Timothy Wardle explores the early Christian decision to describe their community in terms befitting a temple and argues that this decision is best understood when compared with contemporaneous Jewish communities which constructed rival temples to that in Jerusalem.

In this volume, Timothy Wardle examines the central importance of the Jerusalem Temple during the Second Temple period and the motivating factors which led to the construction of several rival Jewish temples to that in Jerusalem: namely, the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim, the Oniad Temple in Leontopolis, and the "temple of men" at Qumran. Building upon these findings, Wardle then explores the early Christian decision to describe their own community in terms befitting a temple. He argues that the formation of a nascent Christian temple identity stretches back to the earliest layers of the Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem, and that, in line with the Samaritan, Oniad, and Qumran communities, this distinctive temple ideology was predicated upon an acrimonious relationship with the priestly leadership charged with oversight of the Jerusalem Temple.

Autorentext
Born 1974; 1997 B.A. in History and Biblical Studies from Wheaton College (IL); 2002 M.A. in Religious Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 2008 Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University; since 2008 adjunct assistant professor at Wake Forest University and Elon University.