Margaret Barker
The Temple Roots of the Liturgy
‘It is remarkable how few traces of the solemn liturgies of
the High Holy Days have left in Christian worship’.
‘Christ was more associated with the synagogue type of
worship than with that of the temple’[1] These two quotations from books
written some forty years ago are not untypical of the approach at
that time to the origins of Christian Liturgy, namely that they
are to be found in the synagogue. In this paper I shall show some
of the similarities between the early Christian liturgies and
temple rituals
Since the New Testament interprets the death of Jesus as
atonement (e.g. 1 Cor.15.3) and links the Eucharist to his death,
there must have been from the start some link between Eucharist
and atonement. Since the imagery of the Eucharist is sacrificial,
this must have been an Atonement sacrifice in the temple, rather
than just the time of fasting observed by the people. It is true
that very little is known about the origin of the Christian
liturgy or about temple practices, but certain areas do invite
further examination. In the Letter to the Hebrews, for example,
Christ is presented as the high priest offering the atonement
sacrifice, and this surely should be taken as the starting point
for any investigation into roots of the Christian Liturgy. In his
book The Christian Understanding of Atonement, Dillistone
made this observation: ‘From the New Testament there come
hints, suggestions, even daring affirmations of a comprehensive
cosmic reconciliation’. He doubted that this came from
Hebrew thought and so suggested: ‘It was not until early
Christian witnesses found themselves confronted by pagan systems
in which a full theory of cosmic redemption played a prominent
part that the effect of the work of Christ upon the cosmos at
large began to receive serious consideration’[2]. The pre-Christian roots of the
idea of Atonement have played a very small part in Christian
treatments of the subject; a recent report by the Church of
England’s Doctrine Commission dealt with atonement without
mentioning Leviticus[3].
The Eucharist has frequently been linked to the Passover, for the
very obvious reason that the Last Supper is linked to that
festival[4], and Paul wrote to the Corinthian
church that ‘Christ our Passover has been sacrificed’
(1.Cor.5.7). But there are immediate and obvious problems trying
to link the Eucharist with Passover to as we recognise it: the
Passover was the only sacrifice not offered by a priest
(m.Pesahim 5.5ff on Exod 12.6), and the essential element was
that the offering was whole, (Exod 12.46), whereas the words of
institution in their various forms all emphasise that the
bread/body was broken[5] Further, the cup at the Last
Supper is linked to the covenant [except the Western text of
Luke], and the Letter to the Hebrews links the death of Jesus to
the covenant renewed on the Day of Atonement (Heb.9.11-15).
Matthew’s form of the words ‘My blood of the covenant
poured out for many for the aphesis of sins’
(Mat.26.28) suggests the same context, since aphesis was
the translation for deror,
liberty, the characteristic of the Jubilee which was inaugurated
on the Day of Atonement (Lxx Lev.25.10; Isa.61.1 also Luke 4.18).
Since the great Jubilee at the end of the second temple period
was associated with the appearance of Melchizedek and his
atonement sacrifice (11Q Melch), we have here a possible
contemporary context for the words of institution. And again,
there are the words of the early liturgies, which do not use the
Exodus imagery of being the Chosen people and being liberated
from slavery. We find in the Didache thanksgiving for the gifts
of knowledge and eternal life, and for the Sacred Name dwelling
in the hearts of those who have received the spiritual food
(Didache 9-10). This, as we shall see, is priestly Wisdom
imagery. The hope is for the ingathering of the scattered Church
into the Kingdom. Bishop Sarapion (mid 4th century Egypt) prayed
that his people would become ‘living’, i.e.
resurrected, and able to speak of the mysteries, that the
spiritual food would be the medicine of life to heal every
sickness. ‘Make us wise by the participation of the body and
the blood’.
Let us now consider the words of Bishop Sarapion’s
contemporary, St Basil of Caesarea, who died 379CE. In his
treatise On the Holy Spirit, he emphasised the unwritten
traditions of the Church. Where, he asked, do we find in writing
anything about signing with the cross (at baptism), or about
turning to the east to pray. ‘Which of the saints has left
us in writing the words of invocation (epiklesis) at the
offering of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing?
For, as it is well known, we are not satisfied with saying the
words which the Apostle and the Gospel have recorded, but, before
and after these words we add other words, on the grounds that
they have great strength for the mystery. And these words we have
received from the unwritten teaching.’ (On the Holy
Spirit 66)
Origen had written something similar a century or so earlier, in
his Homily 5 on Numbers. He compared these same Christian
practices - praying towards the East, the rites of baptism and
the Eucharist - to the secrets of the temple which were guarded
by the priests. Commenting on Numbers 4, the instructions for
transporting the tabernacle through the desert, he emphasised
that the family of Kohath were only permitted to carry the sacred
objects but not to see them. Only Aaron the high priest and his
sons were permitted to see what was in the holy place; then they
had to cover the sacred objects with veils before handing them to
others, who were only permitted to carry them. The mysteries of
the Church were similar, ‘handed down and entrusted to us by
the high priest and his sons.’ Origen does not say who this
high priest was; we assume it was Jesus and his disciples, but
Origen could have known a continuity between the Christian
mysteries and those of the temple priesthood[6]. Origen had close contact with the
Jewish scholars in Caesarea and he knew at least one of what we
nowadays call the Dead Sea Scrolls[7].
