Tempio, Gerusalemme, città di asilo

La geografia dello spazio sacro trasformata in una religione senza luogo

Abstract

First published in La territorializzazione del sacro. Valenza teologico-politica del tempio («Politica e Religione», 2016), pp. 15-59. 

When we consider the history of the temple in Jerusalem, we realise that its holiness became a spatial template for other religious institutions, allowing them, too, to be considered as genuinely holy places. Although the Temple of Solomon is closely connected with the political evolution of the monarchy period of ancient Israel, the so-called “second temple” increasingly becomes an ideal place, whose holiness encompasses the land and people (consider the temple of Ezekiel 40-48). A “religion of holiness”, i.e. of purity and separation, evolves, which survives when the destruction of the temple means that no concrete holy place remains. The sacralization of particular spaces, like places and cities of refuge, shows that the idea of holiness, related to the temple, involves other ideal spaces (like the cities of refuge, considered to be Levitical cities), which to a great extent, and on a symbolic level, contribute to endorsing this spaceless religion.