Veil Of Temple Rent In Twain

[Theophilus]

I didn't mean the Hebrew should be translated differently, I meant that the OT authors, when the y said "before the Lord" it meant ""in the presence of the Lord", i.e., in the Temple.

Well of course.

And the only reason it meant that was because the ark represented God's dwelling place, and by extension, the tabernacle, and finally the temple.

But the Hebrew of "before the LORD" was always "before Yahweh", or "before adonai".

If you want to argue that Jewish interpretation is authoritative, then I leave you to your rejection of Jesus as Messiah.

Theophilus

[Bill Hamblin]

That's simply not true at all.

Almost all occurrences of "before the LORD" in the OT are "before YHWH" (Jehovah). A couple are instead, "before the lord God" ("before adonai elohim").

Where do you get your misinformation?

M. Haran, Temple and Temple Service in Ancient Israel (1985),

"In general, any cultic activity to which the biblical text applies the formula 'before the Lord' can be considered an indication of the extence of a temple at the site, since this expression ... belongs to the temple's technical terminology." (p. 26)

[Theophilus]

M. Haran, Temple and Temple Service in Ancient Israel (1985),

"In general, any cultic activity to which the biblical text applies the formula 'before the Lord' can be considered an indication of the extence of a temple at the site, since this expression ... belongs to the temple's technical terminology." (p. 26)

Hmmm...

"quite literally" seems just a little bit different from, "... can be considered an indication of...".

Theophilus

[charity]

theophilus, if Mattias wasn't a replacement for Judas to keep a quorum, why did they need him?

[Bill Hamblin]

"Purification rituals" aren't animal sacrifice.

Your apologetics seems incredibly imprecise.

Not all sacrifice is sacrifice for sin, Bill.

Paul

[Bill Hamblin]

"quite literally" seems just a little bit different from, "... can be considered an indication of...".

Ah, it's Theophilus' quibble time again, I see.

You asked for a source, you got it.

[Theophilus]

theophilus, if Mattias wasn't a replacement for Judas to keep a quorum, why did they need him?

The point is that the other Eleven never needed replacing.

God is a god of a living, not the dead.

They are still Jesus' Apostles, His "Twelve".

See Rev. 21:14.

Theophilus

[Bill Hamblin]

The veil was mended?!

Chapter and verse, please?

By the way, we know the veil was "mended" or replaced because Josephus discusses it being in the Temple during the Jewish wars nearly four decades after the death of Jesus.

Still looking forward to your explanation of Paul offering sacrifice at the Temple.

[auteur55]

There have been some great responses. I find it interesting how often I heard this scripture on my mission and the different interpretations it inspired.

On another thread Theophilus said it negated the need for prophets since the holy spirit now communicates to us individually (though apparently he has given many of us different interpretations of inspired scripture).

I am curious as to how the scripture can be interpreted this way when Prophets and Apostles continued to lead the church after Christ. Theophilus says the problem lies in what the word "Prophet" actually means in the scriptures. How many ways is there to interpret the word Prophet? How do we ignore the existence of Prophets and Apostles after the Veil was rent if this was truly what it symbolized?

[Theophilus]

On another thread Theophilus said it negated the need for prophets since the holy spirit now communicates to us individually (though apparently he has given many of us different interpretations of inspired scripture).

Why do you blame the Holy Spirit for all the different interpretations?

I am curious as to how the scripture can be interpreted this way when Prophets and Apostles continued to lead the church after Christ.

First of all, prophets never "led" the church.

Second of all, I have absolutely no problems with the Apostles (ie. the Twelve) leading the church, since they were disciples of Christ. But "Apostle" was never meant as an perpetual "office".

Theophilus says the problem lies in what the word "Prophet" actually means in the scriptures. How many ways is there to interpret the word Prophet?

Well, does "prophet" refer to one one "fore-tells", as the OT prophets did? If so, what has Gordon Hinckley ever "prophesied", that makes him a prophet? Or Ezra Taft Benson, for that matter?

LDS have argued in the past that "prophet" can also simply mean, "forth-telling", rather than strict, "fore-telling", in order to try to justify ETB's and GBH's claims as "prophet". But if that's the definition, then I and every Christian I know are "prophets" in that sense. And once again, that negates the need for an OT-style, "one man speaks for God to the many" kind of prophet, since God speaks to each of us directly (even Mormonism teaches this, even in today's GC).

