4
Deities and Temples

When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” . . . The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice. When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting, “Friends, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.”

Acts 14:11–15

These Worthless Things

Speaking to the people of Lystra, the apostle Paul described the temples of the Greco-Roman deities and the sacrifices offered to them as “worthless things.” In this, he voiced a viewpoint acceptable to only a small minority of his peers. For the vast majority of his contemporaries, temples were critical components in the smooth running of society. The phrase “these worthless things” probably also included a reference to the deities themselves, in which case Paul voiced a view that would have resonated with an even smaller minority of the population.

To label temples and deities as “worthless” (and to do so in the name of “the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them”) would be equivalent today to calling for shutting off all the electrical grids that power the structures of contemporary society. It is little wonder, then, that this narrative shows Paul to be in a position of extreme danger after making his daring pronouncement. The narrator tells us that the people “stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead” (Acts 14:19).

The Temples and Deities in Pompeii and Beyond

Like the Temple of Zeus (or Jupiter) in this narrative, there were many temples beyond the walls of Roman urban centers. Most temples, however, lay within urban walls—usually at the heart of Roman civic centers. Things were no different in Pompeii in this regard. Although one very important temple lay beyond the town’s walls (see discussion of the Temple of Bacchus in chapter 8), no fewer than eight temples were dotted around the central forum of the town or sat nearby it (see figure 4.1). The forum toward the southwest of the town (see figure 3.6) was the center of public life in Pompeii (excluding the odd Roman baths dotted here or there beyond the forum and excluding two main complexes east of the town—the amphitheater and the grand palaestra, which was basically a large park). That central forum housed many of Pompeii’s public buildings—buildings for devotional worship, for the selling of primary foods, and for the municipal administration of the town. These buildings formed a ribbon around a large rectangular open space where people milled around or moved from one location to another. The forum was the center of the oldest part of the town, and much of the town seems to have grown up around it.

Figure 4.1. The locations of the main Greco-Roman temples of Pompeii in the final years of its existence: 1 = the Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva); 2 = Venus; 3 = Apollo; 4 = imperial cult; 5 = emperor Vespasian (imperial cult); 6 = Augustan Fortuna (imperial cult); 7 = Isis; 8 = Aesculapius (or Jupiter Meilichios). The forum is the rectangular space around which temples 1, 3, 4, and 5 are dotted.

Pompeii’s temples honored certain deities in particular. Most prominent in the central forum was the temple honoring Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva (temple 1 on figure 4.1)—three deities known as the “Capitoline Triad” because they were worshiped together on Rome’s important Capitoline Hill. Also prominent within Pompeii’s central forum was a temple honoring Apollo (temple 3), another honoring the imperial family (temple 4), and another honoring emperor Vespasian in particular (temple 5).

Much less prominent was the temple to the Egyptian deity Isis (temple 7). This small temple was tucked away from things, as if to enhance the devotional secrecy of those who were initiated into the mysteries of this popular female deity. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of Isis in Pompeii and elsewhere throughout the Roman world. Her devotees were growing in number by leaps and bounds at precisely the same time that the early Jesus-movement was getting a small foothold in relatively insignificant groups throughout urban centers of the Mediterranean basin. (Chapter 9 will further consider the significance of Isis-devotion in the Vesuvian towns.)

At the southwest pinnacle of the town stood the temple to the female deity Venus (temple 2), who had been selected to serve as Pompeii’s primary benefactor and protector. Her temple stood closest to the water, in a position of prominence for those passing by on the sea or arriving from the sea. Except for the Pompeian resident who threatened to break Venus’s ribs because he had been unlucky in love (see chapter 1), Pompeians were extremely dedicated to Venus and honored her in many ways. One resident scratched a graffito on the wall announcing Venus to be “the Savior” (CIL 4.9867; see also chapter 6), and a fresco on the exterior wall of a shop (9.7.6–7) depicts her with a ruling scepter as she is pulled in a chariot by four elephants. Frescos and graffiti throughout the town show the importance of this deity for the residents of Pompeii.

