The High Priest and the Temple

Metaphorical Depictions of Jesus in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch

by Jonathon Lookadoo

Book cover: The High Priest and the Temple

Extent: 371 pages

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Subjects: Biblical Studies

Series: Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2.Reihe

Series volume number: 473

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(October 2018)

ISBN: 9783161560712

9.25 x 6.14 inches

Price: $130.00

Out of stock

Jonathon Lookadoo explores Ignatius’s pairing of high priestly and temple metaphors in order to understand more clearly how Ignatius viewed Jesus and the church. The metaphors of high priest and temple are closely related in three of Ignatius’s letters. This study allows readers to appreciate better how Ignatius portrayed Jesus’s identity and work. The author also sheds light on how some of Ignatius’s audiences were to demonstrate unity. By exploring each metaphor with a view to its rhetorical function in a particular letter as well as to similar imagery in early Jewish and early Christian literature, Jonathon Lookadoo freshly illuminates Ignatius’s letters in a way that is of interest not only to Ignatian scholars, but to all who study early Christian letters, rhetoric, and theology in the first two centuries CE.


Jonathon Lookadoo explores Ignatius’s pairing of high priestly and temple metaphors in order to understand more clearly how Ignatius viewed Jesus and the church. The metaphors of high priest and temple are closely related in three of Ignatius’s letters. This study allows readers to appreciate better how Ignatius portrayed Jesus’s identity and work. The author also sheds light on how some of Ignatius’s audiences were to demonstrate unity. By exploring each metaphor with a view to its rhetorical function in a particular letter as well as to similar imagery in early Jewish and early Christian literature, Jonathon Lookadoo freshly illuminates Ignatius’s letters in a way that is of interest not only to Ignatian scholars, but to all who study early Christian letters, rhetoric, and theology in the first two centuries CE.

  • By (author) Jonathon Lookadoo