#apparently henry mystic is long gone at this point | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

free-mormons-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Christian Envy of the Temple -- When the Lights Went Out Three Studies on the Ancient Apostasy -- HUGH NIBLEY 2001

Christian Envy of the Temple

The Question

In his justly celebrated work on the fall of Jerusalem, S. G. F. Brandon comments on the “truly amazing” indifference of Christian writers to the importance of that event in the history of the church.1 But if the fall of the city meant for the Christians much what it meant for the Jews, that is, “the sudden removal of the original source of authority,”2 the loss of the temple, which was the central episode of the catastrophe, could hardly have been of less significance; yet Brandon himself, though by comparison with other scholars a positive enthusiast for the temple, minimizes its importance for the Christians as consistently as he accuses others of playing down the importance of Jerusalem.3

Why is this? Long ago Adam of St. Victor observed with wonder that the Christian fathers had always gone out of their way to avoid any discussion of the tabernacle of God, in spite of its great popular interest and its importance in the divine economy.4 The reason for this strange attitude is, as Adam and his fellow Richard explain, that the very thing which makes the temple so attractive to many Christians, that is, the exciting possibility of a literal and tangible bond between heaven and earth, is precisely the thing that most alarms and embarrasses the churchmen.5 Again, why so? Can it be that the destruction of the temple left a gaping void in the life of the church, a vacuum that the historians and theologians have studiously ignored, exactly as they have ignored such other appalling reverses to the church as the fall of Jerusalem and the cessation of the spiritual gifts?6 If the loss of the temple was really a crippling blow to the church, the fact can no longer be overlooked in the interpretation of church history.

But was it such a blow? The purpose of this paper is to consider three facts that strongly support an affirmative reply, namely: (1) that many Christian writers have expressed the conviction that the church possesses no adequate substitute for the temple and have yearned for its return; (2) that determined attempts have been made from time to time to revive in the church practices peculiar to the temple; and (3) that the official Christian position, that church and temple cannot coexist and hence the latter has been abolished forever, has always been weakened by a persistent fear that the temple might be restored. These three propositions reflect in the Christian mind a sense respectively of loss, inadequacy, and misgiving. What they all share in common is envy of the temple. But before the significance of that becomes apparent, we must consider the three points in order.

Good Riddance or Tragic Loss?

Whatever the conflicting views of the earliest Christians may have been,7 the perennial controversy regarding the temple in later times is well-illustrated by the Battle of the Books that began in the third century when Bishop Nepos attacked the “allegorists” with a book in defense of a literal and earthly millennium; in reply to this “unhealthy” teaching, Dionysius, the sophisticated Bishop of Alexandria, wrote what Jerome calls “an elegant book, deriding the old fable about the thousand years and the earthly Jerusalem with its gold and jewels, the restoration of the Temple,” etc.8 This in turn brought forth a two-volume counterblast in Jerome’s day by one Apollinarius, who “not only speaks for his own following but for the greater part of the people here as well, so that I can already see,” says Jerome, “what a storm of opposition is in store for me!”9 Jerome frankly admits that the opposition represents the old Christian tradition, his own liberal “spiritualizing” interpretation running counter to the beliefs of such eminent earlier authorities as Tertullian, Victorinus, Lactantius, and Irenaeus. This puts him in a dilemma: “If we accept [the Apocalypse of John] literally we are judaizers, if spiritually, as they were written, we seem to be contradicting the opinions of many of the ancients.”10 From personal experience, furthermore, Jerome can tell us how the old-fashioned Christians in Jerusalem insist on pointing out the very plot of ground on the Mount of Olives “where they say the sanctuary of the Lord, that is, the Temple, is to be built, and where it will stand forever,” that is, “when, as they say, the Lord comes with the heavenly Jerusalem at the end of the world.”11

Professor Henry Cadbury, in a study in which he suggests that the earliest Christians may well have believed “that this site [the Mount of Olives] is to be the site of the parousia,” concludes that “if other Christians, ancient and modern, have found the primitive emphasis on such a literal future event embarrassing, Luke gives no real countenance to any of their ways of avoiding it,”12 which means that Jerome’s dilemma remains unresolved to this day. Through the years the doctors have continued to dismiss a literal temple as an old wives’ tale only to find all their arguments against it offset by arguments at least as potent in its favor.

First and foremost was the philosophical plea against a physical temple (supported by endless repetitions of Isaiah 66:1), that God is not to be contained in any crass material structure.13 The fact that the invisible incorporeal God needs no visible corporeal temple was grasped “by no man at any time, either Barbarian or Greek, except by our Savior alone,” writes Eusebius, forgetting in his tendentious zeal that this had been a stock theme of the schools for centuries, and that Christian Clement, speaking with the pagan voice of Alexandria, had given it his eloquent best with supporting quotations from Plato, Zeno, and Euripides.14 The main objection to this view, however, was not its heathen coloring but the idea, pointed out later by Aquinas, that the temple was not built for God but for man, who needs a tangible image of celestial things and “special times, tabernacles, vessels, and ministers” to inculcate understanding and reverence.15 “It cannot be too often emphasized,” writes Canon Phythian-Adams, “that the belief in the Presence is not to be described as ‘unspiritual’ simply because Its ‘tabernacle’ was material.” And the same scholar, who represents a surprising but unmistakable tendency to view the temple with a new sympathy and understanding, rebukes the hitherto common practice in Christian theology “of confusing a belief or doctrine with low and materialistic interpretations of it.”16 Certainly the Jews themselves were well aware of the limitations of physical buildings and needed no Greek schoolmen, levied as spokesmen for a new religion, to tell them what Solomon had said long before: “The heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this house which I have built!”17

Apart from its gross and earthly substance, the temple has always been criticized by the churchmen as symbolic of a narrow, selfish, tribal worldview, incompatible with the grandiose concept of a universal church.18 Again the answer was clear: What could proclaim the oneness of God’s rule and the universality of true religion more eloquently than the temple itself, “a house of prayer for all peoples,” “the spiritual metropolis of all lands”?19 Some scholars protested that the authority of the temple had been virtually abolished by the exile and the Diaspora,20 but others pointed out with equal assurance that those misfortunes actually had the opposite effect: “Dispersion . . . increased the significance and the fascination of the Temple,” while the exile “only strengthened the universal love for it.”21 Actually, the limiting of the great central rites and ordinances to one spot was the very thing that recommended the temple so strongly to the Christian schoolmen, enthralled as they were by “the withering pressure of an omnipresent and monotonous idea”—the passion for oneness.22 Nothing on earth represented the oneness of God, his worship, and his people more perfectly than the temple had, and the church sorely missed just such a centralizing force.23 Thus Peter Cantor in the twelfth century deplores the multiplication of Christian shrines and invites the church to “note that in all Israel there was but one Temple, one Tabernacle, one Altar,” and to follow that example as “the only remedy” for “this morbum multiplicem.”24

How was such simplification to be effected? Peter and his fellows know nothing of the later device by which in theory there is only one central mass in the church “in which all the Church was thought to participate.”25 Instead he suggests a compromise that had been recommended long before: “Following the example of the one Temple, there should be in every city but one church, or, if it is a very large city, but a few, and those duly subordinated to the one principal church.”26 The objection to this, of course, is that the few fall as far short of the perfection of the Monad as do the many. Christian apologists had never tired of pointing out to the heathen the absurdity of their many gods and temples; how, then, were they to answer heathen and Christian criticism of the endless multiplication of Christian temples of which they first boasted27 and which they then tried to explain away?28

The standard explanation was that since the church was mystically the temple, and, being universal, was one, it followed that the temple was still one.29 Because Christians do all things in common, it was argued, they may be considered as one single temple.30 But this was putting the cart before the horse, for, as Thomas Aquinas observes, the temple was introduced in the first place to achieve that unity—it is not the mystical result of it. But having praised the temple as the perfect expression of God’s unity and of the unitas et simplicitas of the worship he requires, Thomas lamely adds: “But since the cult of the New Law with its spiritual sacrifice is acceptable to God, a multiplication of altars and temples is accordingly acceptable.”31 Here the word spiritual is expected to answer all questions and silence all objections, but Thomas’s own insistence on the unique significance of the temple as a locus electus, a tangible center of worship for the benefit of mortal man, makes demands that abstract terminology cannot satisfy.32 What is everywhere is nowhere, and for the very reason that God and his church are everywhere, there must be some special point of contact, Stephen VI is reported to have argued, around which the church might, like Israel, center its activities.33

Still, the idea of a spiritual temple was made to order for the schoolmen, who from the first took to it like ducks to water. The supplanting of a stone temple by “a spiritual edifice” is for August Neander nothing less than “the mightiest achievement in the history of humanity.”34 It is a simple, eloquent formula: “The Messiah’s kingdom would supplant the outworn system of the past. He would raise up a new temple of the spirit.”35 “Lugeat carnalis Judaeus, sed spiritualis gaudeat Christianus!”36 Again the argument falls flat, for the spiritual and carnal are not neatly divided between Jews and Christians, but “were to be found in both religions, and are still to be found in them.”37 If the Christian doctors knew how to spiritualize the temple, the rabbis had done a good job of de-eschatologizing long before them, and even the old-fashioned literalists knew the danger of “putting their trust in a building rather than in the God who created them.”38 In the end it was not a question of temple versus no temple but, as Irenaeus pointed out, one of proper values and emphasis.39

An inevitable corollary of the spiritual temple was the purely intellectual temple: Templum Dei naturaliter est anima rationalis, the human breast wherein “the rational and intellectual and impolluted and external unutterable nature of Divinity resides,” that higher, purer temple built of abstract virtues, etc.40 But aside from the fact that such ideas bore the trademark of the schools and were far over the heads of the general public,41 there was no reason why an “intellectual” temple should not coexist with a real one: while the Lord referred to the temple as his body, the church, Israel, and even the dry bones of Ezekiel, Origen observes, the real temple was still standing.42 Why not? The early fathers found “nothing absurd in saying that God’s dwelling is in heaven and at the same time in the earthly Zion,”43 and scholastic philosophers have no difficulty in viewing the temple under various mystic, moral, and material aspects without the least sense of contradiction.44

Along with their philosophical and moral condemnation of the temple, the doctors never tired of laboring the historical argument—the cold fact that the temple had actually been destroyed, that God had allowed its destruction and the prophets foretold it.45 But that had happened before, following a well-established eschatological pattern which saw in the destruction itself an earnest of restoration;46 and while in the divine plan the temple was to have its ups and downs (the Jews themselves anticipating the worst),47 there was no doubt in the minds of Jewish and Christian “fundamentalists” that the story would end on a note of eternal triumph for the temple, whose glory was eternal, preexistent, and indestructible.48 And if the Jews looked forward to a dark interim between the fall of the temple and the “Return and Restoration [which were an integral part of] the divine plan,”49 so no less did the first Christians: “For the scripture says,” writes one of them, “showing how the City and the Temple and the People of Israel were to be taken away, ‘It shall come to pass in the last days, that the Lord will give over the sheep of his pasture, and their sheepfold and their tower to destruction.'”50 The fathers of the fourth century were uncomfortably aware of this tradition, and Hilary states his own conviction that because of the wickedness of the times “there has for a long time been no Mountain of the Lord’s House upon the earth.”51 Later churchmen are haunted by a suspicion that the church is not really the equivalent of the temple at all, but rather of the tabernacle wandering in the wilderness, while the stable and enduring temple is still to come.52

