The Open Sanctuary: Access to God and the Heavenly Temple in the New Testament

How can impure, earthbound humans gain access to God, who is holy and in heaven? In ancient Israel and much of the ancient world, the answer was obvious: by means of a temple. The temple gives access to God because it images the cosmos.

This book explores how the concept of a heavenly temple emerged as an important theological concept for early Christians. They developed their understanding of Christ and his work in part through their understanding of heaven as a temple. Nicholas Moore examines the heavenly temple concept in the New Testament within its Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts, demonstrating that the ministry of Jesus gives believers access to the dwelling place of God himself. Moore explores conceptions of the heavenly temple in the ancient world, Second Temple Judaism, the book of Revelation, Hebrews, the Gospels, Acts, and other early Christian literature.

One important contribution of the book is to provide a corrective to the way many people understand the Jerusalem temple in early Christian thought. It is the first comprehensive study of the heavenly temple in the New Testament. Professors, students, and scholars of the New Testament will benefit from this work.

Nicholas J. Moore (DPhil, University of Oxford) is academic dean and lecturer in New Testament at Cranmer Hall, St. John’s College, at Durham University in Durham, England. He previously served in ministry in Buckinghamshire and Hartlepool in the United Kingdom and in Paris, France. He is the author of Repetition in Hebrews and has edited and translated several volumes of French scholarship.