Jesus himself had deep feelings for the temple of God, which can be seen in many parts of the Gospels. For instance, after Jesus entered the holy city greeted by people’s cheers on Palm Sunday, the first thing he did was turn left to enter the Temple. At the entrance, he drove away cattle, sheep, and pigeons. He intended to clean up the filth of religious corruption.
Also, after Jesus ascended to heaven, two of his most important disciples, Peter and John, very often went to the temple to pray at three o’clock in the afternoon. Although those who crucified Jesus were corrupted priests in charge of the Temple, the disciples still observed and continued the most important Judaism tradition of regular praying. From this, we can also see that respecting the temple and the law was quite important to Jesus.
However, a glamorous temple was not the only aspect of Jesus’ thoughts.
Jesus was extremely familiar with the Old Testament - the two foundations of the Hebrew religion: the law and the prophet. He not only had a profound understanding of the nature of the law, such as the exposition of the general outline of the law but also quoted many prophets such as Isaiah, Hosea, and Jonah to explain himself to the world. These were closely related to Jesus’ emphasis on the Old Testament.
Jesus honored the temple, but he was not centered on it. He also inherited and carried forward the tradition of the “holy books”.
The key era of the formation of the tradition of the holy book was during the reign of King Josiah. Both the Book of Kings and Chronicles record that King Josiah discovered a “book of the Law” during the maintenance of the temple. Some biblical scholars believe that this is a part of the book of Deuteronomy that we have today, and it is the content of Deuteronomy.
It can be said that the core part of the time of Josiah was to take Deuteronomy as the program of religious revival. It was the first time that the authority of the Hebrew religion was determined in the form of the Torah. Torah, like the temple and rituals, became an authoritative element of the Hebrew religion.
Soon after, with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, the Jews were taken into exile in Babylon, leaving their homes and the temple behind. Therefore, the rituals and the temple were no longer available, so the Book of Law became the core of religion, which shifted the Hebrew religion from the former temple-ritual centralism to the latter holy book centralism, “Book Religion”.
Before that, it was the temple era founded by King David and King Solomon around 1000 BC, which made the Jewish people think that they should go to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to the temple followed by worshiping God. However, when the people of Israel were taken captive by Babylon, they could only go to the rivers and synagogues to teach the Book of Law. That started an era centered on the Book. Consequently, from the former temple-centralism to the latter holy-book-centralism, it is one of the most far-reaching turning points for the Jewish religion.
Then, contrary to our human nature’s expectation, the people of Israel, known as God’s chosen people, did not have the deepest understanding of faith in the period when their joint kingdoms were strong, but rather in the exile period after being taken captive.
After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple - the so-called catastrophe in the history of Israel - although Israel’s religious pattern, social life, and economic structure were severely damaged, the marginalized group, who was in slavery in a foreign land, struggled to make a living, inherited their faith through holy books and community life, and nurtured and precipitated the highest thinking about the true meaning of faith. It was clearly reflected in many prophetic books at that time, such as the relationship between individuals and God that Prophet Jeremiah talked about.
Israel reconsidered why the holy city and temple were destroyed, what the essence of religion was, what the true meaning of “God’s people” was, and what kind of future and hope God would develop in history. In the end, sin and judgment, redemption and return were the major themes that have surged in different prophets’ teaching.
Therefore, superficially it seemed a period of “mute, silence and stagnancy” for the people of Israel, but it was indeed an era in which the vitality of faith was the most prime and surging.
For instance, if you look at the Book of Esther in which there is no mention of ‘the Lord’ from beginning to end because it was probably written in an era when anti-Semitism was on the rise again. If there was the mentioning of the Lord’s name in the text, the author would get into trouble. However, there are five verses of an acrostic in Esther. The order and form of the initial letters in the first four verses were analyzed. The discovery was they indeed appeared in the original Hebrew text and these four letters were JHVH, which is the name of the Lord in Hebrew. At present, the Chinese transliteration of the name is pronounced “Yehehua” (in Chinese Pinyin, translator’s note), and the Hebrew pronunciation is “Yahweh”.
