Reimagining the Sacred

In a post second Temple world as well as a post Jesus resurrection, the traditional notion of sacred began to deviate. At this moment in history Jerusalem still served as an extremely potent symbol for human’s relation to the sacred, however the theology introduced by Jesus created for a new lens to view the sacred through. Traditionally, Jews were able to encounter and develop a relationship with the sacred through the context of a physical locations. The idea of Jerusalem was the ultimate symbol of the sacred as it provided the means in which cohesion was met. These same principles held true for Jewish Christians however in place of Jerusalem was the figure of Jesus. This post second-temple period was marked by “Christians were beginning to think about Jesus in the same was some the the Throne Mystics were envisaging Jerusalem” (Armstrong, 159). Instead of a physical location, Jesus was the embodiment of the sacred and provided a more tangible understanding. Jerusalem and Jesus share many parallels for the adherents as they both were an “incarnation of a divine reality that had been with God from the beginning” and how each could bring “salvation from sin and death” (Armstrong, 159). The prophetic qualities of these two symbols both possess characteristics that would reinforce Eliadan principles on the sacred. Further, just how one sacred symbol is normally built on top of another, so does the theology preached by Jesus. It should be noted how “Jesus commands the disciples to being their preaching in the Holy City” insinuating how it is still the center of the world (Armstrong, 159). This detail to preach in Jerusalem is interesting since it preserves the tradition of clustering perceptions of sacred one on top of another. Insinuating how one people’s notion of sacred does not exist in isolation but instead is the culmination of a deep rooted history.