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Temples, Ancient and Modern

Temples, Ancient and Modern

Last updated on: September 29, 2024 at 2:11 pm by Dan Peterson

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Temples, Ancient and Modern 2024-09-29T14:11:50-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The cover art of the fourth volume of “Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days” features temples in Accra, Ghana; Hong Kong; Mexico City; Nuku’alofa, Tonga; and São Paulo, Brazil. (The image belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but my employment of it here is, I hope, legitimate on the principle of “fair use.”). The profusion of dedicated temples throughout the world is one of the great stories in the history of the Church during the past few decades.

Yesterday, I provided a few notes on the two morning sessions of the Seventh Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference, Temple on Mount Zion 2024, which focused on the theme “Seership, Craftsmanship, and Fellowship.” Today, I’ll continue with that effort. (We’ll see how far I get.)

Those who returned sufficiently early from lunch were treated to a showing of Willy and Lilly Binene and the Saints of Luputa, an episode in the Interpreter Foundation’s Africa-focused Not by Bread Alone video series. Brother and Sister Binene — Elder Binene is currently serving as an Area Seventy — will be a significant focus in the fourth and final volume of Saints, the series of official volumes of Church history, which is set to appear in late October.

Immediately prior to the second Saturday Afternoon session, another episode from Not by Bread Alone was shown. This one focused on the remarkable story of the late Norman Kamosi and the building of the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple.

The first conference speaker of the afternoon was Daniel Smith, who spoke about “Re-creating the Most Detailed and Accurate 3D Model of Herod’s Temple”:

The Talmud declares that “Whoever has not seen Herod’s Temple has not seen a beautiful building” (Bava Basra 4a). Yet while every 3D model of Herod’s temple heretofore created has demonstrated the sheer size of the edifice, none has illustrated the beauty and grandeur of the building. Such models have generally depicted its overall layout and design, have only occasionally included a few design motifs pulled either from archaeology or altogether from frank creative license. No model has managed to represent the beauty of the great temple .

Over the last two years, however, Scripture Central and the BYU Virtual Scriptures team have collaborated to construct the most detailed and accurate model of Herod’s temple ever built. In his presentation, Daniel Smith discussed the history of several of the prior 3D models and compared them to the current project. He showed the process whereby the team created the many details for the temple, every detail coming from actual archaeological remains.

Matthew L. Bowen spoke next, to the subject of “Joy in the Harvest: Temple Metaphors and Allusions in Ammon’s Speech (Alma 26).”

In this presentation, Professor Bowen argued that Ammon’s speech (“the words of Ammon to his brethren”) in Alma 26 is filled with temple metaphors and allusions. For example, Ammon’s harvest metaphor (Alma 26:5-7), with its description of bound sheaves, and “garners” into which bound items are gathered and protected, is directly connected with the ʾôṣār of the Jerusalem temple. The language of “sealing” is used in the analogy (e.g., “they are his,” Alma 26:7). The ancient Israelite autumn festival complex, with its temple-centric sacred times, was inseparably connected with the harvest as a season of joy and rejoicing. Fittingly, the term rejoice occurs seven times, and the term joy—a key-word in Mormon’s account of Jesus’s ministry at the temple in Bountiful—occurs eight times.

Ammon’s speech is filled with language from the Psalms (see, e.g., Alma 26:8, 12-16), which were the hymns of the ancient Jerusalem temple. What’s more, there are also echoes of temple rituals (including divine reception, Alma 26:15), temple architecture and ritual design (Alma 26:20), esoteric language (mysteries, Alma 26:22), and references to Lamanite and Amlicite/Amalekite sacred spaces (Alma 26:29), and (Abrahamic) covenant fidelity, human (Alma 26:32-34) and divine (Alma 26:35-37). Thus, claimed Professor Bowen, Alma 26 is yet another Book of Mormon text that helps us to make meaningful connections to Jesus Christ through Ammon’s temple-consonant language.

Matt Bowen has been doing a vast amount of work that appears to demonstrate a far greater richness and complexity in the Book of Mormon than most readers — including Latter-day Saints as well as unbelievers — have previously recognized in the volume.

The third speaker of the afternoon was Steven L. Olsen. He discussed “The Literary Craftmanship of Doctrine and Covenants 132.”

Doctrine and Covenants 132, Dr. Olsen contended in his remarks, is arguably Joseph Smith’s most far-reaching and controversial writing. It defines a concept of life eternal, he said, that is so revolutionary that it required new vocabulary to express it (exaltation) and new rituals to enact it (endowment, sealing, baptism for the dead), and it expanded “built forms” to contain it (the house of the Lord, the temple). At the same time, it contributed as much as anything else did to the eventual martyrdom of the Prophet of the Restoration.

In the study that Brother Olsen shared on Saturday, he focused on the literary craftsmanship of the revelation, rather than the historical origins of the text or the social practices that it motivated, the better to examine its layered, nuanced, and complex meanings. Of particular interest to him were the complementary conventions of diction, tone, structural logic, and pedagogy that use language to articulate and implement an expansive worldview centered on the covenant of eternal life.

I was particularly struck, as he was, by 132:20: “Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them.”

Brother Olsen paused to note the sublimity of the language in that verse, one of the most wonderful in all of the revelations given to and through the Prophet Joseph Smith. I concur.

I still have three more talks to summarize; I’ll do that tomorrow. Videos of the presentations given at this conference will, I think, eventually go up online. And the ultimate goal is to publish them as an anthology in the form of a book.

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