The duties of the priests were defined as ‘guarding all
matters concerning the altar and what was within the veil’
(Num..3.10; 18.7 LXX), and as early as the letter of Ignatius to
the Philadelphians, we read: ‘Our own high priest is greater
(than the priests of old) for he has been entrusted with the Holy
of Holies and to him alone are the secret things of God
committed’ (Phil.9). Clement of Alexandria used similar
imagery: those who have the truth enter by drawing aside the
curtain (Misc.7.17). He knew that there were ‘among the
Hebrews some things delivered unwritten’ (Misc.5.10). Origen
too spoke often of the unwritten or secret tradition (e.g.
Cels.3.37; 6.6; Preface to First Princ), the mystery
‘established before the ages’ (On Mat.7.2)[8].
Of the examples given by Basil, facing the east to pray and
signing with a cross at baptism can be identified as customs
dating back to the first temple. The Mishnah records that during
Tabernacles, a procession would turn back at the eastern gate and
face towards the temple saying: ‘Our fathers when they were
in this place turned with their backs towards the temple of the
Lord and their faces towards the east and they worshipped the sun
towards the east; but as for us, our eyes are turned toward the
Lord’ (m.Sukkah 5.4). This clearly refers to Ezekiel’s
account of men in the temple facing east, holding branches before
their faces and worshipping the sun (Ezek. 8.16-8), presumably in
a celebration akin to Tabernacles. The Therapeuts (Philo
Cont.Life 27) and the Essenes (Josephus War 2.128) also
worshipped towards the rising sun, and the vision in Revelation 7
describes a great multitude holding palm branches, standing
before the angel who came from the sunrise with the seal of the
living God. Worshipping towards the east must have been a
practice which distinguished the adherents of first temple
customs from those favoured by the compilers of the Mishnah.
Signing with a cross was also a custom from the first temple.
When Ezekiel received his vision of the destruction of Jerusalem,
he saw the six angels of destruction and a seventh, who was
instructed to pass through the city and mark a letter tau on the
foreheads of those who were faithful to the Lord (Ezek 9.4). In
the old Hebrew alphabet, the tau is a diagonal cross, the sign
which was also used when the high priest was anointed on his
forehead (b. Horayoth 12a). The anointed high priest was
distinguished from the one who only wore the garments of high
priesthood (m.Horayoth 3.4), and, since the true anointing oil
had been hidden away in the time of Josiah (b.Horayoth 12a, b
Kerittoth 5b), the tradition of anointing the high priest in this
way must have been another first temple custom which was not
observed during the second temple.
Christian customs, then, perpetuated practices which had very
ancient roots but had not been current in the second temple.
Presumably the Christians also perpetuated the beliefs that
accompanied those practices: the belief that the gift of Wisdom
was good, for example, and that it made humans like gods (i.e.
gave them eternal life), just as the serpent in Eden had said. We
are not looking for continuity with the actual temple practices
of the first century CE (nor with its scriptures), but with a
remembered, perhaps idealised, system that was much older. We are
looking for the temple destroyed in the time of Josiah, rather
than the second temple which was condemned in the Enoch tradition
as impure and polluted (1 En.89.73).
Where had this system been preserved? The Melchizedek Text has a
possible reading about people in the last days whose teachers
have been kept hidden and secret (as in DJD XXIII 11Q Melch 4-5).
The Damascus Document is quite clear: a remnant knew the
‘hidden things in which all Israel has gone astray’ and
the examples given are ‘his holy Sabbaths and his glorious
feasts’ (CD III)[9]. These are usually interpreted as
a dispute about the calendar and this was certainly a part of the
problem. But only a part! There could well have been disputes
over the significance and manner of observing those Sabbaths and
feasts: ‘They shall keep the Sabbath Day according to its
exact interpretation and the feasts and the Day of Fasting
according to the finding of the members of the New Covenant in
the land of Damascus’ (CD VI). The problem concerned the
Sabbath and especially the Day of Fasting i.e. the Day of
Atonement.
This remnant is very similar to the group depicted in the Book of
Revelation; the Damascus remnant are ‘called by Name and
stand at the end of days’ i.e. they are the resurrected to
wear the sacred Name, just like the redeemed in the holy of
holies at the end of the Book of Revelation (Rev. 22.4)[10], and also like those who
participate in the Eucharist of the Didache or Sarapion. The
group depicted in the Damascus Document and the Christians were
guardians of the true teaching ‘they keep the commandments
of God and the visions of Jesus’ (Rev.12. 17). The writers
of CD had similar concerns to those of the early Christians,
although, as is well known, there were also important
differences. What we seem to have here is a continuity; an
awareness of what is behind the Hebrew Scriptures (what I called The
Older Testament[11]) that passed into the New
Testament and then into the Liturgies.
Basil’s third example of unwritten tradition is the epiklesis
at the Eucharist. The later forms of this prayer, known from
the time of Cyril of Jerusalem (Catecheses 23.7, died 387 CE),
call on God the Father to send the Holy Spirit onto the bread and
wine, but the earlier forms seem to have been different, calling
for the Second Person, the Logos, the change the bread and wine.
