The Spirit In The Temple

Abstract

"The NT assumes a close correspondence between the Holy Spirit and God’s presence in the temple. This assumption is most clearly expressed in passages such as 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; Eph 2:22 where believers are called a “temple of the Holy Spirit.” 1 This concept is alluded to in other contexts such as John 14:17 where Jesus (in fulfillment of the temple) promises to mediate God’s indwelling presence through the Holy Spirit.2 This NT concept seems to be drawing from antecedent notions concerning the temple and yet no OT Scripture explicitly refers to the Spirit indwelling the temple. Despite the lack of direct references, many scholars presuppose that the NT relationship between the Holy Spirit and the temple is based upon OT antecedents.3 The gap between the OT and NT data is often addressed by simply incorporating the NT assumption without an investigation as to how the unstated in the OT became assumed in the NT. This paper’s purpose is to address this gap through an investigation of the temple and Spirit concepts in the OT and literature of the Second Temple period"