John Bytheway: 00:00:02 Welcome to part two of this week’s podcast.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:00:07 So let’s go ahead and just journey through this. I think, Hank, you had asked earlier about, what do the average Israelites do? How do members of other tribes interact with this sacred space? That kind of speaks to how these different spaces were used. So going to draw heavily upon a 3D digital reconstruction of the tabernacle that was recently done by a friend of mine named Daniel Smith. He’s been very gracious to let us use these images to help visually facilitate our conversation here. He has a YouTube channel. It’s called the Messages of Christ, where he has several videos posted on ancient Israelite institutions, including a recent video series on the ancient tabernacle. And the ways in which he walks you through it, I think you’ll find very interesting. They might be a slightly different approach and represent a different perspective than what we’ll try to do here.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:00:49 I think these videos will do a lot with looking back on this system and how can we, as later Christians, find resonance from a Christian perspective. What we’re going to try to do here is just try to understand how these spaces functioned in the context of ancient Israel first. So let’s go ahead and walk through the spaces then. So let’s start with that outer courtyard. How does the outer courtyard work? Well, if you are an Israelite, who needs to go to the temple to provide any kind of sacrificial offering, based on what you’ll do is you’ll appear at the front of the tabernacle space. So the outside curtain will have curtains that themselves will be accessible by average Israelites.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:01:25 So the way that ritual activity in the temple works is that an Israelite coming to the temple will first themselves have to go through a process of ritual purification. So they’ll need to become ritually pure through certain washings and allowing certain time to pass. And once they are ritually clean through their washings, they can now enter this sacred space, go through with their offering, whether it be a goat or a lamb or a bird or some of the various offerings that are described in the Book of Leviticus. They would take that offering, they would go through this first curtain and they would now find themselves in the outer court.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:02:00 Now in the outer court, we have two main items of furniture that are listed in the Book of Exodus. The first one is what’s called the altar of burnt offerings. And then the second item is called the brass laver. It’s a basin of water. Now that you’re in the outer courtyard, you need to find a priest to help facilitate your sacrificial ritual. And of course, you know who the priests are because they’re set apart by their clothing.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:02:21 So if you see an Aaronic priest walking around in his white robe, his cap and his sash, and he is barefoot,

Hank Smith: 00:02:26 That’s your guy.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:02:27 Yeah. You can track him down and say, I’ve got an offering here and together you will now proceed through the sacrificial offerings. Now for these sacrificial offerings, there’s a lot of detail in the Book of Leviticus. Leviticus chapters one through seven is basically a handbook for how priests should be offering these sacrifices. And as we’re reading in on their handbook of sacrificial procedure, we’re able to learn a lot about the different types of sacrifices that were offered. There are so many details. We probably don’t have time to go into here, but there’s different sacrifices and offerings for different occasions and different needs. There’s what are called burnt offerings or whole offerings. There’s peace offerings or wellbeing offerings. There’s grain offerings, there’s guilt or reconciliation offerings, reparation offerings.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:03:11 So many different types of offerings. We probably won’t be able to distinguish all of those here, but if you want more detail again, get a good study Bible, read through those first chapters of Leviticus and learn about the types of offerings and the procedure. Pretty fascinating stuff to see what constituted the religious experience of ancient Israel in this temple space. So let’s walk through some of those. Again, there’ll be variation depending on the different types of sacrifices, but generally speaking here is how the process worked.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:03:37 If you brought your sacrifice, let’s say you have a lamb or a goat, you’ll sign down a priest and you and the priest together will proceed to the north side of the altar to begin the sacrifice itself. The sacrifice doesn’t actually take place on the altar. The sacrifice takes place to the north of the altar. And what you’ll do is first you as an offerer will lay your hand upon the head of the animal and designate it that this is an offering to the God of Israel. And once you’ve done that together, you and the priest will hold the animal down and will slaughter the animal by slitting its throat. And the priest will catch the blood in a bowl.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:04:12 You’re then somehow going to hang the carcass up in the later Jerusalem temple, there will actually be meat hooks set up there, so you can hang the carcass up on the hook, drain the rest of the blood, so the priest will be catching the blood. And then what you’ll do is start slitting the body of the animal, slit the hide. You’ll open it up and you’ll start pulling out the different fat, the kidneys. Book of Leviticus describes in great detail all the different inside internal bits of the animal. You’ll actually remove the animal hide. Depending on the sacrifice, either the priest will take that home as a priestly gift, or sometimes you will take that home as an offerer.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:04:47 And now the priest basically functions as a butcher. I mean, this whole area is like a butcher shop at this point, because you now have got the different animal pieces on the table. He would have already tossed the blood at the altar, maybe dubbed the blood on the horns of the altar or tossed it out at the base of the altar. But after disposing of the blood at the altar, the priest will take the meat of the animal and will ascend the ramp and will put the meat on top of the altar. So the altar itself is basically a barbecue pit. It’s described as having a brass grate up on top, and there’s a fire that’s underneath it. So the altar is not where you kill the animal, it’s off to the side. The altar is where you roast the meat of the animal.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:05:26 And depending on the sacrifices you might burn all of it up, the burnt offering or the whole offering is where you’ll take the different animal parts and you’ll burn it all on the altar. It’s one big roast that goes all the way up. And the whole thing goes up to God. And so the idea of a whole or a burnt offering is that it’s all offered up to God. And the whole thing just burns up. Other sacrifices though, like the shelamim or the peace or the wellbeing offerings, for example, Leviticus describes those as not being completely consumed, but by being roasted, it’s like you’re cooking the meat, and once it’s done on one side, the priest turns it over and it’s done on the other side. And at that point, the priest will divide up the roasted meat and you’ll actually eat it.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:06:07 And the book of Leviticus described some of those consumed sacrifices as being divided, where the priest gets the right hand shoulder of the animal. And so the priest will eat the meat from the right shoulder of the animal, and the one who’s coming to make the offering will eat the left portion of the animal. And so right there in this sacred space, the priest will eat some meat, you will eat some meat. And I know again from a modern Christian or modern Latter-day Saint perspective, this just really seems like an odd way to have a spiritual experience, but this was a significant religious ritual in the ancient near east, including in ancient Israel. And the idea is you and God’s representative, the priest, together are consuming the flesh of the sacrificial animal that is providing you with atonement or reconciliation. And that as a concept, the idea of eating the meat of the sacrificed animal with God’s representative, the priest, itself will have long reaching impacts into later Christian liturgy and later Christian ritual in a Christian context, of course the bloodless version of this is the Eucharist or what Latter-day Saints often call the sacrament.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:07:21 This idea of taking a sacrifice and eating the flesh of that sacrifice along with God’s representative and together partaking of the sacrificial meat of the animal that died to provide you reconciliation is a pretty significant ritual of communion. And which is why in a Christian context, the Eucharist or the communion or the sacrament still performs those same gestures only it’s a bloodless version of it, because looking backwards, Christians would say that the blood was shed by Jesus on the cross, but we still perform the outlines of that ritual through Eucharist or sacrament or whatever.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:07:54 So the concept of eating the sacrificial meat is not as foreign to modern Christians or modern Latter-day Saints as we might sometimes think, but in ancient Israel, it was a very physical experience where you’re eating this meat. And then once you finish eating the meat, whatever’s left, either the priest will wrap it up and take it home, or the worshiper will take that animal hide maybe, and wrap it up and take it home and finish the meat there. But in any case, the meat is to be consumed in many of these sacrifices. And I’ll just say, because as an archeologist, we haven’t been able to talk about archeology a lot in this lesson because this conversation is mostly textual based. We’re just looking at the description of the ancient Torah text. But as an archeologist, I think it’s very exciting and fascinating that when we do find archeological sites where this type of ritual was performed, so for example, if you go up to Northern Israel today, the site of Tel Dan where an ancient Israelite sanctuary was built in later centuries, long after the tabernacle narratives, the Northern kingdom of Israel built a temple to the God of Israel at the site of Tel Dan and that’s been excavated.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:08:54 And in the outer courtyard of the Tel Dan sanctuary, you can see the altar very much like what would’ve existed in Solomon’s temple, but in the rooms off to the side, when they discovered the bones of animals that had been sacrificed on the altar, they noticed that in certain rooms, the bones were only the right hand portions of the animals, meaning there’d be certain spaces where the priest would consume the animal portions that were belonging to them based on Pentateuchal legislation. And so it’s fun to see archeological remains of this type of ritual experience, where you can imagine you eating some of the meat, the priest eating some of the meat and then discarding the bones somewhere in the courtyard there. And archeologists later came along and discovered that at least in other sanctuary settings, but there’s nothing of course to find from the tabernacle because it was so temporary, it’s fun to see that reflected in the material culture. That’s how the sacrifice itself would be conducted. I don’t know if you guys have any thoughts on any things you want to unpack there before we proceed, because we’re just now getting started in the ritual system. But any thoughts so far?