How do we ignore the existence of Prophets and Apostles after the Veil was rent if this was truly what it symbolized?

Did you expect the Twelve to magically disappear as soon as Christ died?

I'm not sure what you are asking.

And remember, belief in the cessation of OT-style, LDS-style "prophets" isn't simply based on a perhaps weak-looking interpretation of the veil being rent, it's based on explicit Biblical teaching (Heb. 1:1-2, Luke 16-16:31, Matt. 11:13).

Theophilus

[Vex]

Wasn't it also a fulfillment of prophecy?

[Bill Hamblin]

Hi Theophilus

I still eagerly await your response on two issues:

1- Did Paul see a vision of Christ in the Temple?

2- Did Paul offer animal sacrifice in the Temple as a sin offering after Christ's death?

I hope we're not heading to a game of dodge-ball.

[juliann]

I hope we're not heading to a game of dodge-ball.

No problem, I have my stadium chair ready. Just need hotdogs and popcorn.

[Uncle Dale]

Wasn't it also a fulfillment of prophecy?

Perhaps the account is an invention of oral tradition or of the gospel writers.

Other than by special revelation, how would outsiders know what went on within the

House of the Lord, at the center of the Temple complex?

Even the regular courses of priests did not generally enter so far into that building

as to be able to discern rips in the veil.

I count it as a symbolic tradition which may or may not have a basis in some actual

event. I count it as falling into the same symbology as Jesus' saying there was a

temple centered about him which might be re-built in three days.

Previous prophecy had little place for a crucified messiah, or for miracles expected

during his passion -- so I doubt you will be able to find an exact prediction in the

Hebrew Bible.

What you will find there is a specific prohibition against the high priest damaging his

priestly vestments. In the passion story, when Jesus is brought before the high priest,

that official rips his garment in disgust or righteous indignation -- any other Jew might

have done the same, when confronted with a common man who spoke for/as God.

But, as I said, the high priest was forbidden to do such a thing.

Look for a prophecy of what would occur, should the high priest tear his garments,

and perhaps you will find an allusion to what it meant for the Temple veil to tear.

Uncle Dale

[Theophilus]

Hi Theophilus

I still eagerly await your response on two issues:

Bill,

I don't appreciate your constantly baiting me and taunting me to respond to you, just so you can respond to tell me how wrong and stupid I am.

First of all, your complete lack of courtesy and respect towards me hardly compels me to be eager to respond to you, just to have you respond with more of the same.

Second, I recognize your need to try to save face, and so I let you have your say. I am sufficiently confident in my beliefs that I didn't (and still don't) feel the need to respond to your last, my previous replies being sufficient to any semi-unbiased reader. IMO, you should be happy to have the privilege of the last word on the subject. But apparently having the last word isn't good enough for you, appaerntly you need to have me "admit" that you are right, even when you're not.

So I suggest we agree to disagree.

1- Did Paul see a vision of Christ in the Temple?

I have no problem with Paul seeing a vision of Christ in the temple.

(Is Christ not allowed to show Himself there, for some bizarre reason?)

(That was a rhetorical question, Bill, no need to reply.)

Christ also appeared to others in many other places, so the Temple was hardly "special" on that basis.

2- Did Paul offer animal sacrifice in the Temple as a sin offering after Christ's death?

I was not the least bit impressed with your attempts at spin-doctoring to try to demonstrate that premise. But I'm sure that your LDS brethren appreciated your response.

If you wish to respond to this, Bill, feel free.

I have no intention of responding if you do, however, so I grant you the last word (again).

Theophilus

[Bill Hamblin]

I'm sorry that you are apparently so insecure in your beliefs that you feel the need to constantly bait me and taunt me to respond to you.

my previous replies being sufficient to any semi-unbiased reader.

I am not goading you because of some morbid sense of insecurity. I am goading you because you are dead wrong on these issues, and it would be nice to get you to admit it instead of continuing your posturing.

I have no problem with Paul seeing a vision of Christ in the temple.

(Is Christ not allowed to show Himself there, for some bizarre reason?)

I'm glad that's resolved. This means, I presume, that you are tacitly admitting that your original claim that my interpretation of Paul's vision of Christ in the Temple was based on "quite a bit of imaginative speculation" is wrong.

