Chatper One Final

Chapter One

Introduction

The New Testament serves as a crucible both for the appropriation and transformation of Israel’s literary and symbolic religious traditions; the significance of central Jewish symbols—temple, land, covenant, and covenant community—undergo a renegotiation of meaning. Our own specific focus shall be the most complex and multivalent symbol of this tradition: the Jerusalem temple, in particular, its presentation in Luke-Acts, the longest and arguably the most complex narrative in the New Testament. It is self-evident in both the writings of the New Testament and Qumran that the importance and interpretation of the Jerusalem temple were subjects for profound theological reflection and intense, sometimes divisive debate. The Jerusalem temple played a momentous role as a hermeneutical focal point in the first century, for Judaism, for the writers of the New Testament, and particularly for the author of Luke-Acts.[1] Why did Luke devote so much attention and space to the Jerusalem temple in Luke-Acts? How does it make sense within the larger narrative and what was Luke hoping to communicate thereby to a largely Gentile audience? Though the theme of the temple in Luke-Acts has received significant attention, the present study contends that a more nuanced and coherent understanding of this theme can be gained by focusing on its socio-religious function as sacred space and how Luke exploits this in his narrative.

In the present chapter we shall begin to address such issues first by a brief overview of previous scholarship on this topic, followed by a proposal for a refined methodological framework which shall facilitate our analysis. The balance of the chapter will attempt to lay a theoretical foundation for the main emphasis which flows out of this framework: the need for a more profound engagement with the Lukan focus on the temple as sacred space and a more nuanced account of how this significance has been engaged in Luke’s narrative world.

Previous Scholarship

Let us begin, then, by briefly considering the contours of previous scholarship on the temple in Luke-Acts. Broadly speaking, scholarship on the Lukan role of the temple may be divided into three perspectives: positive, negative, and ambivalent. Those who emphasize the positive role of the temple in Luke-Acts include M. Bachmann (1980), F. D. Weinert (1979, 1981, 1982, 1987), J. M. Dawsey (1984, 1991), and J. B. Chance (1988). In some fashion, each underscores or characterizes the temple as having an unequivocally positive function in Luke-Acts. The works by Bachmann and Chance are of monograph length and merit closer consideration.[2]

Unquestionably, the most extensive and detailed study on the temple in Luke-Acts remains Michael Bachmann’s Jerusalem und der Tempel, which explores the temple's function as a Jewish culture center. In a number of ways Bachmann illuminates the inextricable connection between Jerusalem and the temple from Luke's perspective, contra Hans Conzelmann.[3] In addition to discussing the two spellings of Jerusalem and demonstrating how Jerusalem and Judea function interchangeably, Bachmann posits a chiastic structure for the four Jerusalem scenes found in Luke-Acts (Luke 1:5-2:52; 19:45-24:53; Acts 1:3-8:3; 21:15-23:32), which underscores the homogenität of the two middle sections, the overlooked prominence of Jerusalem, and, particularly, the temple as the center of Jewish life and its role in the fulfillment of both the law and the prophets. Luke’s presentation of city and temple are so closely connected that the temple determines the entire character and life of the city.

Nevertheless, for all its detail and depth in regard to the centrality of the temple for Jewish life—including Jewish Christians—the theological implications of how the temple functions within the context of the entire narrative are surprisingly lacking. For example, its relationship to the Gentile mission or even its theological relevance for Gentile believers in Luke’s audience remains unexplored. Moreover, the positive role which Bachmann assigns to the temple does not adequately consider the presence of negative aspects of Luke’s temple material. As is the problem in other studies of this theme, it is more the case that a positive Lukan portrayal of the temple is assumed, based upon or equated with the prominence which Luke accords the temple in his narrative, rather than demonstrated from its function within the narrative. When considered from this perspective, there remains in Bachmann’s positive analysis significant, unaddressed tensions with both the telos and overarching concerns of Luke’s narrative.[4]

A more recent study of the temple in Luke-Acts is Jerusalem, the Temple, and the New Age in Luke-Acts by J. Bradley Chance. Chance’s study is narrower in scope than that of Bachmann, focusing on the historic and future eschatological role of Jerusalem and the temple.[5] A major premise of Chance’s study is that, since Luke does not spiritualize or transfer the sacred functions of the city and temple to Jesus or the church—as broadly in evidence in other New Testament writings—Luke’s position must be closer to that of traditional Jewish eschatological hope centered on the literal Jerusalem and the temple.[6]

Chance’s study is clearly presented and makes a genuine contribution concerning the eschatological dimension of Lukan salvation as over against the deeschatologized perspective of Hans Conzelmann. Moreover, his analysis moves beyond that of Bachmann by recognizing the need to account for the relationship between the prominence of the Jerusalem temple and the salvation of Gentiles (87-113). Nevertheless, his textual support for his position concerning the actual function that the temple plays vis-à-vis the salvation of Gentiles or its future restoration is tenuous, particularly for the second half of Acts. The relevance and function of the temple as the narrative advances into the Gentile mission is never clearly delineated, nor is the role that a restored temple might play in the future.[7] One might inquire in this regard, How would a literal, restored temple, whose very architecture underscores its exclusivity, make any sense as a positive hope or symbol for Luke’s Gentile audience? Culturally, Gentiles were at best peripheral to this exclusive Jewish institution and at worst a threat to its sanctity.[8] Luke’s narrative, moreover, would appear to underscore this latter aspect in the final, climactic temple scene, wherein the alleged presence of a Gentile in the temple precipitates a riot (Acts 21:27-36). Indeed, there is little engagement with the social or cultural dimensions of this central Jewish religious institution and how this may inform a reading of its presence in the narrative.

It may not be without significance, then, that it is attention to the social dimensions of the temple which distinguishes two recent negative assessments of the role of the temple in Luke-Acts: those of John Elliott (1991) and Jerome Neyrey (1991b).[9] Elliott’s study, “Temple Versus Household in Luke–Acts: A Contrast in Social Institutions,” provides a constructive entry point for understanding the temple’s importance as a social institution.

The holiness of its space, its personnel . . ., its sacrifices, and the laws of holiness it enforced symbolized a holy people’s union with the Holy One of Israel. This link between the holy place and the holy people and their demarcation from all that was unholy was derived from the Torah; and it was elaborated, maintained, and legitimated in an ideology and system of holiness which defined Jewish identity and regulated all aspects of Jewish life. Where temple and Torah are involved in Luke’s narrative, therefore, crucial issues regarding norms of holy behavior and social interaction, and the boundaries of god’s holy people are at stake. (218-19)

Initially, Elliott provides an excellent overview of the formidable range of issues and semantic fields associated with the temple in Luke-Acts, underscoring the complexity of this theme in Luke-Acts (219-20). Halfway through the study, however, by way of contrasting the institutions of temple and household, Elliott emphasizes the economic centrality and political role of the temple to a greater degree than Luke’s narrative warrants, thereby eclipsing certain socio-religious aspects which the narrative does foreground. Indeed, as Halvor Moxnes notes in his study of Lukan economic relations, Luke has not chosen to highlight in his narrative a number of avenues of the temple’s economic and political control, such as tithes and land ownership for example (1988, 70-74).[10] Though the political and economic import of the temple are embedded within the institution, and though they are certainly not without significance in the social world of the first century, Luke has not chosen to focus on these particular characteristics of the temple as a social institution in his narrative. Those socio-religious aspects of the temple which Luke does underscore, however, are brought out more clearly by Jerome Neyrey’s study, “The Symbolic Universe of Luke–Acts.”[11]

in contrast to the political-economic focus of John Elliott’s work, Jerome Neyrey’s study provides a helpful approach to the symbolic nature of the temple. Though his essay is not exclusively devoted to a study of the temple in Luke-Acts, Neyrey correctly underscores the role of the temple as “the chief symbol of Israel’s symbolic universe” (278). It is this characteristic of the temple institution which emerges as the most salient feature in Luke’s narrative portrayal, more closely accounting for the emphasis which the temple receives in Luke-Acts and more illuminating for its function in the narrative. Like Elliott, however, Neyrey too easily moves back and forth between the function of the temple in the social world and the way it is actually presented in Luke’s narrative, ultimately causing him to overstate the negative character of Luke’s portrayal. “[I]t is clear that Luke understood the Jesus movement to be repudiating the temple, both as a symbol and as an institution” (294). It is difficult to harmonize such an unequivocally negative statement with the emphasis the temple receives in the infancy narratives, the Lukan redaction of Jesus’ Jerusalem ministry, the prominence of the temple in Acts or the disciple’s ongoing interaction with the institution. In spite of the many passages which would seem to contradict such categorical statements, Neyrey’s analysis flattens-out the complexity of Luke’s nuanced portrayal of the temple as decidedly negative.

