The History Behind the Theotokos Entering the Temple

 The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple is often scandalous to those of a critical mind in our Church. They say it’s an impossibility, a legend, or a myth based on a theological tradition. If this is so, this is the only feast in our liturgical calendar that is based on false history and if this is so what does that say about the rest of our feasts? 

The logic behind such thinking is that the Jews of that time would not allow it. Just who were these Jews that these people speak about? The Jews back then were about as diverse as they are today in their beliefs. For all we know, the High Priest at the time of the Theotokos, Zacharias, was a Nazorean, a sect of the Jews that were first-temple traditionalists.

Our Lord Jesus, on his cross, was called a Nazorean and so were the first Christians in the Book of Acts (24:5). This has often been mistranslated to mean from Nazareth. The word actually comes from the Hebrew word nāṣar, which meant to guard, preserve, or keep. This group of Jews had their own prophecies about the coming messiah and his mother based on Isaiah  7, which modern translations of the Dead Sea scroll testify to. As they say, “Ask a sign from the Mother of the LORD your God”, and, when Ahaz refuses, the Isaiah scroll says “Then the Lord himself will give you a sign… ‘Behold, The Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel”.

The Virgin, the Lady of the Temple, or the Mother of the Sons of God as she is called by the Nazoreans obviously becomes a stumbling block for the modern critic. However, even if you don’t like it, it’s a first-temple traditionalist belief, which even the prophet Jeremiah speaks about (7:18). The first-temple traditionalists opposed Jeremiah and claimed that when the Queen of Heaven was removed from the temple it caused the destruction of the Jerusalem. Regardless of whatever feelings one might have about a female image of God in the temple, it is the basis for understanding the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos. It’s the only way to make sense of the history behind this feast. Without it, the Feast rightly becomes the myth that some claim.

In order for us to understand the temple maternal imagery as the basis of this feast, we need to understand how the first temple worked. In the first temple, there was a place in it called the Holy of Holies. Holy of Holies means that it makes other things holy. In temple thinking something that is holy of itself does not have the power to communicate holiness. Only the Holy of Holies can do that and what gave this sacred place in the temple, the Holy of Holies, the power to do that was the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, like other temple objects, was in one way symbolically a sacred maternal object. As we will see it had the power to give birth to a Son of God.

To give you a picture of how this looked in the worship of the first temple: when King Solomon would go into the holy of holies, he would be given the power that this place had. He would be given the power to make things holy. As we read in the Psalms (2:7), he would become reborn as a Son of God. This is what our Lord was speaking about when he told Nicodemus he needed to be born again to experience the Kingdom of God.  The King was given the power to participate in heavenly things, he was deified. He would then leave the holy of holies and ritualistically make the people worshiping in the outer parts of the temple holy. He would make these people as the scriptures say a holy nation and a kingdom of priests.  These people would leave that place and bring God’s presence into the world.

The problem that we get to when we get to the time of the Theotokos is that the Holy of Holies was an empty place. This was the time of the second temple, the first temple of King Solomon was destroyed. The Ark had disappeared. There was no longer that instrument that gave birth to the Sons of God. There was no power to create those holy people who would be able to bring God’s presence into the world. One of the great hopes of the Nazorean Jews at that time was the restoration of the temple. The coming of the messiah for them was said to bring back the Ark into the temple, making it once again the means of salvation of the world. Just as it says in Isaiah 7.

The Nazorean logic behind the restoration of the temple is why Zacharias brought The Virgin into the temple. He brought back to the temple the true Ark. He must have been given supernatural insight into the nature of what the Ark was. In the Old Testament when the Ark was made it was patterned after what was seen in heaven. It was a copy of the real thing, a symbol of what was to come. When the Theotokos was brought into the Holy of Holies she became the fulfillment of the Old Testament symbolism. She alone is the true source behind that sacred space, she is as we rightfully call her: Theotokos, the birth giver of God.