Altar und Tempelhaus. Eine religionsgeschichtliche Interpretation der perserzeitliche Jerusalemer Kultanlage

Abstract

The altar and the temple house, two basic institutions within the Jerusalem temple, differ in their respective purposes, history, and theology. Inherited from the distant past, the open-air altar is an archaic feature that reaches back to prehistoric times. Cultic practices enacted at the altar presuppose a distant abode of God — in the Persian period, no doubt a heavenly one. The temple house is different altogether: an institution that reflects an advanced culture that involved building and living in houses, it incorporated the idea of an earthly residence for God. In Persian times, both structures were reformed: the altar through the introduction of a continuously and perpetually burning fire, and the temple house through aniconism, i.e. the absence of any divine image in human form. Owing to the “aspective thinking” of ancient civilizations, the temple house and altar persisted, remaining juxtaposed, and no one questioned the mutual existence within the Jerusalem temple of these structures that represented two very different ritual and theological concepts.