Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 75:1 (NA 2024)
Article: ‘The True Tabernacle’ Of Hebrews 8:2: A Response To Nicholas J. Moore
Author: Philip A. F. Church

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‘The True Tabernacle’ Of Hebrews 8:2: A Response To Nicholas J. Moore

Philip Church

Senior Research Fellow
Laidlaw College
[email protected]

Abstract

Does Hebrews 8:5 claim that Israel’s earthly sanctuaries are ‘shadowy copies’ of a heavenly sanctuary, or do these sanctuaries anticipate an eschatological sanctuary where God will dwell with his people, as I have argued? Nicholas J. Moore has critiqued my reading of this verse on the grounds that reading the expression ὑπόδειγμα καὶ σκιά as ‘copy and shadow’ is lexically permissible, that the idea that Israel’s earthly sanctuaries are copies of the heavenly sanctuary is widespread in the Second Temple period, and that my reading involves an awkward switch between temple and tabernacle in Hebrews 8:5. This article argues that it cannot be demonstrated that ὑπόδειγμα can have the sense ‘copy’, that the idea of the temple as an anticipation of God’s eschatological dwelling with his people is present at Qumran in ways that are similar to what is found in Hebrews, and that my reading involves no awkward switch between tabernacle and temple in Hebrews 8:5. Ultimately, it can be shown that a temporal reading of ὑπόδειγμα καί σκιά in Hebrews 8:5 contributes more to its context than does a spatial reading.

1. Introduction

In Volume 72 of the Tyndale Bulletin (2021), Nicholas Moore interacts with my monograph Hebrews and the Temple, in which I argue against the view that ‘the true tabernacle’ in Hebrews 8:2 is a heavenly archetype of the Jerusalem Temple.1 Rather, I proposed then (and continue to maintain) that it refers to

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the eschatological dwelling of God with his people.2 This was part of a more extensive work in which I argued that scholars who have read Hebrews through the lens of Philo of Alexandria have overemphasised the vertical and spatial aspects of Hebrews’ temple imagery and downplayed the horizontal and eschatological aspects. Moore has successfully shown that I did not give enough attention to these vertical and spatial aspects. However, they are there in my work, particularly in my reading of ...