Temple in Antiquity: Ancient Records and Modern Perspectives by Madsen Truman G

Author:Madsen, Truman G. [Madsen, Truman G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2010-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

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The Temple and the Holy Mountain

Richard J. Clifford

In the literatures of the Judeo-Christian tradition and in other sacred texts there is a close connection between, even an identifying of, temples and mountains. "The mountain of the Lord's house" symbolizes at least three ideas: (1) Theophanies have occurred on mountaintops (Abraham on Mount Moriah, Moses on Sinai, Elijah on Mount Carmel, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration). (2) In both Eastern and Western religion one finds assumptions that elevation and height are proportioned to the thin veil that separates man from the heavenly realm. (3) The mountain peak represents a pristine and therefore undesecrated region. It is a "natural temple," a place of altar, of consecration, of ordination, even of coronation. As the modern exodus of the Mormons was anticipated, Joseph Smith said: "I want every man who goes to be a king and a priest. When he gets on the mountains he may want to talk to his God." In the present essay, Richard Clifford outlines powerful symbolic connections between the sacred mountain and the privileges of the temple in ancient Israel.

T.G.M.

T wo mountains dominate the landscape of the Old Testament—Mount Sinai and Mount Zion. On both the Lord is depicted dwelling in his house, appearing to his votaries in majesty pronouncing words decisive for Israel and the nations. The two mountains are fixed points in the national story of exodus-conquest which Israel recited to express its identity as Yahweh's people. Sinai is the mountain of the beginnings, the site of the initial encounter between the just-freed slaves and Yahweh, and of the covenant that shaped that relationship. Mount Zion is the ultimate term of the great procession that led from Egypt and Sinai to the land of promise. Sinai not only dominates the Pentateuch; associated with Moses and with the Law, it plays an enormously significant role in Judaism and Christianity. Zion too has an impressive trajectory, particularly in the shaping of Jewish and Christian hope.

It is not the purpose of this paper to give an encyclopedic account of biblical beliefs about the two mountains, but, more narrowly, to describe how Israel adapted to its own uses the belief of some West-Semitic peoples that mountaintops were divine residences and places of divine disclosure. 1

Israel was not unique, of course, in assigning a central place to the holy mountain and the house of the god upon it. The link between mountain and temple has been noted, for instance, by Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, and by Brigham Young, who observed that when people did not have opportunities to go to temples, they often resorted to mountaintops for worship. Among the Israelites and their neighbors of the first and second millennia B.C., the link between divine presence and mountaintops is a well-documented phenomenon meriting careful study. We are fortunate in having preserved for us, not only the considerable biblical witness to sacred heights, but another corpus of religious literature as well, not far removed in time or place from Israel's world-the tablets from Ugarit of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.

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