Monday, January 11, 2016

The Role Of Temples in the Ancient Near East and Their Connection to The One True Temple - Part 2

TEMPLE PRACTICES AMONG OTHER ANE PEOPLES

Temple as Microcosm
A common thread among temple practices of the ANE is their belief in the temple as a microcosm.  The lack of distinction between politics and religion in the ancient world contributed to an incomparable significance of the role of the temples.  Their role in the divine interaction of every day life caused them to take center-stage in the lives of the ancients.  The temple of the gods were small representations on earth for the sake of the gods and everything they signified.  John Walton speaks of the temple, “It was considered the center of power, control, and order from which deity brings order to the human world.  Fertility, prosperity, peace, and justice emanate from his (the god) presence there.”[1]  An example is taken from the Akkadian god Ningirsu who promises, “when you bring your hand to bear for me, I will cry out to heaven for rain…with the founding of my temple, let abundance come!”[2]  Walton concludes, “Therefore the temple is not only the cosmic center, it is the economic and moral center of the cosmos.”[3]  The means by which the local world will function well is for the world of the gods to be happy and this could only occur through temple rituals. 
The centrality of focus upon the temple and its other-worldly representation is clearly seen in Enuma Elish.  The erection of Marduk’s shrine as cosmic symbolism is believed to bring his heavenly achievements to earth, “A likeness on earth of what he has wrought in heaven.”[4]  The same microcosmic concepts can be seen in Egypt with tributes to Amon.  Greg Beale notes, “Thutmose III restored a temple for the god Amon and made it ‘like the heavens’.  And Ramses III affirmed about his god: ‘I made for thee an august house in Nubia…the likeness of the heavens.”[5]  This cosmic symbolism can be seen in temple practices throughout the ANE.  The temple was viewed as a microcosm.  It was a small representation of the world of the gods upon the earth and thus served as the central focus of most of ANE life.  The ANE was a world of two worlds in one.  The ever-present call of man in his need for God.  The temples reflected this part of the ANE which was the very heartbeat of culture.  Nothing occurred without the gods and their sanctuaries and there was no way to separate one from the other.  Earthly ANE temples were thought to be the houses of the gods with cosmic symbolism and their kings and priests were divinely placed in the image of the gods to do his/her work.  Claus Ambos summarizes, “A temple was believed to be the house of a deity who lived there in the shape of his or her cult statue and was taken care of and fed by humans.  By their layout and architectural features, the sanctuaries of the ANE expressed in many respects cosmic symbolism.”[6]     

