I agree that “parables” is not exactly what you’re mentioning here.
The whole definition of a temple, in the ancient Greek world, was a place where a god dwelled. The word that Paul uses, “naos,” is specifically the inner room of a Greek temple where the god’s statue was, and which the god was supposed to possess or even use as a body at times. (So a naos was very comparable to the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple.)
If you’re a Christian, God dwells within you. So the only figurative thing about calling us “temple” or even “naos” is that we’re not buildings. But since the ideal of a Jewish Temple was a temple with walls made of natural stones, not sculpted by human hands… well, we’re natural objects made by God, too.
Living water flowing out of a spring, watering the whole land, was another feature of the ideal Jerusalem Temple. That’s what Jesus was talking about, when He brought up “living water” coming out of us, and He was referring to eternal life from God. But you notice that it doesn’t just stay within us – it is supposed to make other people alive also.
There’s a whole lot of theology research going on right now, on the subject of the Heavenly Temple, Jesus as a sort of ultimate Temple, the members of the Body of Christ as temples, Eden’s relationship to the Temple, and so on. It’s pretty neat stuff. Scott W. Smith is doing some good stuff. He had a podcast called Solomon’s Porch for a while that was working through his academic book about it, and I think he’s got some helpful PDF summaries online.