A favorite symbol of the transition from crass Jewish materialism to the Christian temple of the Spirit has always been the New Testament episode of the driving out of the money changers.53 Yet how much this “obvious transfer” (as St. Leo calls it)54 left to be desired is apparent from many a bitter comment that the church itself was as much “a den of thieves” as ever the temple was, with the obvious difference, already voiced by Origen, that “today Jesus comes no more to drive out the money-changers and save the rest!”55 Furthermore, it has often been pointed out that the purging of the temple, far from being its death sentence, was rather a demonstration by the Lord “that he would not tolerate the slightest disrespect” for his Father’s house.56

In the same way, the other classic scriptural arguments against the temple have either backfired or proven highly equivocal. The famous prophecy that not one stone should remain upon another, hailed by the churchmen as a guarantee of eternal dissolution,57 contains nothing to confirm or deny a future restoration, and may well have been spoken “with the sorrow of a patriot rather than the wrath of an iconoclast.”58 If the rending of the veil has been treated as a symbol of irreversible eradication,59 it has suggested with equal force a broadening and expanding of revelation.60 Jesus’ invitation to “destroy this temple” and his conditioned promise to rebuild the same are often taken—but only by a liberal revamping of the text—to mean the opposite, namely, that he will destroy the temple himself, and instead of rebuilding it bring something totally different in its place: “‘Finish then,’ he might have implied, ‘this work of dissolution: in three days will I . . . restore . . . not a material Temple, but a living Church.'” Dean Farrar’s interpretation is typical, resting as it does not on what Jesus said but on what “he might have implied.”61

. . . Tamen usque recurret

The temple was driven out with a fork by Jerome and his intellectual friends. On one thing all the spiritual children of Alexandria—Greek, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—have always seen eye to eye, and that is the conviction that the old eschatology with its naive literalism and its millennial temple was unworthy of thinking men, “repugnant to every principle of faith as well as reason.”62 Of these intellectuals none have been more dedicated to the party line than the Christian schoolmen, whose opinions inevitably became the official doctrine of a church which drew its leaders almost exclusively from their ranks. Yet they were not the only force to be reckoned with, and by the time “St. Augustine’s City of God had come to replace millenarianism as the official doctrine of the church,”63 the more tangible and sensuous aspects of the temple, enhanced by time and legend, were exercising their powerful attraction on two highly susceptible and influential bodies—a spectacle-hungry public and a power-hungry government.

As to the first of these, it is apparent from Jerome’s experience that a large part of the Christian society did not lose sight of the temple after its destruction but spoke longingly of its return. Students today are more inclined than they have been in the past to concede to the temple a high place in the estimation of Jesus,64 of the prophets before him,65 and of the apostles and the church after him.66 “The ethical monotheism of the Wellhausen era,” that made short work of the temple and its ritualism, now yields to recognition of the importance of the ritual drama of the temple not only as “a basic component of Israel’s religion,” but of early Christianity as well.67 For both, the way to heaven led through the temple, and if that was but an intermediate step in the salvation of the race, it was none-the-less an indispensable one.68 It was all very well for the orators of the fourth century to declaim that in the church “the goal of all old Testament hopes had now come,” that “the religion of promise and pilgrimage” had given way to “one of achievement and fulfilment”—the simpler Christians knew better: “Christians have not yet attained their goal; they too must run their course (Hebrews 12:1).”69 The Christian still needed the temple and always remained a pilgrim to Jerusalem in a very literal sense. Even the learned doctors of the second and third centuries “were unable to resist the fascination of the holy places” and came with the rest to see the spot where the Lord had left the earth and where he would return to his temple.70 In vain did the great fathers of the following centuries protest against the silly custom, clearly pointing out that it was in direct conflict with the official doctrine of the spiritual temple: the pilgrimage went right on.71

The Emperor Constantine’s plan “to legislate the millennium in a generation” called for the uniting of the human race in the bonds of a single religion, under a single holy ruler, administered from a single holy center.72 It was the old “hierocentric” concept of the sacral state, represented among others by the Roma aeterna of which Christian Rome claimed to be the revival,73 but also typified from time immemorial in the temples of the East, each a scale model of the cosmos, which was thought literally to revolve around it.74 Constantine’s architectural projects proclaim his familiarity with the idea of a templum mundi as a physical center of the universe,75 just as clearly as his panegyrists hail him in the role of Solomon the temple builder.76 “It is our most peaceful Solomon who built this Temple,” cries the orator at the dedication of one of Constantine’s vast “cosmic” rotundas, “and the latter glory of this House is greater than the former.” Just as Christ transferred “from sordid flesh to a glorified body,” so the church now has a much more glorified body than before.77 Let no one mistake this for the incorporeal temple of the doctors, who protested briefly and ineffectively against all this materialism;78 this really fulfills the prophecy (Haggai 2:9), no longer in words only but in deeds.79 The same rhetorical license that had vaporized the temple of Jerusalem by its appeal to higher things was not employed to justify its very solid successors, and before a rapt audience the great Christian orator could convert a monster pile, window by window and stone by stone, “into a spiritual temple structure” by the bewitching power of allegory.80

Immediately after his return from the Council of Nicea, Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem, by authorization of the emperor, demolished the temple of Jupiter that the Romans had “built on the very spot where formerly the Temple of God had stood,” and in the process discovered the crypts of the Cross and the Holy Sepulchre, “and,” Eusebius significantly adds, “the Holy of Holies crypt,” which was identical in form with the latter.81 Over the holy spot the emperor or his mother had built the wonderful structure which they called “the New Jerusalem, having erected it in the place of the ancient one that had been abandoned,” the Holy Sepulchre serving as the pivot and center of the whole sacred complex.82 The temple complex was supplanted by Christian buildings. Theodoret pointedly compares the Churches of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension with the ruined temple and asks how the Jews in the face of that can have the effrontery even to remain in the city: “The Babylonians never came to worship at their Temple,” he argues, “while all the world flocks to our churches,” thus proving that the true house of God that draws all nations to Jerusalem is not their temple but our church.83 Chrysostom draws a like conclusion as he ecstatically views those vast panegyrises, those gorgeous year-assemblies at the shrine of the martyrs that represent the brilliant wedding of Christianity with the ever-popular pagan cults with their feasts and markets at holy tombs: “What does this all mean?” he asks, and the answer is clear: “It means that the Temple has been abolished.”84 We don’t need to go to Jerusalem anymore, John assures his people, just as his friend Gregory of Nyssa can announce that the church can “supplant the faded antique glory of our cities by our own Christian glory.”85

Of the many duplicates of Constantine’s New Jerusalem the most ambitious was Justinian’s “mighty glorious Temple, the Temple of my Lord, a heaven here below which I ween amazes even the reverencing Seraphim. If God should ever condescend to abide in a house made with hands,” the panegyrist continues, “this surely is the House!”86 As a crowning gesture, the emperor had fetched from Carthage the very vessels that the Roman soldiers had plundered from the temple of Jerusalem long before. But then in an even more significant gesture, the haughty Justinian for the only time in his life heeded the advice of the hated Jews and in superstitious dread ordered the vessels returned “in haste to Jerusalem, where he had them deposited in a church.”87 It was all very well to set up a new and holier Rome on the Bosphorus, but when it came to a showdown not even a Justinian dared to arrogate the authority of the house of God at Jerusalem.88

The man who dared most was Pope Leo. Behind him he had the tradition of the empire, now Christian, with Rome “holy among cities” as the center of the world.89But how could the church have two centers? The churchmen displayed considerable ingenuity in their arguments to show how a large number of churches could carry on the tradition of a single temple,90 but by the time of Constantine it was recognized that if there was ever to be peace in the church what was needed was not a vague universality and equality, but a highly centralized authority.91 Leo, who did more than any other man to transform the old universal devotio Romana into a new devotio Christiana,92 clearly saw in the temple at Jerusalem his most serious opponent.93 His sermons bristle with barbed and invidious remarks that betray his touchiness on the subject. In Leo’s Rome, as Michael Seidlmayer puts it, “die christliche Kirche steht auf dem Fundament des heidnischen Tempels.”94 Leo explains this away by appealing to the well-established Roman doctrine of renovatio with a new twist: Rome has died pagan and been resurrected Christian.95 The tomb of Peter now performs the function that once belonged to the templum of Hadrian, the great round tomb by the Tiber that was designed to draw all the world to it, while Hadrian’s image now stands in the temple of Jerusalem—the roles of the two cities have been neatly reversed.96

Leo freely admits the debt of Christian Rome to pagan Rome97 and sees in the great Easter and Christmas congregations of his people both the old Roman national assembly and the gathering of Israel at the temple: “Here you see the heavenly Jerusalem, built of all nations,” he cries, addressing such assemblies, “purged of all impurity on this day, it has become as the Temple of God!”98 “Now a new and indestructible Temple has been erected,” with Leo himself presiding in it, ordained in honor of Christ, the prophet “after the order of Melchizedek, . . . not after the order of Aaron whose priesthood . . . ceased with the Law of the Old Testament.”99Rome has not abolished the rites of the temple, however, but simply taken them over, every particle of the ancient ordinances and imagery having been absorbed in the Christian sacraments: “Ours today is the circumcision, the anointing of priests, etc. . . . Ours is the honor of the Temple!”100 Thanks to the ministrations of Peter and Paul, the people of Rome are now “a holy generation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city.” In a word, Rome was now Jerusalem.101

But Leo protests too much. His Easter sermons, like Hilary’s Tract on the Psalms, Ambrose’s De Sacramentis, Jerome’s letters from Bethlehem, and Chrysostom’s great work on the priesthood, breathe less of pious conviction than of envy. The first of these displays a positive phobia of a literal temple, against which it wages truceless war.102 “We admire the mysteries of the Jews, given to our fathers, first for their antiquity, and then for their sanctity,” says Ambrose, reassuring his followers, “But I can promise you that the Christian sacraments are both holier and older.” For the former rites go back only to Moses, while Melchizedek is the author of the latter. Quis est Melchisedek? Who but the Justice, Peace, and Wisdom of God—is there anything more timeless or holy than a pure abstraction?103 Jerome, explaining to a friend that the temple was always exclusively reserved to the Christians, concedes that the holy of holies was a wondrous thing, and promptly adds: “But doesn’t the Sepulchre of the Lord appear more worshipful to you? As often as we enter it we see the Lord lying there . . . and the Angel sitting at his feet.”104Chrysostom, constantly approached by disillusioned Christians wanting to know what has happened to the ancient glories of Israel, is able to reply with stirring rhetoric: In ancient times only Moses could approach God, but now we all see him face to face. Moses feared God—but no one fears him today. Israel heard the thunder and trembled—we hear God’s actual voice and are not afraid.105 We have angels all around us in the church today—you can see them if only you will open your mental eyes.106 The priest ministering at our altar is a more awesome object than the high priest in the temple, since “he casts aside all carnal thought and like a disembodied spirit views celestial things by pure mind alone.”107 The Jewish temple was a mere shadow, the churchmen repeat: we have the real thing. “They had the Tabernacle, we see Truth face to face!”108 Do we? Yes, indeed, “but in a higher and hidden sense.”109

Leo’s imagery manifests an awareness that in snubbing the temple the church would be missing a good thing. Actually the fathers of the preceding generation had fumbled the ball badly when they threw out the temple. But before the church could recover, a new and formidable player, Islam, had snatched it up and run the whole length of the field.

