Rebuilding Solomon’s Temple, in São Paulo

This week, as Jews around the world observed the fasting day of Tisha B’av, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Jewish Temples in ancient Jerusalem, a Brazilian megachurch received planning permission to build a 10,000-seat replica of Solomon’s Temple in the city of São Paulo.

As Tom Phillips of The Guardian noted, a Brazilian newspaper, Estado de São Paulo, reported that the church will cost an estimated $200 million and should be completed in four years.

According to a post on the blog of Bishop Edir Macedo, the founder of Brazil’s evangelical Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which is building the replica, the structure will be 180 feet high, making it nearly twice as tall as the Christ the Redeemer statue that towers over Rio de Janeiro. Mr. Macedo also said that stones of the same type used by Solomon had been ordered from Jerusalem to be used in a complex which will also house 36 Bible schools, television and radio studios and a 1,000-space parking lot.

In 1998, Alan Riding reported for The Times that the Brazilian police investigated charges that the Universal Church “pretends to cure people by expelling the Devil from their bodies, using grotesque and humiliating gestures reminiscent of the barbaric sects of the Middle Ages.”

The Bishop’s blog also reported that a leader of the city’s Jews has called the temple project “very interesting” and suggested that the project might help fight anti-Semitism by educating Brazilians about Israel. The blog also said this about the prospects for a similar project in Jerusalem : “For Jews, there is still hope that the Third Temple is constructed so that the Messiah will reign with them. But for that to happen, they will have to expect some natural disaster or governmental changes.”

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This would be quite a site to see — although it is rather disappointing that the inside of the building will apparently not be very similar at all to Solomon’s Temple nor, I am sure, will it have the sacred rituals that were performed in that edifice.  As I was a missionary in Brazil and am very familiar with the church that is planning this project, I will refrain myself from making further comment…

This video is the first installment of a series of productions covering the topic of ancient temples, presented by David Larsen and David Tayman. The focus of these presentations will be to explore the nature, function, doctrine, and rituals of the ancient temple, especially the ancient Israelite Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, in a manner that is especially helpful for those who are familiar with modern Latter-day Saint Temples. The basic assumption we are working with is that, although there are important differences, there are also a number of significant similarities that can be found between the ancient temple and the modern.

BYU Professor Richard O. Cowan explained:

Modern revelation affirms that both the Tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon were built so that “those ordinances might be revealed which had been hid from before the world was” (D&C 124:38). Hence the Lord’s people in these Old Testament times had access to at least some of the temple ordinances that would be restored in the latter days. …The Lord’s requirements for exaltation, and therefore the need for temples, were the same then as they are now.

(Richard O. Cowan, “Sacred Temples Ancient and Modern,” in The Temple in Time and Eternity (Provo: FARMS, 1999), p. 105)

Looking at the structure and function of the ancient temple, the first major point to note is that the temple was built on a location that was understood to be sacred space.

1. The sanctity of the location was often attributed to one of the following characteristics. It was: the initial place of creation, the center of the world, the top of a holy mountain, or, in many cases, a combination of all three.

2. The tops of mountains were often chosen because they were seen to be half-way between heaven and earth — an ideal place for a meeting between God and man.

3. In addition, the temple itself was an architectural reproduction of the Holy Mountain of God. According to ancient Semitic religious tradition, the holy mountain, the highest and most exalted of all mountains, was the personal dwelling place of the Most High God, and His sons, the Holy Ones.

As one ascended the mountain, one drew closer to the presence of God, who resided at the top. Only those invited and duly authorized could do so. We see the disastrous results of an unwelcome ascent in the story of the unauthorized temple known as the Tower of Babel.

The three-fold structure of the Temple of Jerusalem can be understood by its parallels to the events described in the ascent occurring at Mt. Sinai in the Book of Exodus:

a.    the children of Israel stayed at the bottom (outer courts)

b.   Aaron and the 70 elders went up to the middle (holy place)

c.   only Moses went to the top (Holy of Holies).

Each degree of the temple is more holy than the last, because of its representative closeness to God.

The script for the following installment of this temple video series, Part 2a, will be posted shortly.

