Multidimensional Temple

This Monday I was in Hilo, Hawaii, preparing this Sunday worship while sitting on Moku‘ola (Island of Life) also known as Coconut Island in Hilo Bay. It was the original location of an old Heiau (old Hawaiian temple) and a holy place which was destroyed many years ago with only a few stones remaining. Yet that place still keeps a very special spiritual atmosphere.
    I was preparing a worship in which I plan to talk about an ancient Jewish Temple. And although it was a genuine Jewish Temple, it was not in Jerusalem, but rather it was on an island called Elephantine in the river Nile in South Egypt.
    There is not a single mention of this Jewish Elephantine temple in the Bible, because that was a great problem. You need to understand that a Jewish Temple outside of Jerusalem should had been an anathema it certainly was in the sharp contradiction of everything written in the Torah (Law of Moses).
     And furthermore, this temple was not some rough heretical operation at its time. The community gathered around this Egyptian Jewish Temple was in regular correspondence with Jerusalem and Samaria and existed with the support and blessing from Jerusalem. Any memory of this Jewish Temple in Egypt was almost entirely suppressed. We would not know of its existence if not for the so called Elephantine papyri that survived and were discovered in the late XIX and early XX century.
    For the biblical fundamentalists this ancient Jewish Temple in Egypt is an utter conundrum and a stumbling block for their hardened, harsh and often abusive religion.
    In reality it offers us an intriguing new and fresh perspective not only for our understanding of the Bible but it invites us to embrace an alternative, multi-dimentional, more tolerant and inclusive self understanding of our faith - broader and more tolerant than the biblical fundamentalism.
    Join us this Sunday as we embrace this new and broader vision.
And for those who want more information, here is an older article I wrote about this Jewish Temple in Egypt some time ago.