Other scholars, who have more closely attended to the juxtaposition of positive and negative images of Luke’s temple portrayal have suggested that Luke is presenting an ambivalent portrait of the temple or has ambiguous feelings about it.[12] Scholars with widely divergent perspectives on Luke-Acts have made very similar comments concerning Luke's apparent ambivalent and conflicting temple imagery. R. L. Brawley explains that the conflicting imagery surrounding the centrality of the temple and Jerusalem, or Luke’s “ambiguous fascination with the holy place of Israel,” is because they are both the "place where the prophet must die and from where the gospel goes forth" (1987, 18). J. T. Sanders echoes this sentiment as well: “While in terms of salvation history, it is the pivot in the divine plan of salvation for the Gentiles, it is, even more than that, the locus classicus of evil, of hostility to Jesus, to the church, to the purposes of God" (1987, 32). Finally, J. B. Tyson, noting that Luke-Acts contains more positive and negative images of the temple and Jerusalem than the other Gospels, has framed the issue in similar terms:

The ambivalence of Jerusalem and the temple in Luke-Acts is striking. The presence of both positive and negative images, stories of peace, stories of conflict, and associations of both religious devotion and impending doom characterize the Lukan writing. The contrasts are deep and inescapable. (1986, 159)[13]

However, such conclusions as these engender further questions. Can Luke’s alleged ambivalence towards the temple, his mingling of both positive and negative images, be accounted for in a more nuanced and precise way? Can they be construed in a manner which is meaningful and coherent both within the context of the entire narrative and for Luke’s largely Gentile audience?

One recent study which does suggest a way forward regarding these sorts of questions, particularly for a non-Jewish audience, is Philip Esler’s Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts (1987). Esler roots Luke’s ambivalent temple theology in an historical reconstruction of the first generation of Christians in Jerusalem, suggesting that it reflects “a continuation of an experience of one segment of the early church in Jerusalem whose feelings for the temple, given its social and religious impact on them, were profoundly ambiguous”(133). This segment of the first generation of believers is represented by God-fearers, those Gentiles attracted to Judaism yet, because of cultural barriers, remain on its margins. In an exercise of “sociological imagination,” Esler explores the fundamental ambivalence of such a God-fearer when confronted with the worship experience at the Jerusalem temple.

On the one hand, he experiences great satisfaction that he has come to the temple of his God and has viewed its overwhelming beauty; on the other, at the same time, he is greatly dissatisfied that he is prevented from approaching as closely as possible to the presence of God on earth and being a full participant in his cult. As he stands there, the very architecture of the place brings home to him that, for all his devotion, he is an outsider and will remain so unless he undergoes circum­cision, an operation which is both painful and utterly at odds with his Hellenic distaste for self-mutilation in any form. In sociological terms, such a person is 'marginalized'. (156)

Esler’s historical reconstruction and the implications which he draws from it, not just for Luke but for other New Testament texts, would take us well beyond the boundaries of the present study. Yet, his depiction of how the exclusivity of the temple architecture marginalizes one particular class of people can serve as a crucial insight into a much broader understanding of how the temple functions in Luke’s narrative. While Esler roots Luke’s ambivalence in the historic experience of God-fearers vis-à-vis the actual physical structure of the temple, in the present study we will underscore the temple as an embodiment of the multiple socio-religious systems inscribed within its structure which marginalize large cross-sections of people and with continuing relevance for Luke’s audience.[14] Like Esler’s research the present study shall also locate motivations for Luke’s so-called ambivalent presentation of the temple in his competing pastoral interests for his largely Gentile audience. However, we shall include among these motivations interests which would also emphasize connection and continuity with God’s people by: (1) locating provision for Gentile participation in the promises to Israel in its sacred institutions while at the same time (2) challenging a circumscribed understanding of these institutions which would marginalize Gentiles and maintain cultural barriers.[15] Furthermore, while Esler notes that this aspect of Luke’s temple critique is primarily evident in Stephen’s speech (Acts 7:2-53, esp. 7:48, echoed by Paul in 17:24), we shall assert its presence as a consistent subtext throughout Luke-Acts.

Another recent article which builds on Esler’s work and has served as a catalyst for the present study is Joel B. Green’s “The Demise of the Temple as Culture Center in Luke-Acts: An Exploration of the Rending of the Temple Veil” (1994a). By careful attention to Luke’s narrative staging of the death of Jesus and a nuanced treatment of Luke’s characterization of the temple against the background of sacred space, Green underscores the socio-religious symbolism of the rending of the temple veil by demonstrating that “the torn veil works symbolically to neutralize the dominance of the temple as a sacred symbol of socio-religious power predetermining insider and outsider” (514). One can infer from Green’s analysis several emphases which would enable a better understanding of Luke’s portrayal of the temple. First, it suggests a perspective on the temple which lends greater coherence to the Lukan concern for the marginalized,[16] a concern which includes but is not limited to the Gentiles, nor merely to the temple theme. Reading Luke-Acts, one encounters various segments of society who, because of diverse cultural and religious barriers, remain on the margins of society. Second, there is the related possibility of a more subtle accounting of both positive and negative facets of Luke’s characterization of the temple. Third, it implies a methodological need for a deeper appreciation for the symbolism of sacred space, Luke’s narrative staging, and the complex interaction between the two. And, finally, it highlights the unfinished task of a complete investigation along these lines of the temple theme in Luke-Acts. Green concludes,

Although a full exploration of Luke’s temple theology lies far beyond the scope of one essay, what we have examined indicates a consistent concern with the continued but transformed role of the temple. Even if the temple remains as a place for prayer and teaching, it no longer occupies the position of cultural center, the sacred orientation point for life: its zones of holiness no longer prejudge people according to relative purity. Other stories and speeches in Acts will develop the theological rationale, but in the torn veil Luke has already demonstrated symbolically that the holiness-purity matrix embodied in and emanating from the temple has been undermined. (515)

Clearly none of the previous studies on the temple in Luke-Acts have undertaken an exploration of the entire temple theme in Luke-Acts with the particular emphases noted above. The following study shall attempt to do so. In the process we will endeavor to keep three important aspects in focus: first, the symbolically rich and complex nature of the temple as a sacred, socio-religious institution; second, the theological and narratological function of the temple in Luke’s two volumes;[17] and third, the complex nature of the interplay between these first two aspects and how it shapes Luke’s narrative rhetoric. Each of these statements shall receive further clarification as we explore how to balance these three foci in an appropriate methodological framework.

A Methodological Proposal

In attempting to balance the main focal points of the present study we have taken two methodological cues from the work of sociologist Robert Wuthnow in his volume Communities of Discourse (1989). The first insight concerns a way of conceptualizing the relationship between innovative cultural discourse and its social environment; the second concerns a flexible methodological framework for pursuing this concept. Concerning this first aspect, we propose that it is more helpful to explore Luke’s seemingly ambivalent presentation of the Jerusalem temple through this broader characteristic of innovative cultural discourse—that which Wuthnow has termed the problem of articulation. In Communities of Discourse Wuthnow illustrates how such discourse achieves a balance between conformity within its cultural environment and the broader appeal of cultural innovation that challenges the status quo.[18]

Great works of art and literature, philosophy and social criticism, like great sermons, always relate in an enigmatic fashion to their social environment. They draw resources, insights, and inspiration from that environment: they reflect it, speak to it, and make themselves relevant to it. And yet they also remain autonomous enough from their social environment to acquire a broader, even universal and limitless appeal. This is the problem of articulation: if cultural products do not articulate closely enough with their social settings, they are likely to be regarded by the potential audiences of which these settings are composed as irrelevant, unrealistic, artificial, and overly abstract, . . . but if cultural products articulate too closely with the specific social environment in which they are produced they are likely to be thought of as esoteric, parochial, time bound, and fail to attract a wider and more lasting audience. The process of articulation is thus characterized by a delicate balance between the products of culture and the social environment in which they are produced. (Wuthnow 1989, 3)

Wuthnow’s employment of the term “articulation” advances a significant range of the word’s semantic potential, capturing as it does its various senses of the manner of producing an utterance, the articulation of a group’s convictions, and the mode of joining disparate entities. In doing so, his analysis underscores both the power of discourse over social environment and the power which social environment exerts upon discourse; it illustrates how discourse shapes its environment, as well as how this environment is always shaping discourse.[19] Any coherent analysis of the role that the Jerusalem temple plays in Luke’s narrative must account for both how this salient theme is shaped by its social context as well as how it challenges that social context.

