The Ark and the Tent: Temple Symbolism in the Story of Noah Jeffrey M. Bradshaw It has long been recognized that the story of Noah recapitulates the Genesis accounts of the Creation, the Garden, and the Fall of Adam and Eve. What has been generally underappreciated by modern scholarship, however, is the nature and depth of the relationship between all these stories and the liturgy and layout of temples, not only in Israel but also throughout the ancient Near East. And this relationship goes two ways. Not only have accounts of primeval history been included as a significant part of ancient temple worship, but also, in striking abundance, themes echoing temple architecture, furnishings, ritual, and covenants have been deeply woven into scripture itself. In this chapter I will outline some of the rich temple themes in the biblical account of the great flood, highlighting how the scriptural descriptions of the structure and function of the ark and the tent within the story of Noah anticipate the design and purpose of the later tabernacle of Moses. Structural Similarities Between the Ark and the Tabernacle It is significant that, apart from the tabernacle of Moses1 and the temple of Solomon,2 Noah’s ark is the only man-made structure mentioned in the Bible whose design was directly revealed by God.3 Like the tabernacle, Noah’s ark “was designed as a temple.”4 The ark’s three decks suggest both the three divisions of the tabernacle and the threefold layout of the Garden of Eden.5 Indeed, each of the three decks of Noah’s ark was exactly “the same height as the Tabernacle and three times the area of the Tabernacle court.”6 Strengthening the association between the Ark and the Tabernacle is the fact that the Hebrew term for Noah’s ark, tevah, later became the standard word for the ark of the covenant in Mishnaic Hebrew.7 In addition, the Septuagint used the same Greek term, kibotos, for both Noah’s ark and the ark of the covenant.8 The ratio of the width to the height of both of these arks is 3:5.9 Marking the similarities between the shape of the ark of the covenant 26 • Temple Insights and the chest-like form of Noah’s ark, Westermann describes Noah’s ark as “a huge, rectangular box, with a roof.”10 The biblical account makes it clear that the ark “was not shaped like a ship and it had no oars,” “accentuating the fact that Noah’s deliverance was not dependent on navigating skills, [but rather happened] entirely by God’s will,”11 its movement solely determined by “the thrust of the water and wind.”12 Consistent with the emphasis on deliverance by God rather than through human navigation, the Hebrew word for “ark” reappears for the only other time in the Bible in the story of the infant Moses, whose deliverance from death was also made possible by a free-floating watercraft — specifically, in this case, a reed basket.13 Reeds may have also been used as part of the construction materials for Noah’s ark, as will be discussed below. Besides the resemblances in form between the Ark and the Tabernacle, there is also the manner by which the Ark was entered and exited. For example, scholars have noted in the Mesopotamian flood story of Gilgamesh a similarity of the loading of the ship to the loading of goods into a temple.14 Morales discusses the centrality of entering and leaving the Ark as reason “to suspect an entrance liturgy ideal at work,”15 with all “‘entries’ as being via Noah,”16 the righteous and unblemished priestly prototype.17 As for the material out of which the ark was constructed, Genesis 6:14 reads, “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.” The meaning of the Hebrew term for “gopher wood” — unique in the Bible to Genesis 6:14 — is uncertain.18 Modern commentators often take it to mean cypress wood.19 Because it is resistant to rot, the cypress tree was used in ancient times for the building of ships.20 There is an extensive mythology about the cypress tree in cultures throughout the world. It is known for its fragrance and longevity21 — qualities that have naturally linked it with ancient literature describing the Garden of Eden.22 Cypress trees were also sometimes used to make temple doors — gateways to Paradise.23 The possibility of conscious rhyming wordplay in the juxtaposition of the Hebrew terms gopher and kopher (“pitch”) within the same verse cannot be ruled out. As Harper notes, the word kopher might have evoked for the ancient reader, “the rich cultic overtones of kaphar ‘ransom’ with its half- shekel temple atonement price,24 kapporeth ‘mercy seat’ over the Ark of the Covenant,25 and the verb kipper ‘to atone’ associated with so many priestly rituals.”26 Some of these