GREEN 'She and her household were baptized' 11
The vertical axis marks the temple as the meeting place of God and
humanity, the juncture of the layers of the cosmos. Here is God's own
abode; the location of service, worship, prayer, and sacrifice to God; the
point of divine revelation; the locus of the divine presence.^16 The hori-
zontal axis emphasizes the temple's capacity to structure and orient social
life. What Shaye Cohen says of the ideology of the temple historically is
also true of Luke's narrative representation of the temple—namely, that it
serves as a binding force, relating monotheism and exclusivity: the one
temple unified the one people under the one God.^17 This horizontal axis,
then, signals how the temple establishes the order of the world, providing
the center point around which human life is oriented. The architecture of
the temple—with its system of restricted spaces correlating the concepts of
holiness and purity, segregating Gentile from Jew, Jewish female from
Jewish male, priest from non-priest, and so on—both embodies and radi-
ates this socio-religious matrix, generating social maps that segregate
persons along lines of ethnicity and gender and, thus, with respect to rela-
tive status measured in terms of religious purity.^18
As we follow Peter into and through the Lukan narrative of his encoun-
ter with Cornelius, we recognize that Peter stands in an ambiguous relation
to this Jerusalem-centered ideology. On the one hand, he manifests his
awareness of and allegiance to such an ideology. This is self-evident in his
interaction with the Lord in his vision: 'By no means, Lord; for I have
never eaten anything that is profane or unclean' (10.14). Later, when relat-
ing this vision at Jerusalem, Peter's recollection is even more emphatic:
'By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my
mouth'. Moreover, as Peter readies himself to enter Cornelius's house, he
voices the social script arising out of the temple ideology: 'It is unlawful
for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile' (10.28). Indeed, when he
returns to Jerusalem after his encounter with Cornelius, he is castigated
precisely at this point, for sharing in the hospitality of Gentiles (11.2-3).^19- Cf.Lk. 1.8-23; 2.22-24,36-38; 18.10; 19.46; 24.53; Acts 2.46-47; 3.1; 21.26;
22.17; 24.18. - Shaye J.D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (LEC; Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1987), p. 106. - See further Michael Colin McKeever,' Sacred Space and Discursive Field: The
Narrative Function of the Temple in Luke-Acts' (PhD thesis, Graduate Theological
Union, Berkeley, 1999). - Philip Francis Esler has helpfully discussed the literary and historical evidence
for the Jewish ban on dining with Gentiles (Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts: The