Christians: Heirs of the True Temple

This next installment of my analysis of Margaret Barker’s Temple Themes in Christian Worship is taken from both chapters 2 and 3: “Temple and Synagogue,” and “Sons and Heirs.” In these chapters, Barker continues with her theme of the secret temple tradition and its importance to Christianity. She looks at the importance of temple themes for the study of Christian origins, what this tradition meant for Israel’s Messianic expectations, and also what it meant for the Christian understanding of their own identity. There is so much great information in these chapters that I can only present a brief overview in this post. I highly encourage you to get a copy of this book and read it for yourself. There are many details I couldn’t mention here that are of interest to Latter-day Saints.

First of all, Barker further establishes the need to look to the First Temple (Solomon’s) when attempting a study of the origin of Christian worship. She notes, with dismay, how most scholars try to locate these origins in the tradition of the synagogue rather than the temple. Because details regarding temple worship in this formative period are hard to come by, scholars have a tendency to seek similarities between Christian worship and the worship that took place in the synagogue. According to Barker, however, Christian self-identification sounds more like the Temple than the synagogue.

Any investigation of the origin of Christian worship must take into account the fact that Jesus was proclaimed as the Great High Priest (e.g. Heb. 4.14), and the high priest did not function in a synagogue; that the central message of Christianity was the atonement, a ritual at the heart of temple worship; that the hope for the Messiah was grounded in the royal high priesthood of the original temple; and that the Christians thought of themselves as a kingdom of priests (1 Pet. 2.9). The great high priest and his royal priests would have been out of place in a synagogue, and a large number of priests joined the church in Jerusalem (Acts 6.7) (p. 20).

Jesus, and his disciples after him, went to the Temple frequently, and its themes pervaded their language and traditions. The Book of Revelation, that apocalyptic expression of Christian worship, has as its setting the Heavenly Temple and is replete with temple imagery.  Barker does an excellent job of presenting the temple themes present in Christian tradition that clearly did not have their roots in the worship of the synagogue. 

Although the temple was so important to the early Christians, Barker explains how, ironically, it is possible that Christians were soon barred from visiting the Temple.  Although Christ and the Apostles were quite at home in the Temple, there came a time when Christians were no longer welcome. Barker cites evidence that besides being expelled from the synagogues, they were also ”cut off” from the Temple–declared anathema or “cursed” (see pgs. 36-37).

How, then, did Christian worship involve the Temple if they had no access to it? This is the topic that occupies much of the last part of chapter 2 and then chapter 3. The first obvious answer is that they carried on the temple tradition  without the temple walls. Christians claimed to be “the true heirs to the temple tradition” (p. 38). They did not necessarily need to be in the Temple to carry on its rituals, beliefs, and doctrines. They were “the living stones of the spiritual temple” (1 Pet 2:5), built on the foundation of prophets and apostles (Eph 2:19–22). Like the authors of “The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice” at Qumran, Christians could carry on a living temple liturgy without having a literal temple building to perform it in (see pg. 39). Latter-day Saints can perhaps compare this to Joseph Smith performing endowments and other ordinances before the Nauvoo Temple was built.

 Although the idea of the spiritual and heavenly reality of the Temple was important for Christians, they did expect that they would one day have a true, physical temple to worship in. Justin, in his debates with Trypho, assured him that:

I and every other completely orthodox Christian feel certain that there will be a resurrection of the flesh, followed by a thousand years in the rebuilt, embellished and enlarged city of Jerusalem, as announced by the prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the others (Trypho 80) (p. 60).

Barker reasons that because Ezekiel had given detailed instructions for the building of a new temple, we can assume that Justin was looking forward to a literal rebuilding. The Christians, similar to the Jews (as expressed in 2 Baruch 32 and elsewhere), believed that, in the future, Jerusalem would be restored to glory and perfected into eternity (see pp. 60-61). This included either a new temple, or that Jerusalem itself would be one huge temple. In any case, Barker notes, “Being a spiritual temple did not mean that they did not hope for a great temple building too” (p. 61).

The hope for a restored temple was part of the millennial hope and messianic expectation. How could a restored Temple be part of the messianic expectation if, at that point, the Temple still stood? Barker reminds us that “Jesus cleansed the temple” (p. 45). This was because the temple of Jesus’ time, the Second Temple, was corrupt. Ever since the Jews rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, after their return from exile, many had felt it was corrupt-a false temple with a false priesthood, and looked for a restoration of the ancient true temple. This idea is expressed in much of the intertestamental literature, including 1 Enoch, Qumran’s Temple Scroll, 2 Esdras, and others. The Messiah was expected to come and destroy the existing temple and build another. Barker notes that “this implies two things: that there was something seriously wrong with the second temple: and that the messianic hope was rooted in another, earlier temple” (p. 53). She takes John’s vision of the great harlot in Rev 17 to be a description of the corruption of the Second Temple.

[The Temple was,] as the great harlot (Rev. 17.1), dressed in the vestments of the high priesthood — purple and scarlet, gold jewels and pearls -and she had a name on her forehead: ‘Babylon the great…’ (Rev. 17.5), a parody of the Name worn on the forehead by the high priest (Exod. 28.36). The harlot would be burned, a punishment reserved for harlots of the house of Aaron, the high priestly family (Lev. 21.9). There is little doubt who she was. And as she burned, the saints in heaven rejoiced and sang praises to God (Rev. 19.1-3).

Although we see this as a prophecy for the last days, it is likely that John was drawing on images from his own time as a type of what would happen eschatalogically.

After detailing why the temple and priesthood were considered corrupt, she goes on to say:

The Christian claim is unmistakeable: the corruption of the priesthood had brought the downfall of the temple, and Jesus was the new high priest…[The] former faith, superseded after the exile, was the faith of the first temple, and the evidence is consistent that the priests of the second temple had very different ways. They were an apostate generation whose works were evil (1 Enoch 93.9). The Christians claimed for Jesus the older priesthood of Melchizedek (pp. 56-57, emphasis in original). 

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