rituals involve the action of smearing or wiping, the same movements by which pitch is applied.27 Just as God’s presence in Bradshaw, The Ark and the Tent • 27 the tabernacle preserves the life of His people, so Noah’s ark preserves a righteous remnant of humanity along with representatives of all its creatures. In Mesopotamian flood stories, the construction materials for the building of a boat were obtained by tearing down a reed-hut. The basic construction idea of such huts is that poles of resinous wood would have framed and supported woven reed mats.28 The reed mats would be stitched to the hull and covered with pitch to make them waterproof.29 These building techniques are still in use today. Although reed-huts may sometimes serve as secular enclosures, references to them in Mesopotamian flood stories clearly point to their ancient use as divine sanctuaries.30 Seated in his rectangular sanctuary made of reeds, Enki presided both as the god of wisdom and of the Abzu, the freshwater ocean that existed under the land.31 In some parts of the ancient Near East, mortal kings and priests entered into reed sanctuaries in order to commune with the gods, just as Israelite high priests entered their temples. In a Mesopotamian account of the flood story, Ziusudra enters into a “reed-hut … temple,”32 where he stands “day after day” listening to the “conversation” of the divine assembly.33 Eventually, Ziusudra hears the deadly oaths of the council of the gods following their decision to destroy mankind by a devastating flood. Regretting the decision of the divine assembly, the god Enki contrives a plan to warn Ziusudra and to instruct him on how to build a boat that will save him and his family. Evoking ancient Near East parallels where the gods whisper their secrets to mortals standing on the other side of temple partitions or screens separating the divine and human realms,34 Enki conveys his warning message privately through the thin wall of Ziusudra’s reed sanctuary.35 Related accounts tell us that Enki instructed Ziusudra to tear down the reed-hut temple and to use the materials to build a boat.36 Three kinds of boat-building materials are listed in the Mesopotamian flood stories — wood timbers, reeds, and pitch.37 The biblical list is identical, except that the second item is given as “rooms” rather than “reeds.” Concluding “that the apparent lack of the reed-hut or primeval shrine in the Genesis flood account demands closer inspection,”38 Jason McCann observes39 that re-pointing the Hebrew vowels would lead to an alternate translation signifying an ark that was “woven-of-reeds.” Thus, the New Jerusalem Bible translation of Genesis 6:14:40 “Make yourself an ark out of resinous wood. Make it with reeds and caulk it with pitch inside and out” (emphasis added). 28 • Temple Insights By a translation that recognizes “reeds,” not “rooms,” as the second element in the building materials for Noah’s ark, a puzzling inconsistency between the Bible and the Mesopotamian accounts is resolved while at the same time further connecting the scriptural ark with the temple. Let’s now turn our attention to the Creation and temple themes in the story of the Flood, where we will find temple parallels not only to the structure of the Ark but also in its function. Creation In considering the role of Noah’s ark in the Flood story, it should be noted that it was, specifically, a mobile sanctuary,41 as were the tabernacle and the ark made of reeds that saved the baby Moses. Arguably, each of these structures can be described as a traveling vehicle of rescue designed to parallel in function God’s portable pavilion or chariot. Scripture makes a clear distinction between the fixed heavenly temple and its portable counterparts. For example, in Psalm 1842 and D&C 121:1, the “pavilion” of “God’s hiding place” should not be equated with the celestial “temple” to which the prayers of the oppressed go up43 but rather as a representation of a movable “conveyance”44 in which God could swiftly descend to rescue His people from mortal danger.45 The sense of the action is succinctly captured by Robert Alter: “The outcry of the beleaguered warrior ascends all the way to the highest heavens, thus launching a downward vertical movement”46 of God’s own chariot. Despite its ungainly shape as a buoyant temple, the Ark is portrayed as floating confidently above the chaos of the great deep. Significantly, the motion of the ark “upon the face of the waters”47 paralleled the movement of the Spirit of God “upon the face of the waters”48 at the original creation of heaven and earth. The deliberate nature of this parallel is made clear when we consider that