John Bytheway: 00:09:49 This was one of the questions that I had wondered as a kid was if you just sacrificed it, do you eat it? Do you eat part of it? And I think you helped answer that. Some of them you said are fully consumed, but some you eat and then I love how you connected that to perhaps before the first Passover, maybe where they ate the lamb, even to the sacrament where you take part of that sacrifice.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:10:14 Yeah. That’s the later Christian version of what we are seeing here in ancient Israel.

John Bytheway: 00:10:17 Yeah. Which helps because now you’re connecting things that might seem strange to something we’re familiar with, the idea of taking that sacrifice, making it part of us by putting it inside.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:10:27 There’s one more set of rituals that would’ve occurred in the outer courtyard as the average non priestly Israelite worshiper, your job is now done. You’ve done your part. You’ve brought the animal, you and the priest have sacrificed it together. The priest has roasted the meat. You’ve maybe eaten the meat depending on the specific type of sacrifice, but at this point, the priest will continue some of his ritual activities moving closer to the sanctuary itself. So you remember that the next item of furniture within that outer court space is a basin of water. As you could probably imagine, after that sacrificial ritual, the priest is going to have a lot of blood on his hands and maybe even on his garments as well. And so before that priest can proceed into the next sacred space, through that curtain, into the holy place, the priest will need to go to this basin of water and wash the sacrificial blood from his hands.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:11:15 So this basin of water in the temple courtyard, there’s no indication it has anything to do with ritual immersion or baptism. Those are certainly later Christian ideas that could resonate with a water feature like this. But in ancient Israel, this washing basin seemed to be mostly for the washing of the priests, their hands and their feet. And Leviticus says even their garments, if any blood had gotten on them, they can wash themselves clean of the sacrificial blood at this basin of water. And that basin of water then also allows them to perform the necessary ritual purification washings that would allow them to now enter the next zone of sacredness, which is the holy place, which is just on the other side of the curtain that you see here in this picture for those two activities of ritual sacrifice and then ritual, washing both the two main activities that would’ve occurred in the outer court.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:12:04 That’s another great image from Balage, that he actually shows us a lot of what we just described. In fact, this might give us a fun chance to just summarize this. So you’ll notice here that you’d see in the reconstruction, you can see the high priests walking around in his garments and you can see the other Aaronic priests walking around in their robes and caps and sashes. You can see here on the left, in the left corner, you can see the artist put in some tables, right? That would be the idea that would be where some of the butcher activity would occur. The slaughtering of the animal, the processing of it. But then you can see over here on the altar, you could see the priest reaching over and putting the meat on the alter. You can see the fire being kindled underneath it.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:12:36 So there he is, roasting the meat. And then if you go beyond that closer to the sanctuary, you can see a basin of water. You can see the priest washing the blood from his hands, becoming ritually purified through that basin of water. And then once he’s been purified, you see another priest parting that curtain, and now going into the holy place, which is the inner court of the actual tent sanctuary. So it’s in this space that now only the Aaronic priests can access. So remember each zone becomes increasingly holy and also increasingly restrictive. Israelites could be in the outer court with the priests, but once you pass through that initial curtain, now you’re into the holy place. And now only the priests can minister on behalf of Israel in that space, the closer we get to God’s presence. This is Daniel Smith’s digital reconstruction of what that interior space would look like.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:13:23 In the holy place or inner court of the temple, the book of Exodus describes three main items of furniture. There is on the south side, the menorah, which is a seven branched golden candlestick. The description of the text seems to indicate that the menorah is like a tree. There’s a lot of speculation is this meant to be like the tree of life. We mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of garden imagery here that connects the tabernacle space with the paradise of God and the garden of Eden, Genesis: 2-3. So there’s some potential connections here with Genesis. But in addition to this tree imagery, the seven branches of this golden candlestick or menorah all support oil lamps. So there’s oil lamps on top. And these lamps were meant to be lit by the Aaronic priests every morning and every evening. So they keep it burning throughout the day. And again, it, what does it mean? What does it symbolize?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:14:09 In an ancient Israelite setting? It probably just has to do with representing the divine presence. It’s the divine light. It’s representing God’s house that we’re maintaining and we’re maintaining his presence in it. So the menorah is a really important item of furniture in the holy place. If we then turned around at a 180 and we’re now on the north side of the interior space, we have the table of show bread. Here, we have 12 gloves of unleavened bread, along with vessels of wine and probably some cups of incense as well. And again, this is going to be the table of the Lord. If this is God’s house, this is the dining place of the house. Again, in ancient, near Eastern cultures, it was very common to have food in the house of the deity as a way to maintain the presence of the deity.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:14:50 And that’s an idea that might not resonate with our modern Western thinking as much, but in the ancient middle Eastern context of early Israel, this idea of maintaining God’s presence in his house by setting out a feast where symbolically he and Israel can dine together is pretty significant. And so every Sabbath, every Saturday, the priest would come and replace these 12 unleavened loaves, and probably eat the previous ones and drink the wine and replace it and keep that table furnished before the Lord. So between the menorah and the table of show bread, those are two aspects of God’s house that the priests are tending to on behalf of Israel.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:15:23 And then finally, the last item of furniture in the holy place is going to be the altar of incense. So this will be the second altar of the tabernacle, but this altar is not a sacrificial altar. This altar is the altar that’s placed right in front of the final veil. And final veil of course, leading into the Holy of Holies. But before you get into the Holy of Holies, this altar of incense stands right before the curtain, and it seems to be an altar of prayer. As the Israeli priest, the Aaronic priest would come into this space and would take incense in their hand, they’d put the incense on this altar, which itself has a grate and a fire underneath it and would burn the incense. God’s throne room is just on the other side. As the incense is going up, the priest will raise his hands above his head, that’s the ancient gesture of prayer that all ancient cultures used, and as the smoke went up, the hands of the priest would go up and the priest would utter prayer on behalf of Israel, that means he’s representing Israel to God.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:16:17 So as you can imagine, the smoke rising, the Israelite priest raising his hands above his head, offering prayer on behalf of the community of Israel, that’s going to be the main ritual activity of this particular feature. And for this feature, I actually should take a step back and notice that in Exodus 29, and Leviticus 9, we are told about what’s called the daily offering. So in addition to all the different ritual activities that’s occurring with the different sacrifices in the courtyard, the different lamp tending and table setting of the holy place, the Pentateuch legislates that twice a day, a communal ritual would be offered by the priest on behalf of Israel, it’s called the daily offering. It would happen every morning, around 9:00 AM and every afternoon around 3:00 PM. And every day a lamb would be offered for Israel in the outer court on behalf of the entire community, the nation of Israel. And then the priest would come into the holy place and offer incense as the smoke rises, his hands are above his head. He’s offering prayer on behalf of Israel to God. That ritual sequence of sacrifice and prayer at the incense altar would’ve happened every morning and every afternoon. And it would conclude by the priest having just represented Israel to God through the hand raised prayer, the priest will now turn around and represent God to Israel by emerging from the sanctuary.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:17:41 So he’s now back into the outer court, he’ll raise his hands above his head again, and now pronounce the priestly blessing of God upon Israel. So he’s represented Israel to God through the prayer, but now he’s going to represent God to Israel through the blessing. And so when he is out in the outer courtyard, he will raise his hands and bless Israel after the prayer, bless Israel with the language of Numbers 6, “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord’s face shine upon you and give you peace.” And that twice a day, communal ceremony, meaning community based ceremony will occur every morning and every afternoon, and will include the sacrifice, the prayer and the blessing. So it’s kind of fascinating to see the daily operations of the temple, both as individuals, but also as kind of the community prayer service. So it’s like, thanks for coming to the temple this morning. We’ll see you this afternoon. That’s the general function of this incense altar. It’s a prayer altar that’s set before the final veil on our journey into the presence of God.