Image as Divine Symbol
Temples in the ANE were also considered the earthly dwelling place of the gods with the kings and priests serving as divinely placed ambassadors.  It was believed these ambassadors were placed there by the gods to rule the people and to represent the gods on their behalf.  This divine symbol was considered a visible image of the invisible god.  Hart explains, “In the ANE it was widely believed that a god’s spirit lived in any statue or image of that god, with the result that the image could function as a kind of representative of or substitute for the god where it was placed.  It was also customary in the ANE to think of a king as a representative of a god; obviously the king ruled, and the god was the ultimate ruler, so the king must be ruling on the god’s behalf.  It is therefore not surprising that these two separate ideas became connected and a king came to be described as an image of a god.”[7] 
Greg Beale records multiple examples of images of gods being placed in their temples throughout the ANE[8] but here I will just mention a few.  Assyrian king Ashurbanipal II (883-859 B.C.) “created an icon of the goddess Ishtar…and set up in (the temple) her throne platform.”[9]  An Akkadian prayer describes Anu, Enlil, and Ea devising a plan for “providing support for the gods” by building a dwelling with the obvious presence of priests who collected this support “and the gods were installed in this dwelling: their principal temple.”[10]  The Enuma Elish records Marduk as the one who holds the divine right of naming objects.  It is an exercise of dominion to hold such power over beings.  Marduk was the patron god of the ancient Babylonian world and kings used this to their advantage.  Many of the inscriptions discovered in ancient Mesopotamian temple sites have revealed a common name etched upon Marduk’s temples.  They were called “e.umus.a” or “house of command”[11] which leads many to believe these temples were used as political and military propaganda for the sake of the ones who bore the alleged divine image. 
The temple practices of the ancient Hittites dating to a period around 1600-1200 B.C. provide insight to similar views of the king’s place in the temple.  Excavations among Hittite civilizations have provided archeological remains including cuneiform tablets shedding light on the temple practices of these northern Mesopotamian peoples.  The Hittites were influenced by their southern neighbors the Assyrians from whom they most likely learned their cuneiform script.  The Hittite texts also speak of temples as “house of god” as well as “big house”.[12]  Again there is the parallel in shared expressions of a temple as the dwelling which belongs to God.  The parallel to Eden is clearly seen in Adam as the one granted authority by God to rule over the garden.  We find a connection to the ancient Hittites in the work of Susanne Gorke who states, “the religious ideology of the Hittites…shows the king as the administrator appointed by the main gods of the country.”[13]  Just as Hittite kings were believed to be “appointed by the gods” so Adam is appointed by God to administer His rule over the creation.  He serves in the house of God in the image of God.
The Mosaic description of Adam is not separated from his ANE counterparts.  The first man created by God is one who is granted authority to administer the rule of God over His created order.  Adam is made from the dust of the earth and has the image of God placed upon and within him in the process.  Although the concept “image of God” only appears five times in the scriptures (Gen. 1:26-27; 5:1, 3; 9:6) it should not be overlooked.  The significance of the imago dei extends well beyond a first look at these verses.  It may share further similarities with other ANE narratives regarding a god establishing a divine representative in his or her dwelling.  Kenneth Mathews states, “In the ANE royal persons were considered the sons of the gods or representatives of the gods (2 Sam. 7:13-16; Ps. 2:7).  Mankind is appointed as God’s royal representatives (i.e. sonship) to rule the earth in his place.”[14]  Exponentially multiplied volumes have been written on the imago dei so let me just mention a few things in the context of this writing.  The divine image is present in Adam and other ANE narratives also set forth a similar idea although there are certain differences.  The divine image-bearer in Genesis is culpable of damaging the very image of God he was so graciously given.  Other ANE cultures do not seem to be much concerned with that.   Adam’s life is still valuable and never to be neglected nor abused.  The image of God is to be cherished and protected in others.  This type of value placed upon human life is not common in other ANE narratives and the function of the image seems to be quite different.  Other ANE gods wish to use man as their image to feed them and water them whereas the God of Genesis creates and provides for every need of His creation.  The similarities exist but it is the contrast of distinction between God’s garden-temple and the other ANE temples that really gets us to what is most important. 


The One True Temple

            What are we to do with these similarities?  How are we to understand the common practices of the ANE in light of the revelation from the One who refers to Himself as the one and only God?  Where do the commonalities begin and where do they end?  These are the types of questions that have led many scholars to assert the author (or authors) of Genesis borrowed from other ANE peoples and presented their own version of events.  There is at least one other answer available to us.  It is my thesis that these shared characteristics are the result of multiplied reports of one original narrative which is to be found in the biblical record.  While I recognize many of these other narratives predate the written copies we now possess of ANE events that does not mean that they were the first to tell of the events.  It is entirely possible that there was one true garden-temple whose details were passed through oral tradition and spread through various ANE cultures.  So what makes Israel’s account the genuine article?  The short answer is the divine inspiration which guided the process from oral tradition to written copy.  The other ANE cultures were outside of this truth except for rare occasions when some were responsive to God’s grace and entered the one true narrative.  The chief example of this is Abraham who came out from Ur of the Chaldees to become the focal point of the narrative through which God would reveal His blessings to all families of the earth.  I will now make my presentation for Eden as the one true temple by which later ANE temples were based in two categories: the temple as the house of God and kings/priests as His divinely placed image.