Genesis 1:2 and 7:18 are the only two verses in the Bible that contain the phrase “the face of the waters.” In short, scripture intends to make us understand that in the presence of the Ark there was a return of the same Spirit of God that had hovered over the waters at the Creation — the Spirit whose previous withdrawal had been presaged in Genesis 6:3.49 The motion of the Ark “upon the face of the waters,”50 like the Spirit of God “upon the face of the waters”51 at Creation, was a portent of the (re)appearance of light and life. Within the Ark, a “mini replica of Creation,”52 were the last vestiges of the original Creation, “an alternative earth for all living creatures,”53 “a colony of heaven”54 containing seedlings for the planting of a second Garden of Eden,55 the nucleus of a new world Bradshaw, The Ark and the Tent • 29 — all hidden within a vessel of rescue described in scripture, like the tabernacle, as a likeness of God’s own traveling pavilion. Just as the Spirit of God patiently brooded56 over the great deep at the Creation and just as “the longsuffering of God waited … while the ark was a preparing,”57 so the indefatigable Noah endured the long brooding of the ark over the slowly receding waters of the deluge58 until, at last, the dry land appeared.59 There are rich thematic connections between the emergence of the dry land at the Creation, the settling of the Ark atop the first mountain to emerge from the Flood, New Year’s Day, and the temple. In ancient Israel, the holiest spot on earth was believed to be the foundation stone in front of the ark of the covenant within the temple at Jerusalem:60 “It was the first solid material to emerge from the waters of Creation,61 and it was upon this stone that the Deity effected Creation.” The depiction of the ark-temple of Noah perched upon Mount Ararat would have evoked similar temple imagery for the ancient reader of the Bible. Note that it was “in the six hundred and first year [of Noah’s life] in the first month, the first day of the month” that “the waters were dried up.”62 The specific wording of this verse would have hinted to the ancient reader that there was ritual significance to the date. Note that it was also the “first day of the first month”63 when the tabernacle was dedicated, “while Solomon’s temple was dedicated at the New Year festival in the autumn.”64 Garden Nothing in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden can be understood without reference to the temple. Neither can the story of Noah and his family in the garden setting of a renewed earth be appreciated fully without taking the temple as its background. Allusions to Garden of Eden and temple motifs begin as soon as Noah and his family leave the ark. Just as the book of Moses highlights Adam’s diligence in offering sacrifice as soon as he entered the fallen world,65 Genesis describes Noah’s first action on the renewed earth as being the building of an altar for burnt offerings.66 Likewise, in each account, God’s blessing is followed by a commandment to multiply and replenish the earth.67 Both stories also contain instructions about what the protagonists are and are not to eat.68 Notably, in each case a covenant is established in a context of ordinances and signs or tokens.69 More specifically, according to Pseudo- Philo,70 the rainbow as a sign or token of a covenant of higher priesthood 30 • Temple Insights blessings was said by God to be an analogue of Moses’s staff, a symbol of kingship.71 Both the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah prominently feature the theme of nakedness being covered by a garment.72 Noah, like Adam, is called the “lord of the whole earth.”73 Surely, it is no exaggeration to say that Noah is portrayed as a new Adam, “reversing the estrangement” between God and man by means of an atoning sacrifice.74 Fall and Judgment In Genesis, the Fall and judgment scenes are straightforwardly recited as follows:75 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. Looking at the passage more closely, however, raises several questions. To begin with, what tent did Noah enter? Although the English translation says “his tent,” the Hebrew text features a feminine possessive that would normally mean “her tent.”76 The Midrash Rabbah explains this as a reference to the tent of Noah’s wife,77 and both ancient and modern commentators have often focused on this detail to imply that Ham intruded on his father and mother during a moment of intimacy.78 A very intriguing alternative explanation, however, is offered by Rabbi Shim’on in the Zohar, who takes the he of the feminine possessive to mean “‘the tent of that vineyard,’ namely, the