In Egypt in the middle of the fourth century, Bishop Sarapion
prayed: ‘O God of truth, let thy holy Word come upon this
bread (epidemesato, literally ‘dwell’)...[12] The Liturgy of Addai and Mari is
a problem; although acknowledged as important evidence for early
practice, there is no agreement on the original form of the
prayers[13]. Dix’s reconstruction
offers a prayer addressed to the Second person, the Lord who
‘put on our manhood’: ‘May there come O my Lord,
thy Holy Spirit and rest upon this oblation of thy
Servants..’. Later prayers speak of the Spirit being
‘sent’ but these examples of early practice imply that
the divinity addressed ‘came’ to the bread and wine.
There is some confusion in the earliest texts because they can
call the Second Person either Word or Spirit, as did Philo for
whom the Word and Wisdom were equivalents[14]. Possibly the earliest evidence
of all, apart from the New Testament, is the Didache, which
concludes with the Maranatha, praying for the Lord to come.
Given the temple and priestly context of Basil’s other
‘unwritten’ traditions, it is likely that the epiklesis
also originated there, in the prayers for the Lord to
‘come’ to the temple. The tabernacle had been built so
that the Lord could ‘dwell’ there (Exod.25.8 Lxx
‘appear) and could speak to Moses from between the cherubim
on the ark (Exod 25.22). When the tabernacle was completed, the
Glory of the Lord came to fill the tabernacle
(Exod.40.34), as it also came to fill the newly built
temple (1 Kgs 8.11). Ezekiel later saw the Glory leaving the
polluted temple (Ezek.11.23). Isaiah had seen the Lord enthroned
in the temple (Isa.6); and the Third Isaiah prayed that the Lord
would rend the heavens and come down (Isa.64.1)[15]. Several passages in the later
Merkavah texts have suggested to scholars that drawing the Lord
down into the temple was a major element of the temple service.
Moshe Idel concluded: ‘We can seriously consider the
possibility that temple service was conceived as inducing the
presence of the Shekinah in the Holy of Holies’[16]. So where might the Maranatha
prayer have originated?
The rituals performed in the Holy of Holies are still as veiled
as they ever were, but we can at least place them in their
original setting. The tabernacle/temple replicated the days of
the creation. Moses began to erect it on the first day of the
year, and each stage corresponds to one of the days of creation
(Exod.40.16-33). The veil corresponded to the firmament set in
place on the second day, to separate what was above from what was
below. Everything beyond the veil corresponded to Day One, beyond
the visible world and beyond time. This seems to have been an
ancient pattern, but the Hebrew and Greek texts of Exodus are
notoriously divergent, and any discussion of the affairs of the
holy of holies was forbidden. The creation of the angels on Day
One was as sensitive issue, as were their names, and the
prohibition in the Mishnah concerned the secrets of the holy of
holies which the priests had to guard: the story of the creation,
the chapter of the chariot, what is above, beneath, before and
hereafter (m Hag 2.1). The rituals of the holy of holies were
thus taking place outside time and matter, in the realm of the
angels and the heavenly throne, and those who functioned in the
holy of holies were more than human, being and seeing beyond
time.
Psalm 110 (109), is obscure (perhaps obscured) in the Hebrew. The
Greek, however, describes how the king is born as the divine son
in the glory of the holy ones, i.e. in the holy of holies, and
declared to be the Melchizedek priest[17]. The last words of David
describe him as one through whom the Spirit of the Lord has
spoken, a man who was anointed and raised up (qwm, anestesan
kurios), a word that could also be translated
‘resurrected’ (2 Sam.23.1). This is how it must have
been understood at the end of the second temple period, because
the Letter to the Hebrews contrasts the Levitical priests and
Melchizedek; the former have their position due to descent from
Levi, but Melchizedek has been raised up (anistatai)
with the power of indestructible life (Heb.7.15-16). The
Chronicler’s account of Solomon’s enthronement says
that he sat on the throne of the Lord as king, and the people
worshipped the Lord and the king (1 Chron.29.20-23). That the
Davidic monarchs had indeed become ‘God and King’ in
the holy of holies, and that this had not been forgotten, is
confirmed by Philo’s extraordinary statement about Moses: he
became god and king when he entered the darkness where God was
(Moses I.158). In his vision, Ezekiel saw this divine and human
figure enthroned, the glory of the Lord in human form
(Ezek.1.26-28), and the later account of the tabernacle in Exodus
25 remembered the king on his cherub throne as the voice of the
Lord above the kapporeth, between the cherubim
(Exod.25.22).
The holy of holies was the place of the pre-created light of Day
One, but in the temple this was in fact the darkness of the
divine presence in the holy of holies. Texts which describe what
happened before the world was created, or what happened in
eternity, are describing rituals in the holy of holies,
presumably the secrets from beyond the curtain which Jesus is
said to have taught (e.g. Clement Misc.6.7; 7,17; Origen Cels.
