How many veils were in the temple

Now when the Lord Jesus was here on earth, He did not liken Himself to the tabernacle but to the temple, and this is recorded in the very Gospel where He is presented as the Apostle or Sent One of God. In John 2: 19—21, He speaks of the temple naos - the inner sanctuary of His body - not the tabernacle of His body, for it was a question of making God known and revealing Him as Father.

For this the temple, the vehicle of display, was the suited figure, not the tabernacle. Similarly in 1 Cor.

In each of the three synoptic Gospels we are told that the veil of the temple was rent. This has nothing directly to do with man going in to God but the very reverse. In the old Levitical economy of law God was hidden, dwelling in thick darkness behind the veil in the temple 1 Kings 8: 12, 2 Chron. The temple veil was rent for God to come out. While the revelation of the Father in the Son was complete in His life here, the revelation of the love of God in all its fullness only came out in the death of Christ - a revelation symbolised by the temple veil being rent.

In the world to come there will be yet another temple, the details of which are given to us in Ez. Now while there are similarities with Solomon's temple there are also differences. In Ez. The lesson of this is that once a revelation is made, it is not retracted - the temple veil is not reinstated - it is rent for ever.

Thus, for example, we still know God as Jehovah Israel's relationship but we also now know Him as Father. However, while revelation cannot be taken back, approach is another matter. Thus associated with Ezekiel's temple there will be the various offerings for example see Ez. This indicates that approach to God will not be the same as now, even though the present revelation remains.

In the early verses Christ is presented as the Apostle, the One sent from God to make Him known in revelation - answering to Moses in the old economy. This paves the way for the main thrust of the epistle from Heb.

Now the imagery throughout Hebrews is based on the tabernacle for example, Heb. Indeed there is not a word said anywhere in Hebrews about the temple. Thus the veil spoken of in Heb. This veil was never rent and is never viewed as rent. Furthermore, the only way into the holiest of all is through that veil. In the imagery, the Holy of holies Heb.

The veil is still there, unrent, and we have to go through it to enter the presence of God. Some have muddled up the temple and tabernacle veils, and say that we go through the veil, because it is rent for us to go through.

Yet while God has come out in love to all the rent temple veil , to say that we go through that veil would mean that all unbeliever and believer alike could go in! No, approach is through the tabernacle veil, and that is not rent.

However, in Heb. This can be seen by comparing two verses in Eph. Returning now to Heb. Title is one thing; actual entrance is another. God has come out in the death of Christ the rent veil of the temple so that I might go in the way Christ went in as forerunner through the veil of the tabernacle. The way into the presence of God for worship is not open, it is through the veil. What does this mean? Christ went in through death and as He is the forerunner we must go in the same way by appropriating His death for ourselves as detailed in John 6: 53— Clearly I cannot take my sins into the presence of God but neither can I take anything in that is inconsistent with Christ's death.

Every follower of Christ can now approach God directly, without the intervention of earthly priests. Christ, the great High Priest, intercedes for us before God. Through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross , all barriers have been destroyed. Through the Holy Spirit , God dwells once more with and in his people. Exodus 26, , , , , , , ; Leviticus , 17, , , ; Numbers , ; 2 Chronicles ; Matthew ; Mark ; Luke ; Hebrews , , Smith's Bible Dictionary , William Smith.

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Share Flipboard Email. Jack Zavada. Christianity Expert. Something similar was said of Jesus by the early Christian writers Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria and Origen: that he was the high priest who had passed through the curtain and revealed the secrets of the past, the present and the future [12].

History seen in the sanctuary, whether this was described as a tower or as Sinai, was history seen outside the limitations of space and time and this explains why histories in the apocalyptic writings are surveys not only of the past but also of the future as everything was depicted on the veil.

Those who passed through the veil also passed into the first day of creation as the building of the tabernacle was said to correspond to the days of creation. Again, the evidence for this belief is relatively late, but given the cultural context of the first temple, it is not unlikely. Solomon's kingdom was surrounded by cultures which linked the story of creation to the erection of temples [13] , and there are canonical texts which could be explained in this way.

Various attempts have been made to relate the commands given to Moses and the account of the seven days in Genesis 1. One was that the gathering of the waters on the third day corresponded to making the bronze sea, and making the great lights on the fourth day corresponded to making the menorah.

The birds of the fifth day corresponded to the cherubim with their wings and the man on the sixth day was the high priest [14]. It is more satisfactory to keep the traditional order for creating the tabernacle: tent, veil, table, lamp, and link this to the first four days of creation.

The earth and seeds of the third day would then be represented by the table where bread was offered and the great lights of the fourth day by the menorah [15]. There is no disagreement, however, over the correspondence between the first and second days of creation and the first two stages of making the tabernacle.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and on the first day Moses set up the outer covering, the basic structure of the tabernacle Exod. On the second day, God made the firmament and called it heaven and on the second day Moses set up the veil and screened the ark Exod. The Chronicler said that the temple was built according to a heavenly revelation received by David 1 Chron.

The verses in Exodus do not actually say that Moses saw a heavenly tabernacle which was to be the pattern, tabnit , for the tabernacle he had to build, but some later texts do assume this. Given the importance of the subject matter, there are surprisingly few references to the heavenly sanctuary that Moses saw on Sinai [16]. The other two aspects of the tradition, that the temple was a microcosm of the creation and that its construction corresponded to the days of creation suggest that what Moses saw on Sinai was not a heavenly tabernacle but rather, a vision of the creation which the tabernacle was to replicate.