The present study argues that much of what has been deemed ambivalent concerning Luke’s presentation of the temple can be better characterized as a sustained tension or, in Wuthnow’s terms, an ongoing articulation of different facets of sacred space and their significance for his social environment. That is to say, the presentation of the temple in Luke’s narrative is indeed shaped by the social environment of the first century and, to a degree, resonates with traditional perceptions of the Jerusalem temple (e.g., the perspectives of Chance and Bachmann). However, as an instrument of cultural innovation which points beyond and, in some sense, transcends its particular originating environment, the narrative focus on the temple also exhibits a significant degree of dissonance with this social environment, evincing a notable critique of temple ideology and its attendant prescriptions of insider and outsider. This sustained balancing of perspectives is an intricate and intrinsic part of Luke’s narrative rhetoric and can be understood as a coherent part of his wider theological agenda. In what follows we shall demonstrate the nature and purpose of Luke’s sustained articulation of this theme, explore the function of maintaining this type of tension in his narrative rhetoric and emphasize some of the broader implications of his temple theology. This we shall do by means of a flexible methodological framework which will serve to facilitate our analysis.

 As we have maintained in our discussion of previous research, this methodological framework should be able to negotiate between the significance of the temple in its socio-historic setting and the significance it is accorded in Luke’s narrative. This is important for a number of reasons. First, it is all too easy for scholars in working with historic narrative to unconsciously move back and forth between meaning and significance in the social world and in the world of the narrative. This sort of methodological self-consciousness will prove particularly challenging when the focus is such a multivalent symbol such as the temple. Nevertheless, this oversight has undermined a number of previous attempts to account fully for the complexity of the temple theme in Luke-Acts. Second, certain narrative approaches, on the other hand, can grant too much autonomy to the text, as though it did not have any resonance or grounding outside the world of the text, as though the text were completely distinct from its first century context, rather than being, in some sense, a product thereof. Third, though cultural and literary theory have been the ascendant methodological concerns in the area of biblical studies for several decades, each becoming increasingly refined, work in the area of synthesis and integration of the two has lagged far behind, particularly in the area of a common framework. Indeed, there has been little dialogue between these two approaches and they remain for the most part segregated methodologies. How can we best address these concerns?

We shall attempt to focus on such concerns through the appropriation and modification of the model found in Wuthnow’s Communities of Discourse. As a sociologist whose work is sensitive to the power of both social and discursive forces, Wuthnow has provided a conceptual framework which may be readily appropriated by biblical scholars seeking to address both cultural and literary concerns.[20] In Communities of Discourse the framework was employed to focus on a broad array of cultural artifacts which represented several major cultural movements, while in the present study we are focusing on one specific narrative. There Wuthnow addresses the issue of articulation by employing a pair of triads, one social and the other discursive and ideological.[21] In the present study we shall employ a modified pair of these conceptual triads which facilitate the negotiation of meaning between social worlds and narrative worlds (see Figure 1).[22]

Figure 1

Methodological Framework

Each column in the methodological framework above can be broadly characterized as moving from general to specific or from abstract to concrete.[23] The conceptual triad of the social world  consists of environmental conditions, institutional contexts, and agents and practices. More precisely, these conceptual categories may be defined as follows.

First, environmental conditions speak of the “most general social, cultural, political, and economic contours of the period under consideration” (Wuthnow 1989, 7). It is a place to begin to consider the society in question from a panoramic and generalized perspective. Next, institutional contexts provide more specific contexts for considering cultural change.

Institutional contexts are the more immediate settings in which these resources are molded. They are the organizational situations in which ideology is actually created and disseminated, and are likely to include the arrangements of power, economic supplies, personnel, and legitimation that directly affect the creation and dissemination of an ideology. . . . Within these contexts the producers of culture gain access to necessary resources, come into contact with their audiences, and confront the limitations posed by competitors and persons in authority. (Wuthnow 1989, 7)[24]

In a variety of ways we will underscore how the Jerusalem temple functioned as the premier institutional context within the Jewish social world, how its role as sacred space functioned as a symbolic resource for the competing theologies and ideologies of Second Temple Judaism, and how this perspective will contribute to a better understanding of its thematization in the narrative world of Luke-Acts.

Third, agents and practices, or what Wuthnow has termed Action sequences, focus on what transpires within institutional contexts. “They refer to the behavior of culture producers and consumers and the decisions of patrons, censors, political leaders, and others who affect the behavior of culture producers and their audiences” (Wuthnow 1989, 7). Though this category is often too idiosyncratic for systematization, it underscores the role of personal agency and behavior in the process of cultural change and clarifies how culture producers arise. An example for engaging this concept might be comparing the orientation and influence of various groups vis-à-vis the temple institution, e.g., Essenes, Pharisees, Sadducees, or Jesus and his followers.

By considering the spectrum of this triad of conceptual categories which outline a social world—from broad environmental considerations through immediate institutional contexts to specific agents and practices—we may speak with more precision concerning the forces which a social world may exert on a narrative world or how a social setting may shape narrative configuration.

Merely to consider the social context, however, is to provide only a partial analysis. There is always a degree to which a narrative does not articulate with its social context and remains to an extent free of contextual determination. Narratives are unavoidably selective and perspectival; they give witness to a world in some way distinct from the context from which they originate. This we may address through the other half of our methodological framework, the discursive triad which pertains to the Narrative World. This narrative triad consists of the social horizon of the text, discursive fields, and figural action.

First, the social horizon of the text concerns elements of the real experienced social world  which are also selected for incorporation and thematization in the Narrative World.

The experienced world becomes, as it were, incorporated into the text. But the process of incorporation, of textualization, is itself selective and transformative. The social world of the text and the social world in which the text is produced will resemble each other only partially. Struggles between social classes in the experienced world and the narrative or theoretical representation of these struggles will differ by virtue of the constraints imposed by narrative and theoretical construction itself. The two will articulate but remain disarticulated as well. (Wuthnow 1989, 12-13)[25]

The social horizon of the text is an important conceptual construct which mediates between social worlds and the narrative worlds. As we have commented above, lack of methodological attention to the selective nature of textual incorporation of features of the real social world into narrative worlds can undermine any attempt at socio-literary analysis.

Next, discursive fields refer to the “symbolic space or structure” within the narrative itself. That is to say, many narrative texts are shaped by and structured around certain binary concepts and fundamental oppositions which determine the conceptual parameters and contours under consideration.

A discursive field of this kind provides the fundamental categories in which thinking can take place. It establishes the limits of discussion and defines the range of problems that can be addressed. The question of articulation at this level becomes a question of specific features of the social horizon being incorporated into the discursive field as symbolic acts and events, or parallel formation in one being superimposed on the other. In the simplest case, conflict between two factions in the social world may dramatize the basic opposition around which ideological statements are organized. The question of disarticulation becomes one of identifying ways in which the discursive field provides contrast with features of the social horizon itself, thereby evoking a conceptual space in which creative reflection can take place. (Wuthnow 1989, 13-14)

Within the narrative world of Luke-Acts we shall focus on how many of Luke’s discursive fields are organized around the binary opposition of insider/outsider and the rhetorical conventions of reversal. Around this basic polarity Luke organizes a multitude of opposing pairs along such lines as status, gender, purity, and ethnicity; lines which find their significance in the holiness-purity matrix centered in the temple—that tangible expression of God’s presence, as well as a concrete reminder of such social barriers embodied in its dividing structures. What makes the narrative of Luke-Acts a particularly interesting text to consider within the present framework is the importance of the Jerusalem temple: (1) as a premier institutional context in the social world, (2) the prominence accorded this institution within the social horizon of the text, and (3) the important role that it plays in organizing many of the discursive fields we find within the narrative. There is a subtle and complex interplay between these conceptual levels which contributes to the theological texture and richness of Luke’s narrative.

Finally, figural action draws its narrative significance from the conceptual space created by discursive fields.

 [It] refers to representative behaviors, modes of thinking or characters that occupy space within a discursive field and are defined by the structural features of that field. . . . They take on significance within the broader polarities around which . . . discourse is organized. If discursive fields define the range of problems that can be considered, figural action provides, as it were, a representative range of solutions to these problems. Figural action defines a course of behavior that makes sense, given the problems and possibilities that have been identified. (Wuthnow 1989, 14)

Careful attention to figural action, particularly as informed by narrative criticism, will lend greater specificity to the task of characterizing Luke’s narrative aim, that is, the point of his narrative sequences and the general thrust of his narrative cycles, whether long or short. Moreover, such attention to figural action will foster a greater appreciation for how narratives in general can communicate theology in no lesser way than other genres. Indeed, narrative can better resist collapsing the tension of Luke’s disparate perspectives on the temple and more adequately invoke the rich “storied” nature of human experience.[26]

While recognizing the role of social context in shaping ideas, the conceptual triad of the Narrative World underscores how these ideas are able to disengage from social contexts. Though the raw materials of the social environment are woven into the symbolic structure of any narrative representation, this representation will also, to some degree, disarticulate with its social environment.