3.37: ‘Jesus beheld these weighty secrets and made them
known to a few’: Origen on Mat.7.2 ‘...the mystery
established before the ages’). Thus Psalm 110 is telling us
that the divine son was ‘born’ in eternity. When
Enoch’s second parable says that the Son of Man was named
before the Lord of Spirits, before the sun and signs were
created, it indicates a naming ritual in the holy of holies, most
likely when the human figure was given the Sacred Name (1
En.48.2-3)[18]. After this he was enthroned and
for his people he was Immanuel, God With Us. The reference in
Philippians 2 shows that the sequence of the ritual was still
known at the end of the first temple period, and used to set the
death of Jesus in one particular context. The Servant is exalted
and given the Name because he has died. He nevertheless reigns in
heaven and receives homage whilst enthroned. In other words, the
one who bears the Name is resurrected, just as David had claimed
in his ‘last words’, and just as the writer to the
Hebrews claimed for Melchizedek. There is a similar pattern in
Daniel 7, where the human figure goes with clouds - the clouds of
incense with which the human figure entered the holy of holies -
and is offered before the Ancient of Days (Dan.7.13)[19]. He is then enthroned and given
the kingdom of eternity. A similar sequence appears in the second
parable of Enoch, where the Man figure goes to the Head of Days
and the blood of the Righteous One is offered (1 En.47.1)[20].
The Lord was enthroned on the kapporeth over the ark, the
place of atonement. The ascent of the human figure was associated
with the offering of blood, but the only blood offering made in
the holy of holies itself was the offering on the Day of
Atonement. What, then, happened on the Day of Atonement? This was
one of the issues on which Israel had gone astray, according to
the Damascus Document. It used to be said that the ritual
prescribed in Leviticus 16 was a relatively late addition to the
lore of the temple, but scholars are now moving towards the view
that this was one of the most ancient practices[21]. Few details are given in
Leviticus, although the shape of the ritual is clear enough. The
high priest took blood into the holy of holies and as he emerged,
he sprinkled certain parts of the temple ‘to cleanse it and
hallow it from all the uncleannesses (tum’ot) of the people
of Israel’ (Lev.16.19). He entered the holy place in great
fear, because the Lord would appear to him over the kapporet
(Lev.16.2). Since the temple was a microcosm of the whole
creation, atonement was a ritual to cleanse and renew the
creation at the beginning of the year. The Mishnah gives more
detail of where the blood was sprinkled, and adds that what was
left was poured out at the base of the altar (m Yoma 5.4-6). The
high priest also prayed when he was in the temple, but what he
said is not recorded. Only the words used outside the temple
appear in the Mishnah.
Robertson Smith, in his Lectures on the Religion of the
Semites (delivered in 1888-89 and first published in 1894)
observed: ‘The worship of the second temple was an
antiquarian resuscitation of forms which had lost their intimate
connection with the national life and therefore had lost the
greater part of their original significance’,[22] but according to the Jewish
Encyclopaedia, atonement was ‘the keystone of the
sacrificial system of post exilic Israel’. In other words,
the extent of our ignorance about the Day of Atonement is the
extent of our ignorance about Israel’s earlier religion, and
what we read in the post exilic texts may not be the best source
of information about the original rite. There is, for example, no
certain reference to Aaron or his priests in any pre-exilic text.
Even Ezekiel, who was a priest in the first temple, does not
mention him. The Elephantine texts, which give a glimpse of
Jewish life in Egypt in the sixth and fifth centuries, often
mention priests but never Aaron, nor Levi nor the Levites[23]. Any rites and duties associated
with Aaron probably came from the older royal priesthood of
Melchizedek. Since there have already been other indications that
Basil’s unwritten traditions, including the epiklesis,
had their ultimate origin in the cult of the first temple, it is
likely that any misconception about the Day of Atonement will
have had serious consequences for understanding the roots of the
Christian liturgy.
What was the high priest doing when he made atonement? According
to Numbers 25.6ff, the family of Aaron was given the
‘covenant of eternal priesthood’ because Phineas had
been zealous to preserve the covenant. Atonement was acting to
protect the covenant of peace, elsewhere described as ‘the
eternal covenant’ or ‘the everlasting covenant between
God and every living creature’ (Gen.9.16). Isaiah described
how the pollution of human sin caused the covenant to collapse
(Isa.24.4-6) with heaven and earth withering away. Atonement
renewed it. Aaron protected the people from the consequences of
breaking the covenant by burning incense: ‘Take your
censer... and make atonement for them... for wrath has gone forth
from the Lord (Num.17.46 English numbering). More commonly,
atonement was effected by blood: ‘I have given blood for you
upon the altar to make atonement for your souls...(Lev.17.11).
Blood renewed the eternal covenant which had been destroyed by
human sin. Since the temple was the microcosm of the creation,
the temple ritual to renew the covenant also renewed the
creation. Hence the famous words attributed to the high priest
Simeon the Just: ‘By three things is the world sustained: by
the Law, by the temple service and by deeds of loving
kindness’ (m. Aboth 1.2). On the Day of Atonement the
eternal covenant was renewed, and blood was sprinkled to remove
the effects of sin. The blood was brought out from the holy of
holies; in temple symbolism, this was new life brought from
heaven to renew the earth.
