast cosmic sweep of the god's dwelling is made comprehensible to humanity by the architectural reality of the gateposts, the finite structures giving access to the infinite realm of the god. In another kind of mythic scene, the god enthroned in his celestial palace appears seated between tall posts or standards, representing the structure in which his throne of repose is situated.

The other kind of scene, depicting cultic activity, shares with the mythic motifs the convention of twin pillars standing for a whole building. The presence of worshippers approaching god, or more likely the god's statue, identifies the cultic nature of these compositions. Such worship scenes include representations of flanking pillars of the same character as those in the mythic scenes. In so doing, they convey the idea that the earthly temple, indicated in pars pro toto fashion by the gated entryway, is to be identified with the god's cosmic abode.

The features of these doors or gate leaves, insofar as they are discernable in the minute modeling of cylinder seals, show them to be fashioned after the columns used in monumental temple architecture. For the early Sumerian period, for example, the bound reed bundles that formed the structural supports of the earliest shrines are used to indicate such shrines.22 Columns with scroll capitals or volutes appear in other contexts, such as Hittite seals and Palestinian model shrines,23 attesting to contemporary architectonic fashion.

This kind of iconographic material demonstrates two aspects of the ancient visual arts relevant to our consideration of Jachin and Boaz.

First, inhabitants of the biblical world, from Sumerian times down through the neo-Assyrian period and later, were familiar with a variety of iconographic depictions of shrines in which the whole structure or temple was indicated by a pair of columns. These columns seem to represent either the doorposts of the shrine itself or the gateway that provided access to the sacred area as a whole. It is often difficult and perhaps ultimately meaning-

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less to make such a distinction, although the isolated nature of the pillars without overhead framing would tend to support the idea of courtyard gates. The critical meaning is the notion of passage from profane space to holy space, from the mundane to the supra-mundane. The doors and/or gates stand for the holy and mark this highly significant boundary.

Second, there exists an identity in the conventions for depicting the god's cosmic palace shrine and his earthly temple shrine. This merging of iconographic representation is the visual counterpart of what is ritually and symbolically expressed in the temple service, whereby ritual actions bring about the presence of the deity into the earthly counterpart of his heavenly dwelling.

Temple Architecture and State Ideology

One of the most fundamental aspects of ancient thought systems, and one which Western man must often struggle to recognize inasmuch as it is essentially foreign to modern secular polities, is the identification of the socio-political power structure within the deity. 2 4 The exercise of power is not simply the result of the agreement of the governed, as it is for charismatically acclaimed leadership. Rather, the essentially coercive power represented by dynastic states derives legitimacy from the close connection of such states with divine sovereignty. The religious sphere is hardly separate or autonomous; rather it is an integral and critical component of political power and authority. It provides divine and incontrovertible sanction for state actions that otherwise might not be popularly acclaimed nor seen as generally beneficial.25

Such an understanding of the interrelatedness of religion and politics, of temple and kingship, in the biblical world has been well established. However, this appreciation of the cultic expression of socio-political values has not focused directly enough on the matter of communication. If a religious ideology is to be effective in consolidating and sustaining support for the regime, it must be successfully communicated at least to that portion of the population responsible for implementing state policy.


What are the mechanisms for conveying the fundamental message that the god is inextricably connected with the dynastic power? There are three possibilities.26 Perhaps the most effective means would be the written word; yet in the ancient world, with minimal literacy and expensive modes of publication, the written message recedes in importance. The second possibility, the verbal or oral form of communication, would thus have been essential, though this is the most elusive for us since it is available to us only as it has been preserved in writing and thereby relegated to the form of the written message. Finally, the visual message would have played a significant role, providing the sustained availability of the written word along with the wider accessibility of the spoken word.

The temple constructed in any dynastic capital, by its very existence, was the visual communicator of the divine component of and support for the political realm. The construction of a new capital, with palace and temple, by the initiator of a political structure was not only a pragmatic establishment of a locus for the bureaucracy of government but also a symbolic statement, communicating both to eyewitnesses and to those further afield, who merely heard of the capital splendors, that the god was the guarantor of the state.

The transformation of the mundane materials—wood, stones, bricks, metal—of which a building was constructed into a temple, into a divine residence which participated in the cosmic model of that residence and thus was distinct from a normal building, was an essential part of the communication process. The dedicatory ceremonies with which the construction of temples was culminated achieved two important goals. The presence of the deity in his earthly home was effected, and the facts of his presence and thus of his legitimization of the regnal power responsible for erecting this house were communicated to all those who participated in, witnessed, or heard of these ceremonies. The grander the dedication and the more elaborate the feast, the more powerful was the manner in which these combined goals were achieved.

Within the overall context of a dedication, the specific device

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or process for achieving divine presence and public recognition thereof was the procession in which the image of the god (or gods) was carried, preferably through the city so that all could see it, into the temple precincts and ultimately into the temple with its waiting niche for the god. 2 7 The impact of such a ceremony was obviously greatest at the time it was carried out. However, the political realm required the ongoing legitimization that the divine presence in the temple conveyed. And as memory of the great dedication inevitably waned, it could nonetheless be sustained through a combination of communication devices: written, in dedicatory plaques, stelae, or wall inscriptions; oral, in annually repeated rituals recalling or reenacting the primal entry of the god into the temple; and visual, through the artistic or graphic portrayal of the original entrance event.

The ongoing visual communication of such a momentous occasion, which had great significance for the realm and its stability, was typically and appropriately effected in many capital cities of the ancient Near East in the reliefs and sculptures at the gateways to the royal complex of these cities.2 8 Their wide visibility was assured by the heavy flow of traffic at such locations, and they dealt with the theme of the god's entry through the gate into his precinct. Thus the gate itself through which the god's procession entered the city and temple at the time of dedication was emblazoned with a sculptural record of that event. The gateway represented, visually, the divine legitimization of the realm once the statue of the god had disappeared into its largely inaccessible niche in the adytum.

Jachin and Boaz and the Solomonic State

The reign of Solomon continued many of the policies and programs initiated by the dynastic founder, his father David. Yet Solomon's kingship is indelibly marked by the administrative changes he made in the political and religious organization of the realm. 2 9 The centerpiece of his regnal activity, both in its own time and for all succeeding generations, was the construction of a royal palace complex which included a temple, a permanent


house for Yahweh, and perhaps the most famous building of the ancient world.

Solomon's motives for undertaking the expensive and elaborate temple project have been contrasted with the Davidic reliance on the Shilonite ark tradition.30 In such a schema, David's charismatic accession to kingship and his continued utilization of a tent-shrine for the ark represent a political ideology more akin to that of the preceding tribal period. David achieved cultic or divine legitimacy for his rule in his transfer of the ark to Jerusalem and his placement of it within the tent. The meaning of these events can be related to the role of the Canaanite Tent of El, which represented assembly and consensus and which thus was more congenial to a more limited kingship that would continue covenant tradition.31 David's centralization and consolidation of rule were effectively represented in his establishment of a national capital in Jerusalem, in the city of David. 3 2

In building a temple for the ark, the symbol of Yahweh's presence, Solomon incorporated the Davidic covenantal traditions into a structure representing the permanent and eternal dwelling of Yahweh, and thus the permanent and eternal legitimacy of his dynastic power. 3 3 This action does seem to contrast with David's more limited construction projects. Yet however innovative Solomon's architectural and administrative activities may appear, they actually constitute the culmination of processes already set in motion by David's imperial conquests. Davidic sovereignty over non-Israelite groups was established by military force, and his taking of Jerusalem and placing of the ark there were directed towards internal consolidation of a newly formed state. Solomon, in the stage beyond subjugation, had to build up the temple-palace complex, not so much to reject or enlarge Davidic precedent, but rather to establish the mechanisms for imperial control of regions beyond the tribal territories.

The Solomonic temple and palace thus served the needs of the capital of a minor Levantine empire. The palace provided the administrative and residential space for the king and his bureaucracy, and the temple supplied the vital visual message that the king had the divinely sanctioned power to carry out his imperial governance.34 With the ark sequestered out of sight in

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Notes 1. For a full discussion from an architectural perspective and including a

review of suggested meanings, see Th. A. Busink, Der Tempel von Jerusalem, I. Band, Der Tempel Salomos (Leiden: Brill, 1970). See also the discussion and bibliography in R. B. Y. Scott, "Jachin and Boaz," Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible 2:780-81; the summary in J. B. Gray, I & II Kings, 2nd ed. rev. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), pp. 183-89; and the work of J. Ouellette in "Jachin and Boaz," Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement, p. 469, and in "The Basic Structure of Solomon's Temple and Archaeological Research," The Temple of Solomon, Religion and the Arts, no. 3, ed. J. Gutmann (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976), pp. 7-11.

2. 2 Kings 25:16-17; 2 Chronicles 3:13, 15-17; Jeremiah 52:17, 20-23. 3. See C. Meyers, "The Elusive Temple,'' Biblical Archaeologist 45 (1982):

33-41. 4. Perhaps this grouping led Albright to his conviction that the pillars must

have had an instrumental function. He contended, following W. R. Smith, that they were lofty cressets. See his "Two Cressets from Marisa and the Pillars of Jachin and Boaz," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 85 (1942): 18-27; and Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 4th ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1956), pp. 144-48. Compare the critique by J. L. Myres, "King Solomon's Temple and Other Buildings and Works of Art," Palestine Exploration Quarterly 80 (1948): 29.

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the d^inr, the critical entrance of Yahweh into his Jerusalem house was signified by the twin pillars Jachin and Boaz.

These pillars can be linked iconographically to the paired gateposts described above, as known in Near Eastern royal art. They stood at the entry of the 'u/dm, which according to our analysis is the microcosmic forecourt of Yahweh's microcosmic house (hekd/ plus d^ f r ) . The pillars signified the historic passage of Yahweh, as symbolized by the ark, into the earthly counterpart of his cosmic dwelling. For all who saw them towering over the temple courtyard within the palace complex, they heralded the enormously significant fact of the legitimacy of Solomonic rule. They communicated visually to bureaucrats and emissaries the message crucial for effective rule, namely, that the Davidic dynasty was carrying out God's will in its administration of the Israelite territory and also the adjacent kingdoms, from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt.


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5. In addition to cressets, they have been called fire altars, obelisks, phalli, twin mountains, sacred stones, pillars of heaven, and trees of life. See, for example, R. B. Y. Scott, "The Pillars of Jachin and Boaz," Journal of Biblical Literature 58 (1939): 143-49, and G. E. Wright, "Solomon's Temple Resurrected," Biblical Archaeologist 4 (1941): 21, 26.

6. First reported in C. W. McEwan, "The Syrian Expedition of the Oriental Institute," American Journal ofArchaeology 41 (1932): 8-16. The analogy of the Tainat pillars has led some scholars, notably Ouellette, to persist in the argument for a structural role for the pillars.

7. As in Gray, I & II Kings, p. 186. See also M. Greenberg, "Religion, Stability, and Ferment," in A. Malamat, ed., Age of the Monarchies, World History of the Jewish People, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Jewish History Publications, 1979), pp. 86-87; S. G. F. Brandon, Man and God in Art and Ritual (New York: Scribner's, 1975), p. 107; and H. H. Rowley, Worship in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), p. 81.

8. The importance of the temple in legitimizing the political organization of the monarchy has long been recognized. However, the dynamics of such legitimization are now being examined and explicated in a particularly useful way as the result of current appreciation of the social-scientific approach to biblical studies. See, for example, the work of J. Lundquist, "The Legitimizing Role of the Temple in the Origin of the State," Society of Biblical Literature seminar paper, 1982.

9. Compare the description in R. B. Y. Scott, "Jerusalem Temple," Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible 4:535-37.

10. See the calculations of L. Waterman, "The Treasuries of Solomon's Private Chapel," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 6 (1947): 161-63.

11. For a useful discussion of the term "temple" for "House of Yahweh," see M. Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), pp. 13-15; and "Temples and Cultic Open Areas as Reflected in the Bible," Temples and High Places in Biblical Times, ed. A. Biran (Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College, 1981), pp. 31-36.

12. Gray (I & II Kings, p. 175) believes that this combination-three stone courses plus one wooden course—was repeated several times to achieve a greater height. However, such a notion ignores the identity of 'u/dm construction with court construction.

13. See the discussion of that heavenly dwelling by D. N. Freedman, who associates it with Sinai/Horeb ("Temple Without Hands," Temples and High Places in Biblical Times, pp. 21-30).

14. The 'uldm, as we have already noted, is precisely the element of the divine residence not included in the tabernacle description, which presents a movable tent shrine. For the relationship between tabernacle and temple, see F. M. Cross, "The Priestly Tabernacle in the Light of Recent Research," Temples and High Places in Biblical Times, pp. 169-80.

15. As S. Yeivin contends ("Jachin and Boaz," Palestine Exploration Quarterly 91 [1959]: 1-15).


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16. The dimensions of the Tainat building are 13 m. x 25 m. 17. As Haran (Temple Service, 224-26) points out, the whole sphere of

temple ritual, which constitutes a "single organic whole," was part of the "sole prerogative of the high priest." The people and the rest of the priestly functionaries may have known to varying degrees what existed and what took place within the temple proper, but they never witnessed it themselves.

18. Greenberg, "Religion, Stability, and Ferment," pp. 86-89. It is to be noted, however, that inasmuch as the temple was part of a larger royal or palace complex, the "public" may have been normally limited to the officials and functionaries who had regular access to and business in this complex.

19. See the various modern scholarly reconstructions (such as Wright-Stevens, Molenbrink, Busink, etc.), which are reproduced in Meyers, "The Elusive Temple," pp. 34, 38, 39. The fortress-like quality of the building is not unrelated to its capacity as treasury and storehouse.

20. B. Goldman (Sacred Portal [Detroit: Wayne State, 1966], pp. 69-100) presents a convenient synopsis of the range of such depictions as well as an analysis of their symbolism.

21. For example, B. Buchanan, Cyftnder Seals, Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), pp. 61-65, especially nos. 345-47.