Hank Smith: 00:18:33 This is really fun stuff. I mean, I’ve seen pictures like this before, and I’ve understood a little bit about Yom Kippur, but just to hear about the daily rituals, it’s really fascinating. If I have my Latter-day Saint lens on, I can see a lot of overlay with the altar right in front of the veil.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:18:50 Exactly. So with all the differences and the similarities, I mean together, I think this is how we work through temple literacy. We understand how this worked in antiquity. We understand the shared conceptual vocabulary and note the differences. And I think all of those steps are really important. Temple preparation and temple education or biblical and modern people’s.

John Bytheway: 00:19:08 Speaking of shared vocabulary. So what did you call it, the basin of water?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:19:14 Brass laver, I think is what the King James calls it the brazen laver.

John Bytheway: 00:19:18 And they would wash their hands before going into the holy place.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:19:22 That’s right.

John Bytheway: 00:19:22 So what came to mind was that oft quoted scripture mastery, Psalms 24: 3-4, “Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord? Who shall go to the holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.” This was literally clean hands. Today we can compare that to clean hands, doing good things, not staining yourself with sin and pure heart, pure intent. So I’m hearing that and I’m going, hey, that’s the Psalm right there, clean hands before going to the holy place and the hill of the Lord, which is the temple.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:19:55 Which is the temple, exactly. That’s a great reminder by the way that, in later Israelite temple worship, so in other words, as this system developed over the centuries within the ancient Israelite community, the ceremonies themselves came to become more elaborate. Eventually you had priestly choirs and priestly musicians who would perform, who would chant the Psalms, or specific Psalms in the outer courtyard while the sacrifices were happening. And so one of the Psalms, these are basically temple hymns, many of the Psalms are the temple hymns sung by the Levitical choirs in the outer courtyard to accompany the sacrificial activities. And so several of these hymns actually contain language that you can easily imagine describing the sacrifices or describing the ritual purifications, the one that you gave John as a great example of Psalm 24. It seems to be a bit of a call and response hymn. “Who shall ascend to the mountain of the Lord?” Is one chant. Then the other chant is, “He that has clean hands and a pure heart.” So there almost might have been a call and response baked into the hymn.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:20:56 But of course these aren’t hymns in the modern Protestant four part harmony sense. These are ancient middle Eastern chants, but chanting the words of the Psalms that accompany the sacrifice. That’s a reminder that the temple experience of ancient Israel within this tabernacle and later Solomon’s temple space was just an immersive sensory experience. And what I mean by that is, if you can imagine everything we just described, imagine physically taking that in. So you go in, there’s the butcher shop component here. There’s the barbecue smell coming off the altar here, literally like roast lamb meat. Then you have the incense wafting out from the sanctuary. And the whole thing is being accompanied by Levitical choirs chanting the Psalms.

Hank Smith: 00:21:36 And the clothing as well.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:21:38 You could just imagine, the sensory…

John Bytheway: 00:21:40 You’re seeing, you’re hearing it, you’re smelling it.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:21:43 It is taking you to a different place. And again, that speaks to this idea that the temple is the meeting place between our earthly existence and the heavenly realm, and everything about the sensory experience of this ancient Israelite temple space, it’s just taking you away. It’s taking you into the realm of God. And you can smell it, you can see it, you can hear it. And the cacophony of senses that were engaged in ancient Israelite temple worship is pretty remarkable. The only thing that I’ve ever seen that has come close to this is, if you ever go to a Greek Orthodox service. I have a lot of holy envy for our Greek Orthodox friends. They absorbed in Greek Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox liturgy, more broadly, have absorbed a lot of this temple imagery. And so if you go to a Greek or Eastern Orthodox service, you’ll also see the chanting, you’ll see the iconography, you’ll smell the incense, and you’ll see the liturgical furniture laid out, bringing you closer and closer to the space of God.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:22:32 So a lot of this material that we’re studying here from the book of Exodus can also not just inform Latter-day Saint temple practice, this can inform Catholic mass experience or the experience of Eastern Orthodox service because this temple material from the old Testament is the foundation of later Jewish and Christian religious worship in various communities. And so literacy with this material benefits a lot of different communities today just to understand where their forms of worship come from.