But whose life? Two goats were necessary for the Day of
Atonement, and the customary rendering of Leviticus 16.8 is that
one goat was ‘for the Lord’ and the other goat
‘for Azazel’. This way of reading the text has caused
many problems, not least why any offering was being sent to
Azazel. One line in Origen’s Contra Celsum may provide vital
evidence here. He says that the goat sent into the desert
represented Azazel. If this was correct, then the sacrificed goat
must have represented the Lord. The le meant ‘as
the Lord’ not ‘for the Lord’, and Israel
did not, after all, make an offering to Azazel. The blood which
renewed the creation was new life from the Lord. Since the high
priest himself represented the Lord, wearing the Sacred Name on
his forehead, we have here a ritual in which the Lord was both
the high priest and the victim in the act of atonement. The
argument in the Letter to the Hebrews implies that the older
practice of substitution had been superseded and that the annual
rite was no longer necessary: ‘When Christ appeared as a
high priest... he entered once for all in to the holy place,
taking not the blood of goats and calves, but his own blood thus
securing an eternal redemption...’ (Heb.9.11-12). The high
priest had entered heaven with the blood of the great atonement,
and the origin of the Parousia expectation was that the high
priest would return to complete the atonement and renewal of the
creation. Hence Peter’s speech in Solomon’s portico:
‘Repent, therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be
blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence
of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you,
whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that
God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets...’ (Acts
3.12-23).
The story of the Last Supper depicts Jesus renewing the Eternal
Covenant. As the great high priest it was his own blood that
would renew the covenant and put away sins. None of the other
covenants described in the Hebrew Scriptures concerns putting
away sin. Hence when the ‘Last Supper’ was repeated in
early worship, they prayed for the return of the high priest to
complete the great atonement: ‘Maranatha’. As time
passed and the Parousia hope faded, the significance of the
original epiklesis changed, and what had begun as a temple
ritual fulfilled in history, returned to being a ritual. The
roots of the Christian Eucharistic Liturgy lie mainly in the Day
of Atonement, understood as the renewal of the creation, and
this, as we shall see, passed into the words of the Liturgies.
Another root of the Eucharistic Liturgies is found in the temple
ritual for the Sabbath, the ‘Shewbread’[24]. Twelve loaves made from fine
flour were set out in the temple every Sabbath on a table of
gold, and incense was set with them[25]. It was described as a most holy
portion for the high priests (Aaron and his sons Lev.24.9), to be
eaten in a holy place on the Sabbath. As with the other temple
furnishings and rituals, nothing is said about meaning; we have
to guess.
First, the bread was placed on a table in the temple, the only
cereal offering to be taken inside. The Mishnah records that
there were two tables in the porch outside the temple; ‘On
the table of marble they laid the Shewbread when it was brought
in, and on the table of gold they laid it when it was brought
out, since what is holy must be raised and not brought down’
(m. Menahoth 11.7). In other words, the bread acquired holiness
whilst it was in the temple, and, since it was classed as
‘most holy’ (Lev.24.9), it would have imparted holiness
to the men who consumed it[26]. Others who even came near the
holiest things were in danger of death (Num.4.19). The priests
who ate the goat of the sin offering, most holy food, were
thereby enabled to bear the iniquity of the congregation and thus
make atonement for them (Lev.10.17). Something similar was said
of Aaron when he wore the Name of the Lord on his forehead; he
was empowered to bear the ‘guilt’ of the offerings[2] (Exod.28.38). Those who ate the
Shewbread must have acquired some power.
All the cereal offerings had a special significance, although the
details are now lost. They are ranked with the sin offering hatta’th
and the guilt offering `asam, and mentioned first in the
list, (Num.18.9; Ezek 44.29); they had to be stored and eaten in
the holy chambers within the temple court (Ezek.42.13). The
Shewbread, like the other cereal offerings, was described as an `azkarah,
memorial offering, although how exactly this was understood is
not clear. The text of Leviticus 24.7 implies that the incense on
the table was the ‘memorial offering’, but the Targums[27] here describe the Shewbread as
the ‘Bread of Memorial before the Lord’, suggesting
that this is how it may have been understood at the end of the
second temple period. The extreme holiness of the Shewbread is
confirmed by the fact that when the desert tabernacle was moved,
the ark and the table of Shewbread were the only items to have
three covers (Num.4.5-8). The lamp, the incense altar and the
other sanctuary vessels were wrapped in a blue cloth and a
leather cover, but in addition to these, the ark was first
covered by the veil, and the table by a scarlet covering. The
bread in the temple was an eternal covenant. The regulations in
Leviticus are brief and enigmatic; the bread has to be set in
place each Sabbath ‘an eternal covenant’ (Lev.24.8).
The Sabbath itself was described as an eternal covenant, marking
the completion of the creation (Exod 31.16). The rainbow was
another sign of the eternal covenant: ‘and when the bow is
in the clouds, I will look upon it and remember the eternal
covenant between God and every living creature’ (Gen.9.16).
Might this have been the significance of the bread set before the
Lord each Sabbath, a memorial of the eternal covenant?
The rainbow came to be seen as a sign of the divine presence;
Ezekiel had described the Glory as a rainbow (Ezek.1.28) and
stories were told of a rainbow appearing as the great rabbis were
teaching (e.g. b.Hagigah 14b). In the later Merkavah texts, the
Servant who bore the Sacred Name was wrapped in a rainbow[28], as had been the high priest
Simeon when he emerged from the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement
(b. Sira 50.7). The heavenly throne in Revelation was wreathed in
a rainbow (Rev.4.3) as was the Great Angel in John’s vision
of the Parousia, who returned from heaven wrapped in a cloud and
a rainbow, with his face shining like the sun (Rev.10.1)[29].
If the Shewbread was similarly a sign of the eternal covenant,
the term lehem panim, bread of face/presence could mean
rather more than just ‘bread put out before the Lord’?