When Omar conquered and entered Jerusalem in AD 638 he asked first of all to be shown “the glorious Temple that Solomon had built,” only to discover that the Christians had converted the place into a garbage dump.110 The treasure that the churchmen had so foolishly thrown away the Muslims were quick to exploit, promptly rebuilding the temple and restoring it to its prestige as a center of world pilgrimage.111 They had already harnessed its unique powers by “transferring to Mecca cosmological ideas in vogue among Jews and Christians concerning the sanctuary of Jerusalem,”112 and though the legends of the Kaaba, of its founding and refounding by Adam and Abraham as an earthly replica of the eternal preexistent heavenly prototype, etc., were borrowed freely from Jerusalem, there is no long history of bitter rivalry between the two.113 For Islam, Jerusalem remained par excellence the City of the Holy House, and as late as the eleventh century anyone who could not make the hajj to Mecca was instructed to go to the great feast at Jerusalem instead.114 The Muslim intellectuals, exactly as the Jewish and Christian doctors before them, protested against the glorification of a mere building, and campaigned vigorously against the pilgrimages,115 but the temple had a powerful advocate in Christian jealousy. Like children fighting for a toy, each faction came to prize the temple more highly when it saw how much the other wanted it.

This jealous rivalry became apparent on the very day Omar entered Jerusalem and visited the temple ruins “in all humility and simplicity.” The Christians, who saw in his unassuming manner “only a Satanic hypocrisy,” were piously horrified at the sight, and the Patriarch Sophronius cried out: “This, surely, is the Abomination of Desolation in the Temple, of which David [sic] prophesied.”116 For the Christians it was their temple now, though they had turned it into a dung heap.117 Such horror the Jews of old had expressed at the sight of profane feet in the temple, and presently the Muslims took up the refrain, banishing Christians and Jews on pain of death from the sacred precincts “where the Saracens believe, according to their law, that their prayers are more readily answered than anywhere else.”118 The only genuine religious clashes between Christians and Muslims, Friedrich Müller informs us of the Crusades, were the two fights for the temple, when the Christians took it in 1099 and the Muslims got it back in 1187—”und damit war die Geschichte des Glaubenskrieges als solches ziemlich aus.”119 Solomon’s temple was in each case, as it had been in Jewish times, the last redoubt; there alone neither side gave or asked for quarter; it was the ultimate all-out objective, and each conqueror in turn entered the holy place with songs of apocalyptic joy.120

Actually the possession of the temple complex was more than a mere matter of prestige. In the endless rivalries of the Christian sects there was just one claim to supreme authority that could neither be duplicated nor matched: “Those who cannot be reached by scriptural and doctrinal arguments,” says a writing attributed to Athanasius, are bound to credit the claims of that church which holds the holy places, including “Zion, where the salvation of the world was worked out. . . . And if the opposition say that we hold those places by the brute force of imperial arms, let them know that . . . Christ has never allowed His Places to fall into the hands of heretics.” It was a strong argument until Islam took over.121

From the fourth century on, Christians were taught to view the Holy Sepulchre rather than the temple as the religious center of the universe. But in supplanting the temple its Christian counterpart could never escape the claims and traditions of its predecessors—in Jerusalem the pilgrim was never out of the shadow of the temple, as is strikingly illustrated in the Lady Aetheria’s (Silvia’s) full description of the Easter celebration at Jerusalem at the end of the fourth century.

According to Aetheria, the great culmination of the pilgrimage was the dies enceniarum commemorating the dedication of the great Churches of the Cross and the Holy Sepulchre and of the Temple of Solomon. The supreme consummation and fulfillment of all the pilgrim’s toil and yearning, as the lady describes it, was that moment when he was permitted to come forward and kiss the true Cross on Golgotha, “at the same time kissing the ring of Solomon and the horn with which the kings of Israel were anointed.”122 Again, the great annual sermon attended by all the clergy and the pilgrims, the only universal compulsory assembly, had to be delivered “always in that place . . . to which on the 40th day Joseph and Mary brought the Lord in the Temple.”123 Silvia’s pilgrim is never allowed to forget that he is a pilgrim to the temple.124 Indeed, whatever was holy about the Holy City was made such by contact with the temple, which, as Photius observes, “has the power to sanctify other things . . . a sort of divine grace to make holy.”125 Thus “the temple consecrated the city” and progressively sanctified the holy mountain, the Holy City, the Holy Land, and ultimately the whole earth;126 “the Eternal Presence renders the new Jerusalem one vast naos,” where John saw no temple, not because there was none, but because it was all temple.127

In the reports of both Eastern and Western travelers the various holy places of the temple complex are constantly confused and identified with each other.128Especially common is the locating of the Holy Sepulchre, the holy of holies, and the Cross of Golgotha (directly over the skull of Adam) at one and the same spot.129In old maps and drawings the temple and the Holy Sepulchre are depicted alike, as a circular structure marking the exact center of the earth, with its four shrines marking the points of the compass. The two are virtually identical.130

Upon taking Jerusalem in 1099 the Crusaders moved straight to the object of their desire, the Holy Sepulchre, and then proceeded directly to Solomon’s temple: ad dominicum sepulcrum, dehinc etiam ad Templum.131 As they marched they sang apocalyptic hymns of joy hailing the millennial day and the New Jerusalem.132 The Crusades are a reminder that Christianity was never able to settle for a spiritual temple or forget the old one: “It is foolish and unmeet,” writes an indignant churchman, “for Fulcher to distort utterances applying to the spiritual reign and to spiritual things in such a way as to make them apply to buildings or earthly localities, which mean nothing at all to God.” But Fulcher knew what he was doing: “at the time,” our critic confesses, “everybody was sunk in the error of that kind of gross darkness, clergy and laity, learned and military alike.”133 To explain away the disturbing veneration of the Crusaders for the temple, scholars have argued that they were really confusing it with the Holy Sepulchre;134 but they could hardly have confused the most sacred object on earth with anything but another very sacred object, and it is absurd to suppose that when they spoke of the Temple of Solomon they had no idea of what they were talking about.135 Typical of modern prejudice is the naive insistence that the Knights Templars took their singular title from their street address, their headquarters being by the merest coincidence near the site of Solomon’s temple. But if the title Pauperes commilitione Christi templique Salomoniaci means anything, it means that these gentlemen fought for Christ and the Temple of Solomon, and were perfectly aware that the institution of the pilgrimage, which it was their special office to render secure, went back to the days of the temple.136

Though freely admitting the liturgical indebtedness of the church to the synagogue, students of ritual and liturgy have displayed singular reluctance to concede anything at all to the temple.137 Yet if the church of the fourth and fifth centuries, while embracing popular heathen cult practices everywhere, also aped the synagogue with a zeal that was almost comical,138 we must not forget that “the worship of the early Synagogue was based on the Temple liturgy.”139 Nay, the fathers, early and late, derive Christian worship directly from the temple, though like Hilary they may make a hair-splitting distinction between Jewish worship in templo and Christian worship ad templum.140 They boast that the church possesses all the physical properties of the temple—the oil, the myrrh, the altar, and incense, hymns, priestly robes, etc., everything, in fact, but the temple itself, for “in the place of the tangible Temple we behold the spiritual.”141 Strange, that the solid walls should vanish and all the rest remain! Even the unleavened bread was retained in the West as an acknowledged heritage of the temple, in spite of the much more appropriate spiritual symbolism of the leavened bread preferred by the Eastern churches, “for we do not reject all the practices of the Old Law,” says Rupert in explaining this, “We still offer incense . . . daily, the holy oil of anointing is among us, we have bells in the place of ancient trumpets, and many suchlike things.”142 So we find “veils of the Temple” in Christian churches,143 inner shrines called tabernacles, awesome holies of holies entered only by prince and patriarch for the year-rite,144 buildings and altars oriented like synagogues—which imitated the temple in that respect,145 dedication rites faithfully reproducing those of Solomon’s temple,146 and a body of hymns “so obviously sung in the Temple that there is no need for any words to prove this.”147 In ritual texts 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. Rabanus Maurus leaves us in no doubt of what his people were thinking when they hailed their fine church with templum Domini, templum Domini, templum Domini est!148

The Dread and Envy of Them All

Though it did not need to be pointed out to them, the Jews were ever reminded by Christian theologians that without their temple they were helpless.149 On the other hand, the churchmen recognized with a shudder that if they ever got their temple back again the same Jews would be very dangerous indeed. “If the Jews had [their ancient institutions],” Athanasius observes, “then they could deny that Christ had come . . . ; but now all prophecy is sealed, and their gift of prophecy, their holy city, and their Temple are taken away—forever.”150

That ringing “forever” is the key to the whole problem. The joy of the clergy, some of whom take genuine pleasure in reporting every fresh disaster and indignity to the temple, would be cold comfort indeed were this Banquo ever to rise and push them from their stools. The most disturbing aspect of the temple was the apocalyptic assurance of its restoration, and every device of rhetoric and logic (in the absence of a single verse of scripture to support the thesis and a great many to refute it) was employed to convince the world that the prophetic “forever” applied not to the restoration of the temple, but to its destruction.151 The strongest argument was the historical one, the case stated by Hippolytus, that since the temple has never been restored it should be plain to all “by now” that it never will be. The greatest comfort Origen can muster for the future is the fact that in his day the temple cult had been interrupted for a longer period than ever before. True, the suspended rites have always been resumed in the past, but in this case enough time has passed to warrant one in being so bold as to express an opinion that they will never be restored.152 Later theologians built the feeble argument into their chief bulwark against the temple, Chrysostom reinforcing it with the observation that while Josephus describes the destruction of the temple, he has nothing to say of its restoration, which proves “that he did not dare predict that it would be restored again,” which in turn proves that it never can be!153 Actually “the remorseless logic of history,” far from “confuting” early Christian hopes for the temple,154 has seriously confuted the opposition, whose program has always called for a complete transfer of the ancient heritage to the new church, a transfer which “the continued existence of the Jewish nation and cult” has rendered desperately overdue.155

