Ezekiel's Temple

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
Kris
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Ezekiel's Temple

Post by Kris »

I am trying to understand Ezekiel's temple written about in his book in the OT. Why didn't the Jews coming back from captivity build it to his specs? Did they not know of his prophecies? Did they think they were building it right? Did God give a different temple version because the Jews were sinners and didn't deserve the temple that was given in Ezekiel's vision? ( I saw this argument given by a rabbi once!)Or was it all allegory and representative of something else ? Or is it yet to be built? I think it could've been just failed prophecy of what Ezekel thought would be built and what really was built during the second temple history. Any thoughts?
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Ezekiel's Temple

Post by neilgodfrey »

With respect to the laws of Ezekiel 40-48, Kaufmann did not believe that they represent a program for action or a blueprint for exilic priests. They are, rather, a messianic vision. Kaufmann noted that several of the laws found within these chapters contradict P. He therefore found it difficult to accept that P would have borrowed the style and phraseology of Ezekiel while ignoring the actual laws. It is more likely that Ezekiel sought to replace and update laws found in P that had become obsolete in his time.
-- From A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, the Exile and the Torah, by Risa Levitt Kohn.
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Clive
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Re: Ezekiel's Temple

Post by Clive »

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Kris
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Re: Ezekiel's Temple

Post by Kris »

I guess I was just thinking about Ezekiel and how, while he was in captivity, he supposedly had a vision from god how the Israelites would be able to return to their land and rebuild their temple-- and everyone would be a Jew, they would rule the earth, yada, yada, yada.....

The Jews eventually did return and began rebuilding the temple, and seemingly did incorporate some of the elements of Ezekiel's vision-- and Haggai and Zechariah (I think!) were told by god exactly how to build it. But, all of the peace and joy did not occur. So, is this why Ezekiel's temple becomes a future temple? Did the builders think they WERE building his temple, based on what scriptures they had at the time, and then when it was realized that the entire vision didn't come to pass, the scripture was redacted into a more exorbitant version of the temple of the end of days?

I am trying to reconcile why the second temple wasn't Ezekiel's temple!
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Ezekiel's Temple

Post by neilgodfrey »

One of the most common of ancient literary forms was the historical fabrication. We cannot assume that the self-witness of a document signifies the reality. Someone wrote a piece purporting to be by an Ezekiel and set it during the time of the captivity. We cannot assume the chapters of the Temple vision were part of the original composition. It may be that there really was an Ezekiel who wrote it all during the Captivity but this cannot be assumed. It may appear to be that way in the Bible but that don't make it necessarily so.

If we take it (and other Biblical books) all at face-value then we have in Ezekiel a prophet who was writing contrary to parts of the Mosaic Law and therefore, according to the Mosaic Law, a false prophet......
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outhouse
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Re: Ezekiel's Temple

Post by outhouse »

Kris wrote: I am trying to reconcile why the second temple wasn't Ezekiel's temple!

Because Herod built it.

Herod wanted to be viewed as the literary King David.
Kris
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Re: Ezekiel's Temple

Post by Kris »

Again- thanks for your help! I get so excited when I see a new response post- lame I know, but still!! Outhouse-- did Herod use Ezekiel when he made his temple expansions? Are there any books who talk about this? I wondered about herod's expansions as well but couldn't find anything talking about Ezekiel.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Ezekiel's Temple

Post by MrMacSon »

neilgodfrey wrote:One of the most common of ancient literary forms was the historical fabrication.
"historical fabrication" might be better termed 'fabricated history' (?)
Clive
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Re: Ezekiel's Temple

Post by Clive »

[quoteItalo Calvino described a "deep-rooted tradition in Italian literature... the notion of the literary work as a map of the world and the knowable, of writing driven on by a thirst for knowledge that may in turns be theological, speculative, magical, encyclopaedic..." He was talking about Dante the visionary and Galileo the cosmographer, but he himself, and Umberto Eco, also work from the same impulses.

Eco's new novel, set during the sack of Constantinople in 1204, derives from Boccaccio its form of stories told during a crisis, but has things in common also with the fabulating fantasy of Calvino's Imaginary Cities. It is the life-history of Baudolino, a self-confessed liar, told to the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates. It is fiction - Eco's, Baudolino's, tall-storytellers' of the ancient world - woven into the history of the fourth crusade.

At the centre of the novel is a brilliant conceit about how the human mind makes up its world. It is an examination of the deep need for explanatory stories - myths, fables, chronicles, family traditions, science - and works in codes and layers that resemble the medieval methods of biblical interpretation as much as modern semiotics. It turns, like the Christian religion, on questions of paternity and the presence of the divine spirit in matter such as the blood and wine of the Eucharist.[/quote]
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/ ... on.asbyatt
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
semiopen
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Re: Ezekiel's Temple

Post by semiopen »

I have to admit that the temple Ezekiel describes is a mystery to me. Maybe his description precedes the specs in the Torah.

In Jewish tradition Ezekiel describes the third temple -

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_c ... Temple.htm
It was in the twenty-fifth year of the Babylonian exile that Ezekiel prophesied that the Holy Temple would be rebuilt. The prophecy spans a number of chapters, describing in great detail how this future Temple would look.1 And yet, when we look at the descriptions of the second Temple, we see that it was not built according to those specifications.2
Footnote 2
See Maimonides, in his magnum opus on Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Beit Habechirah 1:4; alternatively, compare the specifications in tractate Middot with Ezekiel’s prophesy.
Schiffman discusses descriptions here -

Descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple in Josephus and the Temple Scroll
Lawrence H. Schiffman - http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/symposiums ... man99.html
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