Sanctuary of Life

John M. Lundquist argues that ancient temples were “associated with the realm of the dead, the underworld, the afterlife, the grave.”

He states further: “The unifying feature here is the rites and worship of ancestors. The temple is the link between this world and the next. It has been called ‘an antechamber between the worlds.’ Tombs can be—and in Egypt and elsewhere are—essentially temples (compare the cosmic orientation, texts written on the tomb walls that guide the deceased into the afterlife, etc.). The unifying principle between temple and tomb is resurrection. Tombs and sarcophagi are ‘sacred places,’ sites of resurrection. In Egyptian religion Nut is depicted on the coffin cover, symbolizing the cosmic orientation (i.e., ‘Nut is the coffin’). One of the chapels in the Eninnu temple was called . . . ‘the house in which one brings offerings for the dead.’ It carried the further description ‘it is something pure, purified by Abzu.’ There is an intimate connection between burials and temples VIII and XI at Tepe Gawra, the latter of which, according to Arthur Tobler, ‘attracted considerable numbers of burials to its precincts.’”

None of this applies to Israel’s temples: No ancestors are buried in the temple courts; dead bodies are strictly excluded from holy space (Numbers 10). The only temples that open to the underworld are those that are so corrupted that they become a nest of demons rather than a house of angels (cf. Revelation 9).

For Israel, the temple was the house of life.