How touchy an issue the temple has always been is shown clearly enough by the extreme reluctance of the churchmen to talk about it. Anything that even reminds them of it seems to rub them on a raw place. The mere sight of its ruins, instead of providing the eyes of the monks of Palestine with a gratifying spectacle and an edifying object lesson as the pagan ruins did, drove them wild with fury—”a detestable thing that causes appallment to the worshippers of Christ.”156 The Jews had to pay a heavy tariff for the luxury of mourning at those ruins, for their mourning was not only a reminder of what the temple had been, but also of what it would be.157No wonder the exasperated fathers ask the Jews why they insist on hanging around Jerusalem after their temple has been destroyed, and bid them take the hint and be gone: “Everything you treasured in Jerusalem now lies in ruins, and your world-renowned temple is now the city dump of a town called Aelia.”158 On the other hand, Theophylactus reports that people even in his day tried to prove from the presence of ruins on the holy mount “that Christ was a liar.”159

This last point, and the fundamental insecurity which underlay it, is illustrated by one of the most dramatic Christian legends, in which the mere report of the Emperor Julian’s intention to assist in rebuilding the temple was magnified into the greatest crime, and its failure into the greatest miracle, of postapostolic history.160 The story begins with the Jews announcing to the monarch that they are paralyzed without their temple: “We cannot worship without it.”161 The wily emperor sees that the Christians will be equally paralyzed by its restoration, and plans in the rebuilding of the temple to deliver the coup de grâce to Christianity by demonstrating once and for all that Jesus was a false prophet.162 For the Christians the whole issue of the truth and survival of their religion hinges on the rebuilding of the temple. To make this clear to all, the bishop of Jerusalem, we are told, had gone about preaching that in Daniel and the Gospels the Lord had predicted that the Jews would never, to the end of time, be able to place one stone of the temple upon another.163 Since the bishop (whose extensive writings make no mention of our story) preached no such thing,164 since no such prophecy exists in the scriptures, and since the restoration of the temple would not confute a single recorded utterance of Jesus, it is plain that the churchmen themselves have chosen to make an issue of the temple and thereby rendered coexistence of church and temple impossible.165 In this case only one solution was possible: a succession of stunning and theatrical miracles in the best fourth-century tradition (but also of a type of miracle story that had been growing up around the temple for many centuries)166 frustrated the evil project at every step. Day after day the stubborn Jews persisted, and day after day great balls of fire chased them all over the temple rock, consuming them like flies, while the earth shook and the heavens gave forth with a succession of superspectacular displays. Among all the conflicting accounts, Michael Adler had no difficulty finding the most probable source of the legends, which grow like a snowball;167 yet to this day Christian scholars cite the fantastic and contradictory stories not only as actual fact, but also as positive proof that Jerusalem and the temple can never be restored.168

When Athanasius assures us that no crime can be more monstrous than that of converting a church into a synagogue, he makes it clear that that is not because one poor synagogue more or less makes so much difference, but because such a gesture “prepares the way” for the sitting of the antichrist in the temple.169 The antichrist-in-the-temple prophecy has always cast a dark shadow over the pages of the fathers, and though most of them prefer an allegorical interpretation, a large and influential number of them insist on taking the thing literally, however terrible the prospect. It is definitive templum Dei, whether we like it or not, they assure us, and before the adversary can usurp his place in the temple, that temple must be rebuilt.170

Church writers have done their best to brighten the gloomy picture. They have reassured us that the only really literal aspect of the temple was its destruction;171 they have told comforting stories of frustrated attempts to rebuild it;172 they report with a great sigh of relief the collapse of the Montanist project for rebuilding the New Jerusalem;173 and, as we have seen, they taxed the resources of exegesis to discover a ray of hope in the scriptures. Yet all this but betrays rather than allays their misgivings: towards the Jews and their temple, their words and deeds remain those of men haunted by a sense of insecurity.174 Why otherwise would they forbid the Jews even to imitate the architecture of the temple in their synagogues?175 The intellectuals who liquidated the temple once and for all in the economy of the church fondly supposed that their own eloquence could more than take its place: while the emperors have taken upon themselves the expense and responsibility of erecting the physical edifice, Jerome assures us, it is eloquentia that warrants the tabernacling of the Spirit therein.176 If the temple of the Spirit was built without hands, human tongues worked overtime on the project, and the finished structure remains a typically unconvincing production of the Age of Rhetoric.177

The Reformation as a reaction against ritualism could hardly be expected to capitalize on the Christian need for the temple or its equivalent, and indeed leading Protestant scholars confess that vagueness and uncertainty in ritual matters was perhaps the most serious defect in the work of the Reformers.178 Yet the Protestant experience seems simply to be repeating the cycle, for we have seen how the doctors of ancient times condemned the temple and its rites with overhasty zeal, and how their successors, seeking like Esau to mend the damage and “inherit the blessing” when it was all too late, introduced into the vacuum a botched and hybrid ritual. It was the pagan element in that ritual which the Reformers found so objectionable and exposed so skillfully.179 Neither group has grounds for complacency, and it would be hard to determine which of the two condemns the temple with greater vigor.

By loosely and inaccurately equating the temple with the synagogue, it has been possible for Christian scholars in the past to claim victory for the church without the painful necessity of mentioning the temple too much or even at all, the assumption being that the church’s triumph over the synagogue answereth all things.180 But with the current emphasis on eschatology and ritual, the temple can no longer be kept in the background. Eschatologie hat über uns keine Macht mehr! has been the common creed of the clergy,181 but eschatology now returns like an unwelcome ghost, and with it comes the temple. So while some Christian scholars still denounce the temple with surprising vehemence,182 others are markedly hesitant,183 and still others have reached the point of unabashedly accepting “the literalness of the future temple and its sacrificial system.”184 All three of these attitudes bespeak a sense of insecurity and inadequacy.

The moral of our tale is that the Christian world has been perennially haunted by the ghost of the temple—a ghost in which it does not believe. If the least be said for it, the temple has never lost its power to stir men’s imaginations and excite their emotions, and the emotion which it has most often inspired in Christian breasts has certainly been that of envy, a passion the more dangerous for being suppressed. The temple has cast a shadow over the claims and the confidence of the Christian church from early times, a shadow which is by no means diminishing in our own day. If we seem to have labored the obvious in pointing this out, it is only because the obvious has been so long and so resolutely denied or ignored in high places.

Notes

“Christian Envy of the Temple” first appeared in the Jewish Quarterly Review 50 (1959—60): 97—123, 229—40. The article was reprinted with the same title in When the Lights Went Out (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1970), 55—88, and in Mormonism and Early Christianity (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1987), 391—434.

1. Samuel G. F. Brandon, The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1951), 10—11. 2. Ibid., 250. 3. While opposing the usual tendency to minimize the temple in the economy of the early church, for example, ibid., 29, 39, 164—65, 263, Brandon bestows upon the city of Jerusalem the laurels that rightfully belong to the temple, for example, 19—21. 4. “Mirum est quod quase hunc locum ita praetergressi sint.” Adam Praemonstratensis (Adam of St. Victor), De tripartito tabernaculo (On the Tripartite Tabernacle) 2 (PL 198:625). Richard of St. Victor writes on the same subject by popular demand—”rogatus ab amicis,” in De tabernaculo (On the Tabernacle) 1 (PL 196:211—12). 5. Adam of St. Victor, On the Tripartite Tabernacle 2 (PL 198:625); Richard of St. Victor, On the Tabernacle 1 (PL 196:211—12), and 2 (PL 196:223—42; cf. PL 196:306). 6. Of the latter calamity Bishop John Kaye writes: “The silence of ecclesiastical history respecting the cessation . . . is to be ascribed . . . to the combined operation of prejudice and policy—of prejudice which made them reluctant to believe, of policy which made them anxious to conceal the truth.” John Kaye, Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries, Illustrated from the Writings of Tertullian (London: Griffith Farran, 1894), 50. 7. Discussed by Brandon, Fall of Jerusalem, 39, 127, 262—64. See note 66 below. 8. Eusebius, Historica ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) 7.24.1—9 (PG 20:692—96), quoting Dionysius at length. Jerome, Commentarius in Isaiam prophetam (Commentary on Isaiah) 18 (PL 24:627). 9. “Quem non solum suae sectae homines, sed et nostrorum in hac parte dumtaxat plurima sequitur multitudo, ut praesaga mente jam cernam quantorum in me rabies concitanda sit.” Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 18 (PL 24:627).

10. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 18 (PL 24:627). The case for the literalists is stated by Cyril of Jerusalem, who insists that Jesus meant the real temple when he spoke of his Father’s house: “Toi Christoi peisthesometha toi legonti peri tou hierou [i.e., Luke 2:49; John 2:16] . . . di’ hon saphestata ton en Hierosolymois proteron naon oikon einai tou heautou Patros homologei.” Catechesis VII. de Patre (Catechetical Lecture on the Father) 6 (PG 33:612).

11. Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah 31.38 (PL 24:920): “Judaei videlicet et nostri Judaizantes, conantur ostendere . . . ibi dicunt sanctuarium Domini, id est templum esse condendum, mansurumque in perpetuum,” etc.; cf. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 15.54 (PL 24:516). 12. Henry J. Cadbury, “Acts and Eschatology,” in The Background of the New Testament and Its Eschatology, ed. William D. Davies and David Daube (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 309, 316.

13. Therefore even Solomon’s temple was “neque legitimum neque devotum,” according to Zeno, Tractatus (Tractate) 1.14 (PL 11:355), since God “reprobat . . . tam immensum, tam insigne, tam opulens templum,” etc., ibid. (PL 11:356—58). The same argument is used by Hilary, Tractatus super Psalmos (Treatise on the Psalms) 126 (PL 9:694—99); Lactantius, Divinae institutiones (Divine Institutes) 6.25 (PL 6:728—32); Isidore, Epistolae (Letters) 4.70 (PG 78:1132—33); cf. 1.20 (PG 78:196), and 1.196 (PG 78:356); Procopius, Commentarius in Isaiam (Commentary on Isaiah) 6.5 (PG 87:1937).

14. Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel) 3.13—17 (PG 21:220—28); Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5.11 (PG 9:112—16); 7.5 (PG 9:436—40). Theodoret, Graecarum affectionum curatio sermo (Sermon on the Treatment of Greek Illnesses) 3 (PG 83:885), quotes Zeno and Plato in this connection.

15. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica 1a2æ, 102.4; Dominican ed., 29:152—77. 16. William J. Phythian-Adams, The People and the Presence (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), 60.

17. 2 Chronicles 6:18.

18. So Irenaeus, Contra haereses (Against Heresies) 4.34.4 (PG 7:1085—86); Hilary, Treatise on the Psalms 118.4 (PL 9:643); Lactantius, Divine Institutes 4.14 (PL 6:1021—22); Chrysostom, De sancta Pentecoste homilia (Homily on the Holy Pentecost) 1.1 (PG 50:453), etc. This was a favorite theme with the moderns who feel that the liquidation of the temple was indispensable to “the absolution of God’s worship from all bonds of time and nationality.” Bernhard Weiss, The Life of Christ, trans. John W. Hope (Edinburgh: Clark, 1883—84), 3:261.