22. E. Strommeyer and M. Hirmer, Art of Mesopotamia (New York: Abrams, n.d.), plates 17, 20/21, 23.

23. E. Akurgal, Art of the Hittites (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1962), pi. 45; Yeivin, "Jachin and Boaz," figs. 1, 2, 3.

24. See G. E. Mendenhall, Tenth Generation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1973), pp. 187-91; M. Liverani, "The Ideology of the Assyrian Empire," in M. T. Larsen, ed., Power and Propaganda, Mesopotamia, vol. 7 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1979), p. 301; and A. Soggin, "The Davidic-Solomomc Kingdom,'' Israelite and Judean History, eds. J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), p. 377.

25. See the general discussion of S. N. Eisenstadt, "Observation and Queries about Sociological Aspects of Imperialism in the Ancient World," Power and Propaganda, pp. 21-33.

26. Liverani, "Ideology," pp. 301-2. 27. R. D. Barnett, "Bringing God into the Temple," Temples and High

Places in Biblical Times, pp. 10-13. 28. Barnett shows this for Hittite and neo-Hittite sites in Syria and southern

Anatolia, as well as for the Assyrians and Sumerians ("Bringing God into the Temple," pp. 12-15).

29. Soggin, "Davidic-Solomonic Kingdom," pp. 367-69. See also F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 237-38; and "Priestly Tabernacle," pp. 175-77.

30. Cross, Canaanite Myth, pp. 232-34, 240-41; and "Priestly Tabernacle," pp. 174-75.


31. Cross, Canaanite Myth, pp. 232-34, 240-41. 32. T. Ishida, The Royal Dynasties in Ancient Israel (Berlin: de Gruyter,

1977), pp. 130-35, cf. p. 146. 33. This can be compared with the erection of Baal's temple, described in R.

J. Clifford, "The Temple in Ugaritic Myth," Symposia, ed. F. M. Cross (Cambridge: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1977), pp. 137-45. Baal's military victories, stages one and two, are analogous to David's accomplishments; and stages three and four can be related to Solomon's actions.

For a discussion of the Davidic covenant and its relationship to Solomonic rule see Cross, Canaanite Myth, pp. 219-65; Ishida, Royal Dynasties, pp. 80-117; and G. Widengren, "King and Covenant," Journal of Semitic Studies 2 (1957): 7-10, 21-24.

34. See Liverani's description ("Ideology," pp. 297-99) of the role of ideology in the exploitation created by imperial control.

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9 The Temple and the Synagogue

Shaye J. D. Cohen

It is sometimes taught that the synagogue in Jewish architecture and ritual is a surrogate temple. In this paper Shaye Cohen draws important contrasts between the two structures, and between the two Jerusalem temples. He also shows that the synagogue has provided a democratization of the priestly functions formerly reserved for the temple. In this spirit, one interpretation congenial to the Restoration movement would be that the eventual messianic temple, while making available again the full spectrum of the priestly functions (including sacrifices by the "Sons of Levi"), will also open up to every worthy person, male or female, the privileges, rights (and rites), and ceremonial enactments which in ancient days were performed, in effect, by proxy only, by the one high priest on Yom Kippur; and that eventually the same privileges will be made available to the whole human family, and on the same principle: by proxy.

T.G.M.

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My topic was suggested to me unknowingly by Truman Madsen, who in the letter of invitation sent along copies of

two articles by Professor Nibley. They are "Christian Envy of the Temple" 1 and "What Is a Temple?" 2 It was while reading those two articles that I began to ponder the relationship of the synagogue to the temple. Although I do not fully accept Professor Nibley's conclusions, his work stimulated me to prepare my article.

One of the developments which characterize post-biblical Judaism and distinguish it from the religion of biblical Israel is the growth of the synagogue. Biblical Israel had a temple, a priestly caste, and a sacrificial cult like those of its Near Eastern neighbors. Post-biblical Judaism maintained these institutions while it invented and perfected a different institution. The synagogue, unlike the temple, is a Jewish invention, a contribution of inestimable importance to the subsequent history of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic people.

However, the origin of the synagogue is unknown and, unless we are graced by some new discoveries equal in magnitude to the Dead Sea Scrolls, unknowable. The widely accepted theory that the synagogue originated during the Babylonian exile as a replacement for the Jerusalem temple which had been destroyed in 587 B.C.E. is, I admit, plausible and attractive, but it is also unsubstantiated and overly simplistic. It is unsubstantiated because it is supported by nothing whatsoever, not a bit of evidence. The only thing supporting it is its inherent plausibility, but plausibility alone is inadequate support. The theory is also simplistic because it assigns to a single time and place the origin of a most complex institution. Our earliest bona fide reference to a synagogue is from upper Egypt in the third century B.C.E., where it is called a proseuche in Greek. Proseuche means prayer. Presumably "prayer (house)" should be understood. Our earliest Judean synagogue is the Jerusalem synagogue of Theodotus, which was erected "for the reading of the law and the teaching of the commandments" (first century B.C.E.). Reading of the law, teaching of the commandments—no reference at all to prayer. We know, too, that synagogues often served as assembly halls or

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The Temple and the Synagogue

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community centers, much as the temple itself occasionally did. Hence the synagogue is an amalgamation of three separate institutions: a prayer house, a study hall or school, and a community center. The time and place in which this amalgamation was effected are as unknown to us as are the origins of each of the three separate institutions which comprise the whole. 3 Even after the destruction of the second temple in the year 70 C.E., the amalgamation was not always complete. The Rabbis regularly distinguish synagogues, bate kenesiyot, from schools, bate midrashot, although they occasionally study in the former and pray in the latter. Hence, as I said, the origin of the synagogue is really unknown and unknowable.

However, my interest here is not the history of institutions but the history of ideology. I shall attempt here to answer two sets of questions. First: How did the Jews of antiquity see the synagogue? How did they assess its relationship with the Jerusalem temple? What kind of sanctity did they ascribe to it? In sum, was the synagogue considered a second-best institution, a poor replacement of, or addition to, the temple, totally dependent upon it and its cult for its sanctity and legitimacy? Or, was it regarded as something independent, as an autonomous institution endowed with its own importance and worth?

The second set of questions I hope to discuss: Did synagogue practice, that is, prayer and Torah study, affect Jewish attitudes toward the temple? Did the temple lose any of its centrality or importance as a result of "competition" with the synagogue?

Having posed these two sets of questions, I confess immediately that I cannot answer them, or at least I cannot answer them satisfactorily. Why? To do so would necessitate a study not only of the contrast between the temple and the synagogue, but also of the contrasts between prayer and sacrifice and between Torah study and sacrifice. We would have to look at literary texts as well as archaeological data, especially inscriptions and synagogue art. We would have to distinguish pre-70 C.E. evidence, that is, evidence from the time of the second temple, from post-70 C.E. evidence. We would have to distinguish Babylonian from Palestinian from "Hellenistic." We would have


to distinguish Tannaitic from Amoraic, Rabbinic from non-Rabbinic, and so forth. The ideology of the synagogue has not yet been studied on this basis, and I am not about to attempt such a study here. What I would like to do is to propose answers to these two sets of questions, all the while admitting that everything I am going to say is susceptible to ampnfication and, I'm sorry to report, correction.

A synagogue differs from the temple in three crucial areas: place, cult, and personnel. Let us look at each of these separately. We will first consider the differences in place. According to Deuteronomy, profane slaughter was permitted anywhere in the land of Israel, while sacred slaughter could be performed only at one unnamed place, which the Lord had chosen and in which He had placed His name.4 For Deuteronomic thinkers this site was the sacred center not only for sacrifices but for prayer as well, since God would surely hearken to the prayers of both Israelites and Gentiles when offered toward or at that place. For example, in 1 Kings 8, after building an ornate slaughterhouse, King Solomon offers a long invocatory prayer which speaks only about prayer toward or at the temple and says nothing about the sacrificial cult. During the second temple period, all Jews regarded Jerusalem as this holy center, as the mother city of the Jewish people, and regarded the temple as the center of the center, as the navel of the earth, and as God's throne, the very symbol of the entire cosmos.5 Later, although the Deuteronomic restrictions did not apply outside the land of Israel, the Diaspora Jews apparently refrained from building temples, according instead a sole respect to the temple in Jerusalem. In contrast to all this, of course, is the synagogue, which was not hampered by Deuteronomic theology. Synagogues were built throughout the Greco-Roman world in both Palestine and the Diaspora, both before the destruction of the temple and after it. Synagogues were not built in holy places. They were built anywhere and everywhere: even a private home could be converted into a synagogue. Surely these humble structures were not cosmic centers in any sense of the term.

The second distinction is that of cult. The cult of the temple was sacrifice. What does that mean? The slaughter, roasting, and

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eating of animals. It was a very bloody affair; as the Rabbis state, "It is a glory for the sons of Aaron that they walk in blood up to their ankles." 6 Prayer had no official place in this cult. Neither Leviticus nor Numbers nor Deuteronomy nor Ezekiel nor the Temple Scroll nor Philo nor Josephus nor anyone else, as far as I can determine, mentions prayer as an integral and statutory part of the sacrificial cult. The cult is silent, except for the squeals of the animals. Of course, in times of need people prayed, and where else would they pray if not at the central shrine? But these prayers were private petitions, not parts of the sacrificial cult. Similarly the hymns of praise to God sung by the Levites always remained in the background.7 In contrast, the synagogue cult is bloodless (those who attend modern synagogues might say it's lifeless, but I won't discuss that), consisting of Torah study and prayer.

We now turn to personnel, my third distinction. The sacrificial cult was carried out on behalf of the Jews by the priests. The actual administrations, that is, the slaughter, the roasting, and much of the eating, were performed only by the priests. Lay Israelites were not allowed even to enter the sacred precincts, let alone to minister before the Lord. The welfare of Israel thus depended upon the piety and punctiliousness of the priesthood, a hereditary aristocracy. The synagogue, in contrast, was a lay institution par exce//ence. Torah study and prayer were virtues to be cultivated by every Israelite (i .e. , every male Israelite). No clergy mediated between the people and their God. "Teachers" and "heads of synagogues" were titles and professions open to all (including women).

Let us now conceptualize these three differences between the temple and the synagogue. If we focus on the first difference, place, we would conclude that the crucial tension between the temple and the synagogue is the tension between the one and the many, between monism and pluralism, one sacred place versus any place. If we focus on the second and third differences, cult and personnel, we would conclude that the crucial tension between the temple and the synagogue is the tension between aristocracy and democracy, between elitism and populism. Is it a cult by the people or for the people? Do the people perform the


cult, or is it performed for them? Is there mediation by a pedigreed elite or not? These tensions, that is, monism versus pluralism and democracy versus aristocracy, are closely related but are not identical. The struggle between the central shrine and the local altars (outlined by the book of Kings), those bamot which are always said not to have disappeared from the land, was a struggle between monism and pluralism, not between elitism and populism. Even bamot had priests. The prophetic tirades against the sacrificial cult and on behalf of personal morality and piety can be interpreted as attempts to democratize Israelite religion, although the prophets were certainly not in favor of local shrines. It was possible, too, for one to believe in the uniqueness of the sacred center, the sole place where heaven and earth meet, while also supporting an unmediated cult of mass participation. There is no inherent contradiction. Deuteronomy, the book which enjoins the centralization of the cult, is also the book which enjoins upon every Israelite the constant study of the words of God. This Deuteronomic ideal was to be one of the powerful forces which democratized Israelite religion and helped it to become post-biblical Judaism. The author of Deuteronomy, not appreciating the full impact of his injunction, still supported a sacrificial cult. Hence in Deuteronomy we have centralization of the cult (monism) combined with individual study (incipient democratization). The book of Lamentations bemoans the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 587 B.C.E. The author is distraught over the loss of the symbol of God's divine protection and love for Israel. He is not, however, perturbed by the loss of the sacrificial cult. Not once does he ask how he will atone for his sins without the blood of rams. Not once does he cry out that he cannot find favor in God's eyes because the altar is no longer. Here is a man for whom the sacred center was essential, while the sacrificial cult apparently was not. I shall argue shortly that ambivalence of this sort characterizes large segments of both second temple and Rabbinic Jewry.

During the second temple period it was easy to entertain ambivalent ideas on the centrality of the temple and its cult. The beginnings of the second temple were most inauspicious. Jeremiah had predicted that the return from Babylon to Israel

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would be more magnificent than the exodus from Egypt; the new redemption would completely eclipse the old one. 8 But this did not come to pass. Instead, a pagan king issued an edict allowing the Jews to return to their homeland and to rebuild their temple. No Davidic king, no miracles, no glory, no political freedom, just an edict issued by the Persian bureaucracy in the name of Cyrus the Great. Was this the return promised by the Lord? Many Jews objected. An anonymous prophet whom we call II Isaiah (whom some people call I Isaiah) scolded them.

Shame on him who argues with his maker. Though naught but a potsherd of earth. Shall the clay say to the potter, "what are you begetting?" or a woman, "what are you bearing?" Thus said the Lord, Israel's holy one and maker. Will you question me on the destiny of my children? Will you instruct me about the work of my hands? It was I who made the earth and created man upon it. My own hands stretched out of the heavens and I marshalled all their host. It was I who roused him (Cyrus the Great) for victory, and who level all roads for him. He shall rebuild my city and let my exiled people go. 9

God, the creator of the world, is the boss. He does with his creation as he sees fit. Once upon a time, as Jeremiah said, he appointed his servant or vassal (ebed) Nebuchadnezzar to destroy the temple. 1 0 Now, Isaiah says, God has appointed Cyrus an anointed one, 1 1 a step above a vassal, to rebuild the temple. Can the Jews argue with their maker? Of course not. Let the Jews accept the divine decree. Similarly, the author of the book of Ezra insists that Cyrus' kindness to the Jews was motivated not by any selfish or personal desires, but by inspiration from God, thereby fulfilling Jeremiah's prophecy of redemption.1 2

But these attempts convinced few. Since fire did not descend from heaven upon the newly reconstructed altar, how could the Jews be sure the new temple and its cult found favor before the Lord? 1 3 The old men who had seen the majesty and the glory of the first temple shed tears at the dedication of the second—not tears of joy, but tears of sadness.14

Matters soon became worse. Prophecy ceased. The Urim and


Thummim fell into disuse. Later, corruption spread among the priesthood. A pagan king entered the holy precincts, plundered the treasury, and sacrificed swine on the altar and established idols in the temple, all the while persecuting the Jews and proscribing Judaism. Never before had such atrocities occurred. Was this God's holy temple? Ultimately the temple was regained and the altar was rebuilt, but still no fire from heaven, no miracles, no explicit sign that God approved the doings of men, and no Davidic king. Even the high priests were no longer legitimate high priests; they were regular priests who usurped the leadership (the Maccabees). Less than a century before its destruction, the temple suffered the ignominy of being rebuilt by Herod the Great, a half-Jew and a complete madman, who incorporated pagan decorations in the structure.