Although they lived in a very difficult environment at that time, even their religious terms could not be explicitly used and so had to use the obscure way, the spirit of faith flowed vividly. Behind Esther’s story was Judaism, a group of God’s chosen people who kept their faith alive and passed on during the captivity just as someone commented on this book, “Although the name of God is not mentioned in Esther, the Book of Esther is full of God’s fingerprints.”
This is amazing and worthy of our deep thought and imitation.
It was the renewal and precipitation of faith in the valley that supported the process of their later returning, rebuilding the temple and offering of sacrifices.
It can be seen that getting out of the temple-centralism and reviving the tradition of holy books was one of the core keys to the inheritance and renewal of the faith of the Jewish community when facing the crisis of religious corruption and exile at that time.
During the long decades of captivity, they did not have their own temples, nor could they publicly perform traditional religious ceremonies such as sacrifices. However, the tradition of holy books helped them keep the tradition and understanding of the faith, and helped them deepen their understanding and precipitation of faith in the trough.
This is indeed a strange contradiction: when the outside world is under pressure, they turned to the inside to think deeply about several essential issues: God, the chosen people, history, past, judgment, redemption, future, peace, hope, etc.
Unfortunately, after their return and the reconstruction, they once again fell into religious corruption, temple-centralism, hypocrisy, and legalism, but hundreds of years later, Jesus came to the world and broke this again, which continues to this day.
The word of Jesus has become the core content of the Gospels we read and think about today. Jesus took his body as the temple and promised that he would be resurrected after death, replacing the physical temple and the system of sacrifice and atonement. Jesus said that true worship was to worship in heart and honesty, then he brought us faith and spiritual renewals. He claimed that wherever two or three people came together in his name, he would be among them. He told us that the essence of the gathering was not about the outward number of participants and large areas of buildings, but was a group of people who gathered in his name. Again, Jesus gave us a new command to love each other so that everyone could recognize his disciples. He told us that the essence of godliness was not to stick to religious ceremonies but to love your neighbor as yourself.
It goes without saying that Jesus is the center of the message of the Bible, and Jesus replaced the temple. Today, the fellowship of those who believe in him is a new form of the temple.
References:
You, Bin., The Literary, Historical and Thought World of the Hebrew Bible - An Introduction. Beijing: China Religious Culture Publisher, 2007.