19. Jacob S. Raisin, Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953), 225; cf. 15—16, 34, 94. 20. So Ernest Renan, Antichrist (Boston: Roberts, 1897), 187—88; Arthur S. Peake, ed., The People and the Book (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), 281.

21. Quotations are, respectively, from Andrew M. Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1902), 487, and Albert T. Olmstead, Jesus in the Light of History (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1942), 69—70; cf. Stanley A. Cook, The Old Testament (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 130. 22. Quotation from John B. Bury. From early times Christians debated the cosmic significance of the oneness of the temple: Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5.9 (PG 9:112): “Palin ho Mouses . . . hena d’oun neon hidrysamenos tou Theou monogene te kosmon . . . kai ton hena, hos ouk eti toi Basileidei dokei, katengele Theon.” 23. “The purpose [ratio] of the unity of the temple or tabernacle . . . was to fix in men’s minds the unity of the divine faith, God desiring that sacrifice be made to him in one place only.” Aquinas, Summa theologica 1a2æ, 102.4; Dominican ed., 29:161. On the lack of a centralizing force, see Louis M. O. Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church (London: Murray, 1931), 2:521—26. Cf. note 2 above.

24. Peter Cantor, Verbum abbreviatum (The Abridged Word) 29 (PL 205:104, 106—7). The historian Socrates, Historica ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) 5.22 (PG 67:625—45), made the same observation in the fifth century.

25. This is the “messe publique,” the oldest exemplar of which Louis M. O. Duchesne calls “un cérémonial fort postérieur à 1’âge antique.” Origines du culte chrétien, 2nd ed. (Paris: Thorin, 1898), 154; 5th ed. (1920), 172.

26. Cantor, The Abridged Word 29 (PL 205:104, 106—7); so also Hilary, Treatise on the Psalms 14.3 (PL 9:301).

27. Hilary, Treatise on the Psalms 14.3 (PL 9:301); Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 5.1 (PG 21:312); Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 13.47 (PL 24:471—72); Leo Magnus, Sermo (Discourse) 59.8 (PL 54:341); Chrysostom, Contra Judaeos et Gentiles, quod Christus sit Deus (Against the Jews and the Gentiles, That Christ Is God) 12 (PG 48:829—30); cf. Chrysostom, De cruce et latrone (On the Cross and the Thief) 2.1 (PG 49:409); Chrysostom, De capto Eutropio et de divitiarum vanitate (On the Capture of Eutropius and the Vanity of Wealth) 15 (PG 52:410).

28. See the discussion by A. le Nourry in PG 9:900—902. A writing attributed to Athanasius admits that the multiplication of shrines presents “a strange and paradoxical problem”—xenon kai paradoxon to eperotema—to which the author gives an even stranger solution. See Quaestiones ad Antiochum Ducem (Questions to Duke Antiochus) 26 (PG 28:613). 29. The temple represents the world—ho naos de hos oikos Theou holon ton kosmon typoi, and since there is but “one world, above and below . . . analogous to the order of the Church,” the church itself is one temple which ho archiereus monos syn tois hieromenois eiserchetai; Symeon Thessalonicensis, De sacro templo (On the Holy Temple) 131 (PG 155:337—40). Cf. Leo, Discourse 54.8 (PL 54: 341); Hilary, Treatise on the Psalms 121 (PL 9:662—63); and Theodoret, Treatment of Greek Illnesses 6 (PG 83:989).

30. Fulgentius, Contra Fabianum (Against Fabian) 34 (PL 65:811—12); Photius, Epistolae (Letters) 1.8.31 (PG 102:665); Wolbero, Commentaria in Canticum Canticorum (Commentary on the Song of Solomon) 3.5.15 (PL 195:1203).

31. Aquinas, Summa theologica 1a2æ, 102.4; Dominican ed., 29:161: “Et ideo, ut firmaretur in animis hominum fides unitatis divinae, voluit Deus ut in uno loco tantum sibi sacrificium offerretur. . . . Sed cultus novae legis . . . Deo acceptus,” etc. 32. Ibid., articuli iv and v. Thomas himself at the beginning of articulus iv refutes the common doctrine of a purely spiritual temple.

33. Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Historia de vitis romanorum pontificum (History of the Lives of the Roman Pontiffs) 112, about Stephen VI (PL 128:1399).

34. August Neander, The Life of Jesus Christ, 4th ed. (New York: Harper, 1858), 180—81.

35. Charles M. Laymon, Life and Teachings of Jesus (New York: Abingdon, 1955), 280.

36. Leo, Discourse 3 (PL 54:145). 37. Frederick C. Grant, An Introduction to New Testament Thought (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1950), 14.

38. Barnabas, Epistola catholica (Catholic Epistle) 16 (PG 2:771—76). Cf. TB Yebamot 6b: “lo’ mim-miqdas ‘attah mityare’ ‘elle’ mimmi se-hizhir ‘al ham-miqdas.” While the temple was still standing, the principle had been established that the efficacy of every species of expiation was morally conditioned. Moore, quoted in William D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1948), 257.

39. “Neque enim domum incusabat [Jesus] . . . sed eos, qui non bene utebantur domo.” Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.2.6 (PG 7:978). Even Stephen’s sermon (Acts 7), usually viewed as an attack on the temple, is rather an appeal for a proper sense of values. See William Manson, The Epistle to the Hebrews (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951), 28, 30, 34. 40. Quotations from Origen, Commentaria in Evangelium secundum Matthaeum (Commentary on Matthew) 14.22—23 (PG 13:1452— 53), and Commentaria in Evangelium Joannis (Commentary on John) 10.16 (PG 14:349). The temple is built of simplicity, intellect, veritas, pudicitia, continentia, etc. Zeno, Tractate 1.14 (PL 11:361—62). The theme is extremely popular with theologians.

41. Jewish and Christian doctors alike “spun out abstract doctrines far beyond the ken of the common folk, and insisted that these are the truths of religion and morality. Nor are we closing the gap today.” Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1952), 87—88. “The fathers,” says Edward Gibbon, “deem themselves secure and invulnerable behind the ample veil of allegory, which they carefully spread over every tender part of the Mosaic dispensation.” Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Modern Library, 1932), 1:393 n. 31. 42. Origen, Commentary on John 10.20 (PG 14:369—70). Amphotera mentoige, to te hieron kai to soma tou Iesou—it is quite possible for it to be two or more things at once.

43. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarius in Michaeam prophetam (Commentary on Micah) 4.1.2 (PG 71:644). Cf. Symeon, On the Holy Temple 128 (PG 155:336); Photius, Contra Manichaeos (Against the Manichaeans) 2 (PG 102:108). 44. Thus Rupert, Liber Regum (Commentary on Kings) 3.6—29 (PL 167:1147—75); Hugh of St. Victor, Allegoriae in Vetus Testamentum (Allegories on the Old Testament) 3.9 (PL 175:661—63); Hugh of St. Victor, De claustro animae (On the Fortress of the Soul) 3.17 (PL 176:1118—20); Alan of Lille, Sententiae, no. 16, 22 (PL 210:236—37, 240); Garnerus, “De Templo” (“On the Temple”), in Gregorianum 13.8 (PL 193:398—400); Adam of St. Victor, Sermones (Sermons) 40 (PL 198:363—71).

45. See notes 152—57 below. 46. Hilary, Treatise on the Psalms 126 (PL 9:694—95). Cf. Olmstead, Jesus in the Light of History, 69.

47. “From the beginning the destruction of the Temple and the eventual cessation of the sacrifices had been anticipated.” Grant, Introduction to New Testament Thought, 14. As early as 587 BC “the old dogma that it was blasphemy even to speak of the destructibility of the temple was shattered.” Raisin, Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals, 82.

48. In the Odes of Solomon the temple is “préexistant au monde et, de plus, il subsiste hors du monde.” Pierre Batiffol, “Les odes de Salomon,” Revue biblique 20 n.s. 8 (1911): 40. “Est ergo altare in coelis, et templum.” Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.18 (PG 7:1024—29). Cf. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 162 n. 2.

49. L. J. Liebereich, “Compilation of the Book of Isaiah,” Jewish Quarterly Review 46 (1956): 272. See Testament of Levi 14—18, Testament of Benjamin 9, and Testament of Naphtali 4.

50. Barnabas, Catholic Epistle 16 (PG 2:771—76). That paradosei here means “remove,” “take out of circulation,” is clear from parallel passages in Matthew 24:9 and Didache 16.4; cf. Robert H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), 198—204.

51. Hilary, Treatise on the Psalms 14 (PL 9:301—2): “Sed mons Domini nullus in terra est: omnis enim terra jam pridem per vitia hominum maledictis obnoxia est.”

52. Athanasius, Quaestiones in Pauli epistolas (Questions on the Epistles of Paul) 127 (PG 28:769); Peter Damian, Dialogus inter Judaeum et Christianum (Dialogue between a Jew and a Christian) 9 (PL 145:59); Rupert, Liber in Numeros (Commentary on Numbers) 2.21 (PL 167:901); Richard of St. Victor, On the Tabernacle 1 (PL 196:212); Richard of St. Victor, Adnotationes mysticae in Psalmos (Mystic Comments on Psalms) 28 (PL 196:306); Richard of St. Victor, In Apocalypsim Joannis (Commentary on the Apocalypse of John) 7.2 (PL 196:860); Aquinas, Summa theologica 1a2æ, 102.4, conclusion; Andrew of Caesarea, Commentarius in Apocalypsin (Commentary on the Apocalypse of John) 21.3—4 (PG 106:425); Wolbero, Commentary on the Song of Solomon 4 (PL 195:1275). 53. For Tertullian the glory of the temple was extinguished by the mere declaration of the Lord that it was a den of thieves. De pudicitia (On Modesty) 1 (PL 2:1033—34). It was not the money changers as such, but really the Jews, that Christ was expelling forever, according to Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarius in Amos prophetam (Commentary on Amos) 19 (PG 71:443—44); Leo, Sermones attributi (Attributed Discourses) 14 (PL 54:507); Rupert, Commentarius in Zachariam prophetam (Commentary on Zechariah) 2.5 (PL 168:735—36), and Commentary on Amos 2.3—4 (PL 168:301). For Ernst W. Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1856—58), 4:248, the “den of thieves” verdict “rendered the continuance of the former [temple] absolutely impossible.”

54. “Evidens . . . translatio.” Leo, Discourse 68.3 (PL 54:374). 55. “Nun de . . . eisi hoi polountes kai agorazontes en toi hieroi . . . kai oudamou Iesous epiphainetai hina ekbalon sosei tous loipous.” Origen, Commentary on Matthew 16.21 (PG 13:1444—45, 1417, 1448): “All’ eithe eiselthon eis to hieron tou Patros . . . kataballoi Iesous tas . . . trapezas.” Cf. Origen, Homiliae in Jeremiam (Homilies on Jeremiah) 9 (PG 13:348). Cf. Gregorius Magnus (Gregory the Great), Epistolae (Letters) 11.46 (PL 77:1166); Theophylactus, Enarratio in Marcum (Commentary on the Gospel of Mark) 11.15—18 (PG 123:616); Photius, Against the Manichaeans 4.23 (PG 102:229); Alcuin, Commentaria in Sancti Joannis Evangelium (Commentary on John) 2.4.14—15 (PL 100:773).

