Temple and Calendar Intellectual Adjustment Mythic Thinking Does not mean biblical stories are fairy tales Refers to symbolic metaphors used to make concepts comprehensible Bible has many of them visual metaphors that ID: 697164
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Slide1
Think Like an Israelite
Keeping Chaos at Bay:
Temple
and
CalendarSlide2
Intellectual Adjustment
Mythic
Thinking
Does not mean biblical stories are “fairy tales”
Refers to symbolic metaphors used to make concepts comprehensible
Bible has many of them – visual metaphors that
d
o not conform to a “scientific world” that help us grasp theological concepts.
“sacred space” was one of themSlide3
In Other Words …
Sacred Space is:
Where God is, or has appeared
Set off from normal (“mundane”) space
New Elements
:
Where God is, there is peace, order, and justice (
shalom
); absence of chaos.
Every place that lacks the above must be made fit for divine presence.Slide4
“Chaos”
“Describes
the state of disorder that would exist in the absence of a divinely imposed order on the cosmos. In biblical and ancient Near Eastern literature, the supreme gods brought order to the universe and subdued the forces of chaos. The chaotic unpredictability and latent threat of the sea (
ים
,
yam
) resulted in its coming to represent these forces of chaos in ancient literature such as the
Baal Cycle, where one of Slide5
“Chaos”
Baal’s
main conflicts is a battle against the god of the sea,
Yamm
(the same Semitic word as the Hebrew for sea,
yam
). Baal’s
eventual victory symbolizes the triumph of order over chaos. In addition to the sea itself, chaos could be represented as a great sea serpent or dragon (
תנין
,
tnyn
), variously known as
Leviathan, Rahab, or Tiamat
.”Slide6
Psa 74:12-17
12
Yet
God my King is from of old,
working salvation in the midst of the earth.
13
You
divided the sea
(
yam
)
by
your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters
(
tnynym
)
on
the waters.
14
You
crushed the heads of
Leviathan
;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15
You
split open springs and brooks;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
16
Yours
is the day, yours also the night;
you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
17
You
have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter. Slide7
Psa 89:8-11
8
O
Lord God of hosts,
who is mighty as you are, O Lord,
with your faithfulness all around you?
9
You
rule the raging of the
sea
(
yam
);
when its waves rise, you still them.
10
You
crushed
Rahab
like a carcass;
you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.
11
The
heavens are yours; the earth also is yours;
the world and all that is in it, you have founded them. Slide8
Isa 51:9-10
9
Awake
, awake, put on strength,
O
arm of the Lord;
awake
, as in days of old,
the
generations of long ago.
Was
it not you who cut
Rahab
in pieces,
who
pierced the
dragon
(
tnyn
)?
10
Was
it not you who dried up the
sea
(
yam
),
the
waters of the great
deep
(
tehom
),
who
made the depths of the sea
(
yam
) a
way
for
the redeemed to pass over? Slide9
Genesis 1-2
1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
2
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the
deep
(
tehom
)
.
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
31
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very
good
(
ṭôb
mĕʾōd
).
And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Slide10
Genesis 1-2
Gen 1:31 does not mean the earth was perfect
(
tāmı̂m
)Slide11
All the Earth was not Eden
Eden is the first sacred space (no chaos)
God made Eden his
sole residence
Eden had geography (Gen 2:5-14)
Invited humans there (original intention was humanity was part of the family)
The rest of earth = God wanting human participation in bringing earth into
submission (Gen 1:28)
You don’t need to “subdue” and “have dominion” over something in a perfect / completed state.Slide12
The Fall
Irruption of chaos – Eden is no more
Sacred space from that point forward had to be chosen by God and then kept “chaos free” by ritual act or ritually prepared for divine presence.Slide13
Holding Chaos at Bay
Main metaphor for restoration and maintenance of order (even extending to the cosmos) = the temple
(Earlier session):
Ezek
38:12 (Jerusalem = “center” of the earth
)
Cosmic center of Jerusalem = templeSlide14Slide15
1 Kings 7:23-26; 2
Chron
4:2-5Slide16
Holding Chaos at Bay
Meyers, ABD:
Just
as spectacular as its size was its ornamentation. Under its rim was a series of cast decorations: two rows of “gourds.” The rim (“brim”) itself was made of lily work. Most amazing of all was the way it was supported on four sets of bronze oxen, with three oxen in each set. Each set of oxen faced a direction of the compass, with their
“hinder parts”
facing inward and supporting the basin.Slide17
Holding Chaos at Bay
The directional orientation led Albright to suppose (a la
Ezekiel
1's cherubim faces) that the oxen = 12 elements of zodiac / cardinal points, signifying the temple as the center of the universe as it were.Slide18
Holding Chaos at Bay
The “bronze sea” had a very large quantity of water – much more than merely for hand-washing by priests (“3000 baths”)
= 66,000 liters (=
17,435 gallons)
= 27-foot diameter round pool / 4-feet high.