This methodological framework is intended to sort out the various ways the temple intersects with and shapes Luke’s narrative. As well as balancing our inquiry between, on the one hand, how the Jerusalem temple dominated the Jewish social world and, on the other hand, its textual incorporation as a salient feature of Luke’s narrative world, it provides us with a range of questions with which to interrogate the text. How does the temple function as an institutional context? What kind of social and symbolic raw material does this context provide and what are the institutional limitations confronted by Jesus and his followers? How is this related to his many confrontations with his competitors and those with institutional authority?

This leads to the closely related question of how this institution informs the symbolic space or structures of Luke’s discursive fields or Luke’s own narrative. What is the temple’s relation to the fundamental oppositions and transpositions of Luke’s narrative? How does it relate to the underlying categories which organize his thinking and what are the range of problems and solutions? Where does Luke’s narrative engage with and where does Luke’s narrative disengage from the social context? Finally, what kind of new conceptual space does Luke’s narrative provide for his Gentile audience?

The flexibility of this methodological framework will not only help us sort out and answer a range of such questions, but it provides an excellent context for implementing a variety of approaches in contemporary biblical studies. The social triad seems a fitting place for interfacing social histories and cultural studies, while the narrative triad is very congenial to a host of literary-rhetorical approaches. Although the role that this framework will play in the following investigation will not be without significance, providing as it does heuristic categories for the tools of New Testament scholarship, it is not meant to be an obtrusive grid through which all texts must pass. It will often function in the background, only to be foregrounded when most pertinent. Furthermore, though each point of both the social and narrative triads will contribute to my investigation of temple passages in Luke-Acts, I shall develop more fully aspects of institutional contexts and discursive fields and the dynamic interplay between these two conceptual levels.[27]

As we stated at the outset of the chapter, when considering our focus on the Jerusalem temple within the present framework there emerges on a number of levels a particular emphasis on the institution of sacred space which is in need of further theoretical grounding. We shall now turn to this topic to consider the most significant features of sacred space as understood and experienced in antiquity.

Sacred Space

The only way to attend properly to the first focal point of our investigation, the symbolically rich and complex nature of the temple as a sacred, socio-religious institution, will be through a more profound engagement with the significance of sacred space, both within the social world of the first century and within Luke’s narrative world. Given the overwhelming significance accorded this sacred site in both these worlds, there is, then, a need briefly to lay a theoretical foundation regarding some of the more salient features of sacred space as understood in antiquity and as experienced in traditional or archaic societies.[28] The conceptual gulf between our world and theirs is not insignificant.[29] To this degree our worlds are different and a recovery of the traditional dimensions of sacred space is necessary.

Jonathan Z. Smith has aptly characterized sacred space as a “place of clarification” or a “focusing lens.” “It is a place where, as in all forms of communication, static and noise (i.e., the accidental) are decreased so that the exchange of information can be increased” (1980, 114).[30] It is ironic, then, that the scholarly perspective on the sacred space of the temple in Luke-Acts largely remains obscure and enigmatic. We propose that the theme of the temple in Luke-Acts is of a more focused and precise nature than has been captured by most previous studies; Luke’s so-called ambivalent presentation of the temple is actuality rooted in the multivalent nature of sacred space. That is, Luke exploits two different dimensions of sacred space, contrasting them with each other; underscoring one dimension while undermining the other. This issue can best be understood by tracing the contours of an exemplary manifestation of sacred space long identified with the Jerusalem temple—the axis mundi or sacred center.[31] A number of Lukan scholars have noted this characterization of the Jerusalem temple recently, particularly in relation to the passion narrative in Luke’s Gospel, e.g., D. Sylva (1986), R. L. Brawley (1987), and J. B. Green (1994a).

An axis mundi or sacred center is a symbolic construct which signifies the cosmological center of the world. Such sites can be characterized as having both vertical and horizontal dimensions or axes. Together these two axes mark the closure of a meaningful world, outside of which lies chaos. The vertical axis marks a point of juncture between multiple layers of the cosmos (the heavens, the earth, the underworld). As such, the vertical dimension functions as an axis of revelation and divine communication. This vertical dimension of sacred space is consistently emphasized in each of the temple sections of Luke-Acts. Throughout both Luke and Acts the temple continues to be a place of revelation, divine communication, and instruction. However, we shall argue that the substance of what is revealed and communicated within its precincts functions within the narrative to point beyond the institution itself, to undermine attendant circumscribed notions of insiders and outsiders, and to call into question the continuing validity of key features of the other dimension of the sacred center—that of the horizontal axis.

The horizontal axis of the sacred center emphasizes its capacity to structure and orient social life and social space. The ordering of social life and social space has an intrinsic correlation: sacred space orders space, "often geographic space, always existential space—and by ordering space, all that exists within it" (Brereton 1986, 530). As such, the horizontal axis of the sacred center functions as an organizational metaphor for society, for organizing and encoding the significance of social space. Indeed, temples were the preeminent ordering, organizing, and unifying institutions in ancient Near Eastern society, and one of the oldest methods of institutional legitimation. Any society which hopes to remain stable over the course of time must supply its members with fitting analogies which both generate and legitimate its structure. A primary means of accomplishing this was through replication of the cosmos at the cosmological or sacred center

Traditional societies believed that the cosmos was an ordered realm which had emerged from the midst of chaos.[32] Hence, sacred space stands over against the chaos “out there.” In harmony with its understanding of the formation of the world or its cosmogony, a society’s sacred space signifies its meaning through a dialectical relationship with chaos. Mircea Eliade has noted that it is a nearly universal trait in traditional societies to recognize an opposition between their own inhabited territory and the “unknown and indeterminate” space with which they are surrounded.[33] Amid all the disorder and chaos encountered in human experience there is a place which serves as a reflection of the cosmic order. This cosmos was divinely ordered, in the beginning, in the originating, primordial act. Hence traditional society approached this resultant order, depicted in the sacred center, with an attitude of both celebration and "a deep sense of responsibility for the maintenance of that order through repetition of the myth, through ritual, and through norms of conduct" (J. Z. Smith 1972, 142). The celebrations and ritual actions formed an intrinsic part of traditional society’s experience of dwelling in and maintaining its symbolic universe. This symbolic universe plays a foundational role in the conceptualization of the cosmos and, conversely, sacred space is a fundamental mode of organizing and internalizing this symbolic universe.[34]

In speaking of the function of the horizontal axis of the sacred center as an organizational metaphor for society, for legitimating its institutions,[35] and the internalization of a symbolic universe, we are encroaching upon the concept of the sociology of knowledge.[36] In this manner these symbolic universes assert that, “all reality is humanly mean­ingful and call upon the entire cosmos to signify the validity of human existence” (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 104).[37] In that these universes are internalized, they function in accord with what Pierre Bourdieu has termed “Structuring Structures” or “instruments for knowing and constructing the world of objects, as symbolic forms” (Bourdieu 1991, 164).[38] Previous New Testament scholarship has largely employed the concept of the sociology of knowledge to facilitate a reconstruction of the original communities which were recipients of the writings of the New Testament.[39] In the present study we are engaging the concept to give a nuanced and textured account of Luke’s theological enterprise, to illuminate Luke’s critique of internalized religious categories and cultural assumptions, and to understand better how his narrative undermines the potential for the importation or transference of this mode of thinking into his own context.

Crites has captured well the coercive force of these sacred centers in producing an analogous interiorization of their structures.

 [The center] tended to project perpendicularly from the horizontal plane of the social space it organized. In the community collected around it people knew where they were, geographically and socially. A clearly defined social role provided the primary sense of person identity for the traditional man or woman. Each person internalized the sacred space in which the community dwelt, spiritually oriented by its divinely charged center, the center of personality being in consonance with the cosmic axis at the center of the community. The language of the community was the language of his or her thoughts, its mores were internalized as the morals of each person, and the daily round of life orbited around its center. The sacred space of the community, in short, formed the nomologous inner space of each member. (Crites 1987,102-3)

The symbolic, sociocosmic hierarchy of temple structures is not unfamiliar in the history of religions. “Architecture becomes a physical expression, one more reinforcement of the manifold separation of the ranks of society according to the function and status” (Knipe 1988, 122). Hence, such sacred centers functioned as a foundation for social differentiation and provided the necessary ideological framework for the hierarchical structuring of society.[40] Jonathan Z. Smith describes the social impact of such centers.

They func­tioned as instruments for the dissemination through all levels of society of beliefs which, in turn, enabled the wielders of political power to justify their goals. . . . At the same time the rituals and ceremonies celebrated at the great cult centers would appear to have acted as mir­rors to society at large, as reflectors of a sacrally sanctioned social order, as inculcators of the attitudes and values appropriate to that order. . . . In other words they may be regarded as idealized structural models which, while giving ritual expression to the moral framework of social organization, defined the approved status rela­tionships between groups and between “social persons” . . . within those groups. (J. Z. Smith 1987, 51-2; see also, Wheatley 1971)

In this sense, the foundational distinction between the sacred and the profane, which underscores the heterogeneity of space, is also employed to underscore the stratification and hierarchical ordering of social structures, serving as a generative symbol, both reflecting and reifying social codes.

