Based on Dr. Barker's book, referenced above, dismissing the need of the temple altogether may be a bit premature. The ancient Jews suffered from the same malady that the Jehovah's Witnesses now suffer from. Some of the more political, zealous Jews and Christians were convinced that the day of deliverance was nigh when the Romans attacked Jerusalem. Although the apostles had evacuated the Christians under their influence, some of the more radical ones who believed that God would not abandon his people and his temple remained. According to Barker, when the Romans began lobbing perfect white stones over the city's embankments, the recalitrant Jews thought the stones were the supernatural hail that was to precede the presence of God. At first they shouted, "The Son is coming!" But when God failed to make his appearance, they actually hurled insults at the Lord because he delayed his coming.
She writes:
Thus, they were insulting God, himself, the great Yhwh. Not the Father, but the Son. They knew the concept of Armageddon, and that it would occur during an assault against Jerusalem by an unholy military force. Like the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, they couldn't believe that what they had promised would happen wasn't happening.
But were the Christians finished with the temple? What of the 40 days Jesus had spent with the apostles following his resurrection? He taught them the "mysteries" of the Kingdom, a secret tradition that Barker indicates was never written down. Again, according to Barker:
And she indicates that part of this secret tradition may have found its way into the early liturgies of the Christian church. The problem, as I see it, is that by then the apostles were gone and no one else really knew for certain which of all the alleged teachings were real and which were not. But churchmen like Clement knew enough, apparently, that he marvelled how anyone could be an atheist after they "learned the divine mysteries" from the Father's "only begotten Son." In describing the reestablishment of the churches in Constantine's time, Eusebius, she notes, describes their reestablishment to:
That "unbroken tradition" in the temple concept indicated that the early Christians and Jews both incorporated "secret traditions" into their temple worship, and that some may have slipped into the liturgies of the early Christian church.
Much in the ancient church was lost when the apostles closed their eyes in death. What we have now is what was agreed upon by people who weren't there when these doctrines and traditions were established.
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