Did God ever want to live in a temple or house forever? Biblical authors disagreed.
No Temple or House:
According to the character Stephen in the Christian book of Acts, his god did not live in or need a house or temple:
"Yet the most high does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says, 'Heaven is my throne, And the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?'" (Acts 7.48-50, quoting Isaiah 66.1-2)
The language is a bit outdated. Calling the sky/heaven (Heb. ha shamayim, Gk. ouranos) god's throne made more sense in pre-scientific times, when people thought that god(s) lived in the sky directly above them in a stationary place (above Jerusalem, in the case of the Jews). Calling the land/earth (Heb. ha eretz, Gk. ge) the footstool of YHWH made more sense when people thought the land/earth was a flat circle or square that could serve as a metaphorical footstool for a god on a throne in the sky. Now that we know the earth is an oblique spheroid that both rotates and revolves around the sun (itself adrift), and that gods do not live on thrones in the earth's atmosphere, we should admit that the earth doesn't make a very good footstool, and the sky doesn't afford a good foundation for a throne.
Or is YHWH constantly spinning around up there as the earth moves?
The writer of Isaiah 44 thought his god YHWH was so high on his throne in the sky that people looked like tiny grasshoppers to him.
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. (Isaiah 44.22)
Obviously this is a rather primitive concept and describes the content of the writer's imagination, rather than any actual god. He knew that people looked smaller from far away, so he simply created a god in his own image. Also, note that he worships an anthropomorphic god who sits on his backside on a throne like a human king. The ancients took aspects of their own world/minds and applied them to the divinities they created.
The writer of Acts, hundreds of years later, certainly still imagined that his god lived right overhead, and when he wrote his account of the stoning of Stephen, at best historical fiction, he claimed that Stephen could actually see his god up in heaven.
But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into the heaven/sky (ouranos) and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, "Behold, I see the skies/heavens (tous ouranous) opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." (Acts 7.55ff)
Yep, Jesus is just standing there looking down at everyone, and his dad is just sitting there, right up there in the clouds above Jerusalem!!?!
Compare also:
· Job 36.29, "Who can understand how he spreads out the clouds, how he thunders from his pavilion?"
· Psalm 18.11, "He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him-- the dark rain clouds of the sky."
· Psalm 19.4, "Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun."
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Yes, God Had a Temple/House and His Desire Was to Live there Forever:
Regardless of the opinions/imaginations of the writers of Isaiah 44 and Acts 7, many ancient Jews once believed that YHWH did inhabit a house/temple in Jerusalem and actively desired to live there.
Psalm 132.13-14 "For YHWH has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His habitation. "This is My resting place forever; Here I will dwell, for I have desired it."
Psalm 68.16, "why gaze in envy, you rugged mountain, at the mountain where God chooses to reign, where YHWH himself will dwell forever?"
Psalm 135.21, "Praise be to YHWH from Zion, to him who dwells in Jerusalem. Praise YHWH."
Exodus 15.17 "You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance -- the place, YHWH, you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary, YHWH, your hands established."
Deuteronomy 12.5-7: "But you shall seek YHWH at the place which YHWH your Elohim will choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come. There you shall bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the contribution of your hand, your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. There also you and your households shall eat before YHWH your Elohim, and rejoice in all your undertakings in which YHWH your God has blessed you."
1 Kings 8.10ff: "When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of YHWH. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of YHWH filled his temple. Then Solomon said, “YHWH has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud; I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever.”
1 Kings 9.1ff depicts YHWH as appearing to Solomon in person and saying, "I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there."
o Even the writer of Matthew momentarily imagined that Jesus believed God lived in the temple, as Mt 23.21 depicts Jesus as saying, "And whoever swears by the temple, swears both by the temple and by Him who dwells within it." It seems that some early Christians believed in continuing the Mosaic law (relics of this belief barely survive in Mt 5.17-19, Gal 2.11-13) and temple worship, before the temple was destroyed by the Romans, before a more Hellenic Christianity became dominant, before virgin birth narratives were invented and appended to gospels, before other doctrines were tweaked. Once the temple was gone and Pauline and Gentile-dominated Christianity had won the day, the history of Christianity was whitewashed by ever-imaginative writers/editors, and was made to justify the version which then prevailed.
