Jesus the Temple

by Nicholas Perrin

Publishers:

Baker Academic; SPCK

, 2010

Overview

Jesus the Temple gives readers a fresh understanding of the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus. It helps to narrow the gap between “the historical Jesus” and “the Christ of faith.”

In the Logos edition, all Scripture passages in Jesus the Temple are tagged to the original language texts and the English translation of your choice, which makes this resource more powerful and easier to access than ever before. With Logos’ advanced features, you can perform powerful searches by topic or Scripture reference—finding, for example, every mention of “Jesus” or “temple.”

Key Features

• Introduction for each chapter
• Bibliographical references and indexes

Contents

Top Highlights

“In this book, I wish to argue that Jesus of Nazareth saw himself and his movement as nothing less than the decisive embodiment of Yahweh’s eschatological temple.” (Page 12)

“The sanctuary instituted under Moses was merely a prelude to a final, much more glorious temple. The defeat of the Gentiles, the arrival of the messiah, the full return from exile, the establishment of everlasting righteousness—as important as these events and conditions were, they were ultimately subsidiary to Israel’s overriding and everlasting destiny: to render worship as the temple. It was this reality on which both Jesus and Paul had their eyes fixed.” (Page 11)

“This followed naturally on the assumption, to which I have already alluded, that the identity of the high priest and the identity of Israel went hand in hand.” (Page 18)

“The community was not simply doing temple works; the community was the temple” (Page 34)

“For the first-century Jew, by contrast, all these realities were wrapped into one. There was no separation of church and state, pontifex and imperator, divine will and common weal. Religious realities were intrinsically political in nature, as well as social, as well as economic. So while it remains true that the temple was the heart of Jewish worship, it was also the hand of economic aid to the poor, the eye of social recognition, and the mouth of politico-religious confession. The Jewish temple was not just a ‘religious center’, nor simply the seat of atonement: it was a totalizing institution.” (Page 7)

Praise for the Print Edition

Nicholas Perrin’s latest book takes a fresh look at the concept of Jesus as temple. To do this, he reviews Jesus’ relationship to the Jerusalem temple, the early Christian community’s idea that Jesus is the new temple, of which his followers are a part, and how this idea may well be rooted in the teaching of Jesus himself. There is little in the book that is conventional, and readers will be surprised again and again by Perrin’s creative insights and control of both primary and secondary literatures. This is a significant advance in an important area of study.

—Craig A. Evans, Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Acadia Divinity College

This is one of the few scholarly books in my memory that can turn a phrase with literary allusions ranging from Albert Schweitzer to Bob Dylan. Delightful reading and worthy of careful appraisal.

—Jeannine K. Brown, associate professor of New Testament, Bethel Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Jesus the Temple
• Author: Nicholas Perrin
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 272

About Nicholas Perrin

Nicholas Perrin, PhD, is dean of Wheaton College Graduate School and Franklin S. Dyrness Professor of Biblical Studies. Between 2000 and 2003, he was research assistant for N.T. Wright and has since authored and edited numerous articles and books, including Thomas and Tatian (Society of Biblical Literature / Brill); Thomas: The Other Gospel (Westminster John Knox); Lost in Transmission: What We Can Know about the Words of Jesus (Thomas Nelson); and Jesus the Temple (SPCK; Baker Academic), the first of a three-part trilogy on the historical Jesus. He is also coeditor of the recently revised edition of Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (InterVarsity).