Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Adela Yarbro Collins on Mark 14:58 and temples “made without hands” as a reference to idolatry

  

If the saying of v. 58 is based on a saying of the historical Jesus, it is likely that it was a prophetic or apocalyptic saying that concerned the replacement of Herod’s temple with a new, definitive temple to be established by divine power. If the contrast between the two temples was expressed at that stage already with the terms χειροποιητος (“made with hands”) and αχειροποιητος (“not made with hands”), or with expressions roughly equivalent to these in Hebrew or Aramaic, the contrast at that stage of the history of the tradition would be between human agency and divine agency. In the context of Mark as a whole, the saying may be interpreted as still having this significance.

 

It could be argued that, at the Markan stage, the use of the term χειροποιητος (“made with hands”) is a polemical indictment of the cult of the temple in Jerusalem as equivalent to idolatry. The term occurs in Lev 26:1 LXX as a substantive with the sense of “(gods) made with hands” or “idols.”But such a connotation is plausible only if one overinterprets Jesus’ actions in the temple in relation to the cursing of the fig tree. Although such a reading of Mark is not well supported by the text, it does seem to be an aspect of the significance of the speech of Stephen in Acts. Stephen is accused by false witnesses of saying that Jesus will destroy the temple (6:13-14). In his defense, he tells how the wilderness generation asked Aaron to “make gods” for them (ποιησον ημιν θεους) (7:40). They made a golden calf, offered sacrifice to the idol and “rejoiced in the works of their hands” (ευφραινοντο εν τοις εργοις των χειρων αυτων) (7:41). In criticism of the temple built by Solomon, Stephen cites Isa 66:1-2 (7:49-50). In introducing this quotation, he says, “But the Most High does not dwell in (temples) made by hands” (αλλ' ουχ ο υψιστος εν χειροποιητος κατοικει) (7:48). If v. 48 alludes back to v. 41, as seems likely, the implication is that having a material temple is a kind of idolatry.

 

Whereas the author and audience of Jubilees and the community at Qumran apparently expected a glorious temple built by God to be established in the earthly Jerusalem, Paul and the author of Hebrews used the term αχειροποιητος (“not made with hands”) to speak of eternal entities in the heavenly world (2 Cor 5:1; Heb 9:11, 24). Heb 9:11 says that Christ has entered “through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, which is not made with hands, that is, not of this creation” (δια της μειζονος και τελειοτερας σκηνης ου χειροποιητου, τουτ' εστιν ου ταυτης της κτισεως) (Heb 9:11). This greater and more perfect tabernacle is “the heavenly or spiritual archetype of the earthly tabernacle” or “a more abstract ‘heaven,’ represented in its entirety by the skhnhv” (“tabernacle”). In 2 Cor 5:1, the οικοδομη εκ θεου (“building from God”) is either a spiritual body that God will grant each of the faithful when they die (or at least the special dead, like Paul) or the heavenly temple into which the faithful dead will be incorporated (cf. Rev 3:12).

 

Somewhat different from the biblical, Second Temple Jewish, and early Christian distinctions between that which is “made with hands” and that which is “not made with hands” is the form that distinction took in Hellenistic critiques of traditional cults. In the latter, what is “not made with hands” is the universe or cosmos as a whole.

 

The most likely meaning for “the temple not made with hands” in v. 58 at the Markan stage is the apocalyptic notion of an eschatological, eternal temple of divine origin. The narrator of Mark calls the saying attributed to Jesus “false” primarily because of the emphatic first person singular form the saying takes in both its parts. Another factor may be that the author no longer expects the appearance of such a temple on earth; calling the testimony “false” creates or recognizes some distance between the traditional saying behind the testimony and the views of the author and audiences of Mark. Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary [Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2007], 702-3)

 

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