Recall that this item was NOT present in tabernacleSlide19
Holding Chaos at Bay
Meyers,
ABD (cont.):
"
One of the features of ANE temples was their utilization of artistic and architectural elements relating to the idea of the temple as the cosmic center of the world. The great deep, or cosmic waters, is one aspect of the array of cosmic attributes of such a holy spot. The temple of
Marduk
at Babylon, for example, had an artificial sea
(
ta-am-
tu
) in its precincts; and some Babylonian temples had an
apsû
- sea, a large basin.
..Slide20
Holding Chaos at Bay
Meyers,
ABD (cont.):
. . . Such
features symbolize the idea of the ordering of the universe by the conquest of chaos; or they represent the presence of the
‘
waters
of
life
’
at the holy center. Ancient Israel shared in this notion of watery chaos being subdued by Yahweh and of the temple being built on the cosmic waters. The great
‘molten sea’
near the temple’s entrance would have signified Yahweh’s power and presence."Slide21Slide22
Holding Chaos at Bay
Take note of
Ezek
43:15
15 and the altar
hearth
(
harʾēl
)
,
four cubits; and from the altar hearth
(
hʾariʾêl
)
projecting
upward, four horns
.
Cf. Isa 29:1ff for alternate spelling
harʾē
l
related to Sumerian
arallu
Slide23
Holding Chaos at Bay
Levenson
[
The term
har'el
] in the same passage (verse 15) is to be connected with Akkadian
arallu
, a term for the netherworld, about which the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary remarks that it was
interalia
, a "cosmic locality opposite of heaven," although we should note, as does Albright, that the ancient Israelites may have understood this term as "mountain of God" (
har'el
), which is a concept no less cosmic
.
Levenson
, Theology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40-48Slide24Slide25
Holding Chaos at Bay
Calendar Considerations
(Qumran sect)
Merkabah
vision (Ezekiel 1) – throne-chariot of God, a concept linked to the temple itself.Slide26
Holding Chaos at Bay
(
Elior
,
The Three Temples
, 29)
In
the Holy of Holies (
devir
) of Solomon’s Temple, two gold-plated cherubim shielded the cover of the Ark with their wings (1 Kings 6:23-35; 8:6-7); their appearance, revealed to David as a divine pattern, is described in the parallel passage in Chronicles, which explicitly links the cherubim with the heavenly Chariot Throne: ‘for the pattern of the
chariot
—the cherubim—those with outspread wings screening the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord’ (1
Chron
28:18
).Slide27
Holding Chaos at Bay
(
Elior
, p. 30)
The
Merkavah
was thus a representation of the ritual order of cyclic ritual time, measured in sabbaths of days, i.e., weeks. But the fourfold annual seasons in turn subdivided in accordance with a fixed sevenfold order; similarly, the concept of sacred time derived from the seven days of Creation; accordingly, there are seven days in a week, counted in ‘sabbaths of days’; seven days of service performed by each priestly course serving in the temple; seven days of consecration (
miluim
; see Lev 8:33); and seven-week intervals between harvesting
times.Slide28
Holding Chaos at Bay
Qumran priests believe in this calendar:
Began on Day 4 of creation
If used, all numerically significant events (sabbaths, Passover, feasts, jubilee, Day of Atonement, etc.) falls on the same day every day
Perfect
mathematical
symmetry
Believed this calendar reflected and derived from the mind of God.Slide29
Holding Chaos at Bay
Consequently, this calendar had to be observed by priesthood to keep heaven and earth in sync.
Otherwise, chaos in God’s land, the whole world
(Beckwith): Calendar produced a date for messiah’s appearance sometime between 3 BC- 2 AD (“an end to sin” – i.e., an end to “period of wickedness” and end of exile); revolves around their understanding of the “70 weeks” = 10 jubilee cycles.Slide30
Holding Chaos at Bay
Birth of Jesus predicted / falls into Qumran jubilee system (sign to that sect).
If you use the calendar followed by the Pharisees (lunar + added month periodically), the birth date wasn’t a Jubilee year. But by biblical chronology, the year Jesus began his ministry was a jubilee year:
Luke 4:14-19Slide31
Holding Chaos at Bay
Their emphasis on jubilee cycles noteworthy for
idealized temple of
Ezek
40-48
. Scholars
have noted the numbers and dimensions of the temple are consistently multiples of 25 (half a jubilee) and fifty (a jubilee).
#
25 = 8x in
chs
40-48
# 50 = 10x in
chs
40-48
#100 = 13x in
chs
40-48
#250 = 4x ...
#500 = 8x ... (walls)
#1,000 = 4x
#5,000 = 2x
#10,000 = 7x
#25,000 = 14x (land allotments)
= 60 references to jubilee numbers and their multiples
NT Temple talk?