Other Temples

by Pahpa 10 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Pahpa

  Most of us are familiar with the Samaritan Temple built upon Mt. Gerizim from comments about it in the New Testament. Less familiar are the two Jewish temples that were built in Egypt. The Samaritan Temple existed from around 330 BC to 128 BC when it was destroyed by John Hyrcanus. The small community of Samaritans that still exist worship at the site.

  Less known are the temples that were erected on the Island of Elephantine (Asswan) and the other at Leontopolis in Egypt. It is believed that a Jewish garrison of mercenaries erected a temple at Elephantine. Myths have developed that the ark of the covenant was carried there before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and later transferred to Ethiopia. This site was destroyed in 410 BC. The temple that was built in Leontopolis around 171 BC came about when Onias fled Jerusalem. The king, Ptolemy VI Philometer, acceded to his request to build a temple resembling the one in Jerusalem. It remained for about 243 years until destroyed three years after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE.
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  Leolaia

  It is generally believed that the Leontopolis temple was built around 154 BC by Onias IV, not earlier by his father Onias III who was murdered around 171 BC while in captivity in Syria (2 Maccabees 4:33); Josephus in his own account had confused the two Oniads (cf. Bellum Judaicum, 7.10.2). I find it an attractive hypothesis that the ark venerated in Ethiopia (giving the Ethiopian Church the benefit of the doubt that it even exists) is a relic from the Leontopolis temple and constitutes a replica or recreation fashioned for the new temple, but this is only a hypothesis. The Jewish tradition in 2 Maccabees and the Vitae Prophetarum (and hinted in 2 Baruch and other sources) claimed that the prophet Jeremiah hid the ark in a cave somewhere in the mountains and sealed off the entrance. See my thread on this: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/95988/1.ashx
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  Qcmbr

  ..and they laugh at the idea that stories of Abraham could come out of Egypt.
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  Leolaia

  No, but what is laughable is the notion that the text produced by Joseph Smith called "The Book of Abraham" has any relation to the papyri portions published by him or the MMA papyri fragments published later on. The papyri are garden-variety funerary texts from the Ptolemaic period. "The Book of Abraham" on the other hand is a recent pseudepigraphon without any textual support.
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  Qcmbr

  Who says they are the same ??? I can't believe Leo. that that is the depth of your study on this!
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  siy

  bye the way the temple at aswan is lovely, so cool at night....
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  Leolaia

  This is going off-topic, so if you want to continue discussing the "Book of Abraham" it should probably continue in another thread. But to respond to your incredulity about my "depth of study," I suggest you point some studies my way which demonstrate that the translation of the "Book of Abraham" rests on a textual basis (rather than being the product of Joseph Smith's imagination) and that the published text -- which is claimed to have been "translated from the papyrus" and translated from "some ancient Records, that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt" [1] -- has any relation to the three fascimiles published with it [1, 2, 3], which are given captions that allude to the story of Abraham. The burden of proof is clearly on the person asserting such a link. Even without the MMA fragments as evidence, the three fascimiles themselves include hierglyphics that can be read and imagery that can be understood and situated within the wider corpus of Egyptian papyri, and they reveal themselves as typical funerary papyri without any of the claimed Abrahamic interpretations provided by Smith in the captions. Although the fascimiles were not of the "Book of Abraham" text proper, they lack the link to the "Book of Abraham" text that Smith published and they show that Smith really did not understand the text that he claimed to have been translating (as the captions fail to reflect the actual language and symbology of the text). Hence my statement on the lack of textual basis and the lack of connection to the published papyri vignettes. If you know of contrary evidence that (1) establishes a textual basis for the "Book of Abraham" or (2) shows that the fascimile captions are accurate and that the vignettes pertain to Abraham, please inform me otherwise in a separate thread.
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  Qcmbr

  Agreed Leo but here's a link which is a fairly good basic intro. I have several books by Michael D Rhodes which go into far more depth. http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_Abraham.shtml
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  Pahpa

  I also found it interesting that Onias used the prophecy in Isaiah (19:19) to justify his building of this temple in Egypt. I believe this is the same prophecy that Russell used in his belief that the measurements of the great pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) was a "witness" to the end time prophecies of the Bible.
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  Leolaia

  BTW, if you check out my thread that I've linked, I mention that there was a Samaritan tradition that certain gold vessels associated with Moses were buried in Mt. Gerizim, and that there seemed to have been a prophecy that their rediscovery was associated with the coming Messiah.