Hank Smith: 00:22:58 Do we know how often an average Israelite would go to the temple or even a Levite? How often is he going to work in the temple?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:23:06 Those are really great questions. The book of Exodus and Leviticus, they don’t address that directly, but from other sources and other later Jewish history, we can pull together a basic picture of this. It seems like for the most part, you would probably only go to the temple a few times in your life, depending on where you lived, of course. If you were in Jerusalem, maybe you went much more often. We read about in the New Testament, for example, individuals who went to the temple daily. So there are clearly people who lived nearby, who would attend the temple frequently, but for who lived in Galilee or part of the larger Mediterranean world, these were pilgrimage events, maybe once or twice a year, if you could afford that, you’d go to the temple for a pilgrimage festival. Maybe people couldn’t afford even that. So we don’t really know exactly how often people would’ve gone, probably depended on their proximity to the temple, how often they would’ve wanted to make that journey down to the temple, especially the farther away you live.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:23:52 If you are a Levite or a priest, by the time you get to the later Old Testament writings, and certainly by the time of the New Testament, the Levites and priests themselves had multiplied exceedingly. There are priests and Levites living in so many different communities. So they arranged a system where they would come on rotation during the year. So any given Levite or priestly family living in whatever village would probably have two to five weeks a year. And so these rotating courses, and sometimes called the 24 priestly courses, each had their designated time during the year where they would come, service the temple in these ways, and then they would go back home for the rest of the year where they would live in these villages. The New Testament example of a lot of these stories of course is the father of John the Baptist, Zechariah.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:24:37 So Zechariah lives in a village outside of Jerusalem, but he’s of a priestly course whose rotation is up. And they come to the temple for their week or two rotation, and the lot falls to him, Hey, while you’re here, by the way, lucky you, you get to be the one to burn incense at the daily offering. And so the whole story of Zechariah as a priest at the altar of incense, of course, this is in Herod’s temple later on, but at the altar of incense, raising his hands above his head, the smoke is going up. He’s offering the prayer on behalf of Israel, during that daily service, and that’s when Gabriel appears, in that moment of the offering.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:25:06 And when he comes out, you’ll notice he tries to give the priestly blessing. He gestures towards it, but he can’t do it because he has been struck dumb. And so that whole story of Zechariah serving in the temple is the story of a priest on rotation, facilitating these rituals, having the opportunity to be the incense offerer or the prayer offerer in a daily sacrifice and coming out to give the blessing, but he can’t because he was struck dumb as a result of the exchange with Gabriel. So that whole story is very much part of this temple system only in a first century version.

John Bytheway: 00:25:34 I love it too, because it tells us of what priesthood he would’ve had and John the Baptist.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:25:41 Yeah. So Luke 1, infers that John the Baptist is born into a priestly family. He’s not only of the tribe of Levi, but within that tribe, he’s an Aaronic priest. So he is of the line that has that Aaronic or Aaronide priesthood. So he would’ve served at the altar or he would’ve helped facilitate the sacrifices. John’s father Zechariah did those very things when his course was on rotation.

John Bytheway: 00:26:02 And what is it? The Course of Abia it says?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:26:04 Yeah, Abia.

John Bytheway: 00:26:07 I need you to be my pronouncing gadget here.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:26:10 Yeah, it’s fun. So in any case, I hope this has been helpful and we’re not quite finished yet, but as we’re just going space to space, kind of understanding how this space functioned, how it operated, trying to get a sense of the experience that an ancient Israelite would’ve had in this space as described by the text. There’s one more space of course, that we want to explore. And that will be the space of the Holy of Holies. Hank you’d mentioned earlier that even though we’re mostly now talking about the daily routine of the temple, there was also an annual ritual called the Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement ritual. And this was the one time a year when the high priest would part that final veil and go into the Holy of Holies, which is the holiest and most sacred zone within the space of the ancient tabernacle or ancient temple.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:26:53 Let me make a few observations about the Holy of Holies itself, and then we will kind of conclude here in just a few minutes. So the Holy of Holies has one item of furniture in it, it’s called the Ark of the Covenant. Of course, this is an item that is described by the book of Exodus and Leviticus. There are lots of early narratives in Hebrew Bible that deal with the Ark of the Covenant. Eventually it disappears. It is no longer part of later Jewish temples, but at least in this early Israeli period, the Ark of the Covenant was the main item of furniture that existed in the Holy of Holies, because the Holy of Holies was viewed as God’s throne room. So if the temple or the tabernacle is God’s house, or is his tent, the Holy of Holies is his throne room. Just like a palace of an ancient near Eastern Monarch would have a palace with a throne, well, this is God’s palace and his throne room.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:27:37 So this is a very common idea in ancient near Eastern Temple’s broadly and in ancient Israel God had a throne room and it was the Holy of Holies. The Ark of the Covenant is covered by an item called the Mercy Seat. And it’s a Mercy Seat because it is a throne. It is God’s throne. It’s where God sits, and the Arc of the Covenant is his foot stool. And the throne of God, where God sits, the Mercy Seat, where God dispenses his mercy to his people, on the day of atonement, when the high priest parts that final veil and goes into the Holy of Holies, it’s going to be this item of furniture, God’s throne, where God’s grace and mercy will be dispensed to his people, to Israel and where the high priest will make the final purification rituals for the year to purify himself and the sanctuary and the whole community.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:28:25 It’s kind of the annual purging or cleansing of all impurities and all sin that exists just to have a once in a year house cleaning ritual. And in that ritual, the high priest will go to the Ark of the Covenant with the Mercy Seat on it and we’ll offer certain incense and blood gestures here as well. But before we leave the Ark of the Covenant, though, I do want to point out that the Ark itself comprises of the box, which is the foot stool. Inside the box are some of Israel’s sacred relics. The lid or the Mercy Seat, the throne of God, where He sits to dispense his mercy to his community. And on top of the Mercy Seat are going to be two cherubim. Now, cherubim are these creatures that are fairly common in ancient near Eastern iconography. They’re composite creatures. They have the bodies of one creature and maybe the wings of an Eagle or something like that.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:29:13 These are very common in ancient near Eastern iconography as guardians of the divine throne. So in any context, whether it be Mesopotamian or Egyptian or Israelite, the throne of the deity is guarded by these angelic creatures. And to get into the throne, you have to pass through these creatures. In fact, it’s these same angelic guardian figures, these cherubim that guard God’s throne on the Mercy Seat or on the Ark of the Covenant. You’ll notice that according to Exodus and Leviticus, those very same images are embroidered on the temple veil. Because again, once you’re passing through that final temple veil into the Holy of Holies, you are entering God’s throne room. That’s where he sits, that’s where he lives.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:29:55 And very common in the ancient near east was to have these guardian figures with eagle wings or lion bodies or whatever, these cherubim figures guarding the way. And so the priest has to go through the veil, passing these guardian figures to get into the presence of God, which itself is a throne room flanked by the cherubim. So again, a lot of really important cultural differences today in Christian and Latter-day Saint communities. We don’t tend to resonate with the cherubim images. We have our own versions of this idea of angelic sentinels at the throne of God or the presence of God. You need to pass the angels who stand as sentinels to get into God’s presence. The ancient middle Eastern or ancient Israelite version of that are cherubim. These guardian figures around God’s throne that you need to pass in order to get into God’s presence.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:30:41 And so on the day of atonement, the high priest who, by the way, is now dressed down on the day of atonement. This is all from Leviticus 16. If you want that full annual ritual described. The high priest will dress down. He’ll remove his blue robe and some of the other items, the Ephod is gone, but he’ll just be in his priestly white robe, white cap and sash. And he will bring in incense and blood through that veil, passing those guardian creatures into the presence of God, will offer the incense, the Holy of Holies is now filled with the incense smoke, again, signifying the divine presence. The book of Exodus says that when the high priest approaches the Ark of the Covenant, I will meet you there. In other words, that’s where I will talk with you, that’s where I will appear to you. And so, because God’s presence was often seen as so holy, the high priest would fill the whole room with incense.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:31:26 So it’s, again, you’re kind of clouding God’s presence a little bit, or maybe even protecting himself from the power of God’s holiness or the power of God’s presence. But in any case, he’s got the incense, he dabs the blood on the Ark of the Covenant, and then proceeds out of the Holy of Holies back into the outer court where he’ll perform a series of other rituals, the scapegoat rituals, and other rituals that would ritually purify the tabernacle, himself, the community of Israel. And that once a year liturgical experience is the only time of the year that the Holy of Holies would’ve been accessed only by that high priest.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:31:57 So what we’ve just done then is, we’ve just walked through the major spaces of the ancient tabernacle, the outer court, the inner court or holy place, and the Holy of Holies just to get a sense of what’s in these places. How do these places function on a daily basis, or even sometimes on an annual basis with a larger community ritual, like the day of atonement? And I hope that’s just been a helpful journey through this experience. I think by taking a step back and looking at the big picture, seeing how it’s all laid out, trying to understand it in its original context, that makes reading these chapters a lot easier, because now you’re able to go chapter for chapter and read, “Oh, this is the sacrificial process for this offering.” Or, “Oh, this is the priestly clothing for that moment,” or whatever. And now you’re able to plug it into the bigger picture.

