Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 64:1 (NA 2013)
Article: The Temple In The Apocalypse Of Weeks And In Hebrews
Author: Philip A. F. Church

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TynBull 64:1 (2013) p. 109

The Temple In The Apocalypse Of Weeks And In Hebrews

Philip Church

Summary

Several Second Temple texts make no explicit mention of the temple, but it cannot be assumed that this silence indicates a lack of interest. While the Apocalypse of Weeks reveres Solomon’s temple and describes it in ways that indicate that it anticipates the eschatological temple, the Second Temple is ignored, implying a strong polemic against it. Hebrews makes no explicit mention of the Second Temple, but several texts reflect a critique of temple, priesthood, and sacrificial system. Hebrews claims that the temple and its associated rituals were a symbolic foreshadowing of the eschatological dwelling of God with his people in the last days, now come with the exaltation of Christ. Since the reality has now come, the readers can no longer be occupied with the symbols.

1. Introduction

Hebrews is one of several texts from the Second Temple period that nowhere explicitly mentions the temple. Other texts from which the temple is absent include the Apocalypse of Weeks and Jubilees, both from the Second Century BC, and 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch from around the end of the First Century AD, both of which deal with the destruction of the Second Temple as though it was Solomon’s temple. But silence about the temple cannot be taken as lack of interest in it as 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra illustrate. Sometimes where the temple is not explicitly mentioned, it is implied, and indeed the readers are supposed to infer that the author is making some point, usually negative, about it. I will illustrate this from the Apocalypse of Weeks and then argue that, while Hebrews is silent about the temple, it critiques temple,

TynBull 64:1 (2013) p. 110

priesthood, and sacrifice. This essay advances the arguments about the significance of the unmentioned temple in Hebrews previously put forward by Peter Walker and Steve Motyer.1

2. The Apocalypse Of Weeks

The Apocalypse of Weeks (ApW) analyses the history of the world into ten weeks, each of seven generations.2 It is embedded in the Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 91-105),3 the place it also occupies in Aramaic Enoch (4QEn^g, 4Q212).4 In 1 Enoch the weeks are disordered, with weeks one to seven in 93:1-10, the end of week seven in 91:11, and weeks eight to ten in 91:12-17. In Aramaic Enoch, the Vorlagen...

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