Temples were seen as a place where the divine would come down from heaven and visit the earth. A temple would then connect heaven and earth, becoming an axis mundi, or a "pillar" connecting the divine world, earth, and the underworld. From Revelation 21 we read that a temple plan is not man made, but it comes from the heavens, and is specific by God. This does make sense to me because when going to mass I always hear the mention of the House of the Lord, this is House and how everyone is welcome to come and visit and experience God. It wouldn't be considered his house, the Lord's house, if he hadn't created it himself.
We see that Jerusalem grew as a sacred spot because of its ability to attract stories. For example, it took the creation story, and applied the location of the Garden of Eden to itself, when relation the Gihon river to the Gihon spring in the city. In addition it was able to take the story of the binding of Isaac, where the Lord had revelaved himself to Abraham, and apply it to its city by equating the land of Moriah to a spot in the city. So Jerusalem took these stories where the first humans lived, and where the divine had revealed himself and applied the sacredness that derived from the stories to its location and city. In a way I find this all amazing because it is just pure luck that the city was able to relate to these stories, or was it already planned by the divine. One reason that Jerusalem is seen as an axis mundi is because of the idea that mountains, the highest places on Earth, are the closest places to heaven, and thus to God. Jerusalem has many mountains in its city to relate to this idea, including Mount Zion. I never really thought of mountains as place closer to God, but I guess in the past where, nature played a bigger part in religion that would make perfect sense because if the divine is believed to be in sky then how would you get closer to God? Through a mountain, the highest places on Earth.
Study break time. "Lies" by Big Bang.
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