What both Smith and Crites are saying, then, is that certain primary symbols, such as temples, can epitomize social structures. These symbols become extensively elaborated, with other symbolic systems perceived as inscribed within, interrelated and superimposed upon each other. In this situation the sacred space of a temple, as a replica of the cosmos, encodes and regulates these various sub-codes.[41] A prime example of this is illustrated in Mary Douglas’ comments concerning the Jewish temple: “[It] is clear that the temple rules and sex rules and food rules are a single system of analogies, they do not converge on any one point but sustain the whole moral and physical universe simultaneously in their systematic interrelatedness” (Douglas 1973, 140).[42] In as much as all societies construct their own realities which they covertly project upon the real world—that world which they appear only to describe—sacred space becomes meaningful for a society in its capacity to superimpose itself on the fundamental patterns of life and culture (cf. Hawkes 1977, 55-56).

By and large, these symbols of sociocosmic hierarchy emphasized by the horizontal dimension of sacred centers proved to be an effective power in the internalization of their hierarchical systems, as witnessed in such reflective Jewish writings as this passage from the Mishna which classifies purity relative to proximity to the Jerusalem sanctuary.

There are ten degrees of holiness:

1.      The Land of Israel is holier than any other land . . .

2.      The walled cities (of the land of Israel) are still more holy . . .

3.      Within the walls (of Jerusalem) is still more holy . . .

4.      The Temple Mount is still more holy . . .

5.      The Rampart is still more holy . . .

6.      The Court of the Women is still more holy . . .

7.      The Court of the Israelites is still more holy . . .

8.      The Court of the Priests is still more holy . . .

9.      Between the Porch and the Altar is still more holy . . .

10.    The Sanctuary is still more holy . . .

11.    The holy of Holiness is still more holy . . . (m. Kelim 1.6-9)[43]

This radiating matrix of relative purity creates social maps, maps which segregate and separate along lines of ethnicity, gender, purity and status. Such social maps and sacred concepts of boundaries also undergird the establishment and maintenance of national and ethnic identity.[44] Boundaries with religious sanction in the realms of bodies (e.g., circumcision), diet, time (e.g., Sabbath), and space, then, become definitive of insiders and outsiders. It is precisely this sort of understanding of sacred space which informs the temple as an institution as well as its significance in Luke’s narrative. Like the threat of chaos into cosmos, those on the margins of such maps, like the Gentiles vis-à-vis the map of Israel in m. Kelim, are considered dangerous (see J. Neyrey 1991b, 281-82). The temple played a generative role in this regard in terms of social and sectarian boundary setting, particularly in times of stress and strain on the external boundaries of a social system (Douglas 1966, 126). Recent scholarship has characterized the first century as just such a time of increasing pressure upon the cultural and ethnic boundaries of Judaism. This period witnessed an intense internal debate concerning community identity and the concomitant criteria for participation.[45]

No doubt the intensified criteria for inclusion in the people of God or covenantal identity fueled the controversy between the Pharisees and Jesus and his followers.[46] This, along with the ever increasing social pressures and general anxieties of the first century, provides a context for interpreting Jesus’ conflict with official temple authorities as well. Though there are certainly distinctions drawn in Luke’s narrative, these are the two main oppositional groups: Pharisees and temple authorities. Both groups, along with associated scribes, come into repeated conflict with Jesus and his followers, both are communities which embody temple purity concerns, and both ideologies are explicitly identified with the larger symbolic system epitomized in the temple.[47]

In Luke’s narrative, communities which reflect temple purity concerns stand in dramatic contrast to the inclusive nature of Jesus’ community.[48] Luke draws attention to this fact by the way he frames his narrative. That is, the very people who are typically considered as outsiders with regard to temple purity concerns, those signaled for exclusion from priestly temple service or community membership at Qumran—the poor, the deaf, the blind, the lame, the maimed, the leprous, the ulcerated and on—these very people are portrayed within the narrative as those who are now insiders.[49]

In this fashion, Luke draws upon the semantic capital of the temple with its hierarchical distinctions and divisions, even while he is undermining its foundations. Luke’s discursive fields and narrative categories take shape in antithetical fashion vis-à-vis the symbolic, segregating function of the temple, that which we have described above as the horizontal axis of the sacred center. In surprising ways, Luke employs the preponderantly centripetal symbolism of the temple to frame his overwhelmingly centrifugal narrative. This subversive tactic is a common element of marginalized voices which appropriate symbols and forms while emptying their content and hollowing out their meaning—in effect “decentering” their function within the system. The Lukan temple theme, then, both frames and parallels two major emphases in the story of Jesus and the disciples: (1) ministry to the marginalized of all kinds and (2) God’s action beyond proscribed boundaries. In this way Luke’s narrative engages with certain cultural institutions while simultaneously subverting them.

There remains one more question concerning the relevance of the sacred space of the Jerusalem sanctuary to the immediate concerns of Luke’s audience. Why does the Jerusalem temple remain a focal point if, as it is quite likely, it was already destroyed by the time of Luke’s writing? One reason may be the very fact that the impetus for the extension, transposition, or allegorization of sacred centers such as the temple is often their destruction, as witnessed in the case of Pharisees, with the transference of center from temple to table and Torah, or in diverse mishnaic trajectories (cf. e.g., m. Kelim), or even its metaphorical extension in Christian texts. Such epitomizing structures are able to integrate different spheres of significance into a symbolic totality, and shape cultural dispositions, being eminently generative and transposable “capable of generating a multiplicity of practices and perceptions in fields other than those in which they were originally acquired” (J. B. Thompson 1991, 12). Ultimately it is the enduring force of this symbolic structure and its potential for undermining his audience’s identity which continues to be the focus of Luke’s thinking rather than simply a material structure of mortar and stone. It is the continuing influence of the temple as an ideological structure which endured in people’s minds— shaping one’s perceptions of the world and of self and of God—it is this structure which ultimately shapes Luke’s narrative.[50]

In the following chapters we shall consider those passages which contribute to and are informed by the temple theme in Luke-Acts. Rather than considering them within a static structure, however (e.g., a chiasm per Bachmann), or as simply a fixed aggregate of texts, we shall explore them against the wider background of the narrative progression of Luke-Acts and the contribution which they make thereto. We shall investigate Luke’s temple theme, then, against a basic understanding of narrative cycles—involving in some fashion the essential elements of order, chronology, and causation—which underscore narrative events as situated within a process or progression. “A simple narrative cycle might consist of the progression from ‘possibility’ to ‘realization’ to ‘result’” (J. B. Green 1997, 8).[51] In this manner we shall be able to make a better accounting of Luke-Acts’ character as narrative and more precisely locate the temple as a “theme” which contributes to the developing narrative.[52]

In Chapter Two we will explore the variety of ways which the Lukas Infancy Narrative (Luke 1:5-2:52) (1) creates readily expectations for understanding Luke-Acts, (2) establishes discursive fields related to the sacred space of the Jerusalem temple and (3) how the figural action related to these discursive fields develops narrative possibilities for a transformed role for the temple. In Chapter Three we will consider (1) the transition to the ministry of Jesus (Luke 3:1-4:13) in light of the developments in the Infancy Narrative, (2) the overarching coherence and relevance of discursive fields related to sacred space within Luke’s Gospel, and (3) how the narrative possibilities of a transformed role for the temple find clarification and realization in Jesus’ Jerusalem ministry, death and ascension (Luke 19:28-24:53). In Chapter Four we will consider (1) the prominent role of the temple setting in Acts 3-5 for further results of these narrative and thematic developments, (2) for how the ministry and death of Stephen (Acts 6-7) functions as a transition away from the sacred center, and (3) how this sets the stage for understanding what follows, particularly how Acts 21:15-23:32 functions as a conclusion to this thematic development. In Chapter Five we will briefly summarize and consider the implications of our research.

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[1] For the purposes of the present study we shall refrain from digression into discussion of authorship at this point but shall hereafter refer to the author of Luke-Acts as Luke.

[2] Representing a distillation of his dissertation, Weinert’s main thesis is presented in his first article: “In his Gospel and in Acts Luke highlights the temple as that ancient and renowned site in Israel which is specifically suited to promoting the service of God through pious observance, prayer, praise, and public testimony” (1981, 89). His later two articles nuance two problematic texts for his thesis: Jesus’ saying about Jerusalem’s abandoned house (Luke 13:34-35) (1982); and Stephen’s speech (Acts 6:13-14; 7:2-53) which is echoed in Paul’s Areopagus speech (Acts 17:22-31) (1987) (regarding Acts 6-7, see also the work of E. Larsson, 1993). Weinert employs a redaction critical methodology in his treatment of Lukan texts (1981, 85), and though not directly refuting positive aspects of his study, we would contend that greater attention to the social dimensions of the temple as an institution and the methodological advances in narrative criticism would bring into focus a consistent, critical subtext underlying many Lukan temple texts. Moreover, Weinert’s studies yield many of the same sorts of unanswered questions as those of Bachmann and Chance, on which see below.