Figure 4.2. The Temple of Jupiter in Pompeii (7.8), which later became the temple to the Capitoline Triad of Roman deities: Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva

Honoring the deities in temples and beyond was a crucial part of civic life in the towns and cities of the Roman world. That the deities were essential to the well-being of all that mattered was a key conviction for many people. The deities were numerous, each having his or her primary functions, although those functions often coupled with secondary functions as well. At the heart of the divine world were the twelve deities who purportedly resided at the top of Mount Olympus, around whom the vast resources of Greek mythology revolved. Inheriting these traditional Olympian deities from Greek mythic narratives, the Romans usually renamed them: Zeus became Jupiter, Poseidon became Neptune, Athena became Minerva, Artemis became Diana, Aphrodite became Venus, Hermes became Mercury, Ares became Mars, Dionysus became Bacchus, and so on (with only Apollo surviving with his original Greek name intact). The number of deities far outstripped the twelve Olympian deities, however. In the Roman world, the deities were limited in number only because of the limits of the human imagination.

Mythologies of these deities did not necessarily depict them as inherently good, gracious, and just. Nor were they shown to be completely knowledgeable, powerful, and benevolent (although Vesuvian graffiti sometimes enhanced their reputation in these categories, as in CIL 4.6864: “Best and greatest Jupiter, all-powerful lord!”). Nor were they predominately concerned about overseeing the welfare of humanity (although some were thought to be more intentional in showing favor toward humanity than others). So why was reverence for the deities deeply embedded within Roman culture? Ultimately devotion to the deities derived from the fear that failing to honor them would incur their wrath and from the hope that capturing their favor might enhance a person’s prospects (see especially chapter 5).

There were, of course, many differing views about the deities. Philosophers and poets of various kinds questioned the validity of many aspects of long-standing Greco-Roman mythologies about the deities. But those mythologies set the overarching context for conversations about the character of the deities. Numerous works of art in the Vesuvian towns (whether in residences, workshops, or public spaces) depict moments in those mythological narratives. Clearly the realm of the deities had captured the imaginations and, no doubt, conversations of the residents of those towns.

Figure 4.3. A fresco of two women at a temple whose rotunda contains a statue of Venus, with one woman having brought an offering of flowers (from 6.17.41, MANN 8594)

Vesuvian residences also illustrate that first-century households could often favor one particular deity, although not to the exclusion of others. The deity Venus was a favorite in Pompeii, as we have seen, and she was frequently called on to enhance prospects in sexual attraction, love, happiness, and commercial enterprise involving sea-faring. Frescos of the deity Mercury adorned some of the shops lining the streets, since he was the deity of commerce (among other things). The high Roman deity, Jupiter, was often depicted in residences to enhance protection within the household. And Dionysus, or Bacchus, was honored in many households, promoting abundant enjoyment (see chapter 8).

There was never any sense that having a favored deity required a person to be devotionally exclusive. Since each deity had his or her own strengths, devotion to the deities was always “complementarian.” In Pompeii, for instance, devotion to the town’s divine protector, Venus, was completely in keeping with devotion to other deities—Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, Juno, Minerva, and all the rest. The deities were like the ancient version of insurance: the more you had, the more secure you were likely to be. Or, to change the analogy, it was like buying into the stock market: the more diverse your portfolio, the less the risk to your finances (generally speaking). For this reason, devotion to the deities was as expansive as it needed to be. And it needed to be expansive in order to engulf all the nooks and crannies of life’s complexities. It was even suggested on occasion that the innumerable deities were not, in fact, separate entities in themselves but were collectively the multiple manifestations of the one single divine entity that lay behind them all and permeated all things. This view was not widespread and was usually restricted to discourse among the philosophers, but it was “in the air” nonetheless.

No one would have thought it strange, then, when one Pompeian woman prided herself on being a priestess of both Venus and Ceres—two of the deities whose cults permitted female priestesses (as in the case of “Alleia, daughter of Marcus,” in EE 8.855; other women who served as priestesses of Venus were Eumachia, Mamia, Holconia, and Isticidia Rufilla, and serving the deity Ceres were Alleia Decimilla, Clodia, Lassia, and Aquvia Quarta—and many others whose names are not mentioned in the surviving Vesuvian realia).