There are several places in the Hebrew Scriptures where panim
was used as a circumlocution for the Lord himself, as can be seen
from the LXX. Thus ‘My presence will go with you’
(Exod.33.14) was translated ‘I myself will go...autos’
and Moses’ response ‘ If your presence will not go with
me...’ became ‘ If you yourself do not go with me...
autos. ‘He brought you out of Egypt with his own
presence (Deut 4.37) became ‘He himself led you out autos’.
‘The Angel of his presence saved them’ (Isa.63.9)
became ‘Not an ambassador nor an angel, but he himself saved
them’.[30] This latter is emphatic; the
angel of the Presence was the Lord himself. Perhaps this is how
‘Bread of Presence’ should be understood; it would
certainly explain the great holiness of the Shewbread and the
special status of the table on which it rested[31].
So much information about the temple has disappeared and has to
be reconstructed from allusions elsewhere. There were, for
example, libation vessels kept on the Shewbread table (Exod.25.29
cf 1 Kgs 7.50), but there is no record of how these were used in
the temple[32]. There had been meals in the
temple; the elders who saw the God of Israel on Sinai and ate and
drank in safety before him is an encoded reference to this
(Exod.24.11). So too, perhaps, Psalm 23: the table set before the
anointed one, who would dwell in the house of the Lord forever,
and the belief that the ruler in Israel would come forth from the
House of bread, beth lehem (Mic.5.2). For the rest, we
look in the shadows and and listen for echoes. In the Midrash
Rabbah we find: ‘Melchizedek instructed Abraham in the laws
of the priesthood, the bread alluding to the Shewbread and the
wine to libations’(R.Gen XLIII.6). ‘The House of Wisdom
is the tabernacle, and Wisdom’s table is Shewbread and wine
(R.Lev.XI.9). ‘In this world you offer before me Shewbread
and sacrifices, but in the world to come I shall prepare for you
a great table’ (followed by a reference to Ps 23,
R.Num.XXI.21). Another mystery is the investiture described in
the Testament of Levi. Levi saw seven angels giving him the
insignia of high priesthood and he described the ritual: he was
anointed, washed with water and then fed ‘bread and wine,
‘the most holy things[33]’, before eventually
receiving the incense (T.Levi 8.1-10). These rituals bear some
resemblance to those in Leviticus 8: washing, vesting, crowning
and anointing, but there is nothing in T.Levi about smearing
blood and eating the boiled flesh of the offerings. Did the
Testament of Levi recall the older ritual, the Melchizedek ritual
which involved the bread and wine? And if so, who had preserved
this knowledge since the destruction of the first temple?[34]
Wisdom and her house is a another recurring theme with the
Shewbread This suggests it was an element in the cult of the
first temple, where Melchizedek was high priest, and Wisdom was
the Queen of Heaven, the patroness of the city. The importance of
the Shewbread in that cult may account for the later silence in
‘official texts’ and the consistent echoes elsewhere.
The offerings to the Queen had been ‘cakes’, libations
and incense (Jer.44.18-19), and the refugees in Egypt after
586BCE, reminded Jeremiah that this cult had been abandoned with
disastrous consequences for Jerusalem. Wisdom was remembered for
her table. The poem in Proverbs 9 is much interpolated, but it is
still clear that Wisdom offers the bread and wine of her table to
those who seek the way of insight (Prov.9.5-6). Ben Sira promises
the man who has Wisdom that she will meet him like a mother and
welcome him like a wife, feeding him with the bread of
understanding and the water of wisdom (Ben Sira 15.2-3). Wisdom
herself promises that those who eat of her will long for more
(Ben Sira 50.21), and we know from elsewhere that the gift of
Wisdom brought eternal life (e.g. Wisdom 8.13).
Recall for a moment the Damascus Document, that a remnant had
kept the true ways when Israel had gone astray over the Sabbath
and the Day of Atonement. The temple ritual for the Sabbath was
the renewal of the Shewbread, a high priestly ritual, and the Day
of Atonement was the major high priestly ritual. There is a
conspicuous silence about both of them, but such fragments as can
be recovered correspond to elements in Christian ritual; to
liturgies and related writings, and even, at a later period, to
church architecture. This may have been a conscious imitation of
the temple at a later stage, rather than an unbroken tradition
from earliest times, but even this most sceptical position
implies an expert knowledge not only of the temple, but of the
older traditions which had been th cause of such controversy. It
is more likely that the tradition came through from the time when
these were still living issues, and gave rise to the original
claim that Jesus was the Melchizedek high priest.
