Dr. Matthew L. Bowen was raised in Orem, Utah and graduated from Brigham Young University. He holds a doctorate in Biblical Studies from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and is currently an assistant professor in religious education at BYU–Hawaii. He and his wife, Suzanne, are the parents of three children.
How would you describe ancient temples before Christ came?
“Temples have traditionally been dedicated for the worship of a particular deity. Even if a culture is polytheistic or embraces a pantheon of deities, sanctuaries are usually devoted to a single deity. I don’t know if that’s always true, but it’s commonly true.
“The temples were also associated with ruling dynasties in different city-states and cultures. For example, the temple in Jerusalem was not only historically a temple dedicated to Yahweh or Jehovah, but it was also a symbol of the strength of the Davidic dynasty, of the power of David’s descendants of Solomon until that dynasty politically ceased to exist with Zedekiah. Anciently, temples not only had a very clear ritual function, including sacrifice, but temples were also very political in terms of what they symbolized.”
What were those rituals like?
“Sacrifice was an important ritual in the Jerusalem temple and many ancient temples, but there were also rituals in Egyptian temples for the purification of the priest. The language of Exodus 28 and Exodus 40 is really important to us as Latter-day Saints today, particularly because of its language regarding washings and anointings. Today, we sort of take it for granted that we as Latter-day Saints allow every worthy saint the opportunity and access to receive temple ordinances or purification ordinances when [they were typically] only offered to the priests back then.”
What are similar things from the old temple in Jerusalem that we do today in the temple?
“We have washing, anointings and clothing of priests in the ancient Israelite temple. In the Egyptian temples, you had representations of the gods that were washed, anointed, clothed and fed. You see some really interesting patterns across cultures where you have very distinctive similarities between what was done in different temples throughout time.”
In the temple today, we focus a lot on progression. Is there any evidence of that in earlier temples?
“Yes, one of my favorite texts that I’ve studied is the daily temple liturgy from Karnak, an ancient temple that has been excavated. They have a lot of those rituals for the purification of priests and of preparing the priests to go in and see God. One of the chapters of the daily liturgy in the temple of Karnak is entitled the Chapter of Seeing God. It was in the rubric to prepare a person to come and see the deity in the most holy place within the deity’s sanctuary.”
Before the early Christian church became more a part of the Holy Roman Empire, were there other similarities to Latter-day Saint temples today?
“The destruction of the temple sort of changes the whole orientation of Judaism at that point, and nascent [early] Christianity’s orientation changes with it because they see themselves as part of Judaism at that point. They don’t see themselves as Christians until later, the first idea of this name was by Luke the Physician in Antioch. Then the whole orientation is different because you don’t have the temple.
“The earliest Christians met in house churches, typically the home of a wealthy member of the church in an area. That was where the congregation would gather. At some point, churches themselves became places of worship and churches became an institution. Synagogues were a big part of Judaism, especially during the Babylonian exile and coming out from the Babylonian exile. They were places of communal gathering.
“After the destruction of the temple, those synagogues started to assume some of the functions that the temple had held, not all of them. That has been reflected in what archeologists have found when they’ve excavated some of the old synagogues. When they’ve unearthed them, it’s clear that they were using the synagogues to compensate for the loss of the temple. Christianity sort of develops with that same kind of thing. There aren’t other temples out there that the Jews go to and there aren’t other temples for the Christians.”
What does the temple mean to you personally?
“One of my first memories of the temple was as a young kid when I went to the Jordan River Temple open house before it was dedicated. That was the first time I remember being in the temple, in places like the Celestial Room and so forth. Even then, I had a sense that it was really special.
“I’ve really grown to love the temple more as I’ve attended over the years. For me, the temple is more home than even my own home is in some ways. There’s a line in J.R.R. Tolkien’s "Lord of the Rings" that describes how I feel. A [mansion] called Rivendell is described as the ‘last homely house east of the sea.’ Personally, that’s an adequate or a somewhat useful description of the temple. In recent years, I feel more at home at the Laie temple than anywhere else. Maybe it’s a toss-up between my house and the Laie temple. In some ways, I feel more at home at the Laie temple because of what it is and what it represents.”
With the 100-year anniversary, what lessons does the Laie Hawaii Temple teach?
“Look at the Laie Hawaii Temple in terms of what Isaiah 11:11 means. This is a scripture I share a lot with students that describes the Lord setting his hand again to gather Israel and then Isaiah lists seven nations. The seven nations aren’t the point. The point is the number seven being the number of wholeness or completion in ancient Israelite thinking, and then you have added for good measure, ‘from the islands of the sea.’ The Laie temple came with great sacrifice, not only in building it, but what it took for people to come here.
“The temple here is really the first international temple in terms of a place out among the nations or among the nations of the sea where people are coming from all kinds of different places to gather here for what the Lord had commanded in terms of gathering to him to obtain the ordinances of salvation. When we talk about the doctrine of the gathering and what that doctrine means in practical terms for Latter-day Saints and their everyday lives you won’t find a better embodiment of the doctrine of the gathering than the Laie Hawaii Temple.”