| |
Note: these excerpt
threads are
subject to continual revision and updating as opportunity and priority
permits John Lundquist: "The temple incorporates within itself most of the ideas that make up our concept of religion. These include the idea of the centre, the sacred mountain, sacred waters and trees of life, sacred geometry, orientation to the four cardinal directions, initiation ritual, sacred dance, the mysteries, New Year festivals, ideas of cosmos/chaos and creation myths. It is within the setting of the temple that these other symbols, rituals and sacred textual traditions arose, and it is within the temple that they still have their deepest and truest meaning... | The temple preserves and transmits the esoteric tradition, the mysteries. Access to the rituals by which these mysteries are transmitted in the temple is restricted, and the knowledge of them is supposed to be kept secret from the uninitiated. Even in modern society, where there are no more secrets, and accounts of the initiatic procedures of various temple communities are widely published, such publications still do not give the uninitiated genuine knowledge of the esoteric traditions in question because a ritual is something that must be experienced in order for it to become alive. Reading about it is not enough. Further, in a living ritual tradition there are oral practices at work, secrets, which are known within the tradition by priestly functionaries, and which are passed on only in the ceremony itself. Anyone who has actually witnessed a temple initiation, such as I described above, and has then read one of the books that purports to reveal its innermost secrets will know the difference, and will know how much of the living ritual will have been left out..." [5|26] The Temple: Meeting Place of Heaven and Earth "...we can conclude that the Temple of Jerusalem, from its beginnings, is embedded within, represents, and evokes a symbolism that permeates all aspects of biblical teaching and doctrine, both within the Hebrew Bible, within the New Testament, within the Dead Sea/Qumran community, and within the vast Apocryphal and Psuedepigraphical scriptural literature. The temple is at the center of the teachings of this tradition. Temple symbolism informs and illuminates doctrinal presentations in Scripture. The community of God exists within the shade of the temple, underneath the protective shadow of the holy mountain. All aspects of their lives and being are illuminated by that which emanates from the holy mountain, and this illumination projects out into the world... | The concrete, historical temple, as we know and understand it, does not play a dominant role in the Pseudepigrapha. What appears in these works are what I call the primordial symbols that underlie and precede the temple: the sacred mountain, the tree of life, the waters of life, the heavenly temple, and the throne of God in heaven... The earthly temple is the image of the universe, the cosmos, the heavenly realms, and gives humans access on earth to the heavenly realms. It is 'heaven on earth,' the 'meeting place of heaven and earth.' Its architecture, ritual, and symbolism all reflect this connection. In turn, scriptural teachings reflect and are based on the temple symbolism. The entire mission and theology of Jesus, as it is presented in the New Testament, is based on temple symbols and theology, and is interpreted in the light of these..." [76-77|93-94] The Temple of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future |