It is not, of course, "for some bizarre reason" that Christ appeared to Paul in the Temple. It is a Temple theophany, a common means in the OT by which prophets were commissioned (e.g. Isa 6). It is interesting to note that Paul's commission to bring the gospel to the gentiles occurs in the very Temple that you claim the Christians rejected. Bizarre indeed. I, on the other hand, see Paul's Temple commission as the beginning of the fulfillment of Isa 56:7, that the Temple "shall be called a house of prayer for all people." When we recognize the ongoing sanctity of the Temple, Christ commissioning Paul from the Temple is not

[freakin a man]

It is not, of course, "for some bizarre reason" that Christ appeared to Paul in the Temple.

Ok so let me get this straight. EV say Jesus is God. EV people say that God now does not dwell in temples or buildings made with hands. Jesus was appeared in a Temple made with hands. Huh. So either Jesus is not God or they messed up on the interpretation about God not dwelling in buildings made with hands.

All this compounded on the notion that I have been told by many that God is some sort of omnipresent being which means if God is everywhere, and a temple made with hands is part of everywhere, then God would be dwelling in that temple made with hands or else God is not really omnipresent. I need to take an asprin for this one.

[Theophilus]

Ok so let me get this straight.  EV say Jesus is God.

Are John 1:1, 8:58, 20:28 missing from the LDS Bible?

EV people say that God now does not dwell in temples or buildings made with hands.

Are Acts 7:48, 17:24 missing from the LDS Bible?

Jesus was appeared in a Temple made with hands.  Huh.

Do LDS not make a distinction between the Father and the Son, just as EV's do?

So either Jesus is not God

Let me get this straight... Are you denying the deity of Christ?

(And you seem not to have noticed your equivocation of "God" being the Father in one verse, and the Son in another... You do realize that Jesus isn't the Father, right?)

or they messed up on the interpretation about God not dwelling in buildings made with hands. 

If your "logic" indicates that EV's messed up, I fail to see how it doesn't equally show that the LDS view "messed up".

All this compounded on the notion that I have been told by many that God is some sort of omnipresent being which means if God is everywhere, and a temple made with hands is part of everywhere, then God would be dwelling in that temple made with hands or else God is not really omnipresent.

You seem to be missing the distinction between "presence" and "dwelling".

Theophilus

[Uncle Dale]

According to your interpretation, there is no logical reason why Christ would appear in the Temple. According to my interpretation, on the other hand, it makes perfect sense, and, indeed, is to be expected. Which interpretation best explains the evidence?

The evidence is that in Paul's time the Temple was still in the hands of the Sadducean

priesthood. This complicates the notion of the risen Christ appearing there in the way

that Isaiah encountered an oracle-dispensing angel, etc.

Jesus was clearly at odds with the Temple Establishment of his day -- the one that

the rabbis still sneer at as the "sons of Boethius," etc. When we read of Jesus' actual

activities in the Temple, they appear to be located in the courtyard of the Gentiles,

the colonnade at one end of that public space, on the doorway steps, etc. He is not

associated with the debir.

Paul may have well experienced such a christophany -- it may indeed have been a

divine revelation to him, but I would not place much store in any doctrinal arguments

flowing out of that subjective experience -- nor do I think we are on very solid ground

in asserting that the physical, risen Christ manifested himself there.

The earliest Jesus-followers went to the Temple because that is where contrite prayers

were offered up to their Heavenly Father -- not because the Temple Establishment

had won their favor (no matter how many priests were converted following Pentecost).

I'm with the Spurgeon advocate on this one, I'm afraid.

UD

[freakin a man]

Ok so let me get this straight.

[Uncle Dale]

Mal 3:1 "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts."

Hope that helps

And how did Jesus make use of such old oracles naming God and Temple? What was

the essential purpose of God's Temple? What was Jesus' essential purpose?

In his day, those Jews who were sinners due to ignorance, poverty, physical blemish

or unclean occupation were barred from entering the Temple in Jerusalem.

Did he not bring the Temple to those abandoned and forgotten ones? Did he not rest

his head in the hovels of am-ha-eretz, who labored dawn to dusk, seven days a week,

just to fend off starvation? Did he not free the captives and give wholeness to the

impaired? Did he not seek out sinners, eat and drink with them, and bring the Gospel

to the most wretched of places? Those who could not enter the Temple to seek

forgiveness in sin offerings were nevertheless extended God's love and forgiveness.

To think that Malachi somehow puts Jesus under the Temple establishment, or as a

worker of rituals in the Jerusalem Temple is a total misunderstanding of how Jesus

interacted with the physical Temple, and how he embodied the more spiritual Temple 'within himself.

