Rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem

From the days of Moses when God made a covenant through him with Israel to come and dwell in their midst, Israel has offered sacrifice to Yahweh their God.  The detailed instructions for offering sacrifices and for the shrine centre built to receive them are found in the Pentateuch.  Originally this shrine was portable, meant to be disassembled and reassembled throughout Israel’s journeying.  It was reassembled in Shiloh which then served as the liturgical and spiritual focal point of Israel’s worship and the center of national unity.  David moved the Ark into his new capital of Jerusalem, and his son Solomon built a (very immovable and permanent) Temple to house the Ark.  Thereafter all the sacrifices to Yahweh (all the legitimately-sanctioned ones anyway) were offered in that Temple in Jerusalem.

       This came to a horrific and crashing end in 586 B.C. when the invading Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem, conquered it, utterly destroyed the Temple, and took many of its citizens into long exile.  Soon after this Cyrus the Great (the Persian who conquered Babylon) allowed some Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple, which they did, though on a much smaller scale—a return and a rebuilding prophesied by many of the prophets (e.g. Isaiah 60:1-11, Jeremiah 33:14-18).

This structure is often referred to as the “Second Temple”.  It was dramatically enlarged by King Herod the Great throughout the course of decades, and it was this enlarged and enlarging Temple that Jesus visited and His apostles frequented.  It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.  Since that time, Israel has been without a Temple or an altar on which to offer sacrifice.  This means that the sacrificial religion prescribed by God in the Law could not be carried out as prescribed.  Sacrifice is at the heart of the Law, and Israelite religion without sacrifice is dramatically (some would say “fatally”) deficient. 

       Our Lord predicted this destruction of the Temple by the Romans.  His words (the so-called “Olivet Discourse” because He delivered it to His disciples on the Mount of Olives) can be found in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21.  There He predicted that “the abomination would stand in the holy place” and that when His disciples saw this, they should take warning and urgently flee from Judea to the mountains (Matthew 24:15-18).  Soon after that there would be “a great tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now nor ever shall” (Matthew 24:21). 

In Luke’s Gospel we find a version of this paraphrased for clarity for Gentile readers:  “When you see Jerusalem surround by armies, then recognize that her desolation is at hand.  Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains…for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people and they will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (Luke 21:20-24).

       This was abundantly fulfilled.  In 66 A.D. the Roman armies stood in the holy place around Jerusalem.  Then unexpectedly the siege was lifted.  The Christians, remembering the Lord’s words, fled from Judea to the mountain city of Pella, thereby saving their lives.  The Romans soon returned to lay siege again in 70 A.D. and did not cease until the city fell and the Temple was destroyed and its citizens led captive into all nations.

       The doom was final.  There is no hint in our Lord’s parables or teaching that the Temple would be rebuilt.  The “times of the Gentiles” were the times when Gentiles ruled the earth—a time to be brought to an end by the Second Coming (see Revelation 11:15).  There was no divinely-sanctioned recovery of the Temple foretold in our Lord teaching.  His words of prophesied doom for the Temple found in Luke 13:7-9 or Mark 11:12-14, 20-23 admit of no recovery.  The fig tree, an image of Jerusalem, was cut down and withered with no hopeful word of eventual reversal added.

       Why then are some groups (often whacky Evangelical Christians groups, such as the “Temple Institute”) hoping and calling for and even taking steps rebuild the Temple?—and one might add, in its original place, now famously occupied by the Islamic Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam?  As Christians, they presumably believe that Christ’s death on the cross has rendered the sacrifices of the Old Covenant superfluous, outdated, and obsolete (Hebrews 8:13).  Why would they embrace this part of Mosaic Judaism and strive to have the obsolete ordinances restored?  Ah, therein lies the tale.

       St. Paul spoke of the coming of the final antichrist at the end of the age, the one he called “the man of sin”.  This one would exalt himself above every so-called god or object of worship “so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself a being God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4).  This is the only place in the New Testament which suggests that the Jewish Temple might be standing at the end of the age.  But does this text really prove that the Temple must be rebuilt? 

