Mieszkanie Chwały. Teologia sanktuarium Izraela na pustyni (Wj 25 - 31 i 35 - 40)

Summary The religion without ritual is inconceivable. The Tent of Meeting – Tabernacle of Glory – was the first temple of Israel, center of israelite ritual and worship. It was erected at the bottom of Mount Sinai after the convenant contracted with God. Moses was told to mirror the heavenly realm on the desert earth: You will make it all according to the design for the Dwelling and the design for its furnishings which I shall now show you (Ex 25,9). The description of the Tabernacle (Ex 25-31; 35-40) belongs to so- called Priestly layer (P) of the Pentateuch. It occupys 13 long chapters of the Book of Exodus, as many as no other cultic object or event in the Bible. The description evidences striking similarities with the account of the building of the Solomonic temple (1 Kings 6f.), not only in the furniture but even in the measures. All the past time biblical scholars attributed the priority to the wilderness sanctuary. However, the unrealistic and formal style of P as compared with the realistic account of the temple building activities led J. Wellhausen (the Protestant, father of so-called “documentary hipotesis”) to conclude that the Tabernacle from Sinai, as described in P, was the copy – not the prototype – of the temple at Jerusalem. This opinion spreaded among the scholars. Further and more nowadays researches however, have shown that this conclusion is one-sided. In fact, the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness can no longer be regarded as a fiction of the late Priesty writers. Chapters 25-31 and 35-40 describe the system of worship with goes back to Moses and contain elements of great antiquity. With these are mixed others which reflect the development of worship in the course of the history of Israel. The composition and redaction of whole of the narrative is late. Although it is not historical data which are the most important in elaborate account of the Tabernacle. One of it's pivotal theological idea is the completion of God's work of creation. We can notice conscious efforts of Priestly autor to join the account of the Tabernacle with the description of the creation of the world (Gen 1,1-2,4a), text also attribited to the Priestly tradition. Author of Exodus' account achives it not only by using similar vocabulary and phrases, but also by using seven-fold pattern in dividing the Tabernacle's description. The detailed exegetical investigation shows that the goal of this assimilation is as follows: the Tabernacle plays principal role in cosmos. Creation is not quite complete until the Tabernacle is built. The order of creation is not fully finished until Israelite society and the Tabernacle cult are constructed. In ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies (of which the priestly creation account in Gen 1 is a typical example) the apogee of creation is the construction of a sanctuary for the god-creator. In P this apogee is deferred to Exodus, especially to Ex 39-40. The extensive verbal and thematical parallels between Gen 1 and the Tabernacle account form an inclusio indicating that creation of the world and construction of the God's Tent belong to a single narrative that culminates in the erection of the wilderness Yahweh's sanctuary. Priestly literature repetedly highlights the centrality of the Tabernacle. It was located in the very centre of the Israelite camp, as P's elaborate map in Numbers 2 makes clear. The inaugural ceremony for the Tabernacle (Ex 40 and Lev 8-10) – during which the Tabernacle was erected, the divine presence entered it in the sign of Glory, and its priesthood was installed – also attest to its pivotal position in Priestly theology. Tabernacle – like Sinai before – is the place of revelation of God's law (Lev 1,1). It is a sacred center, dwelling of God.