Now for a few comparisons. First, with the Shewbread, the
memorial offering, associated with Wisdom and her invitation:
‘Those who eat me will hunger for more’, (b.Sira
24.21), and with Melchizedek the resurrected high priest. It was
eaten by the the high priests who wore the Sacred Name, and was
their most holy food. Eusebius wrote: ‘Our Saviour Jesus,
the Christ of God, even now today performs through his ministers
sacrifices after the manner of Melchizedek (Proof 5.3). In the
Didache they gave thanks over the bread for ‘life and
knowledge’, and after partaking, gave thanks for the Sacred
Name dwelling in their hearts, knowledge, faith and immortality
(Didache 9-10). Bishop Sarapion prayed: ‘Make us wise by the
participation of the body and the blood’. The prothesis
prayer of the Coptic Jacobites preserves the Shewbread tradition:
‘Lord Jesus Christ... the living bread which came down from
heaven... make thy face shine upon this bread and upon this cup
which we have set upon thy priestly table. To this day the
lectionary of the eastern churches prescribes Proverbs 9,
Wisdom’s invitation to her feast of bread and wine, as the
reading for MaundyThrusday. Perhaps the words which Luke and Paul
(Luke 22.19; 1 Cor.11.24) attributed to Jesus: ‘Do this in
remembrance of me’ were originally ‘Do this as my
memorial offering, my `azkarah’, and the bread was
the new Shewbread[35]
Second, the Day of Atonement, when the high priest, who was the
Lord, entered ‘heaven’ carrying blood which represented
the life of the Lord. It was sprinkled on the ‘throne’,
and then brought out into the visible world to renew the eternal
covenant and restore the creation. The ritual represented and
anticipated the Day of the Lord, when he would judge those on
earth, banish evil and establish his kingdom. A key text was
Deuteronomy 32.43: the Lord emerging from heaven to judge his
enemies and atone the land[36]. The Day of Atonement is the
only possible source of the ‘both high priest and
victim’ belief associated with the Eucharist. Thus Narsai
(Hom XVIIA): ‘The priest... celebrating this sacrifice,
bears in himself the image of our Lord in that hour...’
Origen interpreted the Eucharist as the Day of Atonement
offering: ‘Christ the true high priest who made atonement
for you... hear him saying to you: “This is my blood which
is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins”’ (On
Leviticus 9). As early as the Letter of Barnabas, the Day of the
Lord was linked to the goat offered on the Day ofAtonement
(Barn.7) and Justin knew that the sacrificed goat prefigured the
Second Coming (Trypho 40), Cyril of Alexandria wrote: ‘We
must perceive the Immanuel in the slaughtered goat... the two
goats illustrate the mystery (Letter 41). Bishop Sarapion’s
Eucharist was the Day of Atonement; he prayed for ‘the
medicine of life... and not condemnation.’ He prayed for
angels to come and destroy the evil one and establish the Church,
in other words, for the banishing of Azazel and the establishing
of the Kingdom. The Liturgies of Addai and Mari, of John
Chrysostom and of James all have similar themes: remission of
sins, enlightenment, access to the Lord, life in the Kingdom.
A recurring theme is fear and awe, the fear which the high priest
felt as he entered the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement.
Thus Narsai (Hom XVIIA, late fifth century): ‘The dread
mysteries... let everyone be in fear and dread as they are
performed.. the hour of trembling and great fear.’ Cyril of
Jerusalem speaks of ‘the most awful hour’ and ‘the
most awful sacrifice’ (Mystagogical Lectures 5.4,9). The
Nestorian Liturgy speaks of ‘the great fearful holy life
giving divine mystery’, and the priest prays in the words of
Isaiah: ‘Woe is me. . for mine eyes have seen the Lord of
Hosts’ and. like Moses before the ark he says ‘I have
seen the Lord face to face’. Throughout the liturgies, the
imagery is of the holy of holies and the angel hosts. Just as the
ancient kings had been ‘born’ in the glory of the holy
ones, and were thus ‘raised up’, so too the bread and
wine was raised up at the moment of consecration. Thus Narsai
(Hom XVIIA), having described the awe and stillness in the
sanctuary at the moment of consecration, continued: ‘The
Spirit which raised him from the dead comes down now and
celebrates the mysteries of the resurrection of his body’.
The consecration was the resurrection: the power of the Godhead
comes upon the oblation, ‘ and completes the mystery of our
Lord’s resurrection from the dead’ 9 Narsai Hom XVIIA).
Thus the Lord emerging from the holy of holies on the Day of
Atonement, accompnaied by the angel hosts, became the procession
when the bread and wine from the sanctuary. Narsai again:
‘Thousands of Watchers and ministers of fire and spirit go
forth’ with the resurrected Lord, and the people rejoice
‘when they see the Body setting forth from the midst of the
altar.’
Finally, the setting of the Liturgy. The Altar in a traditional
Christian church, is set apart, in an orthodox church literally
beyond the veil. It must have derived from the kapporeth,
the place of atonement in the temple, where the Lord was
enthroned. In the eastern churches, the altar is known as the
throne, and in some of their traditions[37], drawing a curtain across the
holy place is still part of the liturgy[38]. Early sources speak of the
cherubim of the altar[39] and in Ethioppian churches,
there is an ark in the sanctuary. Finally, there is the
preparation the bread of the Eucharist in the Orthodox tradition.
The priest ‘sacrifices’ the loaf and then removes the
central portion to mix with the wine in the chalice. An exactly
similar procedure was used from the Day of Atonement sin offering
according to the Letter of Barnabas .
[1] Respectively E Werner The Sacred Bridge
London New York 1959 p 11 and W. Oesterley The Jewish
Background to the Christian Liturgy p 87
[2] F.W.Dillistone The Christian
Understanding of Atonement Weleyn 1968 p. 47.
