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Christmas, the Israelite Tabernacle, and the Gospel of John

Christmas, the Israelite Tabernacle, and the Gospel of John

Last updated on: December 21, 2023 at 10:20 pm by Dan Peterson

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Christmas, the Israelite Tabernacle, and the Gospel of John 2023-12-21T22:20:19-07:00 Dan Peterson

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Christmas in Frankfurt. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

New on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:

“The Temple: Ancient and Restored: How John’s Gospel Portrays Jesus as the Way of the Temple” was written by John S. Thompson

Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Ancient and Restored, Proceedings of the Second Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 25 October 2014 (2016) edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Donald W. Parry. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-ancient-and-restored/.

Conference Talks: On Earth When It Was in Heaven: Sacred Time and its Protection in Egyptian Temples

The fourth “Temple on Mount Zion” Conference was held on Saturday, November 10, 2018 in the Tanner Building at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

The presentations were filmed, and both video and audio recordings of each presentation are available. The videos are currently available both at and on the Interpreter Foundation YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/theinterpreterfoundation. A YouTube playlist is also available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRMn4gyXMWLsWt34zVNC5FmTqBtFfcnxl. The audio recordings are available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2018-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/2018-temple-on-mount-zion-conference-audio/.

As part of that conference, Professor Kerry Muhlestein delivered this talk, which is entitled “On Earth When It Was in Heaven: Sacred Time and its Protection in Egyptian Temples.”

The Assembly Hall on Salt Lake City’s Temple Square, at Christmas
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Also: I found this chilling story yesterday, Wednesday, in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™. I hope that it fills you with a level of indignation that befits the Winter Solstice season: “Latter-day Saints Spread the Light of Christ around the World: Donations at this year’s Giving Machines so far include 1 million meals and vaccinations for people in need”

And, speaking of “how religion poisons everything,” here’s yet another appalling depravity from the Hitchens File: “This Broadway and Disney star is joining the Tabernacle Choir again — this time in the Philippines: Lea Salonga, well known as the powerful singing voice behind Disney princesses Jasmine and Mulan, will join as a guest artist for the choir’s performances in the Philippines next year”

The Mesa Arizona Temple at Christmas (LDS.org)

“In the beginning was the Word,” begins a Christmas story that we seldom read at Christmas, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14).

The Greek verb translated as “dwelt,” “skeneo,” means “to dwell in a tent” — which, in Greek, is a “skene.” So John 1:14 could be rendered as “And the Word was made flesh, and tented among us.”

This recalls the Old Testament tabernacle in the wilderness, a tent-sanctuary symbolizing the presence of God that was pitched in the midst of the traveling camp of Israel:

“And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle. And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:8-11).

The Hebrew word translated as “tabernacle” is “mishkan,” which refers to the place where God’s presence, his “shekinah,” resided. “And let them make me a sanctuary,” says the Lord in Exodus 25:8-9, “that I may dwell (‘ve-shakan-ti’) among them, according to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle (‘mishkan’).” John’s Greek verb (built from the root “s-k-n”) seems to play off of the Hebrew root (“sh-k-n”; in Arabic, the equivalent root is, precisely, “s-k-n”) in order to suggest that the presence of Moses’ portable temple among the Israelites prefigured Christ’s earthly life in a “tabernacle of flesh” among mortals.

The epistle to the Hebrews also links Christ closely with the temple — most notably when it compares him to the high priest of the earthly sanctuary.

“We have such an high priest,” says the author of Hebrews, “who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.” He is “a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Human priests merely “serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things” (See 8:1-5). Into the holy of holies “went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people … which was a figure for the time then present” (9:7, 9). “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. … For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (9:11-12, 24).

So John compares Christ to the tabernacle/temple, and Hebrews likens him to a high priest officiating within the temple.

But, through redemptive vicarious service in the temple, we, too, can imitate Christ. “The keys are to be delivered,” said Joseph Smith, “the spirit of Elijah is to come, the Gospel to be established, the Saints of God gathered, Zion built up, and the Saints to come up as saviors on Mount Zion. But how are they to become saviors on Mount Zion? By building their temples, erecting their baptismal fonts, and going forth and receiving all the ordinances, baptisms, confirmations, washings, anointings, ordinations and sealing powers upon their heads, in behalf of all their progenitors who are dead, and redeem(ing) them.”

What more Christ-like gift could we possibly give than to go to the temple this Christmas season, to help, in our lesser and derivative way, to redeem God’s children? If we haven’t planned to attend the temple during this hectic and foreshortened month, perhaps we should. It may require special effort, but nothing could be more thoroughly in the spirit of the season.

It’s probably a bit late for most of us to go to the temple before Christmas this year. (The column above was originally published in the Deseret News on 8 December 2011, when there was considerably more of the month remaining than there is right now.) But regular and frequent temple attendance is a pretty good resolution for the New Year, and working in one more temple visit before the end of the year, if at all possible, wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

We live in the greatest period of temple construction that history has ever seen, and temples are being built closer and closer to the worldwide membership of the Church. It is a genuinely glorious thing.

A view in Oberndorf, in the Austrian state of Salzburg — birthplace of the Christmas carol “Silent Night” (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

This is a wonderful and insightful article by a good friend of ours, Joseph Grenny. His “Other Side Village” and “Other Side Academy” are among the very best philanthropic projects that I know: “Opinion: Chronic homelessness is a behavior problem: The reason so much effort to help the chronically homeless is producing so little improvement is because we’re solving the wrong problem”

Up close and personal: Giraffes in the Metro Richmond Zoo
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

I’ve been to this zoo several times, because it is located very near to one of North America’s principal foci of Sheer Cuteness, who visits it on a regular basis. So I was very pleased to find an article about the zoo in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “A Christmas Miracle: How a Virginia zoo rose from the ashes to testify of the Savior’s birth”

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