[3] See M. Bachmann (1980, 132-70) and H. Conzelmann (1960, 73-94).

[4] On such concepts see, e.g., G. Prince (1973).

[5] Chance is in agreement with Bachmann concerning the close identification between city and temple but presents his own understanding of Lukan eschatology framed in contrast to Conzelmann.

[6] These are not the only possible alternatives, yet they seem to be posited as such a priori in Chance’s argument. In his concluding chapter, moreover, Chance makes a provisional case for a Jerusalem source to account for Luke’s eschatological focus on a literal city and temple. In this regard, see also the work of J. M. Dawsey (1981), who, building on Chance’s proposal, contends that Luke has recaptured an early Christian temple tradition predating Mark and perhaps originating from the earliest Christian church in Jerusalem.

[7]Chance seems to level out the diversity of opinion found in Jewish texts concerning the role of the restored Jerusalem in relation to the nations. Texts which range from the subjugation of the nations as well as those which speak of their salvation are subsumed under one equivocal proposition, “The restored Jerusalem was to play a central role in God’s dealing with the nations” (14).

Many of Chance’s assertions are undermined by the successful Gentile mission which increasingly moves away from Jerusalem and wherein we find Gentiles fully participating in God’s salvation apart from any mediation of the temple. Indeed, the only hindrances to this thrust seem to be located in or stem from Jerusalem (e.g., Acts 11:1-3; 15:1) Chance’s study would be strengthened by attention to Luke’s narrative rhetoric which is able to reformulate both earlier expectations found in the narrative as well as traditional Jewish expectations (e.g., the increasingly negative characterization of the temple and religious shrines in general as the narrative progresses). One comes away from this study with the impression that the interpretive possibilities of Luke’s temple theme are needlessly foreshortened by orientations extraneous to the narrative or external theological debates.

[8] See Josephus Antiquities 15.417.

[9] Both articles form chapters of the larger volume, The Social World of Luke-Acts (Neyrey 1991a), which seeks to provide socio-cultural models appropriate for interpreting the social context of Luke-Acts.

From a non-sociological perspective, scholars who ultimately underscore the negative role of the temple date all the way back to Conzelmann, see H. Conzelmann (1961, 75-78, 165), K. Baltzer (1965), C. van der Waal (1973), and F. X. Reitzel (1979).

[10] For a nuanced assessment of Elliott’s essay along these lines see J. B. Green (1994a, 510 fn. 40).

[11] Nevertheless, we are in essential agreement with the general thrust of Elliott’s statement early in his study, “The Holy Place and the holiness ideology it embodies eventually emerge in Luke-Acts as an entire system at odds with the will of God and the realization of salvation" (220).

[12] Alternatively, other scholars have made tentative suggestions for a source-critical basis for Luke’s ambivalence, e.g., concerning Stephen’s speech, on which see the comments of R. Maddox (1982, 52-4).

[13] Tyson has characterized his more recent research along these lines as "a study in ambivalence” (1992, viii). For a similar understanding of the temple in Acts, see C. K. Barrett (1991).

[14] In numerous ways this shall resonate with the broader Lukan themes which Luke accentuates even more than the other Gospels, e.g., Jesus’ setting aside of what were considered by many to be the essential elements of covenant participation, elements which served as socio-religious barriers to many segments of society, elements such as “obedience to the law on such matters as Sabbath observance, abstinence from impure food, and avoidance of contact with persons regarded as impure by reason of their occupation (tax collectors), their state of health, or their non-Jewish origins and way of life” (H. C. Kee 1989, 87).

[15] For a similar analysis of the Law in Luke-Acts see J. A. Fitzmyer (1989, 175-202) and J. B. Green (1995b, 27-28).

[16] On the marginalized and poor in Luke-Acts see, e.g., W. E. Pilgrim 1981, D. P. Seccombe 1983, M. V. Abraham 1987, J. R. Donahue 1989, J. O. York 1991, J. B. Green 1994b, S. J. Roth 1997 and K. Kim 1998.

[17] The narrative and theological unity of Luke-Acts is a basic presupposition of the present study. We may note that since H. J. Cadbury (1927) scholarship has witnessed a growing consensus concerning the essential unity of Luke’s two volumes (e.g., W. C. van Unnik 1955, 1973; R. H. Smith 1971; C. H. Talbert 1974; R. F. O'Toole 1977, 1984; S. M. Praeder 1984; J. B. Tyson 1986; R. C. Tannehhill 1986, 1990) with a few recent dissenting voices particularly concerning questions of genre (e.g., J. M. Dawsey 1989, M. C. Parsons 1990, M. C. Parsons and R. I. Pervo 1993). Our own position is based upon the many parallels which exist between Jesus and the apostles, the larger architectonic parallels (see C. H. Talbert 1974; R. L. Brawley 1987, M. Korn, 1993, T. J. Lane 1996), and the creation of narrative needs and expectations in the first volume which only find their resolution in the second volume. Indeed, many Lukan themes, such as the temple theme, are only fulfilled or understood from the longer perspective that both volumes provide; coherence over the course of both volumes may serve as an acid test for the viability of theories concerning Luke’s theology (e.g., J. A. Bergquist 1986). There is, then, a need to take Luke more seriously as a narrative theologian and with the character of Luke-Acts as narrative. What Beverly Gaventa has said concerning the theology of Acts can also be said concerning a proper assessment of the narrative and theological unity of Luke-Acts, that is, the need for a more subtle accounting of “the elements the narrative repeats, the information omitted, the appearance and disappearance of individuals and groups of people, the rich interweaving of story lines asking what each of those suggests about the theology of the author" (1988, 157).

[18] A major theoretical focus of Wuthnow's study critiques a simplistic view of the unmediated relation between ideology and social structure. In as much as social structure, from an anthropological perspective, speaks of “enduring, culturally structured relations between individuals or groups” and particularly the “forms of differentiation (hierarchy, authority, status)” (R. H. Winthrop 1991, 261) it resonates with the central themes of our study. On the need for New Testament scholars to move beyond simplistic, direct, mono-causal models in sociology, toward the more developed and sophisticated models available, see B. Holmberg’s concise survey (1990).

[19] This principle is nicely illustrated in the area of New Testament studies in the work of N. T. Wright, who characterizes storytelling and human writing as “the articulation of worldviews, or, better still, the telling of stories which bring worldviews into articulation” (Wright 1992, 65).

A number of individuals in different fields have echoed similar themes recently. Cultural and literary theorist Stephen Greenblatt strikes a similar chord, speaking of great literature as both repository and crucible of dominant cultural codes. “[A] culture’s narratives, like its kinship arrangements, are crucial indices of the prevailing codes governing human mobility and constraint. Great writers are precisely master of these codes, specialists in cultural exchange. The works they create are structures for the accumulation, transformation, representation, and communication of social energies and practices” (Greenblatt 1990, 229-30). Indeed, great works of art endure because they are imbued with the surrounding culture. This quality, in turn, facilitates the reconstruction of the context from which these works originated and without which they would be impossible to understand. “Works of art by contrast contain directly or by implication much of this situation within themselves, and it is this sustained absorption that enables many literary works to survive the collapse of the condition that led to their production” (Greenblatt 1990, 227). In the case of the narrative of Luke-Acts, it may well have been that the Jerusalem temple already lay in ruins. Nevertheless such a paradigmatic, ideological symbol has an enduring value long past its natural life span; such a structure “continues to emit its ideological signals long after its original content has become historically obsolete” (Jameson 1981, 186-87; see also, P. Bourdieu 1991, 235; M. Bal 1991, 16; M. Bakhtin 1981, 259-422; T. Todorov 1984, 41-74).

[20] Wuthnow’s framework builds upon his previous work in the area of culture theory as well as incorporating important aspects of recent literary analysis of discourse. For previous work in the area of culture theory see Wuthnow 1984 and 1987. In the area of literary analysis Wuthnow lists the influence of Bakhtin, Todorov, Althusser, and Jameson as being among those from whom he has taken his cues for the nexus between social horizons and “the internal composition of texts” (Wuthnow 1989, 554).

[21] The meaning of ideology in Wuthnow's framework is closely connected with discourse and competing discourses. "[Ideology] refers in the present context to an identifiable constellation of discourse that in fact stands in some degree of articulation with its social context. All ideology, by this definition, bears some relation with its social environment. . . . In this usage, then, ideology is also an analytic feature of a community of discourse. It is that aspect of discourse that pertains in some special way to its social surroundings. To analyze ideology is to focus on the question of articulation. To do so, however, does not preclude other kinds of questions—philosophic, aesthetic, critical. Nor does the analysis of ideology in this sense imply questions of legitimation, distortion, or false consciousness. Ideology is neither assumed to be an accurate reflection of reality nor accused of distorting reality, only of bearing a relation to the specific social context in which it appears" (Wuthnow 1989, 16). Because of his focus on the problem of articulation, Wuthnow is more interested in looking at institutions as a context in which ideology may be produced rather than the role of ideology in the legitimation of social institutions.

