Torn Veil, Unbroken Promise (Doré Exploration #6)
Our meditations upon the woodcuts of Gustave Doré, by which he illustrated the Grande Bible de Tours, reach the climax of Our Lord’s Passion with Luke 23:44-45— It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. By the standards of its day, the Jerusalem Temple was weird. The very idea that there ought to be but one Temple for an entire nation, for a dozen feuding federated Tribes, baffled most observers in the ancient world. Great cities could have scores of temples, of every deity and design, each housing a cultic image, a statue of the given god in glory. Some of these were wonders of the world: Zeus at Olympia, Artemis at Ephesus. Yet the Temple of the Hebrew God stood empty—empty!—just a big blank space with some cherubs set around it, and simple sacred box of acacia and gold (this latter being lost before the time of Christ). Here there would be one Temple, one...