House of God
The temples of the ANE were attempts to duplicate what had been understood among the first of humanity as a temple which was the garden of God.  It was not that Israel was projecting the temple practices of the other ANE peoples into their culture.  Rather it was that the ANE peoples, including Israel, were striving to repeat the experience of Adam and his immediate descendants.  This experience in the garden-temple had been transmitted orally through the generations.  The garden-sanctuary was continually sought after by future generations no matter how distorted their versions may have become compared to the original. 
            Divine dwelling in Egyptian culture was seen in the deification of pharaohs.   Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian culture would have been the culture in which Moses was raised.  With his royal status and education, he was well aware of the temple beliefs as they related to the pharaohs.  His choice of words is starkly different to that of the Egyptians from which he came.  Amenhotep I, whose reign extended from 1526-1506 B.C. and his partially co-regent mother, Ahmose-Nefertari were venerated to the position of deity.  Thutmose II, who reigned from 1493-1479 B.C. was buried in a mortuary temple that contained images of rituals relating to a royal statue on a shrine.[15]  This discovery has contributed to scholarly opinion that this is “the first proof that a royal statue was central to such a temple’s cultus.”[16]  These Egyptian kings along with others were seen not only as kings to rule the people but they were understood as gods to be worshipped.  Byron Shafer describes Egyptian temple beliefs, “They were spaces for performing the rituals and erecting the symbolic architecture that transformed the king into a divine being.”[17]  The Egyptians made men to be gods.  Moses recorded the story of the God who made men.  History preaches the difference of the two.  When man is made to be god or uses religion for his own purposes kingdoms are built on the carcasses of others.  When God makes men He uses gracious redemption to build a kingdom whose citizens love and serve others.
            The Mesopotamian cultures outside of Israel used their temples in deviant ways.  Many of them believed humans were the result of divine intercourse and that blessings (especially fertility) came to the people through humans having intercourse with the priests/priestesses of the gods in the temples.  Sex was prominent to say the least.  The garden-temple was a place for Adam and Eve to enjoy each other in the blessing of their physical union.  There is instruction for how a man and woman should treat each other in marital fidelity and how they should interact with their extended family.  The cultures that have been built on these Edenic principles have brought world history the most generous and flourishing societies.  Edmund Clowney reinforces the genuine authority of Genesis 1, “All the mythology of the nations is swept side.  Mankind does not originate in a process of divine copulation or from the blood of a slaughtered god.  A man is not a piece of a god, nor a piecing together of god and beast.  Rather, Adam and Eve are God’s creatures, but creatures who bear His likeness.”  The people who continue to live according to His original account of how things “ought to be” are the ones who continue to live in His likeness. 
            Israel was not exempt from perverting the true use of the temple.  Their temple usage extended beyond the ANE time period.  It developed from the Tabernacle to the First Temple and then to the Second Temple which was active in the days of Jesus.  Another unfortunate shared characteristic with other peoples is that the temple became a place for personal financial gain.  In Matthew 21 when Jesus came to the temple He found people “buying and selling” in the temple.  He overturned the tables of the money changers drove the profiteers out and referred to them as “thieves” (Matthew 21:12-13).  Many possibilities have been offered for why Jesus did such a thing.  I would like to add to the list.  Adam’s responsibility in the garden of God was to tend it and to keep out any evil thing.  He failed by allowing the serpent to deceive his wife and took of the forbidden fruit.  It could be that Jesus was acting as the proper Second Adam.  The temple was the house of God and He was driving out the evil from the garden of God.  Jesus succeeded where Adam failed.    


Image of God
Kings and priests in the ANE were considered divine symbols placed in the temple as the image of god.  The God of Genesis had a much more meaningful idea.  He placed His image in not only a select few but upon every male and female He created.  Waltke illuminates, “The Hebrew perspective bears a distinct difference.  In ANE texts only the king is in the image of God.  But in the Hebrew perspective this is democratized to all humanity.”[18]  The divine image operates more like a power play by ANE kings to build support and bolster their dominion.  It turns humans into slaves to serve the gods under the guidance of kings.  The imago dei placed by God upon each human being exalts individual life and gives them dominion over creation.  It turns humans into the crowning work of creation while empowering them with divinely placed value on each life. 
Temples in the ANE were the central point of human effort to please the gods.  Blessings of fertility relied upon religious faithfulness on the part of man.  Familial and financial blessings were dependent upon worshippers participating in temple rituals.  The entire religious system was a perpetual work of humanity reaching out to the gods.  This was not unique to Egypt and Mesopotamia but developed thoroughly in first and second temple Judaism as well.  How different this is from the God of the first garden-temple.  When Adam and Eve sin it is God who pursues them.  It is God who provides a gracious covering for the shame they had brought upon themselves in the nakedness.  There is even a strong hint of atonement offered by God Himself in the animal that was sacrificed for the covering.  The God of Genesis is the Rescuer of His people and He is the initiator of the necessary action.  He does not need man to work to please Him.  He is pleased in Himself and is pleased with man who receives His redemptive work.
  The theology of Mesopotamian cultures included the ability for a man to rob another man of the blessings of his god by stealing the images of that god.  The theft of the image of a king also could mean the removal of blessing for his people.  The image idea was mistakenly considered something that could be taken away by another man.  Walton explains, “The images of deities of enemies were not smashed but only carried away in order to deprive the enemies of the support of their gods.”[19]  It is quite likely that this is part of what is happening after the killing of Saul.  The Philistines cut off his head and stripped off his armor and sent word to all the Philistine temples that Saul was defeated (1 Sam. 31:9).  Verse 10 continues, “Then they put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths, and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth Shan.”  Saul was a king who served as the divine symbol of his God and after his defeat the Philistines stole the image therefore proclaiming supposed victory over his God to all their people.  But the image of God cannot be stolen.  It is irremovably placed upon man and even when Adam himself rebels the image cannot be robbed.  And when the image is damaged by sin it is God who intercedes to restore divine likeness by conforming His people to the perfect image of His Son Jesus (Rom. 8:29).
We are thinking comparatively of the truth of religious practices and what that means in the life of a man.  It’s not just about temples.  Temples are one expression of core beliefs in the lives of those in the ANE but they are also an object for us to examine.  To examine carefully and see if there is ancient and abiding truth by which we should live today.  In the midst of so many beliefs there is one God who operates differently than all the others.  There is one book that reveals Him in unique opposition to the others.  There is one temple where He dwells and His image is divinely placed distinct from other accounts.  There is one presentation of man that is dignified and eternally meaningful.  Kirk Spencer differentiates, “In Genesis, man is created from clay by a holy God to rule over the creation.  In Enuma Elish, man is created from the blood of a traitorous god to be slaves of the gods.”[20]  Which would you want to be?