Figure 4.4. The high Roman deity, Jupiter, depicted in a statue from Pompeii’s Capitoline temple (only the head has survived) (from 7.8.1)

Alongside devotion to the traditional Greco-Roman deities, another form of devotion was springing up everywhere in the civic centers of the first century—that is, reverential worship of the emperor. Augustus (emperor from 27 BCE to 14 CE), Claudius (from 41 to 54), Nero (from 54 to 68), Vespasian (from 69 to 79), Titus (from 79 to 81), Domitian (from 81 to 96)—these emperors were worshiped at one point or another in Roman civic centers. If the rise of the Jesus-movement was impressive within the first century, far more widespread was the rise of devotion directed to the emperor—or better, the emperor’s divine spirit. (On his deathbed the emperor Vespasian was reputed to have uttered the jocular quip, “O dear, I think I’m becoming a deity”; Suetonius, Life of Vespasian 23.) Individual urban centers felt competition to outdo other urban centers in the quality and extent of their emperor devotion. This was because enormous economic and political benefits were attached to those who could demonstrate a pro-Roman sentiment. Those who sidled up to the Roman imperial order were rewarded; the propagation of Roman imperial ideology oiled the machinery of Rome’s political interests. It was not necessary for the emperors to advertise their own divinity among the populace; the civic elite did most of the heavy lifting in that regard throughout the cities and towns of the Mediterranean basin. As long as devotion was directed toward the emperor in one fashion or another, people were thought to be exercising their proper duty to the overarching system that had been set in place and legitimated by the deities of Rome. Artifacts and texts from the ancient world repeatedly testify that the modern differentiation of “religion” and “state” within separate spheres of life fails to do justice to the intricate connections between governance and the deities (including the emperor) that characterized the central nexus of power within the Roman world. (We will see more of this in chapters 6 and 7.)

Figure 4.5. A fresco of Apollo standing next to the stone (covered by a net) that marked the center of the world (and thus the point of universal control; from 6.17.10, MANN 9541)

An Ethnic Exception

One ethnic group managed to negotiate things somewhat differently than most of their contemporaries: the Jews or, better perhaps, the Judeans (since their ethnic identity was tied to the land of Judea and to the worship of their deity, whose temple was located there). Whenever local peer pressure promoted emperor worship, Judeans could appear as responsible members of society even without making sacrificial offerings to the emperor in a local imperial temple. This is because Judean priests offered daily sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple (the core of Judean identity) in honor of the Roman emperor—but not in worship of him. These sacrifices enabled Judean identity to be understood as including loyalty to the ruling authority of the day without involving explicit worship of the emperor.

This situation helped resolve a point of potential conflict between the Judeans and their polytheistic contemporaries since Judeans, almost uniquely among all people, were known to be exclusive in their devotion to a single deity: YHWH, the covenant deity of the Judean people. Devotional exclusivity had characterized Judean identity for centuries, and the daily sacrifices for the emperor in the Jerusalem temple allowed Judeans both to avoid the stigma of holding back Roman progress and to maintain their long-established devotional exclusivity to their covenant deity.

Figure 4.6. A fresco depicting Solomon on his judgment seat (center of three figures to the right) issuing a wise pronouncement over the fate of a child claimed by two women, one of whom pleads for the child’s life (kneeling before Solomon’s judgment seat), while the philosophers Plato and Socrates look on in admiration (far left)—a temporal dislocation that seeks to combine the best wise men of Greek and Judean history (from 8.5.24, MANN 113197)

Generally speaking, the exclusivity of Judean devotion was an extremely curious thing in this ancient polytheistic world. To limit devotion to a single deity (putting all your eggs in the basket of only one deity) was seen as limiting one’s strategies for survival to a ridiculously meager range of options. Although attitudes toward Judeans ran from admiration (for their ethical wisdom) to aversion (for the practices of Sabbath observance and circumcision), many within the Roman world would have imagined the Judeans to be taking an absurd risk in their devotion to a single deity.

