A Day in the Temple

From the preface:"An accurate acquaintance with the sacrificial services and the Temple-rites at the time of Jesus Christ serves a double end. First it illustrates a considerable part of the New Testament history in a precise and striking manner. The Virgin Mother at her purification and the presentation of her First-Born, the Christ-child among the Rabbis, the Lord Jesus teaching in the Temple-courts, walking in Solomon's porch, sitting in the treasury, disputing with the scribes and...
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From the preface:"An accurate acquaintance with the sacrificial services and the Temple-rites at the time of Jesus Christ serves a double end. First it illustrates a considerable part of the New Testament history in a precise and striking manner. The Virgin Mother at her purification and the presentation of her First-Born, the Christ-child among the Rabbis, the Lord Jesus teaching in the Temple-courts, walking in Solomon's porch, sitting in the treasury, disputing with the scribes and the chief priests on the Feast of Tabernacles and finally denouncing their greed and hypocrisy, are a few of the events which will assume a new meaning when viewed in the light of the daily Temple-life.But beside its historical interest our study has also a dogmatic and hermeneutic value. "The end of the Law is Jesus Christ, unto justice to every one that believeth" writes St. Paul to the Romans (10:4). The exact knowledge of the Law, of which the daily sacrificial services form no small or unimportant part, will beget a deeper knowledge and more devoted love of its fulfillment, the sacred person of the Word Incarnate. For here we shall see plainly "that the way into the Holies was not yet made manifest, whilst the former tabernacle was yet standing" (Heb 9:8).This is the twofold purpose of the present work and at the same time the apology for its manifold shortcomings. Whilst the ancient sources and the modern literature bearing on the subject, make this work possible, the remoteness of the former and the abundance of the latter render it extremely laborious and irksome. Without pretending to have overcome all difficulties on historical and topographical questions, or to have settled all discrepancies concerning the same points, we refer the reader to those authors whose works have been especially consulted. While thus furnishing every one with the means to acquire a more detailed information, the author expresses his own obligation for the manifold assistance he has derived from the able works of so many industrious students in Jewish and Biblical Antiquities."