The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

CHILTON Aramaic and Targumic Antecedents of 'Justification' 383
single visit to that sanctum, censer in hand. 21
That moment is only specified in order to be fixed, frozen forever.
The movement of ordinary priests, in and out of the holy place, the
'first tabernacle' (9.6), while the high priest could only enter 'the
second tabernacle', the holy of holies (v. 7), once a year, was designed
by the holy spirit as a parable: the way into the holy of holies could
not be revealed while the first Temple, the first tabernacle and its
service, continued (vv. 8-10). That way could only be opened, after
the Temple was destroyed, by Christ, who became high priest and
passed through 'the greater and more perfect tabernacle' of his body
(v. 11) by the power of his own blood (v. 12) so that he could find
eternal redemption in the sanctuary.
Signal motifs within the Gospels are developed in the passage. The
identification of Jesus' death and the destruction of the Temple, which
the Gospels achieve in narrative terms, is assumed to be complete; it is
not clear what the author made of the period between the two events.
Moreover, in the passage, it is taken for granted that Jesus' body was a
kind of 'tabernacle', an instrument of sacrifice (9.11), apparently
because the Gospels speak of his offering his body and his blood in the
words of institution. 22 Jesus' 'body' and 'blood' are the high priest's
self-immolating means to an end: to enter once for all (v. 12) within
the innermost recess of sanctity.
When Paul conceives of Jesus' death sacrificially, it is as a sacrifice
for sin (rcepi a.\iapiia.c,, Rom. 8.3). Indeed, by the time he composed
Romans, he had been referring to Jesus' death in that way for five
years (cf. Gal. 1.4, written c. AD 53). (Certain texts read -urcep for
Ttepi, but the relationship between Sinaiticus and the first corrector
shows the likely direction of change.) Of course, the phrase Ttepi