The Cosmic Temple of Divine Names: Sapiential, Nomistic, and Numerical Properties

Presented at

The 2022 Temple on Mount Zion Conference

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Sponsored by The Interpreter Foundation, BYU College of Humanities, and BYU Religious Education

The typical ancient Near Eastern creation story tends to end with the establishment of a divine temple. By contrast, Genesis’ first creation story reaches its apex with the establishment of the divine Sabbath. In view of this correlation, we can not only identify the entirety of creation as a temple, but more specifically the Sabbath functions as a temporal temple where/when God and the divine name rest. Additionally, more locally we can identify the land/earth of Eden as the first temple in which humans were to serve God. Most essentially, YHWH is “the Name” that rests in the temple (2 Chronicles 6-7). This paper surveys and discusses the correlation between the Tetragrammaton, its numerical value of 26, and the temple throughout various passages of the TANAKH, with an emphasis on the Hebrew Psalter.

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