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Question: Would Israelites not have constructed a temple outside of Jerusalem?: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 06:05, 15 May 2010
This article is a draft. FairMormon editors are currently editing it. We welcome your suggestions on improving the content.
Questions
==
- Critics claim that Israelites would not have constructed a temple outside of Jerusalem, since this was forbidden by Jewish law and practice.
- A related claim insists that Lehi and his family, being Israelites, would not have offered sacrifices "according to the Law of Moses" because only Levites were authorized to perform sacrificial rites in Israel.
To see citations to the critical sources for these claims, [[../CriticalSources|click here]]
==Detailed Analysis
==
Contrary to the critics' claims, ancient Jews did not avoid creating other centers of sacrifice and worship when far from Jerusalem.
For example, Jews outside of the land of Israel created temples at Elephantine in Egypt (it was destroyed in 410 B.C.) and Leontopolis (sacrifice ceased in A.D. 73).[1]
God would not be unjust
An early LDS missionary publication mocked the absurdity of bible-believers insisting that God would deny the Lehites ordinances commanded under the Law of Moses because of their great distance from Jerusalem:
- Mr. B. quotes Zechariah 14th, “And all the families of the earth shall go up to Jerusalem once a year and do homage.” By an unreasonable translation of the Hebrew word Arates, which signifies earth or land, Mr. R. is led into one of the most ridiculous blunders, namely, that the inhabitants of the most inland parts of America are all to perform a journey to Jerusalem every year, making them a journey of two or three thousand miles on the continent of America, three or four thousand more across the ocean, and then two thousand more up the Mediterranean sea, in all at least seven thousand miles. This doubled by going and coming, would make fourteen thousand miles that every man, woman, and child must perform every year to appear at Jerusalem. All this Mr. R. can believe, sooner than believe that America will have a sanctuary of its own and a holy city for the resort of its tribes and nations.
- Well, Mr. R., the Latter-Day Saints cannot stretch their marvellousness enough for to believe this; so, to avoid this extraodinary stretch of the marvellous and unreasonable, they take the liberty of translating the Hebrew word Arates, land instead of earth, in this text. It will then read thus: “All the families of the land shall go up once a year to Jerusalem,” &c. This does not transgress the laws of the Hebrew language, and at the same time renders the fulfilment of the prediction possible.[2]
As seen above, modern historical research has vindicated the Book of Mormon—Jews much closer to Palestine than the Nephites had their own local temples.
==Answer
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Ancient practice did not avoid the construction of alternate sacrificial temples for Jews who were much closer to Jerusalem than the New World Nephites. The Book of Mormon's report is consistent with ancient practice.
==Notes
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- [note] Menachem Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 46—47.
- [note] Anon., "Reply To Mr. J. B. Rollo’s ‘Mormonism Exposed.’," Millennial Star 2 no. 3 (July 1841). off-site