The Rabbis summed this up very nicely when they said, "The second temple had five things less than the first temple." That is, the first temple had five things more than the second temple. What were they? "The sacred fire, the ark, the urim and thummim, the oil for anointment, and the Holy Spirit (prophecy)." 1 5

Yet, in spite of all this, many Jews of the second temple period were content with the cult and the priesthood. After all, the temple was still the temple. The priests were the priests. Nor was this attitude restricted to the temple clergy itself. For how else can we explain the multitudes of the faithful who journeyed to Jerusalem every year at each of the three pilgrim festivals? How else can we explain the prominence accorded to the sacrificial cult by such diverse writers as Philo, Josephus (who, I admit, was a priest), and the authors of the Sibylline Oracles?16 These Jews supplemented the sacrificial cult with other modes of piety. But these other modes were supplements, not replacements. Josephus, for example, boasts that all Jews are learned in the law and declares that Jews regularly pray to God to acknowledge all the bounteous gifts of the divine. 1 7 But at no point does he even hint that either Torah study or prayer are replacements for, or subservient to, the sacrificial cult. They exist alongside each other. Philo, too, has the same attitude.18

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For many Jews, however, the temple was too blemished for such unquestioning allegiance. A few radical Jews, inspired either by one strand of biblical thought (viz., that God cannot be contained by the heavens, let alone by a temple) or by Greek philosophy (Zeno believed that no temple could ever be sacred since no man-made building could be worthy of the gods), or by a combination of the two, argued that God does not require a temple at all—that the entire cosmos is God's throne.1 9 A more common attitude was condemnation of the current temple and cult combined with a hope, which I assume was shared even by those who supported the cult, for the restoration of a new and perfect temple in the future. The condemnation and the hope were expressed in different ways and had different implications among the various Jewish groups. For some the second temple was impure from its very inception; even the sacrifices of Zerubbabel and Joshua the High Priest were profane.2 0 For others, the profanation of the temple was of more recent vintage, since the time of the Maccabees and Antiochus Epiphanes. Some, like the Essenes, concluded that the temple was much too impure for their participation in its cult, while others, like some of the early Christians, felt that the impurity was not as great as that. (According to Acts many Christians spent their day sitting in the temple; and Paul, after returning from Asia Minor, showed his loyalty to the law by sacrificing at the temple.) For the future, some groups could imagine nothing more glorious than a new temple, a new priesthood, and the proper observance of the sacrifices and the festivals. Such was the intention of the Temple Scroll, which gives elaborate instructions for the performance of the festival sacrifices. I assume, as Professor Milgrom does, that this scroll is a blueprint for the ideal future, and the ideal future is a world based on the temple cult. Most visionaries, however, spoke more generally about a new temple which would descend from heaven in a future era; they did not specify or stress the nature of the cult in that temple. Some spoke of a New Jerusalem rather than a new temple, 2 1 and one wonders whether the New Jerusalem necessarily had at its center a temple with a sacrificial cult. At least one visionary proclaimed explicitly, "And I did not


see a temple in her (the heavenly Jerusalem descending from heaven to earth) for the Lord God, the ruler of all is her temple. " 2 2

In the meantime, before the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem and/or the heavenly temple, what was one to do? Given the fact that the temple and the sacrificial cult were presently imperfect, how could one find favor with God? Various attempts were made to find substitutes for the sacrificial cult. Some said that contrition and humility were worthy substitutes. " W e have at this time no prince, prophet, leader, burnt offering, sacrifice, oblations, incense, no place to make an offering before thee or to find mercy. Yet, with a contrite heart and humble spirit may we be accepted as though it were with burnt offerings of rams and bulls and tens of thousands of fat lambs." 2 3 These words are placed in the mouth of someone who supposedly lived after the destruction of the first temple and before the construction of the second, but presumably this text reflects an ideology current in the author's own day (second century B.C.E.?), when the second temple was standing quite soundly on its foundation. Similarly, in good prophetic fashion, other authors argued that fear of the Lord, charity, and performance of the commandments were replacements for the cult.2 4 However, I know of no text from the second temple period which declares either Torah study or prayer to be the equivalent of, or the replacements for, the sacrificial cult. Psalm 119 elevates Torah study to an ideal, but does not compare it to the sacrifices. Deuteronomy enjoins the study of the law so that the Israelite would know how to fulfill the commandments. In Psalm 119 Torah study is not a means but an end. The study of the law is a mode of worship. One finds favor with God by immersing himself in the words of the Torah. Does that replace the sacrificial cult? Not a hint, not a hint. Various texts refer to the practice of coordinating prayer with the times of the sacrifices,25

but it is unclear to me whether this indicates a conception of prayer as a surrogate for sacrifice, or rather the idea that the times ordained by God for sacrifice were also propitious for prayer. In any case, surrogates were found for the sacrificial cult: humility, contrition, charity, or fear of the Lord, if not Torah study and prayer.

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And if surrogates could be found for the cult, could they not be found for the temple as well? It is likely that both sects and synagogues, whose interrelationship remains unexplored, were regarded by their adherents as replacements for the polluted and imperfect temple. Many sects, notably Christians, Essenes, and Pharisees, transferred to themselves—each sect in its own distinctive way—at least some of the laws and ideology of the temple. The corporate brotherhood, the encampment of the sectarians or the table of the group, became the new temple and the new altar. Were synagogues, too, regarded as replacements for the temple? An affirmative answer is almost inevitable, although no text of the second temple period equates Torah study and prayer with the temple cult, or the synagogue with the temple. In fact, few second temple sources even speak about synagogues. Both Philo and Josephus mention the synagogue, but neither attempts to give its history or its ideology. Their praise of prayer and study does not extend to the institution in which these practices took place. Few works of the so-called Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha even mention the synagogue, and not a single work of the Dead Sea Scrolls.26 This reticence concerning the synagogue allows me to return to my theme and to put these pieces together.

During the second temple period the Israelitic religion was democratized. Professor Milgrom spoke about that not too long ago. Torah study, prayer and performance of the commandments by the individual Jew became the distinguishing characteristics of Judaism. Reward and punishment, life after death, immortality of the soul, final judgment—all these beliefs were individualized as the individual Jew became more distinct from the corporate body of Israel. Sect and synagogue ministered to this need for individual self-expression and self-fulfillment. These ideas are the wave of the present and the future. Against all this stood the temple and the sacrificial cult, both based on the idea that the few perform the religion on behalf of the many. Not only were these the waves of the past, but they were, even on their own terms, imperfect and blemished. Hence for many Jews, new ways of serving God supplemented and/or replaced the old ways of the temple and the sacri-


ficial cult, so much so that we cannot assume that all eschatological visions included a place for the sacrificial cult. In fact, few such visions emphasize or describe in detail the sacrificial cults of the future. (The temple scroll is a notable exception.)

However, the temple had one great advantage which neither the synagogue nor the school nor the sect nor prayer nor humility nor anything else could ever hope to duplicate. The temple was located on the one sacred place on Mount Moriah, where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, where Jacob saw a ladder reaching into heaven, and where the angel of the Lord commanded David to build an altar.27 It was the meeting place of heaven and earth, the center of the cosmos, the symbol of the cosmos, the visible presence of God's oneness. As Josephus says in a rhyme which I assume he learned in the Sunday School of his time, "One temple for the one God . " 2 8 Any institution which upset this unity and which was not established on this sacred center was not part of the Jewish ideal. Hence synagogues and sects, by their very nature, are impermanent and imperfect institutions which have no share in the world to come. According to many texts of the second temple period, God has in the heavens a temple and/or a Jerusalem prepared for the delectation of his faithful, but he does not have a heavenly synagogue or a heavenly sect. Synagogues and sects represent the breakdown of unity and the departure from unanimity, yet monism and unanimity are the proofs of Judaism's truth.29 Hence in the ideology of second temple Judaism, the sacrificial cult could be supplemented or replaced by democratic alternatives, but the temple could never be replaced. As a result, no one cared to talk much about sects or synagogues.

The Rabbis inherited these ideas as part of their legacy from second temple Judaism, and they, too, maintained an ambivalent and complex attitude toward the sacrificial cult and the temple, both of which were destroyed in 70 C.E. The entire Rabbinic enterprise is predicated on the democratic assumptions mentioned earlier which are diametrically opposed to those of the sacrificial cult. Rabbinic Jews find God through prayer, Torah study, mystical speculation, and the continuous performance of the commandments, notably the commandments of Shabbat and

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festivals, purity, tithing, food laws, and ethical behavior. All of these are personal and unmediated, and all of them (except mystical speculation) were incumbent upon every male Jew. The relationship of this Rabbinic piety to the sacrificial cult, which most Rabbis believed would be restored in the Messianic era, was never worked out systematically.30 After all, the Rabbis never worked out anything systematically. Nonetheless, they always held that Torah study was at least equal, if not superior, to the sacrificial cult. Prayer, however, is in a different category, and here we find three attitudes:

1. Prayer is a religious obligation which exists independently of the sacrificial cult. The presence or absence of the cult does not affect it.

2. Prayer is a second-rate replacement for the sacrificial cult. Without the cult, Israel has difficulty finding atonement for its sins. Hence it yearns for the restoration of the cult, which will bring it normalcy and security.

3. Prayer is a first-rate replacement for the sacrificial cult, perhaps even better than the original. The logical outgrowth of this position is the idea that the temple of the age to come does not necessarily have to have a sacrificial cult.

We see in these three attitudes echoes of the views held by the Jews of the second temple period. The sole Rabbinic innovation, as far as I can see, was the elevation of Torah study and prayer to that prophetic list of equivalents or replacements for the sacrificial cult. Just like their ancestors, the Rabbis did not endow the synagogue with an independent existence. They, too, regarded it as a poor surrogate for the temple and accorded it no role in the world to come. For the Rabbis, prayer versus sacrifice and Torah study versus sacrifice were real issues. Synagogue versus temple was not.

Having presented a summary of the Rabbinic position, I would like now to elaborate upon it briefly. It is often said that Judaism's will and spirit were devastated by the destruction of the temple, particularly by the cessation of the sacrificial cult. This view is usually supported by the following two Rabbinic stories.

Once as Rabban Johanan ben Zokkai was coming forth from


Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed after him and beheld the temple in ruins. " W o unto us," Rabbi Joshua cried, "that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned, is laid waste!" " M y son," Rabban Johanan said to him, "be not grieved; we have another atonement as effective as this." "And what is it?" "It is acts of loving kindness. As it is said, 'for I desire mercy and not sacrifice.' " 3 1

After the destruction of the temple, perushim (ascetics or separatists) who would neither eat meat nor drink wine became numerous in Israel. Rabbi Joshua met them and inquired, " M y sons, why don't you eat meat?" They replied,"Shall we eat meat when the continual sacrifice, which used to be offered every day on the altar, is no longer?" He then asked, "Why don't you drink wine?'' They responded, "Shall we drink wine, which used to be poured on the altar as a libation, and is no longer?" He said to them, "Even figs and grapes we should not eat because from them they used to bring the first fruits on the Azereth [Pentecost]; bread we should not eat, because they used to bring two loaves and the bread of the presence, water we should not drink because they used to pour libations at Sukkoth [Tabernacles]." The perushim were silent. Rabbi Joshua said to them, "Not to mourn at all [for the destruction of the temple] is impossible. To mourn excessively is impossible. But thus the sages have said, A man plasters his house, but leaves a little bit unplastered as a memorial for Jerusalem.' " 3 2 In other words, just as Jeremiah wrote to the Jews in Babylonia, normalcy must be maintained, but we must never forget what happened.

The historicity of these stories I do not wish to judge here. But even if they are historical as written, they do not indicate a widespread belief among the Jews of the time that they were at a loss how to proceed after the sacrificial cult had been removed. The second story is said explicitly to concern only the perushim, a small group separate from the main religious body of Israel. Furthermore, their asceticism was prompted, not by their inability to obtain atonement, but by their feeling that it was not right for man to sup upon meat and wine while the Lord's table, the altar, was destroyed. The first story is more germane to our

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discussion, but more striking than the anguished cry of Rabbi Joshua (the same Rabbi Joshua who knew very well how to handle the separatists) is Rabban Johanan's hackneyed response. The Master merely paraphrases Hosea: deeds of loving-kindness replace the sacrifices. Indeed, if Rabbi Joshua was satisfied with this reply, the wonder is that he didn't think of it on his own. Rabban Johanan's statement is just another in the long chain of statements, beginning with the prophets and the book of Psalms, which declare some virtue or other to be equal or superior to the sacrifices. Rabban Johanan leaves out the truly revolutionary Rabbinic response to the catastrophe of 70 C.E.-the elevation of Torah study and prayer. Hence this isolated exchange is not real evidence for a deep-seated religious crisis among Rabbinic Jews after the destruction of the second temple.

Indeed, like the author of Lamentations, the Rabbis of the Tannaitic period 3 3 and the authors of the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch and IV Ezra were distressed more by the loss of Jerusalem and the loss of the temple, the visible signs of God's presence in Israel, than by the loss of the sacrificial cult.