“The Temple: Part 2 — Three Degrees of Glory”, produced by David Tayman ( http://www.visionsofthekingdom.com) and I, continues the series of videos discussing the ancient symbolism, doctrine, and rituals of the ancient temples, especially designed for those with a knowledge of, or interest in, the modern temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This video actually comprises just the first section of Part 2, and addresses the topic of the differing levels of holiness set apart in the structure of the ancient temple, focusing here on the objects found in the court surrounding the temple, specifically, in this section, the bronze laver, or “sea”, and its symbolism.  Videos covering the great hall of the temple and the Holy of Holies will follow. LDS viewers will recognize parallels between the information presented about ancient temples and the restored doctrine of the “three degrees of glory.”

My great thanks to David Tayman for all his work in putting this presentation together!

Without further ado, here is The Temple: Part 2 — Three Degrees of Glory (section a, the Bronze Laver):

If you haven’t yet seen Part 1 of this series, I’ll post it as well:

Check back here or at my YouTube channel regularly for further updates to this series!

The “journey” starts off in the presence of God and we then travel through the immensity of space to reach the Earth, the place where God determined that our mortal experience would take place. Our purpose in this mortal life is to learn and progress so that we can return to the presence of God. I depict the place where one gains the knowledge of how to make this return journey as the temple. Temples have been built since the beginning of mankind’s history so that we could gain our bearings in the universe, learning where we came from and how to get back there.  I include a depiction of the procession at Solomon’s temple dedication, which procession I believe was meant to represent the ascent from the Earth through the heavens and back into God’s presence. This was a ritual enactment of what they expected to someday be a reality for them. Then the actual ascent/journey back through the heavens is depicted, ending with a vision of Christ on His Throne, the Godhead, and ultimate enthronement of the individual.

I could have included many more relevant images, but this was just a fun exercise for me in putting together a video.

I am posting a couple of other great videos that James from Lehi’s Library pointed out to me.

They were both put together for NOVA : the first is a reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple (which is much better done than the one I previously posted), and also a video about Asherah as a possible Hebrew Goddess, the wife of God. Some very interesting material!

(You may recognize some of this as having been included in David Tayman’s and my video The Temple: Part One — Sacred Space)

As I was studying recently about the “transfer of power” from the prophet Moses to his young aide, Joshua, it hit me that there was a similarity in this motif with the ideas presented in a paper by Julian Morgenstern  that I recently read called “The King-God among the Western Semites and the Meaning of Epiphanes.” This is quite an intriguing, even if somewhat old and outdated, work that looks at the ancient ideology of the Near East regarding kingship. I must preface my thoughts here by explaining that I don’t necessarily share all of Prof. Morgenstern’s reasoning or conclusions, but I found the pattern he describes strangely applicable to the Moses-Joshua narrative.

Morgenstern’s argument is that the religious traditions of the Ancient Near East, which he sees as background to, and an influence on, Israel’s religious thought, were associated with their understanding of the patterns of nature.  More specifically, the life-cycle of their gods, in their view, was reflected in, for example, the annual cycles of the sun that provide the different seasons, or the vegetation cycles of death in the winter and rebirth in the spring.  Examples of these traditions pervade the religions of the ancient world.

Morgenstern explains that, for example, in the ancient Tyrian (western-Semitic) religion, Baal-Haddad was the reigning god, the god of the storms, who brought rain and fertility to the earth. His consort was Astarte, the mother goddess who was represented as a type of Mother Earth. Their offspring was Tammuz, who was represented by the yearly crops. According to the myth, in the spring, Tammuz, the divine child, was born and grew to maturity to the point where he was identified with, or even supplanted, the Father god. In the autumn, the old god was seen as dying and being buried, only to be born again in the spring as the young god. The cycle repeated itself annually as the young god rose up from the soil (from the Underworld), grew up to become the old Father god, died, and then was born again with new and vigorous life.  (For me, personally, I think it is hard for us to know if this is how the ancients actually saw their gods, as dying and resurrecting each year, or if they saw the cycles of nature as merely reflecting a more archetypal divine example)

