Guest post on the early temple

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This is a guest post by Pratt Hokanson

Last night I was reading a semi interesting book, “Saint Saul : a Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus” by Donald Akenson and he was making the point that after the temple destruction in about 70 AD, the Jewish religion of the time was gutted. The Essenes, the Sadducees, the Zealots et al disappeared, leaving remnants of the Pharisees to rebuild a religion without the central temple. He lumps Christianity in with the Pharisees and sees rabbinic Judaism and Christianity as two compteting Pharisaic bodies that somehow managed to survive.

But it struck me that it is clear from Acts that the post resurrection
Christians continued to attend the temple. We have record of Peter,
James, John, Paul, arguably Stephen and Luke, all attending the temple after the resurrection, even after Pentecost. Can anybody give me a clue what they were doing there? Did they not understand that blood sacrifice was finished? Was it not yet finished? Were they just doing missionary work? In Acts, it seems Paul was there worshipping, not preaching.
Paul had clearly taught the Corinthians that the Temple in Jerusalem was at least not as important, if not totally unimportant now that the spirit was available to all so that one could essentially live a sacral life based on following the spirit instead of attending the temple.

How did the loss of the temple affect the early church, if at all?
If the apostasy can be pushed back that early, did the loss of the temple
affect the apostasy? Or perhaps it was the loss of Jerusalem, and not the temple per se, and the General Conferences that were periodically conducted there that pushed the apostasy forward?

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About Geoff B.

Geoff B graduated from Stanford University (class of 1985) and worked in journalism for several years until about 1992, when he took up his second career in telecommunications sales. He has held many callings in the Church, but his favorite calling is father and husband. Geoff is active in martial arts and loves hiking and skiing. Geoff has five children and lives in Colorado.

8 thoughts on “Guest post on the early temple”

  1. Ben, I seem to remember various buildings that some might consider the equivalent of small temples with baptismal fonts. That’s not to say they were doing what Mormons do. But I could have sworn there were a few candidates for possible temples outside of the obvious other Jewish ones that we all know.

    As for the Jews, the loss of the temple really did shock them and led to the rise of rabbinical Judaism over time. Although I think the Roman diaspora probably had nearly as big an effect. Recall that for a while the Romans weren’t letting anyone circumcised into Palestine.

    The Sadducee power was so linked to the temple and the quasi-autonomy of the Jews that it isn’t surprising they fell. The Essenes we still don’t know enough about. As I recall there’s still some debate about whether the DSS community were Essenes.

    It’s simply hard to figure out with the Jews since many of the groups among them weren’t really as diverse as what we, today, think of as say separate branches of Christianity. It was more akin to Democratic vs. Republican Mormons, to use an analogy. (And don’t push it too far obviously – the lack of a heirarchy like our own obviously was very significant in Judaism)

    As for the early Christians, while I think it significant they went to the temple, one should point out that the temple was a social hub. It’s practical social function was quite unlike how we use temples. It’s hard to think of an analogy within Mormon culture. Recall that within the temple there were gradations of sacredness with the outer courts being much more open for general chit chat. More akin to what we do in the foyers, but perhaps much more active for debate. The sort of thing that Mormons don’t really do outside of blogs. (grin)

    But the loss of the temple definitely affected both Judaism and Christianity. It helped Christianity make a break with Judaism, moving from being a movement within Judaism to being its own movement. It also led the mainstream jews to push teachers and develop the Talmud. While I could well be wrong, I suspect it helped Jewish mysticism develop the way it did as well, since there wasn’t a physical temple any more.

    As for how the early Christians used the temple, I’d be amazingly surprised if anything like the endowment was held there. If there were endowments they would be held in situations like the Mount of Transfiguration or in facilities akin to the endowment houses back in the 19th century.

  3. Pratt,

    The same texts that tell you that the early Christian leaders were in the temple also usually tell you what they were doing: the same things they had always done. It is unlikely that either Stephen or Luke ever entered the temple–Luke may well have been a Gentile and Stephen was a Hellenist, a group with little use for the temple.

    The NT does not support the idea that Jewish Christians stopped using the temple, or that they stopped living various aspects of the Mosaic law. The greatest dissension in the early church was whether or not the Gentiles had to adopt the traditional Jewish practices, not whether Jews should stop.

    Gentile Christians were never in the temple and seem to have had no real interest in it, at least according to the NT. Some of the Gospels, as well as Stephen, are pretty hostile about the temple.

    The destruction of the temple occurred roughly the same time as the very bitter separation of Judaism and Christianity. When there was no more temple, and no more Jewish converts to Christianity, there was no need or interest in a temple.

    This is, however, a very rough outline of the situation. If I can think of something in writing, I’ll revisit this site and leave you a message

  4. No, I was more wondering if Ben remembered the sites I was thinking about. It’s honestly been years since I last studied Palestinian history. Given Ben’s academic studies I figured he’d probably know better.

    But yeah, I didn’t phrase it well.

  5. Based on the confusion about circumcision recorded in Acts, it seems that the argument could be made that the first christians had a hard time distinguishing which parts of their Jewish heritage they should maintain and which they should leave behind. From that line of reasoning, you could argue that Peter and Paul and all the other Jewish Christians were doing what they’d always done in the temple: being good Jews, offering their sacrifices, and worshiping the same way they’d always worshipped.

  6. I think the point that I was trying to get to with my questions is something like.

    It seems to me that the Sunday School view is that the Church set up by Christ had temple ceremonies–at least baptisms for the dead. It also seems to me the Sunday School view is that the rituals conducted in the Jerusalem temple were part of the law that was to pass away with atonement.

    So did the loss of the temple constitute a major turn towards apostacy? The way it was a major turn toward rabbinic judahism?
    Or is it likely that the loss of the Jerusalem Temple really didn’t substantively matter much to the organization christ set up? How to put this? Clearly it was still socially significant to Christians of Jewish descent. But was it important enough doctrinally, or organizationally, that with its loss, Christianity took a major step towards apostacy.

    Given Akenson’s arguments. His answer, were he a Mormon and interested in something called apostacy, seems to be that we simply do not know enough about pre Loss of Temple Christianity to anwser.

  7. Pratt, I think the simple answer is that (as with many simplified answers) the “Sunday School” answer is wrong. I think it hard to argue that all the Jewish Levitical rituals were to pass away with the atonement. Indeed Joseph Smith appears to have felt it important to restore even those, even though they are not currently part of our temple ritual.

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