The name 'Syrtis' may be derived from the sucking action of the treacherous tides — 'Syrtes ab tractu nominatre' (Sail. Bdl. Jii(f. 77). But it is sometimes connected with the Arabic sort, ' a desert,' which would refer to the desolate and sandy shore that marked the neighbourhood of the Syrtes (W. Smith, DGRG ii. [1S68] 1081). Virgil (^En. iv. 41) speaks of the ' inhospita Syrtis,' and there were many ancient tales, luobably not a little exaggerated, of armies on land and even ships at sea being overwhelmed by clouds of drift- ing sand (Diod. xx. 42 ; Sail. Bdl. Jug. 78 ; Herod, iii. 25. 26, iv. 173 ; Lucan, ix. 294 f.).
The crew of the scudding ship avoided the foreseen danger by laying her to on the starboard tack, i.e. with her right side to the wind. Luke's phrase, x^^^tra^res to iTKeuos (* lowered the gear,' Ac '27" RV), only imperfectly describes this opera- tion, as it leaves out an essential detail — the set- ting of the storm-sail. See J. Smith, The Voyiir/e and Shipwreck of St. Paul, 1880, p. llOf., and W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, 1895, p. 328 f.
James Steahan.
TABERNACLE (irKijvfi, tahernaculum).--Ta,her- nacle is the name given in the English Bible, since the time of Wyclif, to the moving sanctuary which, according to the OT priestly writers, was prepared by Moses as the place of worship of the Israelites during their wanderings in the wilderness. This tabernacle, which is described with elaborate detail in Ex '2.5-31, and which supplies the writer of Hebrews with the premisses of his great argu- ment, is now almost universally regarded as a post-Exilic product of the Hebrew religious imagination, working upon a foundation of his- torical fact. Suggested by the Divine promise to Israel, 'My dwelling shall be with them' (Ezk 37") — wliere ' dwelling ' (l?v'P) gives the literal sense of tlie word usually rendered by ' tabernacle ' — it was an attempt to give ideal expression, by out- ward and visible symbols, to a people's faith in the real presence of God. Realizing the double truth of the Divine nearness and mysterious unapproach- ableness, the priests in a manner materialized the conditions under which the right relation between God and His people could be renewed and main- tained. Their sanctuary was evidently a develop- ment of the sketch of Ezekiel (40-48) ; but, whereas his ideal was a hope to be realized in the Messianic age, theirs was represented as a reminiscence of the Mosaic time. In some respects following, but
in others widely diverging from, the arrangements of the first Temple, its rittial was in all essentials actualized in the second and third Temples. Various allusions to the tabernacle are found in the apostolic writings.
1. 'I'lie writer of Hebrews delights, like Pliilo, in the tj'pical and allegorical interpretation of the OT Scriptures, which seem to him pregnant with hidden spiritual meanings. His aim is to jnove that the Christian has passed ' ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.' Never referring to the Temple, always to the tabernacle, he lingers over the description of ' the vessels of the ministry ' (9-'), entering into details which would have been superfluous had he been writing merely to Jewish readers. While he recognizes the splendour of the old order, and reverently unfolds the signilicance of its ritual, he regards all theLevitical institutions as prophetic types which, having at length been ful- filled by Christ, may now be set aside without com- punction or regret. His philosophical presupposi- tion, or view of the world, is the Platonic and Philonie one, that heaven is the place of realities, while earth is the place of shadows ; and his central doctrine is that Christ, having, as a ' minister of the true tabernacle (^ aKtivr) t) dX-qSiv/i), which the Lord i)itclied, not man' (8-), enteieil within the veil, has won for every Christian
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the right of i>ersonal access to God. Holding, like the most enlightened Israelites before him, that the Mosaic onlinances were no more than Divinely appointed ceremonial forms, and asserting the spiritual inellectiveness of the whole ritual, even of the supreme sacrilice of the Day of Atonement, he declares 'the lirst tabernacle' (9*-*), though made in all things according to a heavenly pattern {tvttov, 8'), to he Rii]perseded by 'a greater ami more perfect tabernacle' (9"). and tlie Levitical priesthood by 'a more excellent ministry' (Sia-
2. The writer of the Fourth Gospel illustrates the Incarnation by saying that the Logos taber- nacled {iaKTji'uaev) among us (Jn 1'^). As God once dwelt, in visiMe cloud and Hame, among His people, so Christ has sojourned among men, who have beheld His glory, which in this instance is the spiritual glory of a perfect manhood.
3. The author of the Revelation depicts the final state of Messianic happiness in the words : ' Be- hold, the tabernacle (itktjc^) of God is with men, and he shall dwell (aKrjvwaei) with them ' (2P). ' So closely does Shekinah resemble aK-qvri, that the former has even been thought of as a triinsl itera- tion of the latter ' ( C. Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers", Cambridge, 1897, p. 44). That was no more than a linguistic fancy, Shekinah being really derived from the same verb as mishkan, ' tabernacle.' But the Mes.sianic promise is partially fulfilled in an intenser realization of the Divine Immanence in the world, where ' earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God' (E. B. Browning, Aurora Leigh, bk. vii. line 844 f . ), and a modern mystic declares that ' there is but one Temple in the world, and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hand on a human body' (Novalis, Carli/le's Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, London, 1872, ii. 216). Cf. St. Paul's words, ' ye are a temple (faS^, from vaieii/, ' to dwell ') of God . . . the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are' (1 Co 3"^-"). But when a promise is to be fulfilled by Christ, the best is yet to be.