Presumably, the sacrificial cult had been supplemented or replaced for so long that its loss was not as devastating as it might have been. The Rabbis of the Tannaitic period, of course, hoped and expected that the sacrificial cult would be restored-indeed, one-sixth of the Mishnah is devoted to the laws of the sacrificial cult-but they did not sense a need to find an immediate replacement for the cult. Life could go on without sacrifices. It is even questionable whether the petition for the restoration of the sacrifices figures as prominently in the prayers of the Tannaim as it does in the liturgy of the following generation.34 As I have already indicated, the real Rabbinic response to 70 C.E. is not the hackneyed declaration of Rabban Johanan but the affirmation that prayer and Torah study have as great a worth as the sacrifices of old, not as their replacement but as their equivalent or supplement. The classic statement of this view is in the Tannaitic commentary to Deuteronomy 11:13. "To love the Lord your God and to serve Him. This is Torah study. . . . Just as the sacrificial cult is called 'service' (Abodati), so too is Torah study


called 'service' (Abodah). Another opinion: 'to serve Him' is prayer. . . . Just as the sacrificial cult is called 'service' (Abodah), so too prayer is called 'service' (Abodah)."35 Presumably, these Rabbis believed that the Messianic future held in store a sacrificial cult, combined in some mysterious way with prayer and Torah study, since all three are means of serving the Lord.

It was during the Amoraic period (200-500 C.E.), as the temple receded further into the past, as the prospects of restoration grew dimmer and dimmer and nostalgia for the good old days increased, that the loss of the temple and the sacrificial cult was felt more keenly than before. Rabbi Eleazer declared: "Since the day the temple was destroyed, the gates of prayer have been locked. Since the day the temple was destroyed an iron wall has separated Israel from their Father in Heaven." 3 6 During this period the Rabbis were much more eager than they had been previously to find substitutes for the sacrificial cult, and the most commonly proposed substitute now was prayer. Now, for the first time, the Rabbis disputed the origin of the statutory prayers. According to one school of thought, they were established by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that is, they have an independent existence, just as the Tannaim has assumed. According to another school of thought, they correspond to, or derive from, the different offerings of the sacrificial cult. This view prevailed.3 7

The sacrificial cult was the norm, the only true and effective mode of reaching God, while prayer was its inadequate, temporary, and unavoidable replacement. Paradoxically enough, this attitude was enshrined in the liturgy, which explicitly declared itself to be a poor substitute for the real thing. The last phrase of Hosea 14:3, a phrase which I cannot translate into English because it is woefully obscure and probably corrupt, was understood by the Rabbis to mean that prayer should be offered in lieu of sacrifice, and the phrase was inserted into the liturgy. Since the Rabbis declared that he who studies the scriptural passages concerning the sacrifices and meditates upon the laws of the sacrificial cult is regarded by God as if he had brought a burnt offering, these verses and laws were incorporated in the liturgy

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also. 3 8 Rabbi Sheshet used to pray on the evening after a fast day, "Lord of the world, when the temple was standing, one who sinned offered a sacrifice of which only the fat and the blood were taken on the altar, and thereby his sins were forgiven. I have fasted today, and through this fasting my blood and my fat have been decreased. Deign to look upon the part of my blood and my fat which I have lost through my fasting as if I had offered it to thee on the altar, and forgive my sins in return." 3 9 It is in this spirit, I think, that we should understand the Amoraic dicta which declare, "He who moves his bowels, washes his hands, dons the phylacteries and recites the shma [in other words, he who follows the norms of Rabbinic piety and hygiene every morning of his life] is regarded as if he had built an altar and brought an offering upon it," or which declare,"He who prays in the synagogue is regarded as if he had brought a pure offering," or which equate Torah study and other Rabbinic virtues with the sacrificial cult.4 0 The norm, the standard of comparison, remains the cult. According to this view, when the temple is rebuilt and the sacrificial cult restored in the Messianic era, prayer would have little function, although I doubt that the Rabbis imagined it would be eliminated completely any more than they imagined that Torah study and humility would disappear in the age to come. 4 1

For some Jews, however, Rabbinic piety was not only a replacement of the sacrificial cult-it was superior to the original. "Torah study is greater than the continual offerings." God told King David, according to one legend, that He took more pleasure in one day of King David's Torah study than he would take from the thousand holocausts which Solomon would offer on the altar. Another quotation: "He who studies the Torah has no need for any of the sacrifices." Similarly, humility and charity were said to be equivalent to all the sacrifices put together.42 Prayer, too, was magnified and sanctified. One Rabbi stated explicitly that prayer was greater than the sacrifices, greater, in fact, than good deeds. In this spirit a late Rabbinic homily narrates that "Moses foresaw through the Holy Spirit that the temple would be destroyed and that the offerings of the first fruits would cease. He


arose and enacted that the Jews should pray three times a day because prayer is dearer to the Holy One, blessed be He, than are good deeds and all the sacrifices.'' A logical conclusion from such views is that there was no need in the future for the return of the sacrificial cult. After all, we already have something better. An explicit acknowledgment of this idea we find in another late Rabbinic homily: "Sacrifices are practiced only below (on earth), while charity and the commandments are practiced both below and above (in heaven). Sacrifices are practiced only in this world, while charity and the commandments are practiced in this world and in the world to come." 4 3 This attitude proved congenial to many Jewish philosophers, notably Maimonides.

I have discussed here three different Rabbinic attitudes towards the relationship between the sacrificial cult on the one hand and prayer and Rabbinic piety generally on the other. We must not imagine that these attitudes were fully systematized and clearly articulated. Nor should we attempt to reconcile the contradictory attitudes. The same Rabbi might have preached in the synagogue one morning that Torah study was infinitely superior to the sacrificial cult, and then have proceeded to pray that the cult should be restored. This ambivalence, the legacy of the second temple period, was sharpened by the interplay between the sense of loss caused by the destruction of the temple and the realization that the entire Rabbinic enterprise is antithetical to a sacrificial cult. What is important for us here is that the Rabbis attempted to democratize the cult for both the present and the future. According to two of the three views sketched here, Rabbinic piety is not a second-rate replacement for the sacrificial cult: it is an end in itself, a permanent and successful way of bridging the gap between man and God—so successful, in fact, that some Jews believe that it would replace the sacrificial cult in the age to come.

Missing from all this is the synagogue. Missing from this entire discussion of replacements for and supplements to the sacrificial cult is the very institution which houses prayer and Torah study. Again, following the legacy of second temple times, the Rabbis do not bestow on the synagogue an independent ideology. The little sanctity which the synagogue has derives from two sources: the

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fact that it is a pale imitation of the temple, and the fact that sacred activities are conducted within its precincts. Let us examine these two points briefly.

Synagogues obviously are a reflex of the temple in Jerusalem. The ancient names for the synagogue include many which originally applied to the temple. 4 4 The Rabbis legislated that doors of a synagogue must face east, just as the doors of the temple faced east, and archaeologists have uncovered synagogues whose doors do, in fact, face east. The Rabbis also legislated that synagogues must be built on the highest point of the city, presumably to mimic the temple, which was built on the highest mountain of Jerusalem. Congregational prayer in the synagogue was declared akin to offering a sacrifice.

In sum, the Rabbis had good reason to mistranslate Ezekiel 11:16. "And I have become to them (the exiles) a diminished sanctity in the countries whither they have gone," as " I shall be for them a miniature temple." "Diminished sanctity" has become "miniature temple," that is, the synagogue and the school.45 But the synagogue's status as a miniature temple does not confer upon it any autonomous sanctity or legitimacy. On the contrary, the transference of temple imagery and terminology to the synagogue indicates that the latter is an imperfect representation of the former. The temple is the ideal. Thus, according to Rabbinic legislation the doors of the synagogue face east, but when one prays he orients himself toward Jerusalem irrespective of the doors. Why? Because he faces the one holy site, the ideal center, oblivious to the fact that the imperfect but necessary structure which protects him from the rays of the sun is oriented in a different direction.46 Unlike the temple, whose site remains holy forever, even after its destruction, a synagogue building has no inherent sanctity in Rabbinic law. Indeed, according to one opinion in the Mishna, it could even be converted into a bathhouse.47 This law demonstrates that the sanctity of the synagogue derives from the fact that the building is used for sacred purposes. When such use ceases, so does the sanctity. Hence, many Rabbinic passages which speak of the shekhinah (the divine presence) in the synagogue do so while referring to the prayer and the study conducted by the Jews. These actions, not


the building or the place or the institution, confer sanctity. For example, "Rabbi Judan said in the name of Rabbi Isaac, whenever the Jews assemble in synagogues and schools, the Holy One blessed be He assembles his shekhinah with them." 4 8

The synagogue's status as a second-rate institution is clear again from Rabbinic eschatology. Like their ancestors in the second temple period, the Rabbis speak of a heavenly temple, a heavenly Jerusalem, a heavenly court, and a heavenly Sanhedrin. To this list they add a heavenly altar, a heavenly academy, and a heavenly school. But nowhere, neither in their mystical speculations nor in their musings about the end of days nor in the apocalyptic texts of the sixth and seventh centuries, do the Rabbis refer to a heavenly synagogue.4 9 In the ideal world of the heavens and the ideal world of the future, synagogues do not exist. In one stray passage a Rabbi declares that in the future all the synagogues and academies of Babylonia will be picked up and established in the land of Israel. What happens then he does not say. Even this isolated but somewhat well-known passage does not ascribe to synagogues any important role in the Messianic future.50

The explanation for this phenomenon should be clear. The Rabbis attempted to democratize Judaism. Whether prayer and Torah study were legitimate supplements to or replacements for the sacrificial cult was a serious question which provoked much thought and speculation. In a choice between aristocracy and democracy, elitism and populism, Rabbinic ideology would support the latter. But between the one and the many, between monism and pluralism, there could be no choice. The Rabbis knew that in unity there is truth, that Israel's credo of monotheism was founded on oneness. They knew that the temple was the cosmic center, that it was a symbol of the entire world, that it was the place where heaven and earth meet. 5 1 This could never be duplicated or replaced. Perhaps some Jews attempted to attribute this centrality to their synagogues by depicting the Zodiac and the sun chariot in the middle of the mosaic floors, as if to say, "Here is the center of the cosmos; our synagogue performs the role once performed by the temple." The Christians made a similar artistic and architectural attempt to represent the entire

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cosmos within their cathedrals.52 But these attempts were doomed to failure. For how could there be more than one cosmic center? How could there be more than one divine throne? The Rabbis, at least, ignored these attempts and did not attribute any cosmic significance to their synagogues. In fact, they attributed very little ideological significance to the synagogue. They looked forward instead to a time when they would have the monism of the temple and the democratic cult of the synagogue, an uneasy union of dissimilar ideals. However, the Rabbis tell us that contradictions are tolerated in the world of the divine. Even two contradictory statements can be the words of the living God. 5 3

Notes 1. Jewish Quarterly Review L (1959): 972-93; L (1960): 229-40. 2. "What Is a Temple?" originally published as "The Idea of the Temple in

History," Millennial Star, August 1958, pp. 228-37, 247-49. 3. Martin Hengel, "Proseuche und Synagoge," Tradition und Glaube:...

Festgabe fur Karl GeorgKuhn (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), pp. 157-84 (reprinted in the Ktav anthology The Synagogue, ed. Joseph Gutmann).

4. See especially Deuteronomy 12. 5. All Jews, that is, except the Samaritans. On the sacred center see Ezekiel

43:7. On the metropolis or mother city see Philo, Against Flaccus 46. 6. B. Pesahim 65b, a reference I owe to my teacher Rabbi David Weiss

Halivni. 7. For a definition of statutory prayer, see Joseph Heinemann, Prayer in the

Talmud: Forms and Patterns (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1977), pp. 14-17. Since prayer was not an integral part of the temple cult, it is not discussed by Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978). Isaiah 1:15 and 56:7, 1 Kings 8, and Josephus, Against Apion 2.196-97 refer to personal, private prayers or to spontaneous petitions in times of need, not to a fixed and obligatory mode of worship. This is not the place to discuss the rabbinic institution of mishmarot and maamadot (M.Taanit 4.2-4). Theophrastus (c. 300 B.C.E.) mentions that the Jewish priests pray while they sacrifice, but his account is not believable; see Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, I (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974), pp. 10-12.

8. Jeremiah 16:14; 23:7. 9. Isaiah 45:9-13.

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10. Jeremiah 25:9; 27:6. 11. Isaiah 45:1. 12. Ezra 1:1. 13. The lack of a sacred fire in the second temple is heightened by the

Chronicler, who adds to 1 Kings that fire came down from heaven upon Solomon's altar to indicate divine approval of Solomon's temple (2 Chronicles 7:1). The author of 2 Maccabees 1:10-2:18 tried to show that the second temple did have the sacred fire.

14. Ezra 3:12. 15. P. Taanit 2.1 (65a) and parallels. 16. John J. Collins, The Sibylline Oracles of Egyptian Judaism (Missoula,

Mont.: Scholars Press, 1974), pp. 44-53. 17. Against Apion 2.175-78; Antiquities 4.212-13. 18. Harry A. Wolfson, Philo (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1947; reprint

ed., 1968), 2.241-48. 19. For the biblical thought see 1 Kings 8:27. On Zeno see Johannes von

Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, I (Leipzig: Teubner, 1905; reprint ed., 1938), pp. 61-62, number 264. An example of the radical Jews is Stephen in Acts 7; cf. Josephus, Jewish Wars 5.458.

20. Assumption of Moses 4.6-8; Ethiopic Book of Enoch 89.73-74. 21. See the passages and the bibliography assembled by David Winston, The

Wisdom of Solomon (Garden City: Doubleday, 1979; The Anchor Bible), pp. 203-5 (commentary on Wisdom of Solomon 9:8).