John Bytheway: 00:32:42 Oh, this is great. I have a couple of questions. You use the word cherubim and I know this, sometimes the Old Testament, I’m thinking particularly of like the call of Isaiah in Isaiah 6 talks about seraphim. Are cherubim and seraphim angelic beings both, right? Are they the same?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:33:02 I think they’re similar, but they are slightly different. So in Isaiah 6, this of course, Isaiah is living in the day when there was a permanent temple in Jerusalem. So everything that we’ve just seen here in a portable temporary tent based condition, of course, is later standardized in the Jerusalem temple. Solomon’s temple will be constructed. And it’s during the later century or two of Solomon’s temple that we get Isaiah. And Isaiah 6, is his prophetic call narrative. It’s his moment where he’s called by the God of Israel and given this message. And he experiences a vision. It’s really hard to know from the text, is he actually in the temple? Is Isaiah a priest who’s actually in Solomon’s temple and experiencing this physically? Or is he having a vision? It’s really hard to say. If it’s a visionary experience that might tap into later Jewish ideas of there being a heavenly temple.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:33:53 So meaning the earthly temple is simply the earthly shadow of heavenly reality, which is the temple in heaven. In which case, several Old Testament, early Jewish writers will have visionary experiences where they go to the heavenly temple, which the earthly temple is simply a counterpart. It’s possible that Isaiah might be having an early vision of the heavenly temple in which case he’s brought up and he sees the heavenly version of this. He sees God actually on his throne, in the heavenly Holy of Holies dressed in similar temple robes, by the way, his robes fill the temple. And surrounding God’s throne room are seraphim, which are angelic creatures. They don’t necessarily need to look exactly like the cherubim, the lion body and the eagle wings, but they are angel figures who are on fire, because the word seraph in Hebrew means to be on fire. So the seraphim are the fiery angels around God’s throne.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:34:46 So it’s like the cherubim guarding the Ark of the Covenant, but only it’s the fiery creatures surrounding God’s throne. And they’re singing hymns. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. They’re singing these hymns in the heavenly throne room or the heavenly Holy of Holies. And in Isaiah’s call narrative, it’s one of those seraphim, the fiery guardians of God’s throne who goes to the incense altar, in front of that final veil and takes some of the burning coals of the incense and places it on Isaiah’s lips and purifies Isaiah’s lips and gives him that empowerment that now allows Isaiah to go preach his message. So the prophetic call narrative of Isaiah is very much in a temple setting, either the earthly temple in Jerusalem or a visionary experience in the heavenly temple, but he is commissioned in a temple setting to begin his prophetic work.

John Bytheway: 00:35:34 Yeah. That’s what this kept reminding me of. The Book of Mormon wants us to know about Isaiah’s call too. And because it’s in there in the Book of Mormon, it calls them seraphim because it’s plural, the I-M in Hebrew. But in the Old Testament, King James, it calls them seraphims. It puts an S at the end of it.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:35:53 That’s kind of funny. See the quirkiness of translation come out there.

John Bytheway: 00:35:57 Yeah. I tell my students that’s like saying geeses. But the other thing I wanted to mention was that we hear some of our own hymns in some of the things we’ve talked about. I had the hymn of, I Stand all Amazed going through in my mind, I will praise and adore at the Mercy Seat. You’ve taught us the Mercy Seat was the top of the Ark of the Covenant where the Lord sat, right?

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:36:21 That’s right. It’s the throne of God.

