Commenting on “The Ideal View” (i.e., the temple vision of Ezekeil being “an apocalyptic dream or ideal in which God gives to Ezekiel an ethereal vision of what God would do for His people” [p. 15]):
This view grasps the spirit
of what God wanted to do for His people, however it fails in that it is unable
to do justice to the details given by Ezekiel. If the point of the vision was
simply to present the symbolic truth that God would one day dwell in the midst
of His people, why would Ezekiel give nine chapters of specific measurements
and regulations? A possible answer to this question is that Ezekiel was
presenting a truth in a way that was familiar to him. While it is valid that he
was presenting a truth in a familiar way, this point becomes invalid when it is
realized that Ezekiel's picture of the temple is contradictory in many ways to
the temple with which he was familiar, and the priestly regulations set forth
in the Pentateuch. (These differences will be documented in chapter 6.) So, if
Ezekiel were simply presenting a spiritual truth in an apocalyptic dream in
language with which he was familiar, it is very strange that he would diverge
from the temple he knew as well as standard cultic practices laid down in the
Levitical law. A further difficulty with this position is that 40— 48 really
gives no textual clues that it is to be interpreted symbolically as other
visions in the book should be by virtue of their unrealistic characters (e.g.
ch. 1). (Jerry Michael Hullinger, "A proposed solution to the problem of
animal sacrifices in Ezekiel 40-48" [PhD Dissertation; Dallas Theological
Seminary, 1993], 17-18)
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