56. Photius, Against the Manichaeans 4.23 (PG 102:229); so Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture on the Father 7 (PG 33:612).

57. Thus Hippolytus, Demonstratio adversus Judaeos (Against the Jews) 7 (PG 10:792); Juvencus, Evangelica historia (Gospel History) 4.75—80 (PL 19:286—87). This prophecy was “the final ‘Let us depart hence’ of retiring Deity,” according to Frederic W. Farrar, The Life of Christ (New York: Cassell, 1903), 2:255, who notes that thirty-five years later Deity finally departed! “Those few words completed the prophecy of Israel’s desolation.” Isidore O’Brien, The Life of Christ (Paterson, N.J.: St. Anthony Guild, 1937), 418; 4th ed., 472.

58. Vincent Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice (London: Macmillan, 1937), 71. 59. So Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 15.52 (PL 24:513—24). Leo, Discourse 68 (PL 54:374); Theophanes, Homilia (Homily) 27 (PG 132:600). A. Feuillet, “Le sens du mot parousie dans 1’évangile de Matthieu,” in Davies and Daube, Background of the New Testament, 268.

60. Cassiodorus, Expositio in Psalterium (Commentary on the Psalms) 21 (PL 70:158); Rupert, Commentarius in Apocalypsim Joannis (Commentary on the Apocalypse of John) 9.15 (PL 169:1111); Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 14.52 (PL 24:498); Aquinas, Summa theologica 1a2æ, 102.4; Clarence T. Craig, The Beginning of Christianity (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1943), 183. For a more recent treatment, see Dennis Sylva, “The Temple Curtain and Jesus’ Death in the Gospel of Luke,” Journal of Biblical Literature 105 (1986): 239—50. 61. Farrar, Life of Christ, 1:194—95. Some scholars find the passage too hot to handle and declare it to be “not in the original utterance of Jesus,” but “the travesty of the false witness.” Benjamin W. Robinson, Jesus in Action (New York: Macmillan, 1942), 77.

62. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 1:393 n. 31; cf. Raisin, Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals, 31.

63. Quotation from Gordon Leff, “In Search of the Millennium,” Past and Present 13 (April 1958): 92.

64. Many writers present Jesus as a would-be restorer of temple worship, with the temple as his headquarters. Thus Arthur C. Headlam, Jesus Christ in History and Faith (London: Murray, 1925), 137—39; Rudolf K. Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1961), 1:17; cf. English translation, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel (New York: Scribner, 1951); Benjamin W. Bacon, Studies in Matthew (New York: Holt, 1930), 242—43.

65. “Recent research has shown that prophets had a regular part in the temple cultus.” Millar Burrows, Outline of Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1946), 255. 66. For a comprehensive statement, see James Strahan, “Temple,” in Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, ed. James Hastings (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1916—22), 2:556—57; and Brandon, Fall of Jerusalem, 21, 29, 39, 127, 263, even vindicating Stephen’s position, 89, 127—29, 263. 67. Nils A. Dahl, “Christ, Creation, and the Church,” in Davies and Daube, Background of the New Testament, 430—31, 424. Quotation is from Krister Stendahl, “Implications of Form Criticism and Tradition-Criticism for Biblical Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 77 (1958): 36—37. 68. For closely paralleled Jewish, Christian, and classical concepts, see Bernhard Kötting, Peregrinatio Religiosa (Münster: Regensberg, 1950), 57—69, 287—88. The familiar temple imagery in Christian liturgy was disseminated directly by pilgrims coming from Jerusalem. Anton Baumstark, Abendländische Palästinapilger (Cologne: Bachen, 1906), 31, 80—83. 69. Charles K. Barrett, “The Eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in Davies and Daube, Background of the New Testament, 382.

70. F.-M. Abel, “Jérusalem,” in Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclerq (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907), 7:2311; cf. Sulpicius Severus, Historia sacra (Sacred History) 2.48 (PL 20:156—57), and note 10 above. 71. Gregorius Nyssenus, Epistolae (Letters) 2.3 (PG 46:1012—13, 1016); Basil the Great, Moralia, Regula 67 (PG 31:808; cf. PG 31:805); Chrysostom, Ad populum Antiochenum (To the People of Antioch) 17 (PG 49:177—80); and Chrysostom, Homily on the Holy Pentecost 1 (PG 50:453—64).

72. Quotation is from Charles N. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940), 211; for the concept, see Eusebius, De laudibus Constantini (In Praise of Constantine) 4—6 and 10 (PG 20:1332—52, 1372—76).

73. For a discussion, see Michael S. Seidlmayer, “Rom und Romgedanke im Mittelalter,” Saeculum 7 (1956): 395—412. 74. See Hugh W. Nibley, “The Hierocentric State,” in The Ancient State (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1991), 99—147. W. F. Albright sees in Solomon’s temple “a rich cosmic symbolism which was largely lost in later Israelite and Jewish tradition.” William F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1942), 154—55; cf. 88—89, 167. 75. Eusebius, In Praise of Constantine 4—6 and 10 (PG 20:1332—52, 1372—76); and De Vita Constantini (On the Life of Constantine) 3.33—39 (PG 20:1093—1100); 4.60 (PG 20:1209—12).

76. Contemporaries hail him as “the new Bezeliel or Zerubabel, who builds . . . blessed temples of . . . Christ.” Antiochus Monachus, Prologus (PG 89:1428).

77. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 10.4.45—46 (PG 20:876—77).

78. So Zeno, Tractate 1.14 (PL 11:354—62); Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 1.2.9 (PL 24:49); 17 (PL 24:593); and Jerome, Epistolae (Letters) 52.10 (PL 22:535); 130.14 (PL 22:1119); 46—47 (PL 22:492).

79. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 10.4.45—46 (PG 20:876—77): “hos meketi logon, all’ ergon gegonenai ten ano lechtheisan propheteian [Haggai 2:9], gegonen gar kai nun hos alethos estin.”

80. See the editor’s enthusiastic comment on the oratory of Paulinus, Appendix operum Sancti Paulini (Appendix to the Works of Saint Paulinus) (PL 61:929). 81. Abel, “Jérusalem,” 2312, for the timing. It is Zonaras, Annales (Annals) 11.23 (PG 134:996), who locates the Roman temple, following Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 1.17 (PG 67:117—21). According to Eusebius, On the Life of Constantine 3.28 (PG 20:1088—89), as the digging proceeded, “to semnon kai panagion tes soteriou anastaseos martyrion par’ elpida pasan anephaineto, kai to te hagion ton hagion antron ten homoian tes tou Soteros anabioseos apelambanen eikona.” That this is not a mere parallelism is indicated by the kai . . . te and homoian.

82. Eusebius, On the Life of Constantine 3.33 (PG 20:1093): kai de tou pantos hosper tina kephalen, proton hapanton to hieron antron, etc., noting that this was the very New Jerusalem that had been foretold by the prophets—an eschatological structure. Cf. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 1.17 (PG 67:117—21).

83. Theodoret, Explanatio in Ezechielem (Explanation of Ezekiel) 48.35 (PG 81:1253). 84. Chrysostom, Sermo post reditum ab exsilio (Discourse following the Return from Exile) 2 (PG 52:440); “Ubi aedificabo? Absolutum est templum.” He is rejoicing that the growth of the church has burst all old traditional bounds such as the limitations of the temple. Cf. Chrysostom, Interpretatio in Isaiam prophetam (On Isaiah) 2.3 (PG 56:30, 97); Chrysostom, Homilia in Sanctum Ignatium Martyrem (Homily on St. Ignatius the Martyr) 5 (PG 50:595—96); Basil, Regulae fusius tractatae (Detailed Rules) 40 (PG 31:1020); Theodoret, Epistolae (Letters) 66—68 (PG 83:1236—37); Zeno, Liber (Commentary) 2, Tractate 46 (PL 11:520—21). Significantly, the most brilliant of these gatherings is for the feast of the Maccabees, that is, to commemorate the rededication of the temple. Chrysostom, Homilia in sanctos Maccabeos (Homily on the Holy Maccabees) 1 (PG 50:617—24).

85. Chrysostom, To the People of Antioch 17 (PG 49:177—78); Chrysostom, Against the Jews and the Gentiles 9 (PG 48:825—26); Gregorius Nyssenus, Letters 17 (PG 46:1064).

86. Constantine Manassis, Compendium Chronicum (A Compendium of Chronicles) 3267—83 (PG 127:342—43). It was a conscious imitation of Constantine’s “New Jerusalem.” Procopius, Buildings 1, discussed in the footnotes to Eusebius, The Life of Constantine (PG 20:1098—99 nn. 13—14).

87. The story is told in Raisin, Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals, 361.

88. On Constantinople as the New House of God, see Andras Alföldi, The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), 110.

89. Seidlmayer, “Rom und Romgedanke,” 400—403. Cf. Pliny, Letter to Maximus 8.24.3.

90. See notes 26—28 above. For some amusing arguments, see also Rupert, De victoria verbi Dei (On the Victory of the Word of God) 10.10 (PL 169:1430); Peter Damian, Dialogue between a Jew and a Christian 10 (PL 145:60—61).

91. Eusebius, On the Life of Constantine 4.24 (PG 20:1172); 4.42 (PG 20:1189—90).

92. So Seidlmayer, “Rom und Romgedanke,” 402—3.

93. Thus in Attributed Discourses 14.4—5 (PL 54:507), Leo says that the cathedra occupied by Moses has been torn down mystice and become a pestilentiae Cathedram, the change occurring at the moment Jesus drove the money changers from the temple.

94. Seidlmayer, “Rom und Romgedanke,” 402.

95. Ibid., 409. See Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, chap. 5. 96. Leo, Attributed Discourses 16; 17.1—2 (PL 54:511—13); Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 1.2.9 (PL 24:49): “Ubi quondam erat templum et religio Dei, ibi Adriani statua et Jovis idolum collocatum,” which many Christians regard as literal fulfillment of Mark 13:14.

97. “Partim ignorantiae vitio, partim paganitatis spiritu.” Leo, Discourse 27.4 (PL 54:218—19); cf. 89.4 (PL 54:446).

98. Ibid., 40.5 (PL 54:271); 48.1 (PL 54:298); 49.1 (PL 54:301); 60.3 (PL 54:344); 21.3 and 22.1—2 (PL 54:192—95); 23.5 (PL 54:203); 88.4—5 and 89.1—2 (PL 54:442—46).

99. Ibid., 3.1—3 (PL 54:145—56); 5.3 (PL 54:154).

100. “Nihil legalium institutionum, nihil propheticarum resedit figurarum, quod non totum in Christi sacramenta transierit. Nobiscum est signaculum circumcisionis . . . nobiscum puritas sacrificii, baptismi veritas, honor templi.” Ibid., 66 (PL 54:365—66); cf. 30.3 (PL 54:229). It was all too good for the Jews.

