S1E3 - Two Pivotal Stories: Joseph & Solomon's Temple

Techumanpurpose · S1E3 Two Pivotal Stories - Joseph and Solomon's Temple

My attempt at explaining Temples within the context of a small study series I put together for my church. In recent years the Bible, particularly Israel's Scriptures (the OT) has come alive to me in powerful new ways. This has been due to a range of authors exploring more carefully the ancient world as a setting for the Bible. So many terms that people have argued over for generations actually have specific meaning in Egypt and Mesopotamia. I've done my best at researching this series but I am sure I don't always get it right. The inspiration for this talk was when I heard a lecture by N. T. Wright where he mentioned temples. That clicked into place for me a pile of readings that revolve around temples but do not explicitly unpack the meaning. Go to this reference for a really fascinating read on ancient temples and images of gods. The details on the daily treatment of the images of gods comes from here. Hundley M. B. 2013 "Gods in Dwellings- Temples and Divine Presence" SBL. Beal, G. K. (2008) "We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry", IVP. is pretty interesting.

S1E2 - Early in Genesis

Techumanpurpose · S1E2 THP Early in Genesis

In terms of references, this is a good short video by John Walton on Babel.

 

S1E1 - Introductions

Techumanpurpose · Introductions

 

Nick and I introduce ourselves. If I think of some material to add I will update this blog.

S1E0 Technology and the Human Purpose - Trailer

Techumanpurpose · S1E0 Trailer

 

In this first episode Brian made a note that in the Bible cities and temples are intimately linked. This is obvious but overlooked. Curiously Iain Provan makes it a podcast and then forgets about it when writing. An example of the difference of speaking to an audience and writing. 

https://www.gospelconversations.com/talks/the-ancient-near-eastern-context

If you want to just start with the cities bit it begins at 26 mins. But listen to the whole talk to get into the ancient world view.

Babylon in it's time was a temple complex and centre for government administration. Indeed what was the founding myth of Babylon.

....
"in order to settle the gods in the dwelling of [their] hearts' delight,
He created mankind"(1).

In other words humans are the slave class for building a city for the dwelling of the gods.

Egypt had its own massive temples.

 What are Temples, amongst other things they are the presence of the gods.

Later in the Bible, we see the link between Jerusalem and Yahweh's Temple. Finally at the very end of the Bible we again see this combination between Temple imagery and city imagery. 

If we go beyond the Bible and the Ancient Near East (ANE) we still see the link between cities and temples, think about meso and south America (2).

(1) p1. Leick, G. (2001) Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City. Penguin Books. 

(2) McClellan III, J. E.  and Dorn, H. (2006) Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore.

Podcast is on iTunes

 

Find our new podcast on Apple iTunes. There are two episodes already.

New Podcast coming

Over the years this blog has been a repository for my rather random thinking as I learn and think about technology within the Biblical narrative. It has been a challenging road to sort out what I know about technology, then compare it with how Christians often talk about the subject. Then being forced as I listen to scholars with emerging ways of altering how we think about the text reframe what we thought about the text. People like Professors John Walton and Rikk Watts and Iain Provan have been doing what N T Wright did for New Testament scholarship. Deeply contextualising the scriptures in a particular time and place actually liberates it to shape lives today in ways that I believe are more powerful than the well worn approaches of the past. 

As I begin to develop more solid thoughts on technology within a Biblical narrative, this is advance notice that a podcast is coming.

Hope you get the chance to tune in.

Technology and the Human Purpose.

So for the foreseeable future I will be giving this blog over to information regarding each episode.

Watch for the logo.

Brian.

Cities

The way we build cities and perpetuate inequalty matters. The sacale and history may be at times so large we fail to notice.

This fascinating TED talk might help us.

I will note in passing that his observation does not really fit with Australia where Eastern suburbs are often next to the beach and therefore not disadvantaged. So there maybe other geography structures at play here as well. It is the western suburbs where poverty gets trapped.