John Bytheway: 00:36:23 Yeah. So cool. So when people sing that hymn, they can think of what we’ve just talked about. I will praise and adore at the Mercy Seat. At his glorified throne, I kneel at his feet.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:36:33 Just to kind of wrap up our survey then of this material, in Exodus 40, and maybe part of Leviticus 9, we get a description of how this entire system was constructed, and then finally dedicated, literally sanctified or handed over to the Lord to be his dwelling place. And in Exodus 40, we are told that this is going to be the moment of dedication. The whole structure is anointed. The priests are anointed with oil. And with this, the divine presence becomes manifest as a cloud coming down from heaven, and as fire coming down from the sky. And following this remarkable dedication, which itself is a theophany, it’s a manifestation of the God of Israel among his people, we now get this image of God dwelling among his people as a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:37:22 So both of those images appear in the dedication narrative of the tabernacle in Exodus and maybe a little bit in Leviticus 9 as well. And after that, the cloud of smoke and the pillar of fire became very important images to early Israel, to within early Judaism, and even within later Christian and Latter-day Saint circles of the notion of the presence of God dwelling among you, all coming from that dedicatory moment of the tabernacle, an event that was replicated in some ways with the dedication of Solomon’s temple as well. So it’s a fascinating way to conclude the narrative, having now just described all the details of the measurements and the different types of fabrics and the clothing and the sacrificial rituals to set it all up to anoint it, to dedicate it to God, make it a holy space. And then as part of that dedication, God enters his house as symbolized by the pillar of smoke and the pillar of fire is a pretty powerful symbol that reminded Israel that God was with them.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:38:16 Well, I hope that this has been a helpful overview of the ancient tabernacle system and the ancient priesthood system. To conclude then, I just wanted to make a few final observations that I hope will be helpful going forward. As I mentioned at the very beginning, there’s lots of different ways that modern faith communities can interpret the significance of these features, that can see meaning in these features, from where they are standing. The way that we’ve tried to approach it here is by trying to stay close to what’s in the text of Exodus and Leviticus. Like what’s actually in the text of the Torah, and then try to situate that within its original ancient near Eastern context. What would this stuff have looked like and been experienced by ancient Israel themselves, within their cultural setting.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:38:59 Having said that though, obviously later communities and other communities will look back on this material and find other ways to make sense of it or other layers of significance to them. So for example, in the Book of Mormon, we have Jacob who from his Nephite perspective, he looked at this material as being very Messianic. So in the Book of Mormon, you get it, this idea that the rituals of the ancient temple were Messiah focused. And so in Jacob’s writings, he talks about how we felt that these things pointed our minds to the future Messiah who would come and save us. And that’s a really powerful lens for some communities to look at this material. I do want to point out it’s probably not the lens that the ancient Israelites themselves had on most naturally or most easily. There’s just not a lot of direct evidence in the Torah, in the Pentateuch or in other early Jewish writings that when Israelites or early Jews would go to the temple, go through the sacrificial rituals, that they saw a messianic significance.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:39:59 They are seeing rituals of purification. They’re seeing rituals of reconciliation. They’re seeing rituals that would allow the God of Israel to continue to dwell among them. And those are very powerful concepts within their time and place. But other communities can take off that lens or maybe keep that lens on, but put on a different lens, and that is the lens of Jesus. So in later communities, not necessarily the Old Testament, at least as far as we have record of, as far as we know it, we don’t know how many Israelites went to the ancient temple and saw Messianic meaning there, but within the Nephi community, they definitely did. So Jacob tells us that the lens that he had on was a lens of Christ. So he would say, Jacob, a Book of Mormon writer on another part of the world, another part of the planet, would say that through their understanding, through their revelations, they would see some of this as pointing their souls to Jesus.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:40:48 But even within Nephite rhetoric, we’re pretty regularly reminded that most people probably didn’t see it that way. when Lehi talks about a Messiah in 1st Nephi 1 and 2, most people in Jerusalem had no idea what he’s even talking about. What do you even mean by that? So that gives the impression that most of those people going to Solomon’s temple were not thinking Messianically, but Lehi was and Nephi was, and Jacob was. And so that’s one community who their interpretive approach to this tabernacle was Messianic. And having said that, the strongest biblical parallel to seeing this material in a Messianic way is going to be by early Christians. So if we fast forward to the time of the New Testament, that is where we have a group of followers of Jesus. Jesus, the Messiah who has now died on a cross and was resurrected.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:41:37 And that group of early Jesus followers has to find a way to make sense of why Jesus had to die. And more than that, they’ve got to find ways to tell others why Jesus’ death has meaning. And so for those early Christians looking back onto the tabernacle, they found an enormous amount of riches, of metaphorical language that they could use to describe Jesus. They could use to find meaning in Jesus’ death. So how do we understand Jesus’ death? Why does that matter? Well, it’s like in the Old Testament temple, it’s like in the Jerusalem temple or the ancient tabernacle. You know how they would perform rituals of sacrifice to provide reconciliation or purification, well Jesus’ death is like that. And next thing you know, you start to get really great early Christian imagery of Jesus as our ultimate atoning sacrifice, using language drawn from this ancient temple system, but then applying it to Jesus, and the same thing with the idea of a mediating priest.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:42:36 So not only did early Christians look back on the tabernacle and see imagery of sacrificial atonement that could help inform the way they view Jesus’s death, but they could also look back on the rituals of priestly mediation and say, well, Jesus is like that. Just like the ancient high priest mediated between Israel and God or between heaven and earth, well, that’s what Jesus is. He’s like our great high priest. And he’s like the ultimate version of that. And so I just wanted to help us become a little more sensitive to the ways that we’re interpreting this material. Restoration scripture acknowledges that God can speak to different peoples in different times and places, according to their cultural understanding. So I don’t think we need to manipulate the original significance of this tabernacle system to appreciate the ways in which it could also apply to other faith traditions.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:43:28 We can easily find ourselves looking back on this and saying, wow, there’s a lot about that that resonates with me as I try to make sense of the death of Jesus. Or as I try to articulate why Jesus had to die, well, it’s like a sacrificial atonement. What is Jesus doing right now? Well, it’s like he’s a high priest mediating for us at the throne of God. And I think the best early Christian example of this, is the letter to the Hebrews. Hebrews is by far the most extensive New Testament treatment of a Christ centered reading of this tabernacle material. So for example, Hebrews 4-7, takes all of this mediating high priest imagery, and Jesus is the ultimate high priest. So if in a Christian or a modern Latter-day Saint setting, you’ve ever heard Jesus referred to as your great high priest.

