The key…lies in the fact that the Temple was understood to be not only the centre of the world but also a microcosm of the whole creation. To speak of heaven and earth passing away quite naturally evoked the image of its destruction. Conversely, to destroy the Temple was to destroy the universe.
That a temple could represent the entire cosmos was taken for granted in the ancient Near East, as any modern visitor to the temple at Karnak in Egypt knows. Solomon’s Temple was similarly constructed, albeit with its own distinctive Israelite features (notably, the bronze basin of 1 Kings 7.23-26, which was actually called ‘the Sea’). Like the Tabernacle, it was dedicated in the New Year festival which celebrated God’s creation of the universe.
According to Psalm 78.69, the sanctuary was built ‘like the high heavens, like the earth, which he has founded forever’. A careful examination of the account of creation in Genesis 1 alongside the description of the Tabernacle in Exodus 25-40 finds many points of correspondence between the structure and symbolism of the latter and the order of the former. These connections were not esoteric secrets hidden in scripture. They were very well known to Jews in Jesus’ day and were described in detail by such writers as Josephus and Philo in the first century AD.
This cosmic symbolism had a very specific purpose: it meant that everything that went on in the Temple gave a structure, order and stability to the whole world. Through its sacrifices, prayers and liturgy, the Temple was believed to integrate within itself the life not only of humankind but of all creation. For Jesus the Jew, Israel’s coming catastrophe meant the destruction of the old order. This had truly cosmological implications, as the Temple’s function of holding things together was about to come to an end.
Rather than longing for a cosmic meltdown, we must hear the groans of creation as the birth-pangs of the new age and pray, in the words of Romans 8.21, that it ‘will be set free from its bondage to decay [so that it may] obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God’.
Crispin Fletcher-Louis at Third Way on Mark 13.24ff & 30f
Try Greg Beale The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Temple for a summary of Israel’s theological cosmology
