The Garden Temple: Analyzation and Implications of the Relationship between Eden and the Tabernacle/Temple

Abstract

The garden of Eden was God’s non-architectural temple of creation. Adam was the first priest. The future blueprints of the tabernacle and temple which God directed to be built were concessions that allowed humans to remain in the presence of God’s dwelling place in a context of sin. Israel was called to be a corporate kingdom of neo-Adamic priests. Analyzing the numerous parallels of this correlation between Eden and the tabernacle/temple serves to bring greater clarity to the narrative structure of the Old Testament and all of redemption-history. Seeing the intertextual Edenic elements in the sacred spaces of the tabernacle and temple also provides further depth to the words and works of Christ, the greater temple who tabernacled among men, and his Church of living stones.