Hank Smith: 00:44:16 High priest of good things to come, yeah.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:44:19 Exactly. That’s quoting the letter to the Hebrews, which basically says, look, the high priest of the Jerusalem temple or the high priest of the ancient tabernacle was simply the earthly shadow of the ultimate heavenly reality, which is Jesus. So Hebrews 4-7, envisions there being a heavenly temple playing with the old Platonic notions of types and shadows. So the idea that the real temple is in heaven and the real mediating high priest is Jesus, and what we just saw here on the earth was the earthly of the heavenly reality.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:44:53 So for the letter to the Hebrews, for that author, the priestly system of the tabernacle was a way to make sense of Jesus only that is as an earthly shadow of the heavenly reality. So Jesus is our great high priest. So any of that language of Jesus as your great mediator or your great intercessor or Jesus standing at God’s throne making intercession for you as we speak, thus allowing us to with boldness and confidence approach the throne of God and receive that grace in time of need. All of that language is taken from the tabernacle material of Exodus, but it’s the letter to the Hebrews saying that from his perspective, Jesus was the ultimate version of that.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:45:31 And similarly, Hebrews 8-10, does the same thing only now with the sacrifices. So this whole idea of Jesus’ death as being our ultimate atoning sacrifice, that’s Hebrew’s way of saying that the earthly sacrifices of the ancient temple system or the ancient tabernacle system were simply the earthly shadows of the heavenly reality, the ultimate heavenly reality was Jesus’s death. Everything on earth was just a shadow of it. And so I just wanted to point that out because a lot of times as modern Christians or as modern Latter-day Saints, we want to just jump right into this ancient material and just start imposing our own symbolic worldview onto it.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:46:11 And that has meaning. There’s a reason why we so naturally feel that impulse. But I just wanted to help us be a little bit more sensitive, a little more nuanced in the way we approach this. We do not need to erode the ancient Israelite meaning of this material by imposing our interpretation. I think we should appreciate both, both what it meant to ancient Israelites in their time and place and culture and what it can mean to us. So I just wanted us to be careful in the way that we interpret a lot of these things that we can both appreciate original context and modern resonance.

Hank Smith: 00:46:43 This is just good scripture study skills. The idea of, let’s see it, in its original place, in its original form as clearly as we can. And then if we want to put a Christian lens or a Latter-day Saint lens on it, we can, we just need to realize we’re doing it. I noticed when Matthew records the Savior yielded up the ghost in Matthew 27:50, he immediately goes to the veil of the temple. He says the veil of the temple was rent in two, from the top to the bottom. So he’s connecting the death of Christ to the temple, to the tabernacle. Probably the idea that the Holy of Holies is now more open than it was before.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:47:22 Open to God. Yeah. That’s a fascinating example of… So Hebrews is the one who does this most extensively, but throughout other early Christian or New Testament writings, you have other Christian writers who are also exploring some of these connections between Jesus’ death and the sacrifice. You get a lot of that in John. Jesus’ death is like the sacrificial lamb.

Hank Smith: 00:47:42 The Lamb of God.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:47:43 He dies for your sin. So there’s a lot of that imagery in the gospel of John, again, going back to this system. But in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Matthew, in particular, as you said, that is a fascinating example of how it might be exploring the connection of Jesus and the priest. Because remember the daily sacrifice was every 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM at which times the priest would be at the incense altar before the veil, with his hands upraised, offering his prayer. The synoptic tradition, Matthew, Mark and Luke place Jesus on the cross at 3:00 PM. At the very moment when the priest would’ve been at the altar of incense offering that hands raised prayer, just like Jesus on the cross. And then when Jesus just utters his final prayer, Matthew describes it, the veil of the temple rents.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:48:26 Matthew clearly is exploring that connection, that symbolic connection between what Jesus’ death just accomplished in opening up the way to the presence of God for humanity. And so he doesn’t come out and explicitly say, thus, Jesus is our great high priest. Hebrews does that. But Matthew and a few other texts certainly seem to be exploring connections early on, as those early Christians themselves are trying to make sense of his death. And this tabernacle temple priesthood setting just gave them so much language to work with to try to understand why did Jesus have to die? And what does that mean for us?

Hank Smith: 00:49:00 Do you have a few minutes to tell us about what you see in the restoration with Joseph Smith, reaching back and pulling some of these things forward because even in the Kirtland Temple, don’t you see some of this idea of there’s a courtyard. Do you think that’s meant to be there? You enter the Kirtland Temple, there’s that little 10 foot space before you enter another area and then they could curtain off another area.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:49:23 Yeah, exactly. With the curtains in between. Absolutely. And this is maybe a really great point to end on. I’m assuming we have a predominantly Latter-day Saint audience for this podcast, although I hope that others could be listening and enjoy this conversation because I think there’s so much about this ancient temple material that could inform a Catholic experience or an Eastern Orthodox experience or even other types of faith experiences. But from Latter-day Saints, we have a modern temple tradition. It’s at the center of our religious life. I think you’re absolutely right. Part of our temple literacy, arching back to our opening segment, part of our temple literacy is understanding how this ancient temple worked, how the similarities, the shared conceptual vocabulary can inform a Latter-day Saint temple experience, but also looking at the differences.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:50:02 So for Joseph Smith, as he is trying to create a temple centered community in 19th century America, I think we have several sources of inspiration for him. I think he himself is obviously living in a post Jesus era. He’s Christian, so he’s going to see a lot of Christological imagery in ancient temple practices. And he wants to try to incorporate some of that into the Latter-day Saint temple experience. I think that in later periods, especially when he gets to Nauvoo and others, he’s got the book of Abraham and other cultural interactions that he’s having that are definitely informing the way he’s going to construct the ultimate endowment that Latter-day Saints will today experience. I think lots of sources of inspiration are flowing into that. A lot of those sources of course, indicating some of the differences between modern and ancient temple. Those are just as important to know as the similarities. But in terms of this biblical material in particular, I think it’s pretty clear that from an early stage in Joseph Smith’s own temple thinking and his own temple revelations, that this biblical material plays a really key role.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:51:01 So in Kirtland, the first time Joseph has the community build an actual temple, you’ll notice it’s probably not a coincidence that he was studying Hebrew with Joshua Seixas and he’s reading through a lot of Old Testament in Hebrew. And at that very time in 1835 into early 1836, the very time that Kirtland Temple is being built and eventually dedicated, they start performing ritual washings and anointings, drawing upon the exact language from Exodus 28 and 29 and Leviticus 8 and 9. So Joseph Smith very much saw himself as bringing back some of those ancient priestly rituals from the Old Testament temple, incorporating them into a Latter-day Saint context, and then that of course also will influence his use of sacred space. I think Hank, you just mentioned that the way he developed the Kirtland Temple, it’s fascinating because on its exterior, it’s very, very 19th century America, in the exterior of the Kirtland Temple.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:51:52 In its interior use of space, it’s very Protestant, in that it’s benches are meant for preaching and listening, but he also divides it into three zones, and each zone is separated by a curtain that can be moved at various times. And at various sacred moments, the curtains are set up to make the back part, essentially a Holy of Holies, just like the ancient biblical temple. And it’s course it’s behind that curtain that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery have some of their most sacred revelatory experiences encountering Jesus and other divine beings. And it’s very much the sacred space of theophany behind the curtain, that’s all the conceptual idea that’s drawn right from Old Testament. So even though he never does bring in the blood sacrifices, of course he as a Christian would see that as being done away within Jesus, he definitely brings in a lot of the priestly language. Although Joseph Smith will build upon Aaronic or Levitical priesthood language and say, well, now let’s add to that a higher order of priesthood that did not exist in antiquity, at least in Jewish antiquity, this idea, the order of Melchizedek.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:52:51 So Joseph’s definitely expanding upon those concepts, but at the end of the day, when temple endowment experiences revealed to him in Nauvoo, there’s going to be a lot of similar forms. He will dress up, not only the men, but also the women in robes and caps and sashes. In other words, one of the key differences is that Joseph will take that concept of priesthood, and even this concept of sacred priesthood clothing to be used in sacred space and he’ll apply it very much to the Nauvoo Temple endowment, but he’ll expand upon it. Now he sees it in a Melchizedek priesthood framework, a fullness of the gospel framework from his perspective. And that is a framework in which, which not only do hereditary, Aaronic men wear these sacred vestments, but all women and men of faith are washed, anointed, dressed in the robes of priesthood.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:53:35 And so Joseph is definitely building upon a biblical foundation. The biblical text is clearly informing his temple thinking and his temple revelations, but the final product that Joseph Smith reveals to us as a Latter-day Saint community is very much expanded with a Jesus centered, a Melchizedek priesthood framed version of what we saw in the Old Testament, which again, that just speaks to the need to understand the similarities, but also the differences. And it’s in both that we come to increase our temple literacy as Bible readers, but also as modern temple going Latter-day Saints.