It is doubtful that Malachi looked into futurity with perfect clarity and was prophesying

Paul's Temple grounds vision. Had the old prophet been able to discern that clearly

he might have spoken of unhappy money-changers and their overturned tables.

UD

[Bill Hamblin]

The earliest Jesus-followers went to the Temple because that is where contrite prayers

were offered up to their Heavenly Father -- not because the Temple Establishment

had won their favor (no matter how many priests were converted following Pentecost).

Thanks for an actual argument. (It's much better than Theophilus' grandstanding.)

First, the fact that Jesus and/or the disciples rejected the Temple Establishment (or were rejected by them) does not mean the Christians rejected the sanctity of the Temple itself. Remember, Jesus drove the money-changers from the Temple, saying "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves." (Mt 21:13) It was perfectly consistent for Christians to believe the Temple as Temple was sacred, even if profaned by unrighteous leaders, activities, etc. This is, of course, the position of Ezekiel and other OT prophets.

Secondly, none of this changes the fact that:

1- Paul saw a vision of Christ in the Temple

2- Paul offered sin offerings in the Temple

Paul's belief in the continued presence of Christ, the glory/kabod of God, in the Temple is clear indication that, for early Christians, the sanctity of the Temple remained intact after the death of Jesus. (Which is one reason I think the rending fo the veil was symbolic of the entrance of Christ as Great High Priest into the Holy of Holies as the culmination of the atonement, as described in Hebrews.)

[Bill Hamblin]

To think that Malachi somehow puts Jesus under the Temple establishment, or as a

worker of rituals in the Jerusalem Temple is a total misunderstanding of how Jesus

interacted with the physical Temple, and how he embodied the more spiritual Temple 'within himself.

The belief of the sanctity of the physical Temple was not at all incompatible with belief in the believer--both as individual and as community--as the Temple of God.

[Uncle Dale]

Paul's belief in the continued presence of Christ, the glory/kabod of God, in the Temple is clear indication that, for early Christians, the sanctity of the Temple remained intact after the death of Jesus. (Which is one reason I think the rending fo the veil was symbolic of the entrance of Christ as Great High Priest into the Holy of Holies as the culmination of the atonement, as described in Hebrews.)

Either that, or the narrative tells us something about the views of the Lukan writer.

Short of our constructing a Way-back Machine and going to have a look for ourselves,

I doubt that we can resolve such questions, much beyond what can be distilled from

a single source. You'll have your interpretation and I'll have mine.

Commentaries by Greek Orthodox writers might give you some theological support.

See also my earlier posting in this thread about a possible Jamesian high priestly

activity in an opposition Temple movement shortly before the city's fall.

Whatever sanctity may have been inherent in the Temple grounds in Paul's day, I

attribute to the prayers of the pious -- just as Jews today do for the wailing wall. The

LDS may take some comfort in the notion of Jehovah appearing in the Jerusalem

Temple (even in association with, or depite, an apostate high priest) -- but I personally

see no great significance in any of this. I went back and browsed Hebrews and James,

just to see if I could find some resonance there -- but I think we are looking at Lukan

Pauline stuff here and it "speaks" very little to me.

To each his own, I suppose.

UD

[PacMan]

I don't want to digress the thread back to the main topic (too much), but I always took note that the word "rent" (or rend) had a particular meaning referring to the violent ripping away of clothes, often as emphasis for deep emotion, be it grief, indignation, etc. Particular to the veil of the temple, I always saw this as the Father's way of symbolizing His own grief, sadness, anger, etc., rending the veil--perhaps the holiest piece of cloth in the world.

If this simple analysis were true, I think it magnifies the association that the Father had with His Son (and His response to the wickedness of His other children).

The real issue with my interpretation is that the Greek word used in association is not "diarrhesso," which is typically used in the terminology of "he rent his clothes (Matt 26:65/Acts 14:14)." Instead, "schizo" is used, which means to cleave, rend, or divide by rending. Whether or not "schizo" has the same connotation as "diarrhesso," I'm not sure. But, the two DO appear to have the violent or dramatic parting significance, thus substantiating that the veil did more than just 'split' or 'ripped.' In other words, I think that the veil was rent is particular in that we must ask, who did the rending and why? Using cultural parallelism, I don't think we have to go too far to conclude that the Father was doing the rending because He was indeed, a Father.

PacMan