Friday, December 6, 2019

The Jewish Annotated New Testament on God Not Dwelling in Houses "made with human hands"



Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands . . .(Acts 7:48 NRSV)

While some critics of LDS theology argue that this passage means that, in the New Covenant era, God does not dwell in physical temples and/or has sanctioned temple worship, in reality, what the phrase “not made with human hands” and like-locutions mean is that God will not dwell in idolatrous or false worship centres. Commenting on this passage, The Jewish Annotated Study Bible notes that:

. . . made with human hands implies that the building of the Temple was an idolatrous act (Isa 2.8; 37.19; Mic 5.13 [MT 5.12]; Ps 115.4; 135.15). (Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. The Jewish Annotated New Testament [New York: Oxford University Press, 2011], 213; emphasis added)

And also that:

After some Jews accuse Stephen of blasphemy (though his offense was apparently to characterize the Temple as “made with hands,” that is, a merely human construction), (Ibid., 211), emphasis added

In other words, Stephen in Acts 7 is not condemning temples and temple worship per se but only worship that is not sanctioned by God.