For the most part, the first century witnessed a delicate balancing act whereby a relatively peaceful coexistence between Judean exclusivism and Roman polytheism was generally maintained (perhaps without great support from either side). At times, however, things went wrong. One instance of this occurred in the early 40s, when the emperor known as Caligula (the diminutive nickname of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) tried to set up a statue of himself within the Jerusalem temple—an attempt to place a wanna-be deity alongside the Judean deity in the sacred space reserved solely for that sovereign deity. The exclusivity of Judean devotion was being challenged directly. As a consequence, thousands of Judeans protested the action, saying they would rather be slaughtered than tolerate this form of blasphemy against their deity. Ultimately Caligula was unsuccessful in his attempt to water down the exclusivist devotion of the Judeans.

The balance was again skewed in the late 60s. For one reason or another, Judeans got caught up in an uprising against Rome, seeking to remove the yoke of subordination to the Roman imperial order and to establish the sole reign of their deity. During the revolt of 66–70 (with the wipe-up operation continuing until 73 or 74), the Roman slaughter of Judeans was relentless. In 70, the temple of the Judean deity was destroyed, and the city of Jerusalem would never again play a central role in the practicalities of Judean devotion. This new fact of life was reinforced once and for all with the defeat of a second major Judean uprising against Rome in 132–135 CE, when the city was decimated and hope for its restoration was decisively crushed. In the aftermath of these two revolts, many would have thought that Rome’s deities had proved themselves victorious over the Judean deity twice within a seventy-year period.

Figure 4.7. Left: a fresco of the deity Apollo (as a youth) wearing a solar or radiant crown (from 7.2.16, MANN 9449); right: a fresco of Apollo enthroned in the heavens (from 6.7.23, in situ)

Challenging the System

A less dramatic but no less controversial form of uprising against the deities of Rome is evident in attitudes expressed by several leaders of the early Jesus-movement in the mid-first century—drawing on Judean resources of devotional exclusivity. Those “apostolic” figures were expressly critical of worshiping Greco-Roman deities, and early Jesus-followers often adopted this apostolic point of view. According to Paul, for instance, residents of the city of Thessalonica had already noticed that Jesus-followers had “turned to God, away from idols, to serve a living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). This is an astounding claim, for two reasons:

1. Paul was writing to them less than a year after he had initially arrived in Thessalonica to preach his message of Jesus Christ (he probably arrived there in the second half of 49, and he probably wrote them from Corinth in early 50).
2. Turning away from idols would have been seen as a very bold move, perhaps even a ridiculous one, in the first-century world (for reasons that are evident in what we have already seen and from what we will continue to see in further chapters).

A few years after writing to the Thessalonians, Paul elaborated his exhortation to “turn to God, away from idols” in one of his letters to Jesus-followers in Corinth. In 54 or so, he wrote:

We know that no idol in the world really exists, and that there is no God but one. Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:4–6)

Paul did not deny that spiritual realities pervade things, whether “in heaven or on earth.” What mattered to him was the inventory of the spiritual realities pervading the lives of Jesus-followers. Paul thought that idolatry was a form of enslavement to destructive spiritual forces (Galatians 4:8–9), resulting in the adoption of practices with tragic moral consequences (Romans 1:18–32). Consequently, whereas others added deities to their spiritual devotion, Paul and others argued for abandoning those other deities.

This is why early Jesus-followers became commonly known as “atheists”—not because they failed to believe in a supreme deity, but because they frequently discredited devotion to any of the recognized deities of the Greco-Roman world. This frequently caused Jesus-devotees to undergo various forms of persecution from their contemporaries. Society, it was thought, ran smoothly when the deities were proper recipients of human piety, and consequently, if some Jesus-followers “turned away” from standard reverential piety, they were wearing down the fabric of a stable and secure society.

For this reason, Jesus-devotees were often seen to be holding back progress and running the risk of bringing the ire of the deities down on society at large. It was the job of the civic authorities to remove such brash and irresponsible “atheism” from the civic arena, in order to preserve the social fabric overseen by the deities and protect the local populations. No doubt this is what Paul referenced when he spoke of the strident opposition that he often encountered: “Three times I have been beaten with rods [and] once I was stoned”—these “danger[s] in the city” and forms of “persecutions” being the initiatives of local populations against the so-called atheism of the early Christian message (2 Corinthians 11:25–26 and 12:10 RSV). Even suprahuman forces could be said to participate in this concerted effort against the preachers of “good news,” as Paul suggests in 2 Corinthians 4:4: “The god of this world [= Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

Figure 4.8. A fresco on the exterior wall of a Pompeii residence depicting Venus holding a scepter and a ship’s rudder—showing her powers of rule and guidance; she is accompanied by her son, the deity Eros, and by two flying Erotes, or cupids of love (from 9.7.1, in situ).