Pawson, J. David., Unlocking the Bible: Old Testament - the Book of Esther. Taipei: Good TV.
- Translated by Charlie Li
耶稣本人是对圣殿有着很深的感情，这点可以从福音书中很多地方看出来。
比如：棕枝主日那天，耶稣在和散那的呼声中荣入耶路撒冷圣城后，第一个做的就是向左转进入圣殿，赶走其中的牛羊鸽子，意图洁净宗教腐败的污秽。
再比如，耶稣升天后，他最重要的二个门徒彼得和约翰下午三点去圣殿祷告，虽然是掌管圣殿腐败的祭司阶层杀害了耶稣，但门徒们仍旧遵守和延续着定时祷告这个犹太教最重要的传统，从中也可以看到耶稣对门徒教导中尊重圣殿和律法是非常重要的一部分内容。
然而，耶稣的思想中并不仅仅只有尊荣圣殿这一方面。
他对旧约圣经极为熟悉。希伯来宗教最深厚的两大基础：律法和先知，他不仅对于律法的本质理解深刻，比如对律法总纲的阐述，以及多次引用以赛亚、何西阿和约拿等先知来向世人解释他自己。这些都和耶稣对于圣书即旧约圣经的重视息息相关。
耶稣尊荣圣殿，但是他并非以圣殿为中心；他还承继和发扬了圣书传统。
圣书传统形成最重要的是约西亚王的时期。列王纪和历代志都记录了约西亚王在圣殿维修的过程中发现了一卷“律法书”。一些圣经学者认为这是今天我们所看到的《申命记》中的一部分、被成为“申命记法典”的内容。
可以说，约西亚王中兴最核心的部分就是将申命记法典作为宗教复兴的纲领，由此使希伯来宗教第一次以“律法书”（Torah）的形式确定信仰的权威，并使律法书与圣殿、祭祀一样，成为希伯来信仰的一个权威因素。
而不久后，耶路撒冷陷落，圣殿被毁，犹太人被掳到巴比伦，背井离乡，远离圣殿，因此以圣殿为背景的祭祀不再可行，于是律法书就成为信仰的核心，使希伯来宗教从之前的以圣殿和祭祀为中心，转为以圣书为中心的“圣经宗教”（Book Religion）。
在之前是公元前1000年左右通过大卫和所罗门王打开的圣殿时代，使犹太民族从此认为自己应当到耶路撒冷到圣殿献上祭祀，才能够敬拜神；但当以色列百姓被掳到巴比伦后，他们只能够去河边、去会堂宣讲圣经，开启了以圣经为中心的时代。由此，从以前的以圣殿为中心变成以圣书为中心————这是对犹太人信仰影响最为深远的转折之一。
随后——与我们人性所期待的完全相反——被称为上帝选民群体的以色列民并非是在联合王国强盛时期孕育了对信仰最深沉的理解，反而是在被掳后的流放时期。
经历过耶路撒冷沦陷和圣殿被毁这所谓以色列历史上的大劫难后，虽然以色列的宗教模式、社会生活和经济结构被严重破坏，但是这个在外邦之地处于奴隶境地一般的边缘群体一边艰难谋生、一边藉着圣书和共同体的生活乘继着他们的信仰，并且在这个苦难之地孕育沉淀出对信仰真谛最为顶峰的思考——这在当时许多先知书中有鲜明的体现，比如耶利米先知谈到的个人与上帝的关系、以及上帝重立的新约是一个心灵之约。
以色列民重新思考了到底为何圣城和圣殿被毁、到底宗教的本质是什么、到底“上帝之民”的真正含义是什么、上帝又会在历史中展开怎样新的未来和希望？最终，罪恶和审判、救赎和回归是这些不同的先知宣讲中一直涌动的大主题。
所以，从表面上看，这对以色列民好像是“万马齐喑”的时期，但却是信仰活力最为孕育和涌动的一个时代。
比如看记录被掳时期故事的以斯贴记，从头到尾没有一个以色列人关于上帝的称谓，因为它成书很可能是在一个反犹太风气再度抬头的时代，如果被发现文字中写到犹太人的神可能会惹祸上身。但这部作品中有五段离合诗，前四段的首字母的顺序和形式有分析说，确实出现在希伯来原文希伯来文圣经中，而这四个字母是JHVH，也就是上帝在希伯来文的名字——目前我们的中文翻译念做是耶和华，希伯来文念做是“雅威”。
虽然当时他们所处的环境非常艰难，连他们的宗教词汇都不能直接宣之于口，必须用这种隐晦的方式。然而，信仰的精神却在其中鲜活地流淌着。以斯帖故事的背后是犹太这个上帝选民群体在被掳时一直保持着信仰的活力和传承，就像有人对这本书的评价：“以斯帖记里面虽然没有提到上帝的名，但是以斯帖记处处都是上帝的指纹。”
这个是惊人的，是值得我们深思和效法的。
而正是低谷中信仰的更新和沉淀支撑了他们后来回归、重建圣殿和祭祀另外二大权威的过程。
可以看到，走出圣殿中心主义、复兴圣书传统对当时面对宗教腐败和被掳危机的犹太群体是当时信仰传承和更新最核心的关键之一。
在漫长的几十年被掳过程中，他们没有自己的圣殿，也不能公开进行祭祀等传统的宗教仪式。但圣书的传统帮助他们持守着信仰的传统和理解，并且帮助他们在低谷中加深对信仰的理解和沉淀。
这的确很奇特的一个矛盾：在外界被压时，他们转向内面，去更深去思考几大本质问题：上帝、选民、历史、过去、审判、救赎、未来、和平、希望等。
遗憾的是，他们在回归和重建后，又再一次落入宗教腐败、圣殿中心、假冒为善和律法主义等里面，但是几百年后耶稣来到世界上，再度打破了这个，并延续至今。
耶稣的话，成了今天我们诵读和思想的福音书的核心内容；
耶稣并以他的身体为殿，应许他将会在死后复活，取代物质的圣殿和祭祀赎罪制度。
耶稣说，真正的敬拜是要用心灵和诚实。他给我们带来了信仰和心灵更新。
耶稣还说，无论在哪里，有两三个人奉他的名聚会，就有他在他们中间。他告诉我们聚会的本质并非外面的规模和地方，而是奉命的人的聚集。
耶稣还赐下一条新命令，让我们彼此相爱，这样众人就能认出他们门徒的身份。他告诉我们敬虔的本质并不在于死守宗教仪式，而是落实到爱邻如己的行为来。
一言而喻，耶稣是圣书信息的中心，耶稣取代了圣殿，而今天凡是相信他的人彼此的团契就是一种新的圣殿形式。
参考资料：
游斌,《希伯来圣经的文本、历史和思想世界》。 北京: 宗教文化出版社, 2007。
大卫鲍森,《新旧约纵览-以斯帖记》。台北：Good TV。
角声|后疫情时代再思：走出圣殿中心主义 复兴圣书传统
Jesus himself had deep feelings for the temple of God, which can be seen in many parts of the Gospels. For instance, after Jesus entered the holy city greeted by people’s cheers on Palm Sunday, the first thing he did was turn left to enter the Temple. At the entrance, he drove away cattle, sheep, and pigeons. He intended to clean up the filth of religious corruption.
