Heaven and temple in the Second Temple period: A taxonomy

It is a commonplace of ancient Near Eastern worldviews that temples have cosmic significance. This understanding persists and develops in the Second Temple period, with numerous texts witnessing to a widely held belief that the Jerusalem temple reflected heaven or the universe. Scholars have largely...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Moore, Nicholas J. 1984- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 2023
In: Journal for the study of the pseudepigrapha
Year: 2023, Volume: 33, Issue: 1, Pages: 75-93
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Judaism / Religion / Israel (Geographical name) / Temple / kosmos / Heaven
IxTheo Classification:AA Study of religion
BH Judaism
HB Old Testament
Further subjects:B Cultus
B Tabernacle
B Apocalypse
B Jerusalem Temple
B Cosmology
B Cosmos
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Summary:It is a commonplace of ancient Near Eastern worldviews that temples have cosmic significance. This understanding persists and develops in the Second Temple period, with numerous texts witnessing to a widely held belief that the Jerusalem temple reflected heaven or the universe. Scholars have largely been content either to recognize a basic relationship, or to distinguish temple-in-heaven from temple-as-universe, sometimes construing the former as “apocalyptic” and the latter as “Hellenistic.” Jonathan Klawans’ work represents an important articulation of this distinction. This article summarizes his contribution, and critiques it on the grounds that it remains overly dichotomous and does not do full justice to the evidence. Instead, a fresh taxonomy is proposed with four key categories, each illustrated from Second Temple and biblical texts. None of these categories is discrete; rather they demarcate a spectrum or scale of ways that ancient Jewish and early Christian writers conceptualized the heaven–temple relationship.
ISSN:1745-5286
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal for the study of the pseudepigrapha
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/09518207211052237