tent of Shekhinah,”79 the term for “the divine feminine”80 that was equated to the presence of Bradshaw, The Ark and the Tent • 31 Yahweh in Israelite temples. In a variant of the same theme, at least one set of modern commentators takes the he as referring to Yahweh, hence reading the term as the “Tent of Yahweh,”81 the divine sanctuary. In view of the pervasive theme in ancient literature where the climax of the Flood story is the founding of a temple over the source of the floodwaters, Blenkinsopp82 finds it “safe to assume” that the biblical account of “the deluge served … as the Israelite version of the cosmogonic victory of the deity resulting in the building of a sanctuary for him.” Lucian reports that “the temple of Hierapolis on the Euphrates was founded over the flood waters by Deucalion, counterpart of Ziusudra, Utnapishtim, and Noah.”83 Consistent with this theme, Psalms 29:10 “speaks of Yahweh enthroned over the abyss.”84 Given the many allusions in the story of Noah to the tabernacle of Moses, it would have been natural for the ancient reader to have seen in Noah’s tent, at the foot of the mount where the ark-temple rested, a parallel with the sacred “tent of meeting” at the foot of Mount Sinai, at whose top God’s heavenly tent had been spread. How are we to understand the mention that Noah “was drunken”? Most rabbinical sources make no attempt to explain or justify but instead roundly criticize Noah’s actions.85 The difficulty with that explanation is the fact that the scriptures offer no hint of condemnation for Noah’s supposed drunkenness. Is there a better explanation for Noah’s unexpected behavior?86 Yes. According to a statement attributed to Joseph Smith, Noah “was not drunk, but in a vision.”87 This agrees with the Genesis Apocryphon which, immediately after describing a ritual drinking of wine by Noah and his family, tells of a divine dream vision that revealed the fate of Noah’s posterity.88 Koler and Greenspahn89 concur that Noah was enwrapped in a vision while in the tent, commenting that “this explains why Shem and [Japheth] refrained from looking at Noah even after they had covered him, significantly ‘ahorannît [= Hebrew “backward”] occurs elsewhere with regard to avoidance of looking directly at God in the course of revelation.” Noah’s fitness to enjoy the presence of God is explored in detail by Morales.90 “In every sense,” he writes, “Noah is defined as the one able ‘to enter’”91 into the presence of the Lord. He concludes:92 As the righteous man, Noah not only passes through the [door] of the Ark sanctuary,93 but is able to approach the mount of Yahweh for worship…. Noah stands as a new Adam, the 32 • Temple Insights primordial man who dwells in the divine Presence … As such, he foreshadows the high priest of the Tabernacle cultus who alone will enter the paradisiacal holy of holies…. How does wine play into the picture? It should be remembered that a sacramental libation was an element in the highest ordinances of the priesthood as much in ancient times as it is today. For example, only five chapters after the end of the Flood story, we read that Melchizedek “brought forth bread and wine”94 to Abraham as part of the ordinance that was to make him a king and a priest after Melchizedek’s holy order.95 Just as Melchizedek then blessed the “most high God, which had delivered thine enemies into thine hand,”96 so Noah, according to the Genesis Apocryphon, partook of the wine with his family and blessed “the God Most High, who had delivered us from the destruction.”97 The book of Jubilees further confirms that Noah’s drinking of the wine should be seen in a ritual context, not merely as a spontaneous indulgence that occurred at the end of a particularly wearying day. Indeed, we are specifically told that Noah “guarded” the wine until the time of the fifth New Year festival, the “first day on the first of the first month,” when he “made a feast with rejoicing. And he made a burnt offering to the Lord.”98 We find greater detail about an analogous event within the Testament of Levi. There we read that as Levi was being made a king and a priest, he was anointed, washed, and given “bread and holy wine” prior to his being arrayed in a “holy and glorious vestment.” Note also that the themes of anointing, the removal of outer clothing, the washing of the feet, and the ritual partaking of bread and wine were prominent in the events surrounding the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles. Indeed, we are told that the righteous may joyfully anticipate participation in a similar event when the Lord returns: “for the hour cometh that I will drink of the fruit of the