101. Ibid., 4.1—2 (PL 54:149). Erich Caspar, Geschichte des Papsttums von den Anfängen bis zur Höhe der Weltherrschaft (Tübingen: Mohr, 1930) 1:403; Seidlmayer, “Rom und Romgedanke,” 403. 102. The Hauptthema of this long writing is that the house of God is “non terrena et caduca.” Hilary, Treatise on the Psalms 121.2 (PL 9:661—62); in fact, if one accepts the temple passages literally, then “inanis est psalmus, et mendax Propheta!” Ibid., 124.2 (PL 9:680). 103. Ambrose (dubia), De sacramentis (On the Sacraments) 1.4 (PL 16:420); 4.3 (PL 16:438; cf. PL 16:421). Chapter 4 is intensely invidious.

104. Jerome, Letters 46 (PL 22:486).

105. Chrysostom, In Epistolam ad Hebraeos (On the Epistle to the Hebrews) 12.32 (PG 63:221).

106. Chrysostom, De sanctis martyribus (On the Holy Martyrs) 1 (PG 50:645—56; cf. PG 50:582). This is a favorite theme with Chrysostom.

107. Chrysostom, De sacerdotio (On the Priesthood) 3.4 (PG 48:642). Carl Seltmann in his edition (Münster: Schöningh, 1887), 83—84, raises the knotty question of just how literal all this is supposed to be.

108. Methodius, Convivium decem virginum (Banquet of the Ten Virgins) 7 (PG 18:109).

109. “Ibi enim stamus mentis oculos figimus . . . humana mens . . . superiora illa atque coelestia utcunque in aenigmate conspicit.” Garner, On the Temple 8.8.7 (PL 193:397; cf. PL 193:936); Zeno, Tractate 2.63 (PL 11:518—19); Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 10.4, passim (PG 20:848—80).

110. Friedrich A. Müller, Der Islam im Morgen und Abendland (Berlin: Grote, 1885—87), 1:285; Raisin, Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals, 370.

111. Eutychius, Annales (Annals) 287—92 (PG 111:1100).

112. Gustav E. von Grunebaum, Muhammadan Festivals (New York: Schuman, 1951), 20.

113. “If Islam substituted the Kibla of Mecca for that of Jerusalem, on the other hand it renders the greatest honor to the site of the temple . . . and pure monotheism rebuilt its fortress on Mt. Moriah,” wrote Renan, quoted in Raisin, Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals, 389.

114. Adam Mez, Renaissance des Islams (Heidelberg: Winter, 1903), 302. Cf. English translation by Salahuddin Bukhish (London: Luzac, 1937).

115. Mez, Renaissance des Islams, 302—3.

116. Müller, Der Islam im Morgen und Abendland, 1:285.

117. Just as the Christians turned the temple site into a sterquilinium (note 161 below), so the Muslims just as childishly called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre not al-qiyama, but al-qumama, that is, sterquilinium! Ernst Rosenmüller, ed., Idrisi’s Syria (Leipzig: Sumtibus Io Ambros Barthii, 1828), 10 n. 36. Though at the end of the tenth century Christians still execrated the temple site, Eutychius, Annals 287—92 (PG 111:1100), in the thirteenth century a friend of the sultan was rudely barred from the place, being told: “such things are not revealed to such as you. Do not insult our Law!” “Mithla hadhihi al-‘umuri la takhfa ‘ala ‘amthalika. La tabtul namusana!” etc. Al-Qazwini, Kosmographie, ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1848), 2:109.

118. Fulcher, Historia Hierosolymitana 1.26.9, with editorial discussion by Heinrich Hagenmeyer in his edition, Fulcheri Carnotensis historia Hiersolymitana (Heidelberg: Winter, 1913), 290—91.

119. Müller, Der Islam im Morgen und Abendland, 2:135. 120. Guibert, Gesta Dei per Francos (Acts of God through the Franks) 7.10 (PL 156:795); Fulcher, History Hierosolymitana 1.27.12—13. See note 133 below. For the Muslim reaction, see Müller, Der Islam im Morgen- und Abendland, 2:157.

121. Athanasius, Questions to Duke Antiochus 44 (PG 28:625).

122. Aetheria (Silvia), Peregrinatio ad loca sancta (Pilgrimage to Holy Places), 4th ed. (Heidelberg: Heraeus, 1939), 37:3; 48:1—2; 49:1.

123. Ibid., 26.

124. She compares the pilgrims to those who anciently came to Jerusalem to hear the law (ibid., 27:1, 6) and notes that fasting was forbidden on the Temple Mount and there only (ibid., 44:1) rather than at New Testament shrines. An even earlier pilgrim, Melito of Sardis, describes a strictly Old Testament pilgrimage to the East, Fragmentum (Fragment) (PG 5:1216).

125. Photius, Against the Manichaeans 2.11 (PG 102:109); cf. Raisin, Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals, 31.

126. Edwyn C. Hoskyns, The Fourth Gospel, ed. Francis N. Davey (London: Faber and Faber, 1940), 1:202—3; Phythian-Adams, The People and the Presence, 74.

127. H. B. Swete, quoted by Barrett, “Eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews,” 383. Revelation 21:21—27.

128. Titus Tobler, Dr. Titus Toblers zwei Bücher Topographie von Jerusalem (Berlin: Reimer, 1853—54), 1:540ff. Origen, Commentary on John 10.22 (PG 14:377—78), comments on the “inconsistency and confusion” of the records. Cf. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 1.17 (PG 67:117—21); Sozomen, Historica ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) 1.1 (PG 67:929—33); Eusebius, On the Life of Constantine 3.28 (PG 20:1088—89). Even the holy sites of Galilee had been transported to Jerusalem at an early time. Brandon, Fall of Jerusalem, 197—98.

129. “The place where the dream of Jacob occurred is the place where Adam was created, namely, the place of the future Temple and the center of the earth.” Andreas Altmann, “The Gnostic Background of the Rabbinic Adam Legends,” Jewish Quarterly Review 35 (1945): 390—91. But “the Midrash also teaches . . . that Adam dwelt on Mt. Moriah and there ‘returned to the earth from which he was taken.'” Robert Eisler, Iesous basileus ou basileusas (Heidelberg: Winter, 1930), 1:523. Yet the place where Adam sleeps is Golgotha, the foot of the cross resting on his skull. Epiphanius, Adversus haereses (Against Heresies) 2.1.4—5 (PG 41:844), and many others. Christian and Muslim traditions place the holy of holies on the rock on which Abraham offered Isaac. Rupert, Liber Genesis (Commentary on Genesis) 6.28—29 (PL 167:427—28), making it the logical spot for the supreme culminating sacrifice of the cross. Cf. Aquinas, Summa theologica 1a2æ, 102.4.2: “Et tunc primo aedificatum fuit templum, in loco quem designaverat Abraham . . . ad immolandum,” etc. Both Fulcher and Saewulf report as eyewitnesses that the original ark of the covenant reposed directly in the center of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; cited by Hagenmeyer in Fulcheri Carnotensis, 287—88. The Arabic writers are equally confusing: al-Qazwini, Kosmographie, 2:107—9; Ibn Ajjas, “Geography,” in Chrestomathia Arabica, ed. Fried-rich Arnold (Halle: Pfeffer, 1853), 1:64—66; Rosenmüller, Idrisi’s Syria, 9—12; Ibn Batuta, Muhadhdhib rihlat Ibn Batutah (Cairo: -al–Matba’ah al-Amiriyah, 1938), 1:33—34. 130. See William Simpson, “The Middle of the World, in the Holy Sepulchre,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly (1888): 260—63; C. M. Watson, “The Traditional Sites on Sion,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly (1910): 209; C. M. Watson, trans., “Commemoratorium de casis dei vel monasteriis,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly (1913): pl. iii, opp. p. 28. The seal of King Baldwin of Jerusalem shows the two buildings as almost identical domes, side by side within a single walled enclosure.

131. Fulcher, History Hierosolymitana 1.30.4.

132. “It was another, a new creation!” cries Raimundus de Angiles, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Hierusalem (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968), 330—31; cited by Hagenmeyer in Fulcher, History Hierosolymitana 1.30.4.

133. J. Casper Barth (1720), quoted by Hagenmeyer in Fulcheri Carnotensis, 287. 134. The materials are given and discussed in ibid., 285—87, 304—6.

135. The treaty of 1229 allowed the Christians possession of the sepulchre, while the Muslims retained the Templum Domini, that is, the distinction was clearly preserved. Charles Diehl, Le Monde oriental de 395 à 1081 (Paris: Presses universitaire de France, 1944), 462.

136. See the long article in the Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1928), 60:727—41. The rules of the order closely resemble those of some Jewish sectaries; cf. Henri Daniel-Rops, L’église de la cathédrale et de la croisade (Paris: Fayard, 1952), 145, 718, 720, 730; cf. English translation by John Warrington, Cathedral and Crusade (New York: Dutton, 1957). It is not surprising that the order was accused of heresy since it “urged the emigration of converts to Palestine to help prophecy to become fulfilled.” E. Kautzsch, cited by Emil Kraeling, The Old Testament since the Reformation (New York: Harper, 1955), 133.

137. See, for instance, Duchesne, Origines du culte chrétien, 45; 5th ed., 47. Cf. John Ward, “The Fall of the Templars,” Journal of Religious History 13 (1984): 92—113, for an overview of contemporary research.

138. S. Krauss, “The Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,” Jewish Quarterly Review 6 (1893—94): 238, who paraphrases Rufinus, Invectio (Attack) 1.5 and 2.589: “If a few Jews were to institute new rites, the Church would have to follow suit and immediately adopt them.”

139. William Oesterly and Theodore Robinson, An Introduction to the Books of the Old Testament (New York: Macmillan, 1934), 194; cf. Louis Finkelstein, “The Origin of the Synagogue,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 3 (1930): 49—59.

140. Hilary, Treatise on the Psalms 137 (PL 9:787). Symeon, Expositio de divino templo (Exposition on the Holy Temple) 2 (PG 155:701), describes the mass in terms of the temple. See Malachi 1:11, the chief scriptural support for the mass. Gustav Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1883), 519—20, deals only with the temple. Daniel-Rops, L’église de la cathédrale, 542—43, points out that the round churches of Europe, revived at the time of the Crusades, were direct imitations of the temple at Jerusalem.

141. Chrysostom, In Epistolam II ad Corinthios homilia (Homily on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians) 2.2 (PG 61:476); Epiphanius, Against Heresies 61.8 (PG 41:1049).

142. Rupert, “De Azymo” (“On Unleavened Bread”), in De divinis officiis (On Divine Duties) 2.22 (PL 170:48—51); cf. Epiphanius, Against Heresies 30.16 (PG 41:432). Cf. Leo, Discourse 92 (PL 54:453).