A heavenly temple is not mentioned in this verse even though some translations insert the word temple at this point, e. V [17]. The idea that Moses on Sinai had a vision of the creation finds its clearest expression in the writings of Cosmas, the sixth century Egyptian Christian. He explained that the earth was rectangular and constructed like a huge tent because Moses had been commanded to build the tabernacle as a copy of the whole creation which he had been shown on Sinai.

This is what he wrote: When Moses had come down from the mountain he was ordered by God to make the tabernacle, which was a representation of what he had seen on the mountain, namely, an impress of the whole world. The creation Moses had seen was divided into two parts: Since therefore it had been shown him how God made the heaven and the earth, and how on the second day he made the firmament in the middle between them, and thus made the one place into two places, so Moses, in like manner, in accordance with the pattern which he had seen, made the tabernacle and placed the veil in the middle and by this division made the one tabernacle into two, the inner and the outer Cosmas 2.

The sequence in Jubilees is the same as in Genesis 1, except that Jubilees gives far more detail about Day One, the secrets of the holy of holies. There are seven works on Day One: heaven, earth, the waters, the abyss, darkness and light- all of which can be deduced from Genesis- and then the ministering angels, who are not mentioned in Genesis [19].

A similar account occurs in the Song of the Three Children; before inviting the earth and everything created after the second day to praise the LORD and exalt him for ever, there is a long list of the works of the Day One: the heavens, the angels, the waters above the heavens, the powers, the stars, the rain, dew, winds, fire, heat, summer and winter, ice and cold, frost and snow, lightnings and clouds, the phenomena whose angels praise the LORD on Day One according to Jubilees.

The angels of day One were a sensitive issue. Later Jewish tradition gave the seven works of Day One as heaven and earth, darkness and light, waters and the abyss, and then the winds, whereas Jubilees has the angels. It has long been accepted [21] that Genesis 1 is a reworking of older material and is related to other accounts of creation known in the Ancient Near East.

One of the main elements to have been removed is any account of the birth of the gods, even though Genesis 2. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth. The rest of Job 38 describes the works of Day One: the boundary for the waters, the gates of deep darkness, the storehouses of snow and hail, wind, rain and ice, the pattern of the stars.

Wisdom, as the serpent in Eden had said, made humans divine, exactly what happened to those who entered the sanctuary and, by implication, witnessed the creation.

Enoch, the high priest figure who entered the holy of holies, did know about these things; in 2 Enoch he is taken to stand before the throne in heaven, anointed and transformed into an angel. Then he is shown the great secrets of the creation. The account is confused, but closely related to the account in Genesis even though some of the details seem to be drawn from Egyptian mythology. Enoch is enthroned next to Gabriel and shown how the LORD created the world, beginning with heaven, earth and sea, the movement of the stars, the seasons, the winds and the angels 2 En.

He sees Day One. Enthronement is an important and recurring feature of these texts and another indication of their origin [25]. It is significant that the sanctuary hymn in Revelation 4. Josephus says that the Essenes undertook to preserve the books of the sect and the names of the angels War 2 [26]. Later he sees the great oath which establishes the creation and binds all its elements into their appointed places 1 En.

The very earliest Enoch material describes how he sees the works of Day One; on his first heavenly journey, Enoch learns about the stars, thunder and lightning, the place of great darkness, the mouth of the deep, the winds, the cornerstone of the earth and the firmament of heaven, the paths of the angels and the firmament of heaven at the end of the earth 1 En.

In the Apocalypse of Weeks, another early text embedded in 1 Enoch, there is an expansion after the description of the seventh week. At the end of the seventh week, the chosen righteous ones were to receive sevenfold i. It is interesting the R. What Job had not seen, Enoch saw in the holy of holies. There is not just one isolated example of such a vision of creation; it is a recurring theme throughout the entire compendium of texts.

And what Enoch saw in the holy of holies, Moses, as we should expect, has seen on Sinai. When Ezra asks about the LORD's future plans for his people, he is assured that the One who planned all things would also see them to their end. Ezra is told that everything was planned in the holy of holies, before time. The speaker in Proverbs 8 also saw the works of Day One. The speaker was begotten [29] before the mountains, the hills and the earth, and was with the Creator when he established the heavens and the fountains of the deep and when he set limits to the waters and marked out the foundations of the earth.

This chapter emphasises that the speaker was witness to the works of Day One. The one who was newly born witnessed the creation, exactly what Cosmas, many centuries later, said of Moses. Then having taken him up into the mountain, he hid him in a cloud and took him out of all earthly things Cosmas 3. I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at university That was Day One in Genesis.

And first of its parts the Creator proceeded to make the heaven which In other words, everything made on or after the second day was part of the visible world but the works of Day One were beyond matter, beyond the veil. But Plato's account of creation, especially in the Timaeus, is itself of uncertain origin and the question of who influenced whom must remain open.

What the Creation and the Chariot have in common is that they both belong to the world beyond the veil, the timeless place which also revealed the past and the future. We are not told what the hidden things were. Secrets are said to exist. Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? Most of the detailed evidence for this tradition of the world beyond the veil has been drawn from relatively late texts, but the warnings against secret knowledge suggest that it was a matter of controversy from the beginning of the second temple period.

No one text from the later period gives a complete picture, indicating the fragmentation of an earlier corpus rather than the conglomeration of strands which had formerly been separate and even alien [39]. Early evidence for what I am proposing is to be found in Isaiah This chapter seems to be a conjunction of all the elements of the hidden tradition which can only be reconstructed otherwise from a variety of later sources.

The chapter is set in the holy of holies; the prophet hears the voices calling as did Isaiah [40]. Has it not been told you from the beginning?