Answering Objections
Much of ANE scholarship embraces the idea that Israel borrowed from their neighbors in developing their religious expression.  While the Babylonians presented the Enuma Elish as an alleged creation myth of Marduk so also Israel presented their creation story according to their God.  Just as the Akkadians recorded Gilgamesh and his experience with a flood so also Israel borrowed the idea and named him Noah.  Hammurabi’s code is assumed by some to be the basis for the Mosaic law.  The list continues even to the use of temples.  Georges Barrois repeats a view widely held.  He proposes that temple scribes during the time of Israel’s monarchy into the period of Babylonian exile accumulated Mosaic traditions and struggled to piece them all together to make the writings of Genesis.  In their struggle for it all to make sense Barrois says, “They drew largely on the literary records of their Middle East neighbors, a mixture of fact and fiction.  The first part of Genesis, the ‘Book of Origins’, is rich in episodes reflecting these common traditions.”[21]  Barrois goes on to describe the demythologizing the scribes must have utilized in their attempts to fit all the pieces together with their peculiar monotheism.  John Bright also reports the widespread acceptance of such ideas, “The patriarchal religion as depicted in Genesis was held to be a back-projection of later beliefs.”  He describes how nineteenth century biblical criticism triumphed with “presuppositions that forbade appeal to a doctrine of Scripture as a guarantee of factual accuracy.”[22]
Why should we accept such conclusions?  This thinking is common and appears to contain at least 2 fallacies.  First, that Israel borrowed from their Middle East neighbors. Is this based on archeological discovery of ANE texts that predate the earliest texts of the Old Testament?  If so, it should be considered that any day another discovery could change that.  Especially considering how little of antiquity has actually been uncovered.  Also, it could just as easily be stated that the neighbors of Israel borrowed from them.  The differences are exponentially greater than the largest list of similarities.  Second, the demythologizing effort employed by the scribes would surely not have resulted in such a coherent set of manuscripts.  Literary criticism seeks to overlook the consistency of the biblical witness.  The coherence of biblical authorship becomes especially clear when one begins to read other ANE texts.  Enuma Elish reads more like a soap opera of divine confusion used for political propaganda than divine revelation.  Genesis is filled with historical details and narratives that actually make sense while stories of Anu, Ea, Enlil, Enkidu, Gilgamesh, Si-huhe, Baal, and Mot all read like mythology.  To ignore these differences is to ignore the basic marks of literary genre.  Walter Brueggeman dates the writing of Genesis during the Exilic period and is certainly not coming from many of the presuppositions as this writer.  He wrestles with the ubiquitous nature of such views while trying to take seriously the message of Genesis.  He speaks of “an old tradition” to which Genesis relates and that there are many parallels to other ANE texts.  Brueggeman writes, “The theologians of Israel, in these texts…appropriate materials from the common traditions of the Near East.  But they handle and utilize them in a peculiarly theological way…they break with the mythological.”[23]  He elaborates upon the theology of these Israelites and further clarifies, “This theology of blessing is not derived from ANE texts.  It has emerged out of the faith of Israel.”[24] Later Brueggeman stresses his “exposition has no more stake in stressing the uniqueness of the material than in showing the parallels.”[25]  While emphasizing Israel’s departure from the mythology of their neighbors he also refuses to press upon their uniqueness.  There are common traditions and there are parallels but the question at stake is origin.  It is my view that ANE practices began in the same place and that place is the garden-temple of Eden as recorded in Genesis. 
John Bright also reports the widespread acceptance of Israel’s scriptures being the result of later interjections from other ANE texts, “The patriarchal religion as depicted in Genesis was held to be a back-projection of later beliefs.”  He describes how nineteenth century biblical criticism triumphed with “presuppositions that forbade appeal to a doctrine of Scripture as a guarantee of factual accuracy.”[26]  It is of course quite illogical to begin with such presuppositions.  Why should we dismiss the prominence of such a massive amount of textual data?  Undoubtedly the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has helped deafen some of the voices of such criticism.  Moreover, it makes much more sense to begin with such an enormous amount of manuscripts as the Old Testament and under the authority they claim.  When one considers the overwhelming amounts of data and the coherence of it all it would seem much less of an emotionally driven decision to assume a common narrative and practice from which all the ANE stories and practices derived.  While size and coherence do not guarantee triumph they should at least tip researchers in favor of the evidence.  The temples of the ANE were attempts to duplicate what had been understood among the first of humanity as a temple which was the garden of God.  It was not that Israel was projecting the temple practices of the other ANE peoples into their culture.  Rather it was that ANE peoples, including Israel, were striving to repeat the experience of Adam and his immediate descendants which had been transmitted orally through the generations.