Also, after Jesus ascended to heaven, two of his most important disciples, Peter and John, very often went to the temple to pray at three o’clock in the afternoon. Although those who crucified Jesus were corrupted priests in charge of the Temple, the disciples still observed and continued the most important Judaism tradition of regular praying. From this, we can also see that respecting the temple and the law was quite important to Jesus.
However, a glamorous temple was not the only aspect of Jesus’ thoughts.
Jesus was extremely familiar with the Old Testament - the two foundations of the Hebrew religion: the law and the prophet. He not only had a profound understanding of the nature of the law, such as the exposition of the general outline of the law but also quoted many prophets such as Isaiah, Hosea, and Jonah to explain himself to the world. These were closely related to Jesus’ emphasis on the Old Testament.
Jesus honored the temple, but he was not centered on it. He also inherited and carried forward the tradition of the “holy books”.
The key era of the formation of the tradition of the holy book was during the reign of King Josiah. Both the Book of Kings and Chronicles record that King Josiah discovered a “book of the Law” during the maintenance of the temple. Some biblical scholars believe that this is a part of the book of Deuteronomy that we have today, and it is the content of Deuteronomy.
It can be said that the core part of the time of Josiah was to take Deuteronomy as the program of religious revival. It was the first time that the authority of the Hebrew religion was determined in the form of the Torah. Torah, like the temple and rituals, became an authoritative element of the Hebrew religion.
Soon after, with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, the Jews were taken into exile in Babylon, leaving their homes and the temple behind. Therefore, the rituals and the temple were no longer available, so the Book of Law became the core of religion, which shifted the Hebrew religion from the former temple-ritual centralism to the latter holy book centralism, “Book Religion”.
Before that, it was the temple era founded by King David and King Solomon around 1000 BC, which made the Jewish people think that they should go to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to the temple followed by worshiping God. However, when the people of Israel were taken captive by Babylon, they could only go to the rivers and synagogues to teach the Book of Law. That started an era centered on the Book. Consequently, from the former temple-centralism to the latter holy-book-centralism, it is one of the most far-reaching turning points for the Jewish religion.
Then, contrary to our human nature’s expectation, the people of Israel, known as God’s chosen people, did not have the deepest understanding of faith in the period when their joint kingdoms were strong, but rather in the exile period after being taken captive.