A number of disciplines—sociology and anthropology, cultural and literary criticism—are using ideology in a broader sense than it has been employed in traditional Marxist or political definitions. This scholarship underscores the close fit between ideology and discourse in both its narrow and broad definitions. In a narrower sense of the word, discourse, as “a unified and structured domain of language-use that constrains what can be said or thought,” is, in many ways, commensurate with ideology (Abercrombie et al. 1988, 119); in a broader sense, it is foundational for the totality of social intercourse. A. K. Adam’s comments are suggestive of both of these senses of the word. “These critics define an ‘ideology’ as a descrip­tion of all the social interactions that ascribe ‘significance’ to our behav­ior. They recognize the value of Marx's insight into the ideological compo­nent of oppression, but they go on to use the term not only for cases of ‘false consciousness,’ but as a condition for the possibility of all con­sciousness. Our capacity to produce meaning from experience comes not from an innate faculty, but from our assimilation of socially produced as­sumptions” (Adam 1995, 47-48). See also the comments of G. Marcus and M. Fischer on merging the analysis of ideology and social life into a single enterprise in anthropology and cultural criticism (1986, 115).

[22] Unquestionably, there is a difference between how a biblical scholar might apply this framework to a specific text or narrative and how a sociologist uses this framework to consider the wide assortment of cultural artifacts which represent a cultural movement. We are clearly pushing Wuthnow’s categories further and in different directions than he has taken them in Communities of Discourse. Wuthnow does acknowledge, however, that an important source of his thinking in developing his methodological framework stems from structuralist and formalist methods of literary analysis (Wuthnow 1989, 554). Because of the amenable nature of this framework and the close fit between it and the specific literary methodologies I shall be employing, my appropriation of Wuthnow's framework might be characterized as an attempt to tease out its latent potential for biblical studies and to provide a common framework to further the dialogue between socio-cultural and literary-rhetorical methods.

[23] This social triad is meant “to specify the range of relevant considerations at a relatively abstract level of generality, and then with the benefit of empirical examples to suggest at a more concrete level the particular manifestation of these abstractions that are most likely to become operative” (Wuthnow 1989, 543).

[24] It is important to point out that the term Institution, by this definition, primarily speaks to concrete organizations, entities, and settings, but, speaking more broadly, can potentially include cultural dispositions or “any relatively durable set of social relations which endows individuals with power, status and resources of various kinds” (J. B. Thompson 1991, 8). In this broader sense of Institution, especially with regard to its impact on individuals, we are impinging upon Bourdieu’s distinctive use of the term habitus. “The habitus is a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways. The dispositions generate practices, perceptions and attitudes which are ‘regular’ without being consciously coordinated or governed by any ‘rule.’ The dispositions which constitute the habitus are inculcated, structured, durable, generative and transposable” (J. B. Thompson 1991, 12). These characteristics shall be increasingly important when we consider how the concrete institution of “temple” relates metonymically to less concrete institutions and dispositions which Luke addresses (cf. M. Shapiro and M. Shapiro 1988, 31).

[25] Wuthnow’s definition of social horizon evokes the works of Jameson, Bourdieu, and Bakhtin. Jameson’s influence, and behind that Gadamer and classical phenomenology, would seem to inform this understanding of “horizon.”

[26] See S. Hauerwas and L. G. Jones (1989; esp. 65-88), J. Goldingay 1994, 61-76), and J. B. Green (1995b, 129-34).

[27] The various levels of these three-tiered structures are not meant to represent any idealized temporal or logical process, but rather to underscore the interdependencies of these levels. There is an ebb and flow in the relationship between institutions and discourses which we hope to explore in more detail, yet, it is worthy to note at this point that certain scholars, most notably Michel Foucault and Frederic Jameson, have provocatively framed the issue against the grain of our normal intuitions. That is, they both suggest that it is equally valid to see the relationship as discourse generating institutions rather than institutions generating discourse or simply discourse existing within them.

[28] I shall be using “traditional” or “archaic” in reference to “those peoples for whom a linear conception of time and modern secularization have not come to be the overwhelming determinants of their human experience" (R. F. Brown 1981, 429). For an overview of anthropological discussion on notions of archaic religion, particularly in the work of M. Eliade, see R. F. Brown (1981, 429-49, esp. 432-35).

[29] Though the sacred space of each world is unavoidably influenced by the social space in which one dwells, our social space, however, is, as Stephen Crites has noted, “more pluralistic, less homogeneous, less centered but less exclusive, indefinitely extended and arguably less intimate” (Crites 1987, 104). Even capital cities of world stature lack the sense of center which was present in archaic societies. Their force is more accurately characterized as centrifugal rather than centripetal, “radiating expansively toward an economic empire rather than collecting a community” (Crites 1987,104). Nevertheless, we persist in using spatial language for the social and psychological experience of “lostness” or “loss of center” (e.g., lost, wandering, drifting, without direction).

Even so, our lack of a common world view in the (post-)modern era grants a certain immunity to cosmological contamination as it was experienced in ancient society, as Mary Douglas notes: “Any culture which allows its guiding concepts to be continually under review is immune from cosmological pollutions. To the extent that we have no established world view, our ways of thinking are different from those of people living in primitive[sic] cultures. For the latter, by long and spontaneous evolution, have adapted their patterns of assumption from one context to another until the whole of experience is embraced” (1968, 341).

[30] Smith returns to this metaphor in his more recent work as well. “The temple serves as a focusing lens, establishing the possibil­ity of significance by directing attention, by requiring the per­ception of difference” (Smith 1987, 104).

[31] The concepts of axis mundi or sacred center as employed in this study are largely based on the work of Mircea Eliade (1954, 1959, 1961, 1975) and his proponents. J. D. Levenson correctly argues for the light which these studies can shed on the generative theological role of sacred space in ancient Israel, particularly because of the cultural impetus within Israel to suppress the religious parallels and commonalities it shared with its neighbors in the biblical writings. “[A]ll the social pressure in biblical times encouraged Israel to stress what set her apart from her neighbors, for example, the experience of the Exodus, rather that what she shared with them. . . . It is therefore not surprising that the text of the Hebrew Bible is so taciturn about the theology of the Temple. It was too well-known, too much part of the common cultural landscape, to be allowed free and independent expression. In later times of the Talmudic era, where Jews were clearly distinct from their neighbors and where the book was preeminent, they had more latitude to expand on their commonalties with their neighbors” (Levenson 1985, 120-21).

[32] Mircea Eliade has underscored how traditional societies fight against the encroachment of chaos, striving to maintain their ordered world in the face of disorder. “At the limits of this closed world begins the domain of the unknown, of the formless. On this side there is ordered—because inhabited and organized—space; on the other, outside this familiar space, there is the unknown and dangerous region of the demons, the ghosts, the dead and of foreigners—in a word, chaos or death or night” (Eliade 1961, 37-8). Clifford Geertz expands upon this same thesis. “Humanity has an intrinsic need for order in life as well as human space. [Man] can adapt himself [sic] somehow to anything his imagination can cope with; but he cannot deal with chaos. Because his characteristic function and highest asset is conception, his greatest fright is to meet what he cannot construe—the 'uncanny,' as it is popularly called” (Geertz 1973, 99).

[33] It is in this sense that chaos has significance for a religious world view. “Chaos is a sacred power; but it is frequently perceived as being sacred ‘in the wrong way.’ It is that which is opposed to order, which threatens the paradigms and archetypes but which is, nevertheless, profoundly necessary for the very creativity that is characteristic of Eliade's notion of the Sacred” (J. Z. Smith 1972, 143).

[34] We are using the term symbolic universe here in the same sense and with the same function that Clifford Geertz has spoken of symbolic systems in his semiotic treatise on understanding culture. “Man depends upon symbols and symbol systems with a dependence so great as to be decisive for his creatural viability and, as a result, his sensitivity to even the remotest indication that they may prove unable to cope with one or another aspect of experience raises with him the gravest sort of anxiety. Therefore our most important assets are always the symbols of our general orientation in nature, on the earth, in society, and in what we are doing: the symbols of our Weltanschauung and Lebensanschauung” (Geertz 1973, 99). These symbols form the building blocks for the “enterprise of world-building” which we call human society (Berger 1969, 3).

Geertz’ analogies concerning religion as a cultural system shall help inform our understanding of the function of the temple in the first century as well. As with any culture its symbolic system may be accessed through its exemplary symbols such as temples. Through the lens of sacred space we are better able to focus upon a society’s “system of symbols” which constitutes its world view, and to clarify the “webs of significance” from which it is suspended.