22. Revelation 21:22; contrast 11:19. 23. Prayer ofAzariah 15-16 (one of the additions to the book of Daniel). 24. Judith 16:16; Tobit 4:10-11; Jubilees 2.22; see Schrenk, Theological

Dictionary of the New Testament, III: 241. 25. Judith 9:1; Daniel 9:21 (cf. 6:11); Acts 3:1; Luke 1:10. 26. 3 Maccabees 7:20 (written in Alexandria); Pseudo-Philo, Biblical

Antiquities 11.8 (reminiscent of Philo and Josephus). In his translations of The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, R. H. Charles occasionally employs the terms "synagogue" and "congregation," but in these verses the meaning is "community," not "prayer-house" or "school."

27. On Moriah see 2 Chronicles 3:1; Genesis 22. On Jacob's ladder see Genesis 28:11-19. On David see 2 Samuel 24.

28. Against Apion 2.193; cf. Antiquities 4.201. 29. Against Apion 1.6-46. 30. The tension between the Rabbinic enterprise as a whole and the Rabbinic

desire for the return of the sacrificial cult is analyzed by Robert Goldenberg, "The Broken Axis: Rabbinic Judaism and the Fall of Jerusalem,'' Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45.3 (Sept. 1977), Supp., F:869-82. My analysis differs somewhat from Goldenberg's because I distinguish between Torah study

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and prayer and I attempt to analyze the material chronologically. Further study will undoubtedly result in corrections to both his analysis and mine.

31. Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, version A, chapter 4 (p. 11a ed. Schechter); cf. version B, chapter 8 (p. l i b ed. Schechter). I follow the translation of Judah Goldin (New Haven: Yale University, 1955), p. 34.

32. T. Sotah end; cf. a different version in B. Baba Bathra 60b. 33. Tannaim are the Rabbis who lived from approximately 70 C.E. to 200 C.E.

and produced the Mishnah and related works (Tosephta and commentaries on Exodus [Mekhilta], Leviticus [Siphra], Numbers and Deuteronomy [Siphre]). Amoraim are the Rabbis of Palestine and Babylonia who lived from approximately 200 C.E. to 400-500 C.E. and produced a Palestinian Talmud and a Babylonian Talmud, both of which are allegedly commentaries on the Mishnah. In these footnotes, the names of Rabbinic tractates are preceded by either a B, P, T, or M, which indicate respectively Babylonian Talmud, Palestinian Talmud, Tosephta, and Mishnah. Much of Rabbinic literature is available in translation; see the bibliography, already somewhat outdated, by John Townsend in The Study of Judaism: Bibliographical Essays (New York: Ktav, 1972).

34. Ismar Elbogen, Derjildische Gottesdienst, Hebrew edition, ed. Joseph Heinemann et al. (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1972), pp. 88, 190.

35. Siphre on Deuteronomy 41. 36. B. Berakhot 32b; cf. Lamentations 3:7-9, 44. 37. B. Berakhot 26b; P. Berakhot 4.1 (7a-b). 38. B. Taanit 27b; B. Megillah 31b; B. Menahot 110a; Leviticus Rabbah 7.3

(p. 155, ed. Margoliouth). 39. B. Berakhot 17a. I follow the translation of Jacob Lauterbach, Jewish

Encyclopedia, 10 (1905): 625. Lauterbach and Seligsohn (p. 622) provide a useful anthology of rabbinic statements regarding sacrifices.

40. On hygiene see B. Berakhot 15a. On the synagogue see P. Berakhot 5.1 (8d). On Torah study and other virtues see B. Berakhot 10b; B. Menahot 110a; Pesiqta de Rab Kahana, p. 87, ed. Mandelbaum (p. 998 in the English translation of W. G. Braude).

41. Some sacrifices and prayers would cease in the world to come because they would no longer be needed. See Leviticus Rabbah 9.7 with the discussion of W. D. Davies, Torah in the Messianic Age and/or the Age to Come (Society of Biblical Literature, Monograph Series 7, 1952), pp. 54-56.

42. B. Megillah 3b; B. Makkot 10a; B. Menahot 110a; B. Sotah 5b; B. Sukkah 49b.

43. B. Berakhot 32b; Tanhuma, Ki Tabo 1; Deuteronomy Rabbah on Deuteronomy 16:18 (p. 96, ed. Lieberman).

44. For example: place, holy place, holy, house, house of God. 45. T. Megillah 3.22-23; P. Berakhot 5.1 (8d); B. Megillah 29a. 46. M. Berakhot 4.5-6; T. Berakhot 3.14-16; P. Berakhot and B. Berakhot

ad loc.


47. M. Megillah 3.1-3; T. Megillah 2.12-18; P. Megillah and B. Megillah ad loc.

48. Pesiqta de Rab Kahana, pp. 431-32, ed. Mandelbaum; cf. p. 90. 49. See n. 21 above and Joseph M. Baumgarten, "The Duodecimal Courts of

Qumran, Revelation, and the Sanhedrin," Journal of Biblical Literature 95 (1976): 59-78. The apocalyptic texts of the sixth and seventh centuries are edited by Yehudah ibn Shemuel, Midreshe Geulah (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1954).

50. B. Megillah 29a; cf. 28b. A sermonic plea for synagogue attendance in this world is the context for a reference to a synagogue in the age to come in P. Berakhot 5.1 (8d).

51. On the temple as a cosmic symbol see Pesiqta de Rab Kahana, p. 8, ed. Mandelbaum. On unity and oneness, see Shaye Cohen, " A Virgin Defiled: Some Rabbinic and Christian Views on the Origins of Heresy," Union Seminary Quarterly Review 36 (1980): 1-11.

52. Emile Male, Religious Art in France, XIII Century, trans. Dora Nussey (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1913; frequently reprinted). I owe this reference to my friend Professor Ivan Marcus.

53. B. Erubin 13b.

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10

The Temple as a House of Revelation in the

Hammadi Texts George MacRae

The "Gnostic library" discovered at Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt has vastly revised previous notions concerning the relationships of Christianity and gnosticism, and its pseudo-Gospels can be read with fascination by temple-minded readers. The codices reflect, or perhaps only echo (though often with presuppositions which are foreign to early Christianity), rituals and patterns which may have authentic first-century Jewish and Christian counterparts. In the present paper George MacRae looks at several documents which go back to the third century C.E.: the treatises of the great Seth, the Gospel of Philip, the letter of Peter to Philip, the Second Apocalypse of James, the Apocry-phon of John, and the Apocalypse of Peter. These documents speak of the temple as the locus of divine revelation. There are parallels (which should not be exaggerated) to the Mormon conception of the temple as a house of divine glory, a house of faith, a house of prayer; to the concept that truth is manifest in ordinances as "the power of godliness"; and even to an elusive idea

Nag

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In Gnostic literature the temple is a locus of revelation. There is also much of temple symbolism in Gnostic literature. It may

prove in the long run that the symbolic uses of the temple are the most suggestive.

To provide a concrete focus, I will confine my investigation to the Coptic, Gnostic literature of the Nag Hammadi library. On the whole we have more references to the temple there than we do in the descriptions of Gnosticism in the writings of church fathers. And, I think, if any new light is to be shed on this whole question of the role of temple and Gnostic sources, it is going to come from here.

This collection of Gnostic documents was discovered accidently somewhat in the same manner as the Dead Sea Scrolls and almost in the same year. It is not a uniform collection of documents produced by, or perhaps even ascribed to, any particular grouping within or on the fringes of early Christianity in the fourth century A.D. The documents date from the fourth century A.D., but they represent somebody's library, a library of documents that could be interpreted sympathetically, no doubt. Most of them are classic Gnostic works, recognizable at first glance as the kinds of works which so troubled the Christian church fathers from Justin onward into the fifth century. But since the collection is not a uniform one, we should not imagine that all these ideas about the temple circulated simultaneously in some one person's head. They may instead represent shghtly different phases of the development of this radically dualist religion in the early period.

Several uses of temples and temple symbolism in Gnostic writings have their roots in the biblical tradition, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. These provide some evidence, I think, of Gnostic dependence on the transformation of both Jewish

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of sacred marriage, encapsuled in a mystery called "the bridal chamber."

T.G.M.

The Temple as a House of Revelation in the Nag Hammadi Texts

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and Christian traditions. There are examples of other uses, such as the tradition of the rending of the temple veil at the crucifixion of Jesus. These do not seem to have much significance in telling us about the Gnostic documents except that their authors read the Gospels. Look, for instance, at the document in the Nag Hammadi library collection called The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, which is about the crucifixion of Jesus.

Another suggestive image that the Gnostics derived from the New Testament, this time from the epistle to the Hebrews, is the image of Christ entering through the Holy of Holies into the presence of the supreme God in Heaven. This is found in a number of documents, mcluding the one called a Valentinian Exposition, and it is also present in the Gospel of Philip.

Let me begin, then, with symbolic interpretations of the temple or of temple symbolism in these Gnostic works against the background of Judaism in this period.

Two main types of temple symbolism can be distinguished in Jewish sources, leaving aside a whole range of temple symbols which are represented in early Christian writings as well. Jesus speaks of the "temple" of his own body. Paul describes the body of the Christian as a temple. The Qumran community identifies the temple as its community. These kinds of temple imagery I am setting aside in order to focus on two rather graphic visual images. These provide the groundwork for an understanding of different uses of temple, particularly of heavenly temple imagery in the Gnostic documents.

Ever since the time of George Buchanan Gray (I am referring to his articles of 1908, and perhaps the idea is much older than that for all I know), scholars have distinguished in Jewish literature two different notions of a temple connected with Heaven. One of them is the idea of a temple which is located in Heaven, where God dwells in the sanctuary. The other is a radically different concept, perhaps even an older one. It is of a temple-structured universe in which Heaven represents the inner sanctuary of the temple where God dwells.

First let me say a word about the idea of the temple in heaven. It has its roots in the notion of the Heavenly pattern according to which Moses was instructed to build the tabernacle (in Exodus 25,


for example). This passage does not necessarily suggest that there was a temple up there in Heaven which Moses was shown, then instructed "now do like that." Rather the notion is of a model or a plan for a temple. Moses was commanded to execute a plan which had a prior Heavenly existence. This comes through in other sources in the Bible where the plan is communicated from a writing from the hand of God—in Chronicles, for example. The notion there is not that of a preexistence temple, but of a preexistent idea of, or plan for, or model of, the temple.

But it does not take long in the history of Jewish thought for this to develop into the full-blown notion of a temple in Heaven, of which the temple on earth is, to some extent, a copy. We can see that transition taking place in a line from the Wisdom of Solomon, particularly in chapter 9, verse 8. Solomon is supposedly speaking through this first century B.C. document, which contains a great deal of comment on some of the major events of Old Testament history, and Solomon speaks in this fashion to God: "Thou hast given a command to build a temple on thy holy mountain, and an altar in the city of thy habitation, a copy of the holy tent which thou didst prepare from the beginning." This, then, assumes that the earthly tabernacle or temple, in this case the Temple of Solomon, of course, is nothing but a copy of the one that exists in Heaven where God dwells.

It is particularly significant that we have a notable development of this idea in the tradition of Jewish apocalyptic literature, where Heaven is visited often by the seer in the apocalyptic vision, or Heaven is somehow described to the seer. It contains a temple, and God dwells in the inner sanctuary of that temple. Enoch 14, for example, describes the two houses through which Enoch passes to get to the more remote of the two houses, and there he discovers the throne of God. The Testament of Levi in chapter 5 of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs is very explicit about the temple in Heaven in which God dwells.

The most frequent references to the temple in Heaven as God's dwelling place are to be found in the New Testament book of Revelation. From chapter 11 onward are many references to a temple in Heaven. However, the book of Revelation teaches that when the New Jerusalem is created after the destruction of the

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world there will be no temple in Heaven, because God will have direct contact with his people and will not need the mediation of the temple.

Other passages might be cited. My only point at the moment is to establish the Jewish apocalyptic setting for the concept of the temple in Heaven.

In contrast to this, we have in the writings of Josephus, for example, and in Philo, Jewish writers writing in Greek more or less as contemporaries. We find a completely different notion of the temple as representing the structure of the universe, in which the outer court or courts (depending on whether one uses a twofold or three-fold structure) represent the earth, and heaven above represents the sanctuary. And the sky appears as the curtain which is the sanctuary veil. There are different forms of this kind of temple-structured universe. Josephus's model, for example, is a three-court temple or three-part temple, a tripartite temple, in which the outer court is the sea, the second court is the land, and the inner court, the Holy of Holies, is Heaven itself, which one approaches by passing through the veil, namely the sky.

In Philo of Alexandria we have that, too. But in many passages in Philo we have a slightly different model, a model that is based upon Philo's fundamental distinction between the spiritual realities of the world of God and the sense-perceptible realities of our world, of which the visible heavens are a part. In those passages Philo depicts the temple with the outer court or courts representing the sea, the land, and the visible heavens. That is the whole of the sense-perceptible world. The inner court of the temple represents the world of spiritual reality, which is, of course, another order of existence. That is the true world where God dwells. This is based upon the platonic dualism inherent in Philo's philosophy.

The fact that these variations actually were recognized in antiquity is confirmed by a very interesting and brief passage from the church father Clement of Alexandria, writing early in the third century (book 5, chapter 6). Here he is commenting on the expression "the place within the veil ," and he says, "Some say this is the midpoint between Heaven and earth, while others say


it is symbolic of the intelligible and the sense-perceptible world." This shows he is familiar with the difference between these types of cosmic temple symbolism reflected in Josephus and in Philo. I don't know whether this cosmic view of the temple has any continuity with the ancient cosmic view that underlay the structure of Semitic temples in the ancient world. I think it is likely that thousands of years before our era temple structure reflected the kind of dualistic view of the universe that Professor Cross mentioned in his presentation yesterday. But whether there is any continuity between that and Josephus and Philo, the Hellenistic Jewish writers of the first century of the common era, I just don't know. There is no strong evidence in the Old Testament writings themselves of a continuity of understanding in Israel of this cosmic symbolism. It has been the subject of considerable debate among Old Testament scholars of our time, and I'm not qualified to take a position in the debate.