After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple - the so-called catastrophe in the history of Israel - although Israel’s religious pattern, social life, and economic structure were severely damaged, the marginalized group, who was in slavery in a foreign land, struggled to make a living, inherited their faith through holy books and community life, and nurtured and precipitated the highest thinking about the true meaning of faith. It was clearly reflected in many prophetic books at that time, such as the relationship between individuals and God that Prophet Jeremiah talked about.
Israel reconsidered why the holy city and temple were destroyed, what the essence of religion was, what the true meaning of “God’s people” was, and what kind of future and hope God would develop in history. In the end, sin and judgment, redemption and return were the major themes that have surged in different prophets’ teaching.
Therefore, superficially it seemed a period of “mute, silence and stagnancy” for the people of Israel, but it was indeed an era in which the vitality of faith was the most prime and surging.
For instance, if you look at the Book of Esther in which there is no mention of ‘the Lord’ from beginning to end because it was probably written in an era when anti-Semitism was on the rise again. If there was the mentioning of the Lord’s name in the text, the author would get into trouble. However, there are five verses of an acrostic in Esther. The order and form of the initial letters in the first four verses were analyzed. The discovery was they indeed appeared in the original Hebrew text and these four letters were JHVH, which is the name of the Lord in Hebrew. At present, the Chinese transliteration of the name is pronounced “Yehehua” (in Chinese Pinyin, translator’s note), and the Hebrew pronunciation is “Yahweh”.
Although they lived in a very difficult environment at that time, even their religious terms could not be explicitly used and so had to use the obscure way, the spirit of faith flowed vividly. Behind Esther’s story was Judaism, a group of God’s chosen people who kept their faith alive and passed on during the captivity just as someone commented on this book, “Although the name of God is not mentioned in Esther, the Book of Esther is full of God’s fingerprints.”
This is amazing and worthy of our deep thought and imitation.
It was the renewal and precipitation of faith in the valley that supported the process of their later returning, rebuilding the temple and offering of sacrifices.
It can be seen that getting out of the temple-centralism and reviving the tradition of holy books was one of the core keys to the inheritance and renewal of the faith of the Jewish community when facing the crisis of religious corruption and exile at that time.
During the long decades of captivity, they did not have their own temples, nor could they publicly perform traditional religious ceremonies such as sacrifices. However, the tradition of holy books helped them keep the tradition and understanding of the faith, and helped them deepen their understanding and precipitation of faith in the trough.
This is indeed a strange contradiction: when the outside world is under pressure, they turned to the inside to think deeply about several essential issues: God, the chosen people, history, past, judgment, redemption, future, peace, hope, etc.
Unfortunately, after their return and the reconstruction, they once again fell into religious corruption, temple-centralism, hypocrisy, and legalism, but hundreds of years later, Jesus came to the world and broke this again, which continues to this day.
The word of Jesus has become the core content of the Gospels we read and think about today. Jesus took his body as the temple and promised that he would be resurrected after death, replacing the physical temple and the system of sacrifice and atonement. Jesus said that true worship was to worship in heart and honesty, then he brought us faith and spiritual renewals. He claimed that wherever two or three people came together in his name, he would be among them. He told us that the essence of the gathering was not about the outward number of participants and large areas of buildings, but was a group of people who gathered in his name. Again, Jesus gave us a new command to love each other so that everyone could recognize his disciples. He told us that the essence of godliness was not to stick to religious ceremonies but to love your neighbor as yourself.
It goes without saying that Jesus is the center of the message of the Bible, and Jesus replaced the temple. Today, the fellowship of those who believe in him is a new form of the temple.
References:
You, Bin., The Literary, Historical and Thought World of the Hebrew Bible - An Introduction. Beijing: China Religious Culture Publisher, 2007.
Pawson, J. David., Unlocking the Bible: Old Testament - the Book of Esther. Taipei: Good TV.
- Translated by Charlie Li
Voice: Christianity Should Step out of Temple Centralism, Revive ‘Book Religion’ Tradition