Later on, the Tyrian king Hiram, who had so much influence on Solomon and the building of his temple, supposedly reformed his people’s religion so that it no longer followed the pattern of the vegetation cycle, but followed the solar phases. The main phases of this new belief were following the steadily increasing light of the winter/spring sun and then the receding radiance of the summer/autumn sun. The summer/autumn sun, representing the god Baal-Shamem, grew older and dimmer as the year went on, until at the winter solstice, the point of least light in the year, the old god was believed to have died, fallen asleep, or departed on a journey.  The sun-god journeys to the darkness of the Netherworld through the portals of the West, only to be reborn far in the East. When he is reborn as the winter/spring sun, he is Melcarth, the Lord of Heaven, the young warrior god that brings new life as he grows in brightness and strength throughout these seasons of the year. Essentially, according to Morgenstern, the two gods, Baal-Shamem and Melcarth, were the same god, but in two basic phases — one mortal and one immortal. Often, the old god never truly dies but is replaced in the world of the living by the young god, who rules from his throne. The old god continues to rule, but more remotely, from the realm of the Afterlife. This general pattern can be seen in similar Egyptian beliefs regarding the dying Osiris who is avenged and “replaced” by his son Horus, the Greek traditions of the son god killing and replacing the father god, Zeus and Heracles, the Phoenix, Babylonian beliefs regarding Marduk, and so on.

While Morgenstern goes on extensively to then compare this pattern to ancient Israelite religion, including yearly temple rites in the autumn and spring at the Temple of Solomon, I will only briefly relate some of his ideas that concern the Israelite concept of kingship.  Morgenstern argues that the kings throughout the region of the Near East followed a similar pattern for their transfers of power, imitating the trajectory of the gods.  As the reigning king became old, he would appoint his son, his heir, to rule in his stead. The son symbolically “became” his father, the king, ruling on his throne. The old king would die and the new, young king would continue ruling in his stead, the embodiment of his father. Although the old king had died and journeyed to the Underworld, he would continue to rule, in a sense, through his seed who occupied his throne.

Similarly, the new reigning king would go through an annual cycle represented in the great religious festivals at the temple.  In these festivals, there were dramatic re-enactments in which, according to Morgenstern, the king would play the role of the god, as the embodiment of the god. At the Autumn New Year Festival, on the day of the autumn equinox, the king-god would, in a dramatic presentation, die and be buried in the earth (which Morgenstern seems to be saying would have been represented by the king entering the temple, the pillars of which represented the gates to the world of the dead). At the festival of the vernal equinox, there would have been a celebration of the god/king’s “awakening” or “resurrection” when, at the point of greatest light hitting the temple, he would emerge from its eastern entrance and appear to his people, glorious and radiant (the sun likely reflecting brightly off his throne and/or silver or gold colored crown/clothing) and full of new life, giving new hope to his people. (If such ideas were ever represented in Israelite religion, which I believe that they were, at least to an extent, they were greatly modified over time. According to some theories, all of these themes were represented in one great Autumn festival, and the Spring festival represented different ideas altogether).

I could go on and on about Morgenstern’s interesting analysis of these themes, but my point in bringing this up is that the idea of the old dying god/king and the rise of the young, vibrant god/king seems to have had some influence on the Israelite traditions regarding Moses and Joshua. We could say that history does have a tendency to repeat itself, or perhaps it is a case of ancient stories recontextualized to shape narrations of historical events, but the story of the transfer of power between Moses and Joshua does seem to follow this ancient pattern of cyclical transition as described by Morgenstern.  Moses, the old prophet (who was, for all intents and purposes, Israel’s earthly king), having lived a full life in service of the Lord, reaches the point when it is time for him to die and be replaced by a young, vibrant new leader.  There is a period where Moses is commanded to “share” the authority of his office with Joshua, in preparation for the transition. It is interesting that this takes place just as the people of Israel are reaching the promised land. It is as if God, when bringing his people into a new land for a new life, wants them to be led by a new, younger Moses into the promised land.  Just as Moses had, in earlier years, been both the spiritual and military leader of Israel, Joshua comes as a young warrior-prophet ready to lead the people to further conquests. This is how the resurrected, young god of the ancient traditions was depicted — as a warrior who comes to deliver his people.

However, as some traditions affirm, Moses does not really die, but was “translated” — he is essentially deified and continues ruling, in a sense, from beyond and afar, guiding still his young replacement through the prophetic mantle passed on, through the law that he had recorded, and perhaps, like the succession of Elisha following Elijah, through the endowment of a portion of his “spirit” to Joshua. Certainly, the same prophetic Spirit that had guided Moses was now operating in the Lord’s new servant.