The idea of a temple in Heaven is reflected in several passages in the Gnostic literature describing the trappings of celestial beings. One finds these passages especially in documents which have an affinity to what might be called a Sethean Gnostic type. That is a particular type of Gnostic writing, well represented in the Nag Hammadi library, in which Seth plays a prominent role. This kind of Gnostic writing seems not to be of Christian origin, though there are Christian forms of it.

Characteristic of the Sethean forms of Gnostic writing is a regular ambivalence towards Judaism. I believe it is fair to say that virtually all forms of Gnosticism known to us from antiquity are dependent on some kind of Judaism. It is not that the Gnostics merely read the Bible. Anyone could have read the Bible in this period; it was available in Greek. Rather, the Gnostic writings are indebted in some fashion to the Jewish tradition of interpreting the Bible, which is something very different. But they are ambivalent about Judaism, and we find both positive and negative notions about this kind of imagery. But in either case, they seem to me to be clearly dependent on the apocalyptic Jewish tradition. Let me provide an example or two by reading some short passages from a few documents in the Nag Hammadi library.

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The first is a work that survives without any title from antiquity. Modern scholars title it "On the Origin of the World." It purports to describe at great length, and with much repetition and a sort of pseudo-scientific footnoting, the story of where the world came from. It is all in terms of the Gnostic dualistic myth of the fall of the divine being. It portrays the world as governed by creator/lower-creator gods who manipulate the world. These ideas are all based to some extent on a perversion of Jewish understanding and biblical understanding, because some of them have biblical names, names associated with the creator-gods of Yahwehism. But they are portrayed as sinister. In creating the material world they have imprisoned the sparks of fight and therefore caused the divine plan of the true God to be thwarted.

Further, they are pictured as creating their own heavens, and their own heavens are portrayed in terms of the Jewish apocalyptic notion of Heaven and can be paralleled in many of the Heavenly journey motifs. Since the first father had great authority, he is the father of the six other evil archons who dominate the world of people. He has created for each of his sons, by means of the word, beautiful heavens as dwelling places, and for each heaven great glories, seven times more exquisite than any earthly glory. Thrones and dwelling places and temples and chariots and spiritual virgins and their glories looking to an invisible realm—each one has these within his heaven. And also armies of divine, lordly, angelic and arch-angelic powers, myriads without number in order to serve. This kind of depiction, which is repeated again in only slightly different language, talks about the heavenly state, or rather the quasi-heavenly state, as these rulers who dominate the material world are not really from the Heaven in which the true God dwells. But the depiction portrays their quasi-heavenly state in the Jewish apocalyptic terminology of the throne in the temple in Heaven surrounded by armies of angels, and all the rest of it.

In this document a lot of things go in pairs. A group of rulers are cast out of that heaven above and come down into this world, where they have to recreate for themselves something like the same kind of royal apparatus. The author says: "Let us again come to the rulers of whom we spoke so that we might present


their proof. For when the seven rulers were cast out of their Heavens down upon the earth, they created for themselves angels, that is demons, in order to serve them. But these demons taught men many errors with magic, and potions and idolatry and shedding of blood and altars and temples and sacrifices and libations to all the demons of the earth, having as their co-worker, Fate, who came into being according to the agreement by the Gods of injustice and justice." The Gnostics are radical critics of the traditional religions of their world, including both Judaism and Christianity, so that even the concept of justice is a vice and not a virtue.

We can see how they have taken the same background from the apocalyptic scene of the temple in Heaven and all that goes with it, and have brought that into the world of these archons; then the archons, in being expelled to the earth, have brought about forces which have taught people how to do these evil things. In this instance, the people who have done them are the people we read about in the books of the Bible.

But I have said that the attitude towards Judaism and literature of this sort is ambivalent, and it always is ambivalent. In many ways the debt of Gnostic sources to Judaism cannot be expressed in a simple sentence or two; it has to be qualified. The following, for example, is just one example of a positive view of this same kind of apocalyptic vision of the temple in Heaven and its various trappings.

This account is found in two works in our library, works that are parallel to each other. One is generally referred to as the letter of Eugnostas, which seems to me, at any rate, to be a totally non-Christian Gnostic document, though it knows a lot about Judaism. And the document called Eugnostas is a sort of treatise about the formation of the emanations from God, the true God, in the Heavenly world above. It never really describes the process by which the material world was brought into being. This document seems to be taken over into a Christianized Gnostic document called "The Wisdom of Jesus Christ." We are virtually certain that it was taken over into that document because the treatise is broken up into a series of statements taken almost

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verbatim out of the Eugnostas document and placed on the lips of Jesus Christ, the risen Savior, who reveals them to his disciples.

But here the idea is that God has produced from himself, in his Heaven, a series of emanations from him, each emanation producing its own aura of spiritual beings around it. Ultimately in the Gnostic myth someone in this process tries to imitate God's productive power, and the result is the process by which the earth comes into being. Here we have coming forth from the power of one of these divine figures emanations called immortal man, corresponding to the anthropos God of antiquity and his consort Sophia (Wisdom), who is also called Silence (so named because she perfected her greatness in reflecting without a word). In Valentinean Gnosticism also the consort of God is called Silence.

The imperishable ones, since they have the authority, each provide for themselves great kingdoms, the immortal heavens and their firmaments, thrones and temples corresponding to their greatness, and so on. The image here of their producing their own heavenly kingdoms with their own thrones and temples is in Jewish apocalyptic language, taken in a quite positive sense as a heavenly counterpart. This use of Jewish apocalyptic imagery is tied in with one of the sources of Gnosticism, and I think that is why it is worth dwelling on. I believe that the whole phenomenon of Gnosticism, and the forms in which we know it in literature like this, has its origins in apocalyptic Judaism. What the exact connections are I am unable to say, but I think they are there. And this is evidenced not just by the heavenly temple motif, but in a great many other things which one could cite.

Now the cosmic temple image. That is the image of the universe structured like a temple—or, correspondingly, the image of the temple reflecting the structure of the universe. This too is found in the Gnostic literature, particularly in the Gospel of Philip, where it is closely associated with a kind of sacramental system. The Valentinean Gnostics had, as the Gospel of Philip suggests, a system of rites. Five are enumerated but not explained. We are not sure whether they had three or four or five or what. Through this system of rites they somehow symbolized in the life of this world the true realities which actually belong to


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another world above, a world that is inaccessible to humanity except through the symbolization of that world in our own world.

Two passages occur in the Gospel of Ph Rip—familiar to Mormons who have had an interest in this writing—which show a background of this cosmic temple symbolism that was associated with the Hellenistic Jewish tradition.

The first one says:

There were three buildings specifically for sacrifice in Jerusalem. The one facing West was called the Holy, the one facing South was called the Holy of Holies, and the third, facing East, was called the Holy of the Holies, the place where only the high priest entered. Baptism is the Holy building; Redemption is the Holy of Holies; and the Holy of the Holies is the bridal chamber. Baptism includes the resurrection and the redemption, the redemption takes place in the bridal chamber, but the bridal chamber is in that which is superior to it and the others, because you will not find anything like it. Those who are familiar with it are those who pray in the Holy in Jerusalem. There are some in Jerusalem who pray only in Jerusalem awaiting the Kingdom of Heaven. These are called the Holy of the Holies, because before the veil was rent we had no other bridal chamber except the image of the bridal chamber which is above. Because of this, this veil was rent from top to bottom for it was fitting for some from below to go upward.

To comment in detail on that passage would take me beyond my own competence. But at first sight such passages look like a mere allegorization of a three-part temple in Jerusalem. Apart from the details of which way the building faced and so on, the writer is talking about an outer court, a middle court, and the inner court which is the Holy of Holies. The allegory seems to identify these with three different sacraments in the sacramental system of the Valentinean Gnostics. But I think it is more than that. It is more than that because it builds on the concept that one moves toward the divine presence as one moves successively through the outer courts of the temple toward the inner Holy of


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Holies, to which only the priest has access. Consequently the order in which the courts are identified with sacraments becomes very important. The initiatory rite of baptism is the outermost one. The rite of redemption, whatever that may have consisted of, is the second one. And it is the bridal chamber, the rite of which was the supreme rite for the Valentinean Gnostic, which is the approach into the presence of God himself.

Nothing so far is cosmic in this use of symbolism. In order to see it as cosmic one must look to the other passage, which deals with the same imagery. Here we see the clear way in which the cosmic temple symbolism figures. The entry into the rite of the bridal chamber, which is at the same time the entry through the veil into the Holy of Holies, is in fact by some kind of mystical or spiritual foretaste an entry into the heavens where the real gods dwell. The language is not altogether clear in this paragraph, but I think the picture is there:

The mysteries of truth are revealed . . . in types or images. The bridal chamber, however, remains hidden. It is the Holy in the Holy. The veil at first concealed how God controlled the Creation. But when the veil is rent and the things inside are revealed, this house will be left desolate, or rather will be destroyed. But the whole lower Godhead will not flee from these places into the Holy of Holies. For it will not be able to mix with the unmixed light and the flawless fullness, but will be under the wings of the cross and under its arms. This ark will be its salvation when the flood of water surges over them. If some belong to the order of the priesthood, they will be able to go within the veil with the high priest. For this reason the veil was not rent at the top only, since it would have been open to only those above. Nor was it rent at the bottom only, since it would have been revealed only to those below. But it was rent from top to bottom, those above opened to us who are below in order that we may go into the secret of the truths. This truly is what is held in high regard since it is strong. But we shall go in there by means of lowly types and forms of weakness. They are lowly indeed when compared with the perfect glory. There


is glory which surpasses glory. There is power which surpasses power. Therefore the perfect things are opened to us together with the hidden things of truth. The Holy of the Holies were revealed and the bridal chamber invited us in.

That passage is interesting for the way in which it weaves together biblical exegesis of many different passages from both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The guiding image of this picture is the notion of passing into the sanctuary of the temple, that is to say, passing into the heavenly presence of God, by crossing through the veil by accomplishing the rite of the bridal chamber. The Gospel of Philip assumes throughout that the true spiritual realities are knowable only through images, as it calls them. Throughout the work words are presented as images of divine things, always imperfect images, never telling us the truth about divine things but only giving us some suggestions. The writer understands ritual action also to function in the same imagistic way. The dualism that underlies the cosmic temple symbolism is the same dualism that underlies Gnostic expression and Gnostic understanding of the way words and rituals function.

Now, much more briefly, let me talk about some New Testament temple traditions that leave a mark, somewhat superficial, on some Gnostic documents. Traditions about the temple in Jerusalem are reflected in the Gospels in particular, and also in the Acts of the Apostles. In Acts there is a tradition of the primitive Christian community's devotion to the temple. In the opening chapters especially, I have no doubt that the author, Luke, is concerned to idealize this primitive Christian community. The statements he makes about the tranquility and peace of the temple are for all practical purposes completely out of harmony with the discord in the community that Luke himself reveals to us in other portions of his book. Likewise his estimate that there are thousands and thousands of pious Jewish converts cannot be realistic. But he is concerned to show that this primitive Christian community in Jerusalem focused its life around the temple. They go to the temple, they worship at the temple, they pray at the temple. At the beginning of chapter 3 of Acts, Luke even says that they pray at the temple at specific hours of the day, as if the

186


temple had set public prayer hours. They work miracles at the temple, they teach in the temple, in fact they teach in the temple by command of an angel of the Lord. Thus their temple-centered life is divinely sanctioned. I suspect, and I don't want to be irreverent in saying this, but I suspect that Luke was able to say more and more about the temple because he knew less and less about it. In fact, I don't think Luke had any acquaintance with Jerusalem itself and how the temple actually functioned in the lives of people. For him it was a great spiritual symbol, and of course it could have been in fact a great spiritual symbol. But our preceding presentations suggest that it had also some harsher aspects.

Some of our Gnostic works likewise speak of the Apostles as clinging to the temple or adhering to the temple. The references, though there are several of them, are not all that significant in themselves except that they introduce us, as it were, to another important genre of communication in Gnosticism—perhaps the most distinctive genre of communication. They are revelation-discourses or, if you like, revelation-dialogue. They portray a scene in which the risen Jesus meets with his Apostles and reveals to them the Gnostic understanding of the Christian message. Either they had not understood it before or they had not learned it before because they were not yet ready. After revealing the Gnostic understanding of Christianity to them, the risen Jesus departs and they go off to preach.

This is the scheme in the shortest and perhaps neatest of these dialogues, the Letter of Peter to Philip. It is not really a letter, but it begins with one. It is modeled to some extent on the Acts of the Apostles. It portrays the disciples after Jesus leaves them gathering at the temple in Jerusalem to teach in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and to heal a multitude. The words of the document are very much like those describing the Apostles in Acts carrying on in their lives the work that Jesus has taught them. But this time what they have been taught are Gnostic secrets and not just messages of the kingdom of God. This is clearly a direct dependence on Acts.

We find elsewhere the same reliance on New Testament images—in the Second Apocalypse of James, for example. At the

187


time of his martyrdom James is discovered in the temple, and he is led out from the temple to his martyrdom first by being cast down from the pinnacle of the temple. One of the two ancient traditions about the martyrdom of James has him die that way. In this document he is not only cast down from the pinnacle of the temple, but is also stoned when he reaches the ground. One would not have thought the stoning was necessary, except that at that point he utters a beautiful prayer. It is a prayer that is non-Gnostic in its theology. It is the prayer of a martyr.

Now, these terms of reference have no intrinsic significance except that they introduce some of the topical elements of Gnosticism. One final one may have some intrinsic significance of its own. That is the picture of Jesus giving a revelation-discourse in the temple. This is found particularly in' the work called the Apocalypse of Peter. In the setting of the temple Jesus interprets some visions that Peter has had. Peter has had visions that relate to (a) the arrest of Jesus, (b) the crucifixion, and (c) the resurrection. He tells Jesus that he has had these visions and asks, "What do they mean?" Jesus then interprets them for him. In the course of the interpretation, he tells him a great deal more about the fundamental Gnostic myth. It is not an easy work to read, but it may be an important one.