vine with you on the earth.”99 How do we make sense of Noah’s being “uncovered” during his vision? Perhaps the closest Old Testament parallel to this practice is when Saul, like the prophets who were with him, “stripped off his clothes … and prophesied before Samuel … and lay down naked all that day and all that night.”100 Jamieson101 clarifies that “lay down naked” in this instance meant only that he was “divested of his armor and outer robes.” In a similar sense, when we read in John 21:7 that Peter “was naked” as he was fishing, it simply meant that “he had laid off his outer garment, and had on only his inner garment or tunic.”102 Bradshaw, The Ark and the Tent • 33 How do we understand the statement that Ham “saw the nakedness of his father”? Reluctant to attribute the apparent gravity of Ham’s misdeed to the mere act of seeing, readers have often concluded that Ham in addition must have done something.103 For example, a popular proposal is that Ham committed unspeakable crimes against his mother104 or his father.105 Wenham, however, wisely observes that “these and other suggestions are disproved by the next verse” that recounts how Shem and Japheth covered their father: 106 As Cassuto107 points out: “If the covering was an adequate remedy, it follows that the misdemeanor was confined to seeing.” The elaborate efforts Shem and Japheth made to avoid looking at their father demonstrate that this was all Ham did in the tent.108 All this is consistent with the proposal that the misdeed of Ham was intrusively entering the tent of Yahweh and seeing Noah in the presence of God while the latter was “in the course of revelation.”109 While Noah, the righteous and blameless — an exception to those in his generation110 — was in a position to speak with God face-to-face, Ham was neither qualified nor authorized to see, let alone enter into, a place of divine glory. Is this a parallel to the story of Adam and Eve? A parallel to this incident might be seen by reading the story of the transgression of Adam and Eve in the context of its many temple allusions. Consistent with recent scholarship that sees the Garden as a temple prototype,111 Ephrem the Syrian, a fourth- century Christian, called the tree of knowledge “the veil for the sanctuary.”112 A similar Jewish tradition about the two special trees in the Garden of Eden holds that the foliage of the tree of knowledge, as an analogue to the temple veil, hid the tree of life from direct view: “God did not specifically prohibit eating from the Tree of Life because the Tree of Knowledge formed a hedge around it; only after one had Figure 1. Zones of Sacredness in Eden partaken of the latter and cleared and in the Temple (adapted from G. A. a path for himself could one Anderson, Perfection, p. 80). come close to the Tree of Life.”113 34 • Temple Insights Figure 2. Ephrem the Syrian’s Conception of Eden, the Ark, and Sinai (adapted from Brock in Ephrem the Syrian, Paradise, p. 53). In describing his concept of Eden, Ephrem cited parallels with the division of the animals on Noah’s ark and the demarcations on Sinai separating Moses, Aaron, the priests, and the people, as shown in Figure 2. Ephrem pictured Paradise as a great mountain, with the tree of knowledge providing a boundary partway up the slopes. The tree of knowledge, Ephrem concluded, “acts as a sanctuary curtain [i.e., veil] hiding the Holy of Holies which is the Tree of Life higher up.” Recurring throughout the Old Testament are echoes of such a layout of sacred spaces and the accounts of dire consequences for those who attempt unauthorized entry through the veil into the innermost sanctuary. By way of analogy to the situation of Adam and Eve and its setting in the temple-like layout of the Garden of Eden, service in Israelite temples under conditions of worthiness was intended to sanctify the participants. However, as taught in Levitical laws of purity, doing the same “while defiled by sin, was to court unnecessary danger, perhaps even death.”116 If this understanding of the situation in Eden is correct, the sin of Ham would be a striking parallel to the transgression of Adam and Eve.117 Noah was positioned directly in front of, or perhaps even seated on, a representation of the throne of God.118 Without proper invitation, Ham approached the curtains of the “tent of Yaweh”119 and looked at the glory of God that was “uncovered within”120 — literally, “in the midst of”121 — the tent, just as Eve “cleared a path” for herself so she could “come close to the Tree of Life”122 that was located “in the midst of”123 the Garden. Emerging from the tent, Noah cursed Canaan,124 who is likened in the Zohar to the