Conclusion
Much more should be said about the foreshadowing of the garden-temple and Jesus.  He is the true temple of God.  This is why He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  Adam was supposed to keep and tend the garden in such a way that he prevented any evil from infiltrating it.  As the second Adam He drove the moneychangers from the temple because it was His and He is it.  1 Corinthians 3:16 and 6:19 both portray the followers of Jesus as the “temple of God” and the “temple of the Holy Spirit”.   2 Corinthians 6:16 says, “You are the temple of God.”  Jesus and His bride are the presence of God upon the earth.  The Incarnation reveals to us “the express image of God’s person” and even now God is conforming His people on the earth into “the image of His Son”. (Rom. 8:29)  Once God is complete with His restoration of it all there will be the glorious descending of His temple as described in Revelation 21 to exercise true dominion for all eternity.  Greg Beale provides tremendous thoughts of clarity regarding the role of temples in the ANE.  He says, “it should not be surprising to find some parallels to biblical ideas in the literature of ancient cultures surrounding Israel.  The biblical writers were sometimes aware of the ideas reflected in this literature and sometimes intentionally presented their versions as the true ones in contrast and even contradiction to the others.”[27]  Again from Beale for conclusion, “(ANE) temples were imperfect echoes of the original commission to the first human priest-king…Genesis 1-2 also stands as a polemic against all imperfect attempts to fulfill this commission apart from faithful service to the true God.”[28]  This faithful service to the one true God is the role of the temple.



[1] Walton, pg. 127. 
[2] Ibid, pg. 128.
[3] Ibid, pg. 128.
[4] Pritchard, pg. 36.
[5] Beale, Temple, pg. 51-52.
[6] Ragavan, Deena, ed., Ambos, Claus, Heaven on Earth, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2013), pg. 245.
[7] Hart, I., Genesis 1:1-2:3 As a Prologue to the Books of Genesis, (TynBul 46, 1995), pgs. 315-316.
[8] Beale, Temple, pgs. 87-93.
[9] Ibid, pg. 88.
[10] Ibid, pg. 90.
[11] George, A.R., House Most High, (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbraun’s, 1993), pg. 156.
[12] Ragavan, Deena, ed., Gorke, Susanne, Heaven on Earth, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2013), pg. 41.
[13] Ibid, pg. 42.
[14] Mathews, Kenneth, New American Commentary: Genesis, (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 1996), pg. 164.
[15] Shafer, Byron, ed., Haeny, Gerald, Temples of Ancient Egypt, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), pg. 93.
[16] Ibid, pg. 93.
[17] Shafer, pg. 2.
[18] Waltke, pg. 66.
[19] Walton, pg. 112.
[20] Spencer, Kirk, Ancient of Days, (Self-published, 2003), pg. 59.
[21] Barrois, George, Jesus Christ and the Temple, (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), pg. 11. 
[22] Bright, John, A History of Israel, (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1981), pg. 68.
[23] Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1982), pg. 12.
[24] Ibid, pg. 37.
[25] Ibid, pg. 14.
[26] Bright, John, A History of Israel, (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1981), pg. 68.
[27] Beale, Temple, pg. 87.
[28] Ibid, pg. 93.

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