It is important because it represents the Gnostics' appropriation of the principal symbolic figure of orthodox Christianity in the early century, namely Peter, and claims that Peter was really one of them. It is also unusual for a revelation-dialogue. Usually in a revelation-dialogue or revelation-discourse genre the risen Jesus appears to his disciples on a mountain, the Mount of Olives usually, or at least in some isolated place. The mountain is in most of the stories. For example, in the Apocryphon of John (of which we have so many copies now, thanks to the Nag Hammadi library), John is in the temple. He is there challenged by a Pharisee who asks some questions he cannot answer, and he leaves the temple and goes out into a desert place where Christ appears to him and gives him a revelation-dialogue. That is the normal pattern.

In the Apocalypse of Peter Jesus gives this revelation, that is, he interprets the visions of Peter in a revelatory form, in the

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189

temple itself. The temple then becomes the setting for a Gnostic revelation. Scholars disagree about the meaning of this temple setting. One suggests that it may be the Heavenly temple. The risen Christ, already in Heaven, speaks spiritually from the setting of his father's temple to a Peter down on earth who is receiving a vision of Jesus there. In my opinion, the text does not support that.

I think it is meant to be the temple of Jerusalem, where Jesus, prior to his passion and suffering, is in fact predicting his own passion, death, and resurrection. That theme is common to the New Testament. If that is what the setting means, it has been suggested that perhaps the intention of the author of this document is to suggest, by locating it in the temple, that this is the Gnostic version of Jesus' apocalyptic prediction about the temple in the synoptic tradition, Mark 13 and its parallel. Not that Mark 13 is necessarily spoken in the temple, but the Gnostic account uses a kind of shorthand by locating another type of discourse in the temple to serve the same purpose. And if that is so, perhaps it tells us something very significant.

The synoptic Apocalypse serves, not merely to predict events to come at the end of the world, including the destruction of Jerusalem and then the signs to come and so on, but also to tell something about the way in which Christians should live, not just the way in which they should wait for the end. It has implications for an attitude toward Christian living. The striking thing about the Apocalypse of Peter is that its intention is to provide a substitute to Gnostic Christians for the account of Jesus' utterances in the synoptic tradition.

While on the surface Jesus interprets the visions of Peter that have to do with his coming arrest, suffering, death, and resurrection, nevertheless the real topic of interest in the Apocalypse of Peter (and it shines through in an unmistakable way) is the polemical situation which exists between a Gnostic community and an orthodox Christian community. And this is the work of a very strong polemic on the part of Gnosticism against the orthodox Christians who are persecuting them. It therefore suggests a situation in the life of Gnosticism wherein the Gnostic Christians have been distinguished by the orthodox Christian


church; they have been singled out and are being expelled, or at least pushed forth on their own, to live their own kinds of life. And with the same resentment with which the Gospel of John rebels against the orthodox Christians' expulsion from the synagogue, these Gnostics rebel against their expulsion from the Christian church.

The literary genre of this particular Apocalypse then given to Peter, and communicated to us presumably by Peter, is one of a talk about the present in the apocalyptic guise of a talk about the future. Of course, by the time the book is written, Jesus has died and has risen free from the dead. The future is in a sense already past, although the present remains the present. It is interesting to see how a key such as examining references to temple and temple usage in the Gnostic documents can introduce us to a number of issues which are central to the understanding of this kind of literature.

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Notes on the Contributors

TRUMAN G. MADSEN Truman G. Madsen is Richard L. Evans Endowed Professor at

Brigham Young University, Director of the Judaeo-Christian Studies Center, and Professor of Philosophy. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Utah and Harvard University, where he completed his studies in the philosophy and history of religion. He has been guest professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California; at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts; and at Haifa University in Israel. He has authored volumes on the philosophy of religion, ethics, and language, and also a biography of Mormon historian B. H. Roberts. In the Religious Studies Monograph Series he has edited two volumes, Reflections on Mormonism and Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless, and has contributed essays to two more, Dez'ry and Death and The Words of Joseph Smith.

HUGH W . NIBLEY Hugh W. Nibley is Professor Emeritus of History and Religion at

Brigham Young University. For a time he was Director of the Institute of Ancient Studies. His graduate study in history was begun at UCLA, and his Ph.D. is from the University of California at Berkeley. An expert in Semitic languages, he has devoted two decades to the study of world ritual and has written several volumes based upon the approach of "patternism," one on the Middle East and one on Egypt; presently he is preparing a work on the rituals of Greco-Roman times. He has published several articles on the ancient temple, including "Christian Envy of the Temple," Jewish Quarterly Review L (1959): 97-123, and L (1960): 229-40; and "Treasures in the Heavens: Some Early Christian Insights into the Organizing of the Worlds," Dialogue VIII (AutumnAVinter 1974):76-98. The first of Dr. Nibley's two chapters in the present volume was originally published as "The Idea of the Temple in History," Millennial Star 120 (August 1958): 228-37, 247-49.

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JOHN M . LUNDQUIST John M . Lundquist teaches in Religious Education and in

Anthropology at Brigham Young University. His Ph.D. is in Near Eastern studies from the University of Michigan. He is director of the North Orontes Valley expedition in Syria, and is coeditor of Archaeological Reports from the Tabqa Dam Project—Euphrates Valley, Syria. He contributed "What Is a Temple? A Preliminary Typology'' to The Quest for the Kingdom of God: Studies in Honor of George Mendenhall (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1982), and "The Legitimizing Role of the Temple in the Origin of the State" to Society of Biblical Literature 1982 Seminar Papers, ed. Kent Harold Richards (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, Society of Biblical Literature, 1982), no. 21.

MITCHELL J. DAHOOD Only weeks after his last appearance at BYU, Mitchell Dahood

died suddenly in Rome in March 1982. He was Professor of Ugaritic and Phoenician Languages and Literature at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He studied at Boston College and at Johns Hopkins University, writing his dissertation on Canaanite-Phoenician influence on Qoheleth. He taught as guest professor at Yale University, was president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, and in 1980 delivered the Haskell lectures at Oberlin College. He was the author of three volumes on the Psalms in the Anchor Bible series published by Doubleday (1966, 1968, 1970). He also authored more than two hundred articles on the linguistic and biblical relevance of the Tell Mardikh discoveries in Syria, and he contributed a lengthy article on these texts to the recent volume by the Italian archaeologist Giovanni Pettinato, The Archives of Ebla (Garden City, N . Y . : Doubleday, 1981).

FRANK MOORE CROSS, JR. Frank Moore Cross, Jr., is Hancock Professor of Hebrew and

Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University and curator of the Harvard Semitic Museum. He studied at Johns Hopkins under William F. Albright. He has received grants and fellowships with the American School of Oriental Research, Jerusalem Hebrew College, the Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Academy of Arts and

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Sciences. He has served as an editor of the Biblical Archaeologist and Harvard Theological Review. His work on the tabernacle in ancient Israel is considered a definitive advance over traditional understanding. His contributions to the technical analysis of the Hebrew language are world-renowned. He is considered one of the most authoritative voices in contemporary interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He has written and lectured extensively on the literature and culture of the biblical world, being at home in both archaeological and linguistic studies.

RICHARD J. CLIFFORD Richard J. Clifford is Associate Professor of Old Testament at the

Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He studied at Boston College and Weston College, and at Harvard he completed his Ph.D. under Frank Moore Cross, Jr., concentrating in Hebrew and the Bible. More than once he has returned to Harvard as a guest lecturer. His published articles include "The Temple in the Ugaritic Myth of Baal," in Symposia Celebrating the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1900-1975), ed. Frank Moore Cross (Cambridge, Mass.: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1979). He has also authored the book that is the background of the present paper, The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972).

JACOB MILGROM Jacob Milgrom is Professor of Near East Studies at the Univer

sity of California at Berkeley. He studied at Brooklyn College and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. He has received the Goldman Award and grants-in-aid from the American Philosophical Society and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of Cult and Conscience and Studies in Levitical Terminology. His work on the Temple Scroll, the longest of those discovered near the Dead Sea, has made him the prime authority in America on this scroll and the classic Hebrew study of it by Yigael Yadin. The summary analysis of the scroll is published in "The Temple Scroll," Biblical Archaeologist 41 (1978): 105-20.


CAROL L. MEYERS Carol L. Meyers is Associate Professor of Biblical History at

Duke University and was associate director of Meiron excavations in Israel. Her Ph.D. is from Brandeis University, and she has done postdoctoral study at the University of Michigan. Her thesis on the tabernacle menorah, a study of the origins and symbolic implications of that temple furnishing, has been published in the American Schools of Oriental Research Series (No. 2; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976). Her temple-related work includes The Tabernacle Menorah (ASOR Publications, Monograph Series, 1976); "Was There a Seven Branched Lamp-stand in Solomon's Temple?" Biblical Archaeological Review 5 (1979); and "The Elusive Temple," Biblical Archaeologist 45 (1982). Dr. Meyers's chapter first appeared in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly 45 (1983): 167-78, and is here reprinted by the gracious permission of Joseph Fitzmeyer.

SHAYE J. D. COHEN Shaye J. D. Cohen is Associate Professor of Jewish History at

the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He earned a master of arts degree from both Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a bachelor of arts from Yeshiva University, where he majored in Greek and Latin. His Ph.D. is from Columbia. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities enabled him to teach an Institute on Post-Biblical Foundations. He is a member of the Association of Jewish Studies, the Society of Biblical Literature, and other learned societies. His book, Josephus in Galilee and Rome: His Vita and Development as a Historian, was published by E. J. Brill in 1979. He has also published several articles on Jewish history, especially in the Greco-Roman period.

GEORGE MacRAE George MacRae is Stillmann Professor of Roman Catholic

Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, a member of the Society of Jesus since 1948, and an ordained priest since 1960. He has taught at Fairfield University, the University of Connecticut, the Weston School of Theology, and Boston College. He has

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received awards from the Catholic Biblical Association, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Most recently he has been rector of the Ecumenical Institute for Theological Research at Tentur, Jerusalem. He is a recognized authority on the Coptic texts discovered at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, and has done significant translations and analyses of these codices relating them to traditional understanding of the New Testament and Gnosticism.

Subject Index

A

Anointings, according to Cyril of Jerusalem, 27, 28

in temples, 8 Apocalypse, and the temple, 13 Apocalyptic visions, and the temple in

Heaven, 179-82 Archetypes, primitive origins, 43 Asceticism, and the sacrificial cult,

164, 165

B

Baal, and holy mountains, 109-12 and the temple, 97, 98

Baptism for the dead, 12 Biblical texts, concerning holy moun

tains, 108-12 Bridal chamber, according to the

Gnostics, 184-86

C

Calendar, in the Temple Scroll, 127, 128 Canaanite religion, and holy mountains,

109, 110 Canaanite temple, compared to the

Priestly Tabernacle, 93, 94, 98 Christianity, and corruption of temple

rites, 28-30 and temples, 20-22

Clifford, Richard J., on temples and holy mountains, 107-24

Cohen, Shaye J.D., on temples and synagogues, 151-74

Cosmic mountain, and the temple, 60, 61 Cosmic symbolism, and temples, 54-72 Cosmic temple, and Gnosticism, 183-85 Cosmology, and function of the temple,

22, 23 Creation drama, in the temples, 25, 26,

48, 49 Cross, Frank Moore, Jr., on the Priestly

Tabernacle, 91-105 Crown of Life Promise, 13, 14

Cult, comparison between synagogues and temples, 154, 155

Curtains, in the Tabernacle, 95 Cyril of Jerusalem, on initiation rites

in the temple, 27, 28

D

Dahood, Mitchell J., on sacred places in the Ebla tablets, 77-89

David, and the Priestly Tabernacle, 98, 99

Davidic traditions, and the Solomonic state, 145-47

Dead Sea Scrolls, 126-27 See also Temple Scroll

Dedications, and state ideology, 144, 145 Drama, in the temple, 48, 49

E

Ebla tablets, and the temple, 77-89 Eblaite language, 78-87 Egyptian temples, 61-64 'El, and the holy mountain, 110, 111 and the Priestly Tabernacle, 94-98

Eliade, Mircea, on origin of temples, 45, 46

Eninnu Temple, of Gudea of Lagash, 61, 68

F

Festivals. See Temple festivals First-fruits festivals, in the Temple

Scroll, 128-30 First Temple. See Solomon's Temple Folklore, and temples, 41-43 Food of life, relationship to the temple,

69, 70

G

Gnosticism, and the temple as a house of revelation, 175-90

Gudea of Lagash, the Eninnu Temple of, 61, 68

197

Subject Index

H

Hebrew language, and the understanding of Eblaite, 78-87

Hebrew religion, and holy mountains, 109, 110

Hebrews (NT book), and the temple, 9, 10

Herod's Temple, compared to Solomon's Temple, 156-58

Hidden Manna and New Name Promise, 14

Holy mountains, and temples, 107-24 Holy of Holies, according to the Gnostics,

184-86 as incarnation of the primordial mound,

60-63 Holy Sepulchre, as substitute for the

temple, 21

I

Iconographic data, and Solomon's Temple, 141-43

Initiation rites, in the temples, 26-28 Israel, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 126

J

Jachin and Boaz, and the Solomonic state, 145-47

twin pillars of Solomon's Temple, 135-50

Jerusalem Temple. See Solomon's Temple

Jesus Christ, relationship to the temple, 6-8

Jewish traditions, and the temple, 65 Judaism, and corruption of temple rites,

28-30 and temple symbolism, 177, 178 and the temple, 20-22 its synagogues and temples, 152-71