Hank Smith: 00:54:05 Matt, this has been fantastic. And I think I like this idea of we are becoming more temple literate, especially when it comes to the Old Testament tabernacle. Here you are a Bible scholar and a Latter-day Saint, I think our listeners would be interested in just your journey about those two worlds that you’ve experienced here for the last couple decades.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:54:29 So for me, the journey of both faith and scholarship, I think really began when I became active in the church when I was in high school. I had gone to church when I was younger. My family had been members of the church, but for me, kind of the moment of conversion that convinced me to be a believing practicing Latter-day Saint actually came through the process of study. As a junior or senior in high school, I started really studying scripture for the first time, started studying church history for the first time. And for me it was the process of learning that became itself a defining spiritual experience. And so when I went on my mission and one of my favorite things to do was not only to talk about the gospel message with others, but to study. We read a lot as missionaries. This was back in an earlier day when you had a little more flexibility there, perhaps.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:55:16 So I read a ton and studied a ton as a missionary. And for me, the process of study is not a dichotomy. Sometimes we’re the ones to dichotomize that, where we say, well, you can be intellectual and learn stuff over here, but we really want to feel the spirit over here. I just think for Joseph Smith, that was a totally false dichotomy. And so for Joseph Smith, who we have this prophetic figure, who’s having visions and revelations, and as part of that visionary and revelatory experience, he hires a Jewish scholar of Hebrew to come teach him Hebrew verbs and Hebrew grammar, because he felt that learning through the best books as he put it would actually make him a better prophet. So for Joseph there never seems to have been any dichotomy between feeling the spirit and learning in an academic or an intellectual way as he’s going through his work on the Bible.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:56:04 He seems to be reading biblical commentaries and learning from the scholars of his day and learning languages, all of which he’s incorporating into his spiritual experience. And so, I say early on and all the way through my time as a missionary and as an undergraduate, I always really resonated with that dual approach of, I guess, what Elder Maxwell called being a disciple scholar. Once I got off my mission, I wanted to keep studying the world of scripture. I ended up landing mostly in the world of the Bible, although I’m still fascinated by early church history. I still love the early days of the Restoration, and trying to keep up with some of the great work that our Joseph Smith papers colleagues have done there and other great historians. But I just kind of find myself gravitating more and more to the world of the Bible.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:56:41 I spent some time in the holy land as an undergraduate, went to the BYU Jerusalem Center. So I came out of that experience convinced I wanted to go into biblical studies eventually with a focus in archeology and the social history of early Judaism. So I went off to graduate school. I spent eight years in graduate school. Two years at Andrews, one year at Oxford and five years at Chapel Hill, working through two Masters and a PhD. And through the process, of course, naturally you’re being taught how to think critically and how to read texts critically and how to critically analyze faith traditions of the past. And it’s inevitable that you’re going to take those skills that you’re learning and start looking at your own faith tradition with those skills. And all of a sudden you start reading your own scripture a little more deeply in your own religious experience, a little more analytically.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:57:23 And to be sure, that process can be a lot of wrestling, can include a lot of wrestling. A lot of previous assumptions that I had had all of a sudden are very challenged and I have to think through that. So there are definitely some moments of wrestle and challenge. I think those are necessary moments. I don’t think that the process of becoming a disciple scholar comes easily or cheaply. It comes through a lot of soul searching and a lot of wrestling and a lot of needing to process new information. So as I come to realize, oh, the biblical text is more complicated than I once thought. Or maybe these authorship issues are a little more nuanced than I once thought, or a hundred of those types of questions.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:57:58 Definitely, there’s a lot of challenge to previous assumptions, but I think in the process, at least from my experience and I recognize that different people have different experiences. My experience was that process of wrestling and working through the faith and the scholarship issues, the moments of strength, but also the moments of tension, at the end of the day, I think produced a much more mature and pliable faith for me than what I had as a missionary. As a missionary, probably most of us, we’re very black and white in our thinking, and there’s definitely truth. We affirm truth, but at the same time, I think a mature pliable faith is what helps us to navigate the complexities of scholarship. And I think the end result is someone who is an informed disciple scholar, someone who can be all in on their faith and their discipleship and who can also be responsible with the scholarship, be informed in scholarship, be maybe more nuanced sometimes in the way we approach certain scriptural passages or certain traditions.

Dr. Matthew Grey: 00:58:55 And I think that that is exactly the type of process that we need to go through in order to be effective teachers in the church and teachers in God’s kingdom, to have an informed faith, an informed discipleship. So for me, that’s been something that’s kind-of been developing from the time I started becoming active as a Latter-day Saint and has just continued to grow with a lot of struggles, a lot of wrestle ups and downs. But I think that the end results, and I’m not a final product by any means, none of us are finished products, we’re still in process, but I have thoroughly been enriched by the challenges of combining faith and scholarship and hope to continue to do both in the years ahead.

Hank Smith: 00:59:30 John, what a great day we’ve had today with Dr. Grey. What a blessing to better understand the ancient tabernacle. I feel like I could walk around the tabernacle and know my way around a little bit more. Know who’s doing what and why.

John Bytheway: 00:59:46 And I feel more complimented that you referred to me as an ancient tabernacle at the beginning.

Hank Smith: 00:59:50 Yeah, that’s why, because I knew we were going to walk away with such a great feeling about it. Dr. Grey, thank you so much for being with us. We want to thank all of our listeners. We want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorensen and our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. And we hope all of you will join us next week on our next episode of FollowHIM.