When it comes to how New Testament scholars view the temple, I suggest that there is a widespread tendency to construe the temple, as one might expect, in very western—one might even say Protestant—terms. In other words, there is an instinctive propensity to see the temple’s raison d’être as having exclusively to do with the religious impulse, in particular, the need to be forgiven. ‘What was Israel’s temple for? Why, blood sacrifices and being restored into fellowship with God of course—little if