Temples of the Ancient World: Ritual and Symbolism

by Donald W. Parry (Editor), Hugh Nibley, Michael Lyon

Book by

Genres: Religion, Lds, Nonfiction, History, Church, Reference

805 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Donald W. Parry, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls at Brigham Young University, is married to Camille Mills, from Las Vegas, Nevada; they have six children. He has served as a member of the International Team of Translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls since 1994. He has authored or edited thirty-three books, ten of which pertain to the scrolls and five deal with the writings of Isaiah. Parry has also published articles in journals, festschrifts, conference proceedings, and encyclopedias. He is also a member of several other professional organizations, including the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Groningen, The Netherlands, Society for Biblical Literature, Atlanta, Georgia, and the National Association of Professors of Hebrew, Madison, Wisconsin. Parry presently serves as a member of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation Board of Trustees.

Reviews

[Stephen Cranney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have often seen the LDS temple ritual as a series of masonic rites that God had stamped with his imprimatur because he filled in the external framework provided by the Masons with spiritual content.

Stumbling upon the Greek Eleusinian rites and Osiris rituals in Ancient Egypt in Wikipedia a few years ago helped me situate the LDS temple rituals in the long tradition of endowment-like ancient liturgical reenactment/temple rituals, and saw that, while some of the details may have been masonic, the basic framework is actually much older, even if masonry was used by JS to access the framework.

I had a vague understanding that there was an LDS literature out there that explored these similarities. This book filled out that niche. While not all the chapters were worth my time ( a lot of skimming and outright skipping), the parts that I did read (okay, only parts 2, 5, 8) really helped me situate my views on LDS temple worship.

This book does not have a strong “look at these parallels how could JS have gotten them right therefore the Church is true” message. Rather, it shows how cosmopolitan the LDS temple ceremonies are--how they tap into cosmological temple themes and formats used by various cultures around the world. Even if one believes that they all sprang from the mind of Joseph Smith (which I don’t), it helps represent LDS temple worship more as an almost archetypal striving for sacrality and deity (and yes, for becoming deity) seen in cultures worldwide, and less an idiosyncratic amalgam of 19th century influences. If there is any kind of an ancient message implied in the chapters it isn’t that there was some pre-historical endowment that all the ancient variations are linearly descended from, but that God speaks to different peoples at different times, and that the basic themes are woven through the rituals of His children all around the world.

[Cami · Rating 4 out of 5]

I put this on hold at the library after seeing it referenced in Brad Wilcox's book "Continuous Conversion." It is a huge scholarly volume and I had to absorb it in parts over time. I would give most of the book 3 stars and other parts 5 stars, particularly the chapters by Hugh Nibley. Chapter 20, "On the Sacred and the Symbolic" makes the entire book worth it. (I actually found that chapter online through BYU and will print it for my records.) This collection gives amazing insights to the temple and gave me a lot to think about. I might buy this book to keep on my shelf and revisit from time to time.

[Brian]

PHEW!
I got this book as a required text for a college class about ancient world history back in 2000/2001. I read selected chapters of it for that class, most of which I did not understand or really appreciate. I have wanted to revisit it for many years now, and last year I made the goal of reading it over the course of that year. Having been exposed to more scholarly work than I had been as a freshman in college, I was confident that I would be better equipped to read and appreciate this volume. Well, it took me two years, but today I finished reading it and am happy to be able to say that I did.
As a collection of essays from a scholarly conference this book was... quite heavy. Definitely not meant for a "lay" audience. The collection as a whole felt a bit redundant in places, and some of the essays themselves had internal redundancies, which made the book feel longer. But others were much tighter and more attainable.
Because of how long it took me to read, it's hard to say what the key takeaways were for me. There were lots of things that were interesting and enlightening, but at the moment, I'm struggling to come up with particulars. There was one chapter about the Brother of Jared (from the book of Ether in the Book of Mormon) that I found very interesting, perhaps my favorite part of the whole book. There was a lot of scholarly research on what temples are, what the elements of temples are, what role temples played in ancient societies, etc, all of it was pretty interesting in context of my knowledge and experiences with modern temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Will I read this again? Probably not in the same way of starting at the beginning and reading through to the end, but I can see myself revisiting certain sections in the future.

[Christi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is published by FARMS and is a collection of essays. It covers topics like who and what is allowed in the temples (of old), where some of our religious traditions come from, different meanings for ceremonies and things of the temple, etc. It is heavily intellectual with some spiritual thrown in. It is also heavily historical--majorly focusing on the temples of the Ancient World and not always tying in the modern temples of our religion. Some of the essays were over my head (not being a student of ancient temples), and some were awesome. Some were spiritual and some were very ivory-tower. It was a great read and definitely would be a great resource. But it's long and heavy and not anything I think I would revisit soon. If you do read it, pick and choose the essays that will mean the most to you instead of reading it cover to cover.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

A heterogeneous collection of essays and papers with a wide variability in interest to me.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

very interesting

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting...

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of scholarly papers written by Latter-day Saints about the history of the temple in various ancient cultures, with an emphasis on Israelite temples and symbolism. There are some fantastic papers and some rather dry ones too--they just so happen to be the most in depth of course. My personal favorite is M. Catherine Thomas' paper on the temple symbolism in the Epistle to the Hebrews. That's good stuff.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has kept me busy for months. The articles I understood and hence enjoyed the most were:
Garden of Eden: Prototype Sanctuary by Donald W. Parry; Temple Motifs in Jewish Mysticism by William J. Hamblin; Hebrews: To Ascend the Holy Mount by M. Catherine Thomas.

[Joe Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are lesser articles in this book, but there are those that make this a must read.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Book is an incredible resource for those who are serious students of the gospel of Jesus Christ and want to know a lot more about ancient temples.

[Jason Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, best book on temples I have ever read.

[James Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book on ancient temple systems to date.