Abstract
The temple or sanctuary of God is a rich and pervasive biblical concept. But what it is, essentially? Beginning from the temple of Solomon and passing on to five other biblical iterations of the temple, this paper abstracts the essential characteristics of this revealed reality in order to formulate a definition of the temple itself. Though manifest in sanctuaries as seemingly dissimilar as the Garden of Eden, Mount Sinai, the Tent of Moses, and the Christian Temple, the essential reality realized in each instance is a relationship between mankind and God: in the fullest sense of the verb, the temple is the place where man is with God.