       A literal interpretation of “the temple of God” is not the only one on the exegetical market.  Irenaeus seems to have entertained a more literal view when he wrote that the man of sin would sit “in the sanctuary in Jerusalem” (Against Heresies, 5.25.2).  Chrysostom opined that he “will be seated in the sanctuary of God, not only the one in Jerusalem [which in Chrysostom’s day meant the Church in Jerusalem] but also in every church” (Homily 3 on 2 Thessalonians).  Augustine mentioned a number of different interpretations and said “there is some uncertainty about the ‘sanctuary’ in which he is to take his seat.  Is it in the ruins of the Temple built by King Solomon or actually in a church?...Some people suppose it would be more correct to say that he takes his seat ‘as the sanctuary of God’ instead of ‘in the sanctuary of God’, purporting to be himself God’s sanctuary” (City of God, Book 20, chapter 19).  Note here that Augustine did not foresee the Temple sanctuary being rebuilt, but that the Antichrist would sit in the ruins of the old Temple.

       What then did Paul mean by this phrase?  Perhaps some clue may be found in events contemporary with Paul.  In 40 A.D. the Emperor Caligula was determined to have his image set up in the Jewish Temple—a plan which sent waves of horror through the Jewish world.  Caligula was possibly just mad and megalomaniacal to attempt such a blasphemous stunt.  Happily for all concerned, he died in 41 A.D., assassinated in Rome by those who had enough of him.  I suggest that this daring act of blasphemy associated with the Temple was in Paul’s mind when he wrote this, so that Caligula’s intended self-deification in the Temple provided the metaphor for the man of sin’s blasphemous self-exaltation.  If this is so, there is no need to presuppose that the Jewish Temple will be rebuilt.

       Such a rebuilding would bring up other questions, the first of which is whether any of the responsible nations of the world would support or tolerate the razing of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (sometimes called “the Dome of the Rock”) as a preparation for rebuilding a Temple for the Jews.  Such an act would undoubtedly provoke riots worldwide from the Muslim population and serve to radicalize Muslims who were otherwise comparatively moderate.  And to what end?  Most Jews have gotten along fine without the Temple after Judaism reconfigured itself in the years after 70 A.D.   

Indeed, Orthodox Jews are insistent that the Temple could only be rebuilt by the Messiah, not by a contingent of fanatics.  Most people in power—including the Israelis—have a practical sense of Realpolitik which would exclude razing a Muslim site to build a Jewish Temple not regarded as necessary by most Jews.

       Another question is theological and psychological one regarding the place of animal sacrifice in modern religion.  In all ancient religions, animal sacrifice was central.  The pagans of Mesopotamia, the Israelites in Canaan, and the pagans of the Greco-Roman culture all regarded the killing and slaughter of animals and the pouring of their blood upon an altar as central to their religion.  The gods demanded sacrifice in the same way humans needed food, and gods and men were united in a great symbiosis in which men fed the gods and the gods protected men. 

In Israel this was altered somewhat, because the God of Israel had no needs and did not require to be fed by sacrifice.  Nonetheless, animal sacrifice was still demanded by God and was central to the Old Covenant.  The first real dissenting note suggesting that animal sacrifice had no real place in religion came from the Christians.  For them, animal sacrifice was vain, for “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4).  The sacrifices mandated by God under the Old Covenant were but promises, pledges, and prophecies of the sacrificial death of Christ, which alone can take away sins and fulfill that which was adumbrated under the Old Covenant. 

When the Christians came to power under Constantine and his Imperial successors, animal sacrifice was eventually banned, and vanished along with the pagans who practiced it.  The Jews could no longer offer animal sacrifice since their Temple had been destroyed, and Islam, being a heretical offshoot of Christianity, inherited from the Christians an absence of animal sacrifice.  For these reasons, much of the world no longer practises animal sacrifice and most people regard such a practice as a vestige of a more primitive time and a more primitive religion.  Which of course it is.

Given this, how much credibility can the restoration of Jewish Temple have with its restoration of animal sacrifice?  Will hundreds of lambs, goats, and bulls again be offered in Jerusalem and be regarded by modern people, heir as they are to the Christian (and Rabbinical Jewish) revolution, as a sensible option?  Will this redound the credit of Jews in general and of Israelis in particular?  The fact is that the civilized world has outgrown the notion of animal sacrifice as central to religion.  The fundamentalist fanaticism of a few intent on restoring the Temple, cannot overthrow this consensus.  It is better to regard the plan to rebuild the Temple as a fundamentalist fantasy.