K

Kaaba, as imitation of the temple, 23

L

Liturgy, early Christian, 21, 22 Lundquist, John M., on temple tradi

tions of ancient Near East, 53-76

M

MacRae, George, on temples in Nag Hammadi texts, 175-90

Madsen, Truman G., on temples and the Restoration, 1-18

Matthiae, P., on temple D of Tell Mardikh, 84, 85

Mesopotamian temples, 62, 63, 67, 68 Meyers, Carol L., on the pillars of

Solomon's Temple, 135-50 Meyers, Merlin H., elements in the study

of temples, ix-x Milgrom, Jacob, on new temple festivals

in the Temple Scroll, 125-33 Model building, in research on temples,

54, 55 Mormonism, and latter-day temples,

1-16 and the idea of the temple, 32, 33

Moses, at Mount Sinai, 113, 114 Mount Sinai, and holy mountains, 108,

111, 113, 114 Mount Zion, and holy mountains, 108,

112 Mountains, relationship to temples, 59,

60, 75n.66, 107-24 Mueller, Max, on languages, 41, 42 Mythic motifs, on Jachin and Boaz,

141, 142 Mythology, as explanation for rites, 28,

29 primitive origins, 43

N

Nathan the prophet, and temple building, 100, 101

Near East, temple ideology of ancient, 53-76

New Jerusalem, and the temple, 159, 160

New Oil festival, in the Temple Scroll, 129,130

New Testament, temple traditions in, 186

New Wheat festival, in the Temple Scroll, 130

New Wine festival, in the Temple Scroll, 129,130

New Year rites, and temples, 26 Nibley, Hugh W., on temples and

temple study, 19-51, 66, 152

198

Subject Index

Nimrod, as archetype of usurpers, 29 Nun, and Egyptian temples, 62

O

Old Testament, tree of life motifs, 69, 70 Ordinances, and eternal sanctions, 5-6

proxy, in the temple, 12

P

Paradise symbolism, and temples, 54-72 Patternism, in ancient religions, 28-30,

37 n.67 Personnel, comparison between syna

gogues and temples, 155 Perushim, and the sacrificial cult, 164-

65 Peter, revelation of, in Gnostic writings,

188 Pettinato, G., and the Ebla tablets,

79-82 Pharaoh, versus Yahweh, 113-15 Philo of Alexandria, and the temple in

Heaven, 179 Pillar in the Temple Promise, 15 Place, comparison between synagogues

and temples, 154 Polytheism, and temples, 109, 110 Prayer, and the sacrificial cult, 163-67 Priestly Tabernacle, 91-105

Canaanite elements in, 93, 94, 98 Primordial hillock, and the cosmic

mountain, 60, 61 Promises, and the temple, 13-16 Proxy ordinances, in the temple, 12 Psalms, and the triumph of Yahweh,

117-21

Q

Qumran sect, and the Temple Scroll, 126-33

Qura, Eblaite goddess of weaving, 79, 80

R Rabban Johanan ben Zokkai, and the

sacrificial cult, 163-65 Rabbi Joshua, and the Perushim, 164 Rabbinic piety, as substitute for

sacrificial cult, 167-68 Rabbinics, on temples and synagogues,

163-71

Religion, primitive origins of, 42, 43 Restoration movement, and Mormon

temples, 1-18 Revelation-dialogue, and Peter, 188 Revelations, in the temple, 176-90 Ritual dramas, in the temples, 25, 26 Rituals, as corruptions of temple rites,

32, 33

Rod and Morning Star Promise, 14

S Sabbath day, in the Temple Scroll, 128 Sacrifice, and temple ordinances, 10-11 Sacrificial cult, in Jewish temples, 154,

155 Samaritan sanctuary on Mount Gerizim,

101, 102 Second Temple. See Herod's Temple Semitic languages, and the under

standing of Eblaite, 78-87 Shiloh shrine, and the Tabernacle, 97, 99 Smith, Joseph, Jr., and latter-day

temples, 1-16 and the origin of temples, 51 on holy mountains, 107

Solomonic state, and Jachin and Boaz, 145-47

Solomon's Temple, compared to Herod's Temple, 156-58

iconographic data, 141-43 its twin pillars, Jachin and Boaz,

136-47 relationship to the Priestly Tabernacle,

99-101 State ideology, and temple architecture,

143-45 Sumerian language, and the under

standing of Eblaite, 78-87 Sumerian temples, 60-63 Synagogues, compared to temples, 20,

21, 152-71 history of, 152

T

Tabernacle of Yahweh, description of, 93-94

historicity of its traditions, 91 -102 Tabmt, as model of the Tabernacle,

93, 96 Tainat temple, compared to Solomon's

Temple, 138-40

199

Subject Index

Tannaitic Rabbis, on the sacrificial cult, 165-67

Tell Mardikh, and Eblaite temples, 84, 85

Temenos, and the temple, 64, 65 Temple, the, and Jesus Christ, 6-8

as a house of revelation, 176-90 as center of Mormon ethos, 2 its elemental functions, 11

Temple architecture, and state ideology, 143-45

Temple dedications, ancient, 144, 145 Temple festivals, in the Temple Scroll,

125-33 Temple in Heaven, 178-84 Temple mount, 64, 65 Temple of the Word, in Ebla, 86 Temple ordinances, loss and diffusion

of, 28-30 Temple Scroll, and temple festivals,

125-33 dating of, 132-33

Temple symbolism, in Jewish sources, 177, 178

Temples, ancient Near East ideology, 53-76

and holy mountains, 107-24 as architectural representations of the

primordial mound, 61, 62 as contacts with other worlds, 24-25 as source of civilization, 48-50 centers of the universe, 170-71 compared to synagogues, 151-74 corruption of, 29, 30 cosmic function, 22, 23 evidences of, 47, 48, 72 n.7 in Mormonism, 1-18, 51 in the Ebla tablets, 77-89 initiation rites, 27, 28 loss to Christianity, 20-22 preliminary typology, 55-71 relationship to cosmic mountains, 60,

61, 75 ritual dramas, 25, 26

Tent of David, and the Priestly Tabernacle, 99-101

Torah study, as substitute for the sacrificial cult, 167-68

as worship, 159-61 Tree of life, relationship to the temple,

67-70 Tree of Life Promise, 13 Typology, applied to temples, 40, 55-71

U

Ugaritic texts, and holy mountains, 108-10

'Ulam, and Jachin and Boaz, 138-40

V Valentinean Gnostics, and bridal-

chamber rites, 184-86 Varro, description of temples, 22 Veil, according to the Gnostics, 184-86

W

Washings and anointings, according to Cyril of Jerusalem, 27, 28

Water symbolism, and the temple, 65-67

Waters of creation, and the Holy of Holies, 64-66

White Raiment Promise, 14, 15 Widengren, Geo, on temples, 56, 57, 71 Wood festival, in the Temple Scroll,

130, 131

Worship, and Torah study, 159-61

Y

Yahweh, and Mount Sinai, 113-15

Z Zion, as established by Yahweh, 114-16

in the future, 122, 123

200

Scripture and Pseudepigrapha Index

OLD TESTAMENT

Genesis 1:1, 9 1:30 2-3 2:9 2:10-14 2:10 2:14 4:1-16 6:11 6:14 9:3 11:14 14:19 22 28:11-19 36:4

Exodus 15 15:1-18 15:17 19:16-24 24:1-11 25-31, 35-40 25 25:9, 40 25:9 26 26:30 27:8 29 • 33:7-11 36 39:32 40:6, 29

Leviticus 8 19:1 23:11, 15 25:1-13

Numbers 7 8:4 18:12 34:4

Deuteronomy

201


202

2 Chronicles 2:2-4 121 1:3, 6, 13 105 n. 29 4:2 70 3:1 172 n.27 9:5 104n.l8 3:13, 15-17 171 n.2 11:1-9 122 3:15 140 11:1 70 5:5 104n.26 11:4, 6, 9 122 7:1 172n.l3 11:9 124 n. 10

Ezra 14:1 123 1:1 172n.l2 14:13 93 3:12 172 n. 14 14:25 124 n. 10

Job 16:5 105 n.31 Job 87n.6 22:16 89 n.20

2:11 87n.6 25:6-8 112 17:15 83 30:25 70

Psalms 37:31 70 2 120 40:19-20 70 2:3-7 121 41:7-8 70 29:10-11 119 45:1 172 n.ll 46 112,117 45:9-13 171 n.9 46:5 70 51:9-11 116 48 112, 117,118 51:9-10 116 48:3 103 n.7 53:2 70 52:10 70 55 112 68:8-9 113 56:7 171 n.7 68:9 60 59:5 80, 87 68:17 65 65:3-4 83 72 120 Jeremiah 140 74 116 10:2-4 70 74:12-17 16 10:15 89 n.22 76 112,117, 118 16:14 171 n.8 77 116 22:14 80 77:12-21 116, 117 23:5 70 78 116 23:7 171 n.8 78:2-38 116 25:9 172n.l0 78:60 97 27:6 172n.l0 80:11 104n.l0 30:16 89 n.22 88:11-12 83 31:33 15 89 98, 116, 33:15 70

124n.l2 52:17, 20-23 171 n.2 89:6-28 121

52:17, 20-23 156 173n.36 89 n.22

92:13-15 104:5-8 119

70 64 160

Lamentations 3:7-9, 44 4:11

156 173n.36 89 n.22

132 98 Ezekiel 132:7 104 n.25 11:16 169 141:7 88n.l0 17:23 124 n. 10 150 21 20:40 124 n. 10

Proverbs 21

23:14 80 Proverbs 31:8 104n.l0 24-26 64 39:2 124n.l0

Isaiah 43:7 171 n.5 1:13, 14 18 47:1-12 111, 122 1:15 171 n.7 47:1 70 1:21-26 121 47:12 71


Daniel 6:10 6:11 7 9:21 10:4

Hosea 14:3

Joel 3:18

Amos 9:11

Matthew 16:19 21:13 22:14 (JST) 24:2

Mark 13 13:2

Luke 1:10 13:34 13:35 18:10 19:45 19:47 21:6

John 2:16 3:5 6 13:8, 10 13-20 14:2 17

Acts 3 3:1 7

1 Corinthians 15:29

D&C 13:1 59:9

Obadiah 11 1:21 12

Micah 4:1-4 121

172n.25 96 172n.25 88n.l0 Habbakkuk

1:16 80, 81,87 n.4 166 3 113

Zechariah 7 0 3:8 70

6:12 70 105 n.31 14:8 70

NEW TESTAMENT

Hebrews 177 25 5:8 10 6 8:10 15 18n.43 10:10 10 6 10:16 15

11:40 12 189 6 James

4:14-15 8 172 n.25 i P e t e r 7 2:4-9 11 6 51 2 Peter 6 1:4 14 6 1:19 14 6

1 John 6 2:27 8 5 . . Revelation i 2:7, 10 13 ' 2:17 14 Q 2:26-28 14 Zj 3:12 15

3:20-21 15 11 178

1 8 6 11:19 172 n.22 172 n.25 17:14 16 172 n. 19 21:2 13

21:22 172 n.22 12 22:16 14

DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS

84:31 13 13 84:48 5 3 86:11 5

203


88:1-5 8 109 lSn.41 88:15 9 109:4, 5 2 88:119 11 110:7 18n.41 88:138-41 17 n.29 115:7-16 2 93:35 9 124:28 3 93:36 3 124:39 1, 13 94, 95 2 124:124 8 97:10-14 17n.l3

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA, APOCRYPHA, RABBINICAL WRITINGS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS

Apocalypse of Peter Apocryphon of John Assumption of Moses

4:6-8 Babylonian Talmud.

Baba Bathra 60b Sabbath 88a

Book of Jasher VII, 24-27 XXVII, 2, 7, 10

Book of the Dead 1:19 Enoch 14

89:73-74 Eugnostas IV Ezra Gilgamesh Epic Gospel of Philip Jubilees 2:22 Judith 9:1

16:16 Letter of Peter to Philip 2 Maccabees 1:10-2:18 3 Maccabees 7:20 Manual of Discipline (IQS)

1:16-2:25 Midrash Rabbah.

Leviticus Rabbah 7.3 9.7

Mishnah. Kodashim. Menahot 110a

Moed. Erubim V, i 13b Megillah 2.12-18

3.1-3 3.22-23 3b 29a 29a, b 31b

Pesachim IV, iv VI,iii-iv 65b

188, 189 188

172n.20

173n.32 18 n.45

37 37 65, 66 178 172 n.20 182 165 70 177, 184, 186 172n.24 172 n.25 172n.24 187 172 n. 13 172 n.26

130

173 n.38 173n.41

40, 42, 173 n.38

34 n.22 174 n.53 174 n.47 174 n.47 173 n.45 173 n.42 173 n.45 174 n.50 173 n.38 34n.21 37 n.62 171 n.6

Sukkah 49b Taanit 2.1 (65a)

4.2-4 4.4 27b

Nashim. Sotah 5b

Nezikim. Makkot 10a Zeraim. Berakhot

3:14-16 4.1 (7a-b) 4:5-6 5.1 (8d)

10b 15a

Mishnah. Zeraim. Berakhot 17a

26b 32b

Myth of Adapa On the Origin of the

World Prayer of Azariah 15-16 Second Apocalypse of

James The Second Treatise of

the Great Seth Sibylline Oracles Syriac Apocalypse of

Baruch Tanhuma, Ki Tabo 1 Temple Scroll Testament of Judah Testament of Levi

18:9-12 Tobit 4:10-11 Valentinian Exposition The Wisdom of Jesus

Christ Wisdom of Solomon 9:8 Word of Solomon 9:8

73 n.42 72n.l5 71 n.7 31 73 n.38 73 n.32 73 n.42 73 n.42

73n.46 73 n.37 73 n.46 73 n.40, 45; 174n.50

73n.40 73n.40

73 n.39 73 n.37 73 n.36, 43

69

81 72 n.23

87

77 58

65 73 n.43 62

71 78 8n.40 72 77

82 72 n.21 78

204

the temple in antiquity - ancient records and modern perspectives

Documents

temple ritual

new temple festivals

ancient studies

formal papersto temple

common temple ideology

introductory essay

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