The Tabernacle

Christianity is a uniquely a temple-less religion. Judaism has Jerusalem (and modern Jews are is dying—pardon the expression— to build the Third Temple) and even Islam has her Mecca (though Muslims will insist their's is not a temple). Buddhist and Hindu temples are a legion and tourist hotspots. On the other hand, the New Testament asserts that the disciples of Jesus are the temple: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" (1 Cor 3:16). Does that, therefore, mean that we need not bother about the Temple?

The answer is, No. Even if Christianity does not have a temple, it is rooted in a faith in which the temple had played an important part, and we cannot understand what Paul means unless we have an adequate grasp of the temple. A more urgent one is because modern Jews and Zionist Christians are lobbying so hard to build the Third Temple, which if or when it happens, will trigger a war so massive in its wake it will be like nothing the world has ever seen before. Some proponents of the project estimate that easily a third of the Jews will die in the resulting conflagration. How should Christians respond to this without a clear understanding of the place of the temple in our faith (even though, as we have said, we do not have one)? Indeed, the need to understand the temple is an urgent one. The tabernacle and the temple that replaced it served as the center of ancient Israel's worship. Above all else they, and especially the inner sanctuary, or the Holy of Holies, represent the presence of God in Israel's midst. As a result detailed attention is paid to it like few other structures mentioned in the OT.

The idea of a dwelling place for God is not unique to ancient Israel; every culture has some form of it or other. As often observed by scholars everywhere, while Israel's traditions and understanding of God were unique in many ways, Israel was also a borrower, imitator, and absorber of much from the cultures around her; though she never endowed the forms she borrowed with the same kind of theology as was found among her neighbours. This is nowhere clearly seen than in Israel's conception and attitude towards the temple. Israel's experience with the temple, however, had her precedent in the tabernacle which was given to her at Mount Sinai and which followed her through all her wandering in the wilderness and for another three or four centuries until the time of David, who first broached the idea of a temple for God. This article will follow the course of these developments and examine the attendant thoughts that accompanied each of these stages in the life of the tabernacle and temple.