143. Caspar Sagittarius, in Thesaurus antiquitatum Romanarum, ed. Johannes G. Graevius (Traject. ad Rhenum: Franciscus Halman, 1697) 6:465, 492—93, noting that the Christian veils “procul dubio imitati sunt morem in templo Salomonis.”

144. The place of the altar is a terribilis locus, Rupert, Commentary on Genesis 7.23—24 (PL 167:468—69); “inaccessible and terrible,” Symeon, Dialogus contra haereses (Dialogue against Heresies) 21 (PG 155:108), and Exposition on the Holy Temple 2 (PG 155:701), citing the case of Ambrose in the West, who barred even the emperor “both from the naos and the altar.” Cf. Gregorius Nazianzenus, Carminum liber I, theologica sectio II, poemata moralia (Moral Poems) 34.220—65 (PG 37:961); Pachymeros, De Andronico Palaelogo (On Andronicus Palaelogus) 1.5 (PG 144:25). In the East only the emperor could enter the tabernacle and only at Easter and his coronation. Codinus, De officiis Constantinopolitanis (On the Offices at Constantinople) 17 (PG 157:109—10); cf. Cantacusenus, Historia 1.41 (PG 153:280—81); Ivo, Sermo (Discourse) 4 (PL 162:532—33). At Constantinople and the Vatican there was even a mark on the pavement, as there had been in the temple court of Jerusalem, to show the point beyond which the vulgar might not pass. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De caeremoniis aulae Byzantinae (On the Ritual of the Byzantine Court) 1.10 (PG 112:161); see especially the editor’s note on this.

145. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.7 (PG 9:461), with long note by le Nourry (PG 9:462—63); Hippolytus, Fragmenta in Jeremiam (On Jeremiah) (PG 10:632). Other and later sources given by Gronovius, in Graevius, Thesaurus antiquitatum Romanarum, 7:160.

146. Ivo, Discourse 4 (PL 162:527—35).

147. William K. L. Clarke, Liturgy and Worship (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 55—59.

148. Rabanus Maurus, Expositio super Jeremiam (Exposition on Jeremiah) 4.7 (PL 111:858).

149. Origen, Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans) 6.7 (PG 14:1073); Zeno, Tractate 2.66 (PL 11:520—21); Methodius, Banquet of the Ten Virgins 5.9.1 (PG 18:177); Paulinus of Nola, Poema (Poem) 34.337—48 (PL 61:683). With the fall of the temple “a stupor seems to have settled upon the Jews.” Brandon, Fall of Jerusalem, 165.

150. Athanasius, Oratio de incarnatione verbi Dei (Oration on the Incarnation of the Word) 40 (PG 25:165).

151. For Eusebius the mere statement that Jerusalem will be trodden under foot “shows that the temple shall never rise again”; he admits that the text adds “until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled,” but when is that? Eusebius has the answer: It means never! Theophania (Theophany) 8 (PG 24:649—50). Athanasius is even more naive: We know (he argues) that Christ was a true Prophet because Jerusalem will never rise again. And how do we know that? Because since all has been fulfilled in the coming of the true Prophet, it cannot rise again! Athanasius, Oration on the Incarnation of the Word 39 (PG 25:164—65). Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 1.5 (PL 24:29—30), insists that the words “Non est in eo sanitas” (Isaiah 1:6) refer to the time of Titus and absolutely prove that the temple can never be restored. Even more far-fetched is Eusebius’s demonstration from the thirty pieces of silver, in Demonstratio evangelica (Proof for the Gospel) 10 (PG 22:745). 152. Origen, Contra Celsum (Against Celsus) 4.22 (PG 11:1056—57): “Tharrountes d’ eroumen, hoti oud’ apokatastathesontai.” The same argument is employed by Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 1.1 (PL 24:20—22); and Hippolytus, Fragmenta in Danielem (On Daniel) 8—22 (PG 10:648—55).

153. Chrysostom, Against the Jews and the Gentiles 5 (PG 48:884, 889, 896); cf. Origen, Against Celsus 4.22 (PG 11:1057, with a long discussion in PG 11:1056—60), telling how Grotius developed the argument. Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament, 3:291—92, makes this the official Protestant party line; cf. Farrar, Life of Christ, 2:255—56: “Neither Hadrian nor Julian, nor any other, were able to build upon its site,” etc.

154. So Strahan, “Temple,” 557.

155. Marcel Simon, Verus Israel (Paris: De Boccard, 1964), 118—20, noting, p. 120, that in spite of all efforts to explain it away the danger remains real; cf. trans. H. McKeating (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 91—93.

156. Raisin, Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals, 370. On the usefulness of pagan ruins as object lessons, see Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 1.16 (PG 67:116—17).

157. Kraus, “Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,” 227.

158. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 17.64 (PL 24:650), citing Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 6.12, to prove that the temple will never return. Theodoret, Explanation of Ezekiel 48 (PG 81:1252—53 and 1760); and Chrysostom, Against the Jews and the Gentiles 5 (PG 48:884, 889, 896), express the same impatience. See Kraus, “Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,” 90—91, 240—45, for others.

159. Theophylactus, Commentary on the Gospel of Mark 13.1—4 (PG 123:633): “hoste peirontai deixai pseude ton Christon.”

160. The story is fully treated by Michael Adler, “The Emperor Julian and the Jews,” Jewish Quarterly Review, orig. ser., 5 (1893): 615—51.

161. Rufinus, Historica ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) 1.37 (PL 21:505); Theodoret, Historica ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) 3.15 (PG 82:1112).

162. So Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 3.15 (PG 82:1112); Philostorgius, Ecclesiasticae historiae (Ecclesiastical History) 7.14 (PG 65:552).

163. Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History 1.37 (PL 21:505); Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 3.20 (PG 67:428—32).

164. Adler, “The Emperor Julian and the Jews,” 649. On the temple as a test case, Chrysostom, Against the Jews and the Gentiles 5.3 (PG 48:888); 6.4 (PG 48:909).

165. A blunt statement is that of David M. Stanley, “Kingdom to Church,” Theological Studies 16 (1955): 26: “The definitive coming of the Church . . . terminates the existence of the Temple.”

166. Johannes Hempel, Die althebräische Literatur und ihr hellenistisch-jüdisches Nachleben (Potsdam: Athenaion, 1930), 92. A significant point overlooked by commentators.

167. Adler, “The Emperor Julian and the Jews,” 637—51. 168. Ferdinand Prat, Jesus Christ (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1950), 2:230, hails the fireball story as conclusive proof that Jesus’ prophecy of “not one stone upon another . . . has been fulfilled to the letter.” The learned le Nourry argues that while the destruction of Jewish and pagan temples by fire, especially lightning, is a sure sign of divine wrath, a like fate suffered by Christian buildings is without significance, since Christians do not believe that God dwells in houses made with hands (note in PG 9:899—901).

169. Athanasius, Historia Arianorum ad monachos (Arian History) 71 (PG 25:777): “a persecution, a prelude and a preparation (prooimion de kai paraskeue) for the Antichrist.” Cf. ibid., 74 (PG 25:781); 79 (PG 25:789).

170. Quotation from Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.25 (PG 7:1189). Cyril of Jerusalem says it is a dreadful thing to think of but cannot for that reason be denied. Catechesis XV. de secundo Christi adventu (Catechetical Lectures on the Second Coming of Christ) 15 (PG 33:889—92).

171. Basil, Commentarius in Isaiam prophetam (Commentary on Isaiah) 3.110 (PG 30:296), who for the rest is very partial to a spiritual and intellectual temple (PG 30:289, 233).

172. See notes 165—70 above. In one attempt the workers unearthed a stone bearing the inscription: In the beginning was the Word. “This was proof positive that it is vain ever to try to rebuild [Jerusalem]—evidence of a divine and irrevocable decree that the Temple has vanished forever!” Philostorgius, Ecclesiastical History 7.14 (PG 65:552—53).

173. Even Eusebius had his doubts and wondered if the Montanists might be right. Walter Völker, “Von welchen Tendenzen liess sich Eusebius bei Abfassung seiner ‘Kirchengeschichte’ leiten?” Vigiliae christianae 4 (1950): 170.

174. Well expressed in Simon, Verus Israel, 118—24.

175. See Helen Rosenau, “The Synagogue and the Diaspora,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly (1937): 200.

176. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 17.40 (PL 24:593—94).

177. See Hugh W. Nibley, “The Unsolved Loyalty Problem: Our Western Heritage,” in The Ancient State, 218—22; and “Victoriosa Loquacitas,” in The Ancient State, 260—69.

178. Heinrich Bornkamm, Grundriss zum Studium der Kirchengeschichte (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1949), 113—14. 179. While Fernand Cabrol, Les origines liturgiques (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1906), 48—56, strenuously denies that “toute cette splendeur dont le culte fut entouré” was of any but the purest Hebraic origin, such eminent Catholic authorities as Joseph Lechner and Ludwig Eisenhofer, Liturgik des römischen Ritus (Freiburg: Herder, 1953), 5—6, think otherwise.

180. Thomas Livius, St. Peter Bishop of Rome (London: Burns and Oates, 1888), 521, while boasting that his church alone in Christendom possesses the Holy City, just like the Jews and the Muslims, never mentions the temple but always puts the synagogue in its place. For example, “The divinely appointed Aaronical high-priesthood . . . was in the Synagogue the fountainhead of all other priesthood” (p. 523), and “The once-favored Synagogue . . . had become a widow . . . without altar or sacrifice” (p. 527). Only once does he let slip the ugly little word, and that in a footnote (p. 527), but it is enough to show that he knows better and is deliberately avoiding the embarrassing word, as Christian scholars consistently do.

181. So Gustaf Wingren, “Weg, Wanderung und verwandte Begriffe,” Studia Theologica 3 (1951): 111—12.

182. “Le Temple est mort à jamais” is the cry of Marcel Simon, “Retour du Christ et reconstruction du temple dans la pensée chrétienne primitive,” in Aux sources de la tradition chrétienne: Mélanges offerts à M. Maurice Goguel (Neuchâtel: Delachaux and Niestlé, 1950), 252; cf. 253, 257. An interesting development is the admission that the original Christians were devoted to the temple, coupled with a rebuke for their foolishness; so Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 1:54, 57, cf. English translation, 53, 57; O’Brien, Life of Christ, 418. Cf. Charles Briggs, Messianic Prophecy (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1891), 289.

183. Charles H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 300—301; Barrett, “Eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews,” 374—76; Burrows, Outline of Biblical Theology, 276. Even Farrar, Life of Christ, 1:192—93, was very cautious in condemning the temple. Phythian-Adams’s whole book, The People and the Presence, belongs in this hesitant and compromising group.

184. J. F. Walvoord, “The Doctrine of the Millennium,” Biblioteca sacra 115 (1958): 106—8. “The entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament, while perhaps incongruous with western civilization aesthetics, was nevertheless commanded by God himself. . . . If a literal view of the temple and sacrifices be allowed, it provides a more intimate view of worship in the millennium than might otherwise be afforded.” Ibid., 107—8.

0 notes