protosanctuary

plural protosanctuaries

1. A precursor to a sanctuary.

   Thus, Charlemagne's protopilgrimage brings him to a protosanctuary where the hero's body is already almost a statue,

   1991, Eugene Vance, “Style and value: From soldier to pilgrim in the Song of Roland”, in Yale French Studies

   2 more examples

   An Egyptologist's mind immediately turns to the ancient Egyptian counterpart to such an imagined protosactuary: a reed hut that all late Egyptian temples, in their archaizing longing to return to the origins, sought to emulate in stone through the typically Egyptian temple features of inward-sloping walls, torus and corvetto cornice.

   2018, Jan Assmann, The Invention of Religion

   T. Desmond Alexander, The City of God and the Goal of Creation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), makes the distinction (contra Beale) that Eden is not necessarily a “protosanctuary,” but rather, that each later sanctuary is “a restored garden of Eden” (19).

   2019, Jared August, “Genesis, Deuteronomy, and the Hope of an Eschatological Mediator”, in Journal of Ministry & Theology