Why would Jews of earlier generations believe their god actually inhabited the temple in Jerusalem according to his eternal wishes, and why would they emphasize the temple's importance, while later Jews and Christians were emphatic about their god needing no temple?
That is an easy question historically. Necessity was the mother of invention. The temple of YHWH was plundered and destroyed repeatedly throughout history, and when it was destroyed by the Babylonians and even more permanently the Romans, many Jews and then Christians decided that YHWH must not actually need or want it. Every time the temple was destroyed, the theologians had to invent excuses to explain why YHWH would allow such a dreadful thing to happen. Either YHWH was impotent, incapable of protecting his "house" – something many, but not all, Jews at the time refused to consider – or it must have been the fault of the Jews themselves, as the "prophets" imagined. By blaming the destruction of the temple on the people themselves instead of the absence/weakness/falsehood of their god, the priests and prophets were able to preserve their own influence along with the beliefs and customs of their people. Only when the priesthood (Sadducees) could no longer survive without a temple, did Pharisaic Judaism and Christianity became dominant.
In its violent history, the temple was:
· plundered by Pharaoh Shoshenq in the 900s BCE,
· plundered by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, in the 700s BCE,
· plundered and eventually demolished by the Babylonians 586 BCE,
· was rebuilt with permission of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great and his successors in the late 500s through the 400s BCE,
· was nearly destroyed by Alexander the Great of Macedon in 332 BCE, but the Jews became suddenly more practical and acknowledge Alexander with flattery that turned him from his anger,
· was desecrated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, ruler of the Greek-speaking Seleucid Empire, in 167 BCE, at which time there was set up the "abomination that causes desolation" (famous from Daniel 9, 11, 12, and 1 Maccabees 1 and 6),
· was purified and back in business under the Maccabees, the Hasmonean dynasty, from 165 BCE onward,
· was desecrated by the Roman general Pompey the Great, who entered the Holy of Holies in 63 BCE, but left the Temple intact
· was looted by the Roman general Crassus in 54 BCE,
· was renovated by Herod the Great in 20 BCE, becoming known as Herod's Temple.
· was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE during the siege of Jerusalem, after the Jews revolted in hopes that YHWH would finally give them the political superiority the "prophets" had promised long before,
· was a topic of interest during the last revolt of the Jews against the Romans in 132–135 CE, when Simon bar Kokhba and Rabbi Akiva wanted to rebuild it, but bar Kokhba's revolt failed, and the Jews were banned from Jerusalem by the Roman Empire.
· was not rebuilt by the emperor Julian in 363 CE, despite hopes,
· was non-existent for millennia,
· had a Muslim shrine built on it in 691 CE, because it is the place where the Prophet Muhammad's "night journey" and his ascent into Heaven allegedly took place. (n.b. Muhammed got to go up into the sky, just like Ra, Pharaoh, Inana, Perseus, Hercules, Asclepius, Romulus, Julius Caesar, Augustus, the good Roman emperors, the apocryphal Moses, Elijah, Jesus, and the perpetually-virgin Mary!)
No wonder so many Jews gave up on the idea that the temple was critical to YHWH's worship. No wonder one sect of Jews combined Judaism with other Mediterranean mythologies, created a new religion, and invented the idea that Jesus fulfilled the need for sacrifice, removing the need for a temple. It was either some such option, or admit that their god was absent or powerless.
The writer of the Isaiah 66 passage was writing after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Babylonians. Of course, he then decided that his god didn't need the temple after all.
The writer of Acts was writing after the Romans had destroyed the temple. Of course, he believed his god didn't need that temple.
But the writers of the opposing verses quoted above were active in period when the temple existed, or when hopes were high for rebuilding it, and they wrote in a manner than bolstered their beliefs/wishes. Of course those wanted to imagine and spread the idea to others that their god actually dwelt in their temple, and they created fantastic stories about past occasions when his glory had miraculous filled the place.
In summary, writers of the various books of the Bible at various times in history believed various things and, from their own imaginations, traditions, and sorely limited perspectives, created the kind of god they desired.
Post Script End Note:
If their god had been considered truly omnipresent, pantheism or panentheism would have resulted, and some contrary ideas (like hell or separation from an allegedly omni-present god) could have been avoided or jettisoned.