[3] The Mystery of Salvation 1995 pp
96ff
[4] Although ‘Palm Sunday’ is clearly
a Tabernacles procession, as described in m.Sukkah 4.5
[5] B Longenekkar ‘The Unbroken
Messiah’ New Testament Studies 41 (1995) pp.428-441 suggests
why the unbroken Passover might have been significant for John.
[6] Acts 6.7 Many priests joined the Church.
[7] Eusebius History 6.16 ‘a scroll
in a jar near Jericho’.
[8] See my ‘The Secret Tradition’
Journal of Higher Criticism 2.1 1995 pp.31-67
[9] LXX Amos 3.12 refers to ‘those priests
in Damascus’ as a remnant, along with Samaria, of something
destroyed. See J.Sawyer ‘’Those Priests in
Damascus’ Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute’
viii.1970.7 pp 123-130.
[10] CD Ms B also mentions the saving power of
the mark described by Ezekiel.
[11] My book of that name, published London 1987
[12] Cf The Acts of Thomas 27, an epiklesis over
the anointing oil ‘Come Thou Holy Name of the Christ, with
‘come’ repeated eight times, after which the anointed
see a human form and then at dawn share the bread of the
Eucharist.
[13] Compare the reconstructions in G.Dix The
Shape of the Liturgy Black London 1945 pp.178ff and A Gelston
The Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari Oxford 1992 pp
49ff.
[14] e.g. Justin on Luke 1.31 the Spirit and the
Power of God are the Word, Apol 1.33: also my The Great Angel,
London 1992 p130.
[15] Solomon prayed for Wisdom to come to him.
The later text probably preserves the original significance of
this Wisd. 8.13). She gave immortality. The older text is
sanitised; Solomon went to the great high place at Gibeon and
there asked for Wisdom (I Kgs 3.6-9).
[16] M. Idel Kabbalah. New Perspectives.
New Haven and London 1988p.168
[17] Presumably this was the original context of
Isa.9.6-7
[18] A similar sequence appears in 3 En.13-15
[19] This is a possible reading of hqbrwhy
cf Ezra 6.10,17 and B130 of Theodotion where prosechthe or
prosenechthe in sacrificial sense,
[20] the whole sequence is that of Dan.7; there
is even the textual confusion in 47.4, where one text tradition
has qareba = offered and the other has baseha = come. See R.H.
Charles The Book of Enoch 1912 p. 92
[21] E.g. J Milgrom Leviticus New York
1991
[22] W.R.Smith Lectures on the religion of
the Semites 3rd edn London 1927 p.216.
[23] A Cowley Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth
Century BC. Oxford 1923 p.xxii
[24] It may be significant that Jesus’s
first Sabbath controversy mentioned the eating of the Shewbread
and who was permitted to do this Mark. 2.23-28.
[25] LXX says salt was set with the loaves also.
[26] The most holy items were deemed to impart
holiness e.g. the altar Exod 29.37; it vessels Exod 30.29; the
cereal offering eaten in the holy place Lev.6.17-18 English
numbering;
HHence the original
significance of the commandment not to bear the Name of the Lord
lightly, [2]for the Lord will not hold him
guiltless...’ (Exod.20.7)
[27] The Onkelos and Palestinian Targums agree.
[28] Schaefer #396,398
[29] See my The Revelation of Jesus Christ
Edinburgh 2000, pp. 180-182, 264
[30] A similar emphasis is found in later Jewish
texts. See J Goldin ‘Not by means of an angel and not by
means of a messenger’ in Religions in Antiquity. Essays
in Memory of E R Goodenough ed. J Neusner (Supplements to
Numen XIV) Leiden 1970
[31] T Onkelos Lev 24. Describes the Shewbread
as the most sacred of the oblations.
[32] V.A.Hurowitz ‘Solomon’s Golden
Vessels (I Kings 7.48-50) and the Cult of the First Temple’
in Pomegranates and Golden Bells, Ed D.P.Wright,
D.N.Freedman, A Hurvitz Winona Lake 1995, pp.151-164, suggests
that the P source shows the reformed cult, and that the
incorporated older lists of vessels are signs that the original
cult was more anthropomorphic.
[33] Reading with R.H.Charles
[34] See also H.L.Jansen ‘The Consecration
in the Eighth Chapter of the T Levi’ in The Sacral
Kingship. Proceedings of the Eighth International
Conference for the History of Religions Rome 1955 , Leiden
1959, pp.356-365.
[35] Mary Douglas ‘The Eucharist; Its
Continuity with the Bread Sacrifice of Leviticus’ Modern
Theology 15.2 (1999) pp.209-224, draws similar conclusions, using
the methods of an anthropologist and on the basis of a different
seet of materials. Building on A Marx Les Offrandes Vegetales
dans l’Ancien Testament; du tribut au repas eschatologique,
Leiden 1994, that the cereal and animal sacrifices are parallel
systems, she demonstrates first why the inner parts of the animal
that were offered as the holiest portion, and ‘what goes for
the animal, goes for the loaf of bread’, p.223.
[36] The vese has a significantly shorter fom in
the MT than in 4Q Deutq or the LXX.
[37] eg Copts. Armenians
[38] The temple/ church parallels are worked out
in the greatest detail in Germanus of Constantinople On the
Divine Liturgy (early eighth century).
[39] See K.E.McVey ‘The Domed Church as
Micrcosm; the Literay Roots of an Architectural Synbol’
Dumbartn Oaks Papers 37 (1983).