THERE IS MUCH DEBATE among scholars about the relationship between the Tabernacle and the Jerusalem Temple. Some scholars think that the Tabernacle is a completely mythic structure whose description is based on the Temple constructed early in the 1st millennium B. C.E. These scholars argue that the Tabernacle tradition evolved to justify and provide a pedigree for the Temple. Other scholars argue that there existed a portable Tabernacle that pre-dated the Temple. Although it would not have been as elaborate as the Tabernacle described in the Torah, this structure must have formed the basis for the portable divine dwelling recounted in Exodus 25–40.
While it is currently impossible to determine the historicity of the Tabernacle texts, it is clear that within the Bible, the Tabernacle and the Temple provide two models of sacred space. The Temple model was particularly resonant when Israel/Judea was a sovereign kingdom (10th-6th centuries B. C.E.). The Temple was a symbol of God’s sanction of the Davidic monarchy, and it functioned as a key element in the Judean monarchy’s attempts to centralize national and religious authority (II Samuel 7:11–16; I Kings 8; 12:26–27).
The Tabernacle model was particularly resonant in the absence of Judean—and later, Jewish—sovereignty (after the Babylonian conquest in 587 B. C.E.). According to the Tabernacle model, God is manifest in the community no matter where the community resides. In order to come into contact with God, the people do not need to make pilgrimages to a fixed location. Instead, they need only maintain a set of behaviors that will allow God to reside in their midst no matter where they are. According to the Rabbis, when the Jews went into exile, God’s presence (Shechinah) went with them and continues to manifest itself wherever Jews pray or study Torah. The medieval Kabbalists understood the Shechinah to be a feminine aspect of God. The idea of the Shechinah as an immanent and feminine divine presence has been a source of reflection and inspiration for feminist theologians like Judith Plaskow and Lynn Gottlieb.
—Elsie R. Stern