Situations of persecution are evident from the pages of the New Testament itself, across a spectrum of stigmatization and abuse of Jesus-followers. Three scenarios exemplify the range of possibilities, with other experiences of ostracism no doubt falling between them as well.

1. The author of 1 Peter spoke of Jesus-followers being “maligned” and “abused” by their non-Christian contemporaries (3:16–17), describing it as “a fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you” (4:12; see further passages from 1 Peter in the “Questions to Consider” section for this chapter). Here, social disdain seemingly took the form of shunning Jesus-devotees.
2. The author of Hebrews knew of Jesus-followers who had experienced “the plundering of [their] possessions” (10:34). The taking of someone’s possessions was usually orchestrated against those who were deemed to be politically subversive (or at least against those who failed to advocate for the political status quo), and some Jesus-followers seemed to have suffered in this way.
3. The author of Revelation knew of one person who had suffered martyrdom—“Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan lives [= where the imperial cult thrives]” (2:13).

Public Proclamation

We do not need to imagine that the persecution of Jesus-followers resulted from their denouncing idolatry while standing on public platforms in the central forums of first-century urban centers and shouting above the heads of the crowd. Of course, public proclamation of that kind is suggested by some of the stories about early Jesus-followers (as in the story from Acts 14, recounted at the outset of this chapter). More ordinary forms of discourse must have been the general norm, however—the kind of thing that would transpire in the workshops where early Jesus-followers worked from dawn to dusk. When Paul wrote to new Jesus-devotees in Thessalonica, for instance, the recipients of that letter were manual laborers (1 Thessalonians 4:11), and in that context Paul recalled his labors in a workshop: “You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we [Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy] worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God” (2:9; see also 2 Thessalonians 3:8).

This verse helps us imagine Paul articulating his message during his many long hours of labor in a (rented) artisan’s workshop—a situation that must have been fairly common among early Jesus-followers. Laborers in workshops would have discussed anything and everything to help pass the time of day while working their craft. Conversations would have included any topic of interest—recent political developments, sporting competitions, sexual couplings, and neighborhood gossip. But during their long working hours, laborers would also have discussed the deities and the mythologies that animated their significance. People like Paul (himself a leatherworker by trade) would have taken any of these opportunities to talk “night and day” about their understanding of the deities in relation to the “good news” they felt commissioned to bring to the Roman world. Paul’s rented workshop may well have had frescos of deities and pagan protective devices on its walls. Instead of getting paint and covering them over in disgust, Paul probably used those frescos as conversation starters in his interaction with local people.

Figure 4.9. A small workshop from Herculaneum, with stairs leading up to the sleeping quarters above; Paul would have worked in places somewhat like this as he took his message to cities of the Roman world.

Reconfiguring Temple Imagery

If early Jesus-devotees often polemicized against the Greco-Roman deities and their temples, they generally did not remove the notion of temples from their discourse altogether. Instead, they reinterpreted temples, redefining divine presence in the process. One example of this is evident in the Gospel of John, which identifies Jesus’s own body as a [or better, the] temple: “Destroy this temple,” Jesus said, “and in three days I will raise it up”—with the narrator informing the audience that Jesus was referring to “the temple of his body” (2:19, 21). Here, divine presence is concentrated in the person of Jesus. In that light, Jesus’s dramatic “clearing of the temple” in John’s Gospel (2:13–22) looks more like a “replacement” of the Judean temple than a simple “cleansing” (see the “cleansing” interpretation in Mark 11:15–18; Matthew 21:12–13; Luke 19:45–46).

