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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Dora Smith <villandra AT austin.rr.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew list <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Please shed any light on meaning of "temple" in these passages
  • Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:55:07 -0800

On 02/02/2004 04:09, Dora Smith wrote:

Someone posted this book excerpt to another list I'm on.


THE ISRAELITES IN HISTORY AND TRADITION
by Niels Peter Lemche (c) 1998

Page 95

...


I don't know what to think of Lemche or the thoroughness of his research.
It is news to me that anyone has been searching for a temple at Shiloh; I
always understood the shrine at Shiloh to be only a shrine.


This seems to be typical of certain kinds of scholarship. One scholar erects a theory that there was a permanent and impressive temple at Shiloh although the records don't say there was. Another demolishes this theory and then presumes that he has discredited the account which didn't support the theory in the first place. Anyway it is extremely hazardous to conclude anything from negative evidence in archaeology, failure to find something. There are so many reasons why evidence can have disappeared, or not be in the expected place.

Prof Lemche was on this list a few years ago. Maybe he is still lurking. I would of course be interested to hear his response to my criticism.

The actual passages as translated in the New Revised Standard Version DO
refer to a temple there, but one of the passages also calls it a tent of
meeting, and my Access Bible interprets this to mean the "temple" was a
mobile tent shrine.

What Hebrew word is used, how can it be interpreted, and what light can
anyone shed on whether the structure was a tent or a temple?

------------------------------

Jeremiah 4:12; Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name
dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people
Israel. Notes explain that Shiloh was a shrine in the northern kingdom that
was destroyed by the Philistines.


7:12 actually, describes Shiloh as a MAQOM "place", nothing more speific.

...
Note on this says "Elkanah's annual pilgrimage to the temple of Yahweh or
house of the Lord (v. 7) in Shiloh..."


1 Sam 1:7 BEYT-YHWH "house of the Lord" (cf. 2 Sam 12:20 before the building of the temple), but BAYIT does not always mean a permanent house, it can refer to a tent e.g. Gen 27:15. Anyway, even if this was a regular BAYIT it would have been built of mud brick and so its remains would be undetectable, or indistinguishable from those of dwelling houses, after 3000 years.

Now Eli was very old. He heard all that his sons were doing to all Israel,
an dhow they lay with the women who served at the entrance to the tent of
meeting. ...

This is 1 Sam 2:22, and the shrine is described as 'OHEL MO`ED "tent of meeting", the same term regularly used for the tabernacle which was transported through the desert in Moses' time. This clearly implies that the author identifies the Shiloh shrine with that tent. Of course the tent might have been partly replaced by a more permanent structure, but the text doesn't say that it had been.

...
3:3: And Samuel was lying down n the temple of the Lord, where the ark of
God was. Note on this says, "Samuel's bed was in the temple near the inner
sanctuary where the ark of God was kept. "


Here, also 1:9, HEYKAL "temple" is used, but this word alone doesn't tell us what kind of building it was.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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