[35] As Peter Berger asserts“[T]his legitimation is the conception of the institutional order as directly reflecting or manifesting the divine structure of the cosmos, that is, the conception of the relationship between society and cosmos as one between microcosm and macrocosm “ (Berger 1969, 34).

[36] In their treatise on the sociology of knowledge, Berger and Luckmann maintain that society consists of a three-step, dialectical process: Externalization (Society as an objective product), Objectification (Society as an objective reality), and Internalization (Humanity as a social product). Though symbolic universes and particularly the institutions which embody them are constructed in relation to the process of externalization, and experienced as an objective reality, they also function in a more subjective manner through the third step of this process, internalization. In this sense the external categories of the world, as objectified in external institutions, become internalized categories for both knowing and constructing the objective external world. This is in accord with what Pierce and Lacan refer to as “thirdness” or that which structures the means of communication, that is “the mediation of the embedded or unconscious cultural structures in language, terminologies, nonverbal codes of behavior, and assumptions about what constitutes the imaginary, real, and symbolic” (Marcus and Fischer 1986, 32).

[37] They function as society’s mode of preserving “bodies of theoretical tradition that integrate different provinces of meaning and encompass the institutional order in a symbolic totality” encompassing “all socially objectivated and subjectively real meanings” (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 95-96).

[38] Such symbols, Bourdieu has further noted, are “the instruments par excell­ence of ‘social integration’: as instruments of knowledge and com­munication . . . they make it possible for there to be a consensus on the meaning of the social world, a consensus which contributes fundamentally to the reproduction of the social order” (Bourdieu 1991, 166).

[39] B. Holmberg’s survey of work done in the area of the Sociology of Knowledge by New Testament scholars primarily looks at the viability of studies which work from finished theological products back to a reconstruction of the community which produced it, or the correlations between early Christian beliefs and texts and their social situations. This is a different engagement of the concept than that of the present study. Notwithstanding the difficulties involved in incorporating these insights, Holmberg, like Berger, stresses its close fit with religious and theological research. “[W]hen the fundamental issues concern human agency, human values, and causality and the relation between human and divine action, theology and theologians have somehow come into their own again. These are among the type of questions exegetes and theologians set out to find answers to, and concern the core of our intellectual discipline. Diving into the sociology of knowledge and its fundamental assumptions might not be a bad way to approach the problem of meaning and especially the meaning of religion” (Holmberg 1990, 144).

[40] Knipe has noted: “It is widely assumed that temple-building societies are sedentary ones with established agrarian bases, if not already urbanized then urbanizing, displaying complex hierarchical social structures, including priestly classes and ruling elites with royal courts providing patronage for cult activities on the part of the society, and, further, owning traditions of architecture, sculpture, painting, as well as of writing and preservation of texts in libraries” (Knipe 1988, 121).

[41] We speak of those symbolic structures where, as Berger has termed it, the “nomos of a society attains theoretical self-conscious” or “the highly theoretical constructions by which the nomos of a society is legitimated in toto and in which all less-than-total legitimations are theoretically integrated in an all-embracing Weltanschauung. This last level may be described by saying that here the nomos of a society attains theoretical self-consciousness” (Berger 1969, 32). These central, multivalent symbolic structures have been char­acterized as “‘elaborating’ symbols, with other symbols and meanings seen as derivative, analyzed as ‘logical’ extensions, metaphoric extensions, or even as temporally sequential elaborations of the ‘core’” (Dolgin, Kemnitzer, and Schneider 1977, 24).

[42] A window into a particular religious world view and symbolic system is greatly facilitated by attention to the boundaries and divisions which constitute the system. Douglas has illustrated this principle as a heuristic tool for entering the symbolic world of the biblical purity code as well as its applicability to other systems. “The purity rules of the Bible . . . set up the great inclusive categories in which the whole universe is hierarchized and structured. Access to their meaning comes by mapping the same basic set of rules from one context on to another. In this exercise the classification of animals into clean and unclean, the classification of peoples as pure and common, the contrast of blemished to unblemished in the attributes of sacrificial victim, priest and woman, create in the Bible an entirely consistent set of criteria and values. The table, the marriage bed and the altar match each others’ roles in the total pattern” (Douglas 1973, 139; see also Eilberg-Schwartz, 1990).

[43] See J. Neyrey (1991b, 278-79). J. Z. Smith infers a similar capacity for differentiation in his discussion of Ezekiel's depiction of the sacred center (40:20-49) (1986, 29).

[44] W. D. Davies notes that in the Qumran community one of the most significant marks of sin is the removal of the boundaries of the land, which were regarded as set by Yahweh himself (1991, 22).

[45] Kee observes: “This question was fiercely debated between the Jewish nationalists, the priests, and those Jews who had in some degree assimilated to Hellenistic culture, on the one hand, and dissident groups such as the Dead Sea community and the Phar­isees, on the other. Although an act of decision could align the individual with one or another of these competing factions within Judaism in this period, the outcome of the decision was a mode of community identity” (Kee 1989, 5). On the relationship between temple and community at Qumran, as well as Targumic, and Rabbinical literature see Donald Juel (1977, 159-68, 169-209). For extra-canonical Jewish literature on the broader question of the place of God’s presence, see D. A. Renwick (1991, 33-41).

[46] As J. B. Green relates, this debate was not always verbal in nature: “Sharing food encoded messages about hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, boundaries and crossing boundaries. Who ate with whom, where one sat in relation to whom at the table—such questions as these were charged with social meaning in the time of Jesus and Luke. As a con­sequence, to refuse table fellowship with people was to ostracize them, to treat them as outsiders” (Green 1995b, 87).

[47] This position reflects an understanding of Luke’s depiction of scribes (a.k.a. “lawyers” and “teachers of the law”) not so much as a distinct group but as being in association with Pharisees and temple leadership. Though there is a debate about any formal relationship between scribes and Pharisees, Luke twice refers to certain scribes as belonging to the Pharisees (Luke 5:30; Acts 23:9; cf. G. H. Twelftree 1992, 733). Although scribes are occasionally focused on individually (e.g., Luke 10:25-37) they are typically associated with Pharisees and temple leadership and with contexts where these groups are present (e.g., Luke 2:46, 11:45-54; 20:45-47). When scribes are present they signal conflict in the area of legal interpretation and act as “agents of censure” (cf. Malina and Neyrey 1991, 97-122), playing a prominent role as such at the trial of Jesus. Scribes, then, constitute “a further arm of the temple apparatus . . . and, like the faction of the Pharisees, represented the link between temple authority and Torah observance” (Elliott 1991, 220).

[48] To a significant degree, there are analogies between the way that the interpretive practices of these communities regarding the Scriptures is challenged in the narrative, and how their temple ideology is challenged more indirectly through the narrative. It is only in relation to God’s redemptive purpose for all peoples that both these institutions must be understood. “The religion of Israel—its institutions, practices, and so on—is to be embraced fully when understood vis-à-vis the redemptive purpose of God. But in order to be understood thus, Israel's religion must cohere with the purpose of God as articulated by God's own authorized interpretive and redemptive agent, God's Son, Jesus of Nazareth” (Green 1995b, 74-75).

[49] See J. A. Sanders’ treatment of Lukan “inclusion lists” against the background of priestly and Qumranic exclusion lists (1993, 106-20).

[50] Bourdieu has focused on the issue with uncommon clarity. “If the objective relations of power tend to reproduce themselves in visions of the social world which contribute to the permanence of those relations, this is therefore because the structuring principles of the world view are rooted in the objective structures of the social world and because the relations of power are also present in people's minds in the form of the categories of perception of those relations. . . . Knowledge of the social world and, more precisely, the categories which make it possible, are the stakes par excellence of the political struggle, a struggle which is inseparably theoretical and practical, over the power of preserving or transforming the social world by preserving or transforming the categories of perception of that world” (Bourdieu 1991, 236). See also the comments of J. Z. Smith (1987, 48); with reference to symbolic domination see Dolgin, Kemnitzer, and Schneider (1977, 37); and concerning both the promise and the perils of investigating the relationship between mythical symbols and social situations, see G. Theissen (1982, 191) and B. Holmberg (1990, 118, 136-37).

[51] On “narrative cycles” see G. Prince (1973, 9-15), M. Bal (1985, 19-23), J. H. Miller (1990, 75) J. B. Green (1997, 8-10).

[52] This approach is in contrast to earlier redaction critical approaches which manifest an order of study at variance with how Luke's actual audience encountered the narrative. For example, Weinert (1981) approaches the narrative in the following order, (1) Luke 19-24, (2) Luke 3-18, (3) Luke 1-2, and (4) Acts in order, and brackets out the role of other pagan temples in Acts.