BOOK REVIEW

Hannah K. Harrington, The Purity and Sanctuary of the Body in Second Temple Judaism. Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements Volume 3. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, 2019, 419 Pages, ISBN: 978-3-525-57128-6.

Hannah K. Harrington's book, The Purity and Sanctuary of the Body in Second Temple Judaism, is a study on the image of the body as a temple in the Hebrew Bible, the Second Temple Literature, the Qumran Scrolls, the New Testament writings and especially in the Epistles of Paul. Hannah K. Harrington is a professor at the Faculty of Biblical and Theological Studies Department, Patten University and an expert on studies on Second Temple Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The author divides her work into seven chapters plus the introduction and conclusion. In the introduction, the author dedicates much space to defining key concepts that form a fundamental part of the investigation. Terms such as holiness, profanity, purity and impurity, among others, are clearly defined as also related to one another. This discussion is interesting because Harrington analyses the terms in the history of the biblical text, beginning with the Pentateuch all the way to the writings of Paul. Subsequently, the author reviews and evaluates a variety of authors and their theoretical proposals on topics such as ritual studies, social anthropology, metaphorical reading models and the intertextual map with the Torah. This introduction organises the key issues involved in the discussion and is also a fertile ground for reflection for future researching. In the following chapters the author analyses a set of biblical and extra-biblical texts: Ezra-Nehemiah (Chapter 2), the Minor Prophets, the Second Temple Literature and the Qumran Scrolls (Chapters 3 and 4). In the final three chapters the author follows an analysis of similar texts on the themes of the Holy Spirit in the sanctuary (Chapter 5), Jesus, the temple and purity (Chapter 6) and, lastly, the theme of the temple in 1-2 Corinthians (Chapter 7). The richness of Harrington's research is inestimable. Her contributions to the contemporary discussion of the metaphor of the temple in Paul's writings are many and here I would like to highlight at least three of them.

First, the theoretical thoroughness in the introduction to this book is exemplary, as it relates the study of metaphor in cognitive linguistics (Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By) to the temple as a metaphor to demonstrate the tension between the subject (community as a target domain) and the metaphor (temple as a source domain). In the author's words: "Setting for the image of the source domain elicits a network of meaning" (51, footnote 119). In other words, when one hears the word "temple," a web of meanings come to mind and those meanings, in turn, illuminate the origin of the concept. Second, for the author, the image of the temple as used in the OT and NT can be explained as a process of ritual transfer from its original symbolic field (cult) towards the moral sphere of the life of the community. This transference shares elements of continuity and discontinuity and in the case of Paul's writings, the temple provides him with a set of theological categories that help him to expound his theology. Lastly, the author shows that the suprationist position, that is, that Paul would have replaced the temple in Jerusalem with the Christian community is incorrect.

The following quote well sums up the author's conclusion:

Paul does not denigrate the Jerusalem temple or attempt to replace it by believers in Christ but builds upon its stature and operations to give understanding to God's intentions for the church at Corinth. The holiness-impurity laws of cult give structure and substance to what it means for believers to be a temple of God. Close analysis reveals that Paul is exhorting the church to a serious commitment of believers to holiness which undergirds both the temple of Jerusalem and the community of believers in Christ. In both cases, holiness is the connector to a healthy relationship with God. It represents both the source of power and blessing within the temple / body and requires biblical standards of ethical behavior (371).

In sum, Harrington's work is a valuable scholarly contribution to an underexplored topic, particularly to the understanding of the tabernacle/temple of ancient Israel in its anthropological and ecclesiological dimensions in early Christianity. The implications of this study may provoke a major theological thrust on this important topic.

Allan Bornape, Faculty of Theology, Adventist University of Chile. Email: allanbornape@unach.cl. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6117-0116.