Nicholas J Moore
Heaven and temple in the Second Temple period: A taxonomy
Moore, Nicholas J
Authors
Abstract
It is a commonplace of ancient Near Eastern worldviews that temples have cosmic significance. This understanding persists and develops in the Second Temple period, with numerous texts witnessing to a widely held belief that the Jerusalem temple reflected heaven or the universe. Scholars have largely been content either to recognize a basic relationship, or to distinguish temple-in-heaven from temple-as-universe, sometimes construing the former as “apocalyptic” and the latter as “Hellenistic.” Jonathan Klawans’ work represents an important articulation of this distinction. This article summarizes his contribution, and critiques it on the grounds that it remains overly dichotomous and does not do full justice to the evidence. Instead, a fresh taxonomy is proposed with four key categories, each illustrated from Second Temple and biblical texts. None of these categories is discrete; rather they demarcate a spectrum or scale of ways that ancient Jewish and early Christian writers conceptualized the heaven–temple relationship.
Citation
Moore, N. J. (2023). Heaven and temple in the Second Temple period: A taxonomy. Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 33(1), 75-93. https://doi.org/10.1177/09518207211052237
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Aug 8, 2023 |
Online Publication Date | Sep 8, 2023 |
Publication Date | 2023-09 |
Deposit Date | Feb 13, 2024 |
Publicly Available Date | Feb 13, 2024 |
Journal | Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha |
Print ISSN | 0951-8207 |
Electronic ISSN | 1745-5286 |
Publisher | SAGE Publications |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 33 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 75-93 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1177/09518207211052237 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2254292 |
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Copyright Statement
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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