Elsewhere, divine presence is linked to the temple motif in relation to communities of Jesus’s followers rather than to Jesus himself. For instance, when writing to Corinthian Jesus-followers, Paul described Jesus-groups as themselves forming a temple. Here is what he says in 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, where each occurrence of the word “you” appears in its plural form (“you all”) in Greek: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? . . . For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (see also 6:19). He makes the same point to the same devotees in a later letter, emphasizing once again the temple’s corporate character: “What does the temple of God have in common with idols? Nothing. For we are the temple of the living God” (2 Corinthians 6:16). And as the temple of God, groups of Jesus-devotees enjoyed the presence of God among them—a point Paul added in the same verse, citing scripture from the Hebrew Bible: “As God said, ‘I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’” (quoting Leviticus 26:12; Jeremiah 32:38; Ezekiel 37:27). The author of Ephesians was similarly convinced that divine presence resides in communities of Jesus-followers. He depicted Jesus-followers as “a holy temple in the Lord” that is being built as “a dwelling place for God” (Ephesians 2:21–22). Evidently Jesus-followers had their temples, but they were not made of bricks and stone, mortar and plaster. Christian temples comprised the flesh and blood of ordinary Jesus-devotees.

There may have been even more to it, however. Temples usually contained within their sanctuaries images of their honored deities. Wherever there was “a holy temple,” the normal expectation would be that an image of the temple’s deity would be proudly displayed within it. (The main exception to this was, of course, the temple to the deity of Israel in Jerusalem, which had no statue displaying its deity.) According to the philosopher Epictetus (50–135), being in the presence of a deity’s image required an elevation of one’s morality (Discourses 2.8.12–14): “When you are in the presence of an image of god, you do not dare to do any of the things you are now doing”—those things being “impure thoughts and filthy actions.”

Figure 4.10. A fresco of the deity Jupiter crowned with a victory wreath, holding a ruling scepter, with his eagle (adopted as the symbol of the Roman army) and a cosmic globe at his feet (from 6.9.6, MANN 9551)

This is very much in line with Paul’s conviction that groups of Jesus-followers were to display the image of their living deity within “the temple of the living God.” That image, however, was not carved in marble and placed on a podium for all to see; instead, it was to be found within Jesus-devotees themselves, who were “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). That shared “image” was the image of their deity, Jesus Christ, who was to be recognizable in the lives of Jesus-devotees. Paul seems to have thought that when non-Christians saw transformation in the lives of Jesus-followers, what they were really looking at was the image of the Jesus-followers’ deity—the effect of their deity’s presence within them, coming alive within the everyday lives of his followers. This image did not display the physical attributes of Jesus Christ (as in the case of temple images); instead, it displayed the character of Jesus Christ within communities of Jesus-followers.

Paul used any number of metaphors to convey this important notion. In his letter to Jesus-followers in Galatia, for instance, he spoke of Jesus Christ being “formed in” his followers (Galatians 4:19) and of Jesus-devotees being “clothed . . . with Christ” (3:27)—just as he could speak of Jesus Christ coming alive within him personally (2:20). Passersby saw images of temple deities within their temples; so too, within “the temple of the living God” Paul expected that the one whom Jesus called “Father” was working to ensure that Jesus-followers would “be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). Like most temples of the Roman world, every Christian “temple” was to display images of its living deity. Unlike most temples, those images were not carved into static marble; instead, they were embodied within the transformed lives of the deity’s followers. Those images were thought to be microcosms of the “new creation” that their deity was empowering within their communities (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15).

This field of temple metaphors finds rich articulation in Revelation—the last book of the New Testament. That book culminates in a vision of the eschatological city of God (Revelation 21–22; compare also Hebrews 13:14: “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come”). The author of Revelation tells us that he “saw no temple in [that] city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22). A city without a temple was unprecedented in the Roman world. In fact, it was an anomaly that made no sense—unless, of course, that city was the ultimate city where the ultimate deity was immediately present. John the Seer (as the author might well be called) thought that a city of that kind could only be called “the holy city, the new Jerusalem” (21:2). It is a city in which the deity proclaimed by the early Jesus-followers “will dwell with them as their God; they will be his people and God himself will be with them” (21:3). It is little wonder that their lord, “seated on the throne,” could confidently proclaim, “See, I am making all things new” (21:5).