contemporary art. Where, it has often been asked, shall we look for the model or prototype of the temple edifice? Whence were derived the motifs to be seen in its decoration? What influences can be detected in the elaborate apparatus above described? Now it has for long been recognized that Syria, including Phoenicia and Palestine, was from the earliest times the meeting-place of streams of influence, religious, artistic and other, issuing from the two great fountains of civilization and culture in the ancient world, Egypt and Babylonia. To these must now be added the early civilization of the Aegean as revealed by the excavations in Crete, and the later but highly developed culture of the Hittites. As a result the art of Phoenicia and Syria, originally borrowed from Egypt mainly, had by the 10th century become thoroughly eclectic. Of this syncretism the best illustration is furnished by the masterpieces of contemporary art, for which Solomon was indebted to Phoenician architects and Phoenician artists. Thus the general disposition of the temple with its walled court, porch or vestibule and naos has been shown by modern excavation, and by later representations on coins, to be characteristic of Phoenician and North Syrian temple architecture. Here, however, we have an adaptation of the earlier temple architecture of Egypt. Egyptian influence is most clearly seen in the gradual decrease in the illumination of the several parts. In the temple court, as in its Egyptian counterpart, men worshipped under the bright eastern sky; in the covered porch there was still no door to exclude the light which streamed in through the lofty entrance. But in the holy place only a dim light was admitted through latticed windows high up in the side walls, while the holy of holies, like the Egyptian cella, was completely dark.[1]
The sculptured panels of the interior were shown by Robertson Smith (Ency. Brit., 9th ed., art. “Temple”) to reveal familiar Phoenician motives, although Babylonia is probably the ultimate home of the cherubim. Excavations at Sinjirli in Northern Syria and at Megiddo have, further, solved the problem of the “three rows of hewn stones and a row of cedar beams” which was the architectural feature of the walls of the various courts (1 Kings vii. 12).[2] The use of wooden beams alternately with courses of stone was a familiar expedient in early times. The practice of building walls with recurring rebatements has also been illustrated by the recent excavations.
While the prototype of the temple itself is to be sought, as has been said, in Egypt, Babylonian influence is clearly traceable in the symbolical “brazen sea,” the apsu of contemporary Babylonian, and doubtless also Phoenician, temples. The bronze lavers, finally, have been found to be dependent, both in their construction and in the motifs and execution of their reliefs, on the art of the Aegean. From Crete and Cyprus they passed through Phoenician intermediaries to Syria and Palestine. The temple of Solomon, in short, is a product of the best Syro-Phoenician art of the period, itself the product of ideas which had their source in other lands.
The Temple of Zerubbabel.—In the year 586 B.C. the temple of Solomon was committed to the flames by order of Nebuchadrezzar (2 Kings xxv. 8; Jer. lii. 12 f.). Seventy years later its successor was finished and dedicated, the foundation having been laid in the second year of Darius Hystaspes (520) during the governorship of Zerubbabel (Hag. ii. 18). There is every reason for assuming that the massive foundation courses of the earlier temple were still in situ, and available for the new building.[3] The latter's inferiority, attested by Hag. 3, was rather in respect of its decoration and equipment, as compared with the magnificence of the first temple, than as regards the size of the building. The dimensions given in the royal decree (Ezra vi. 3)—60 cubits for height and the same for breadth—probably refer, as was pointed out in a previous section, to the extremes of height and breadth applicable to the porch and platform respectively. In these and most other respects it may be supposed that Zerubbabel's builders followed the lines of Solomon's temple. It is probable, however, that the walls of the naos, including both the holy and the most holy place, were now raised to a uniform height, the separate back wall of the former having been abolished and the naos covered by a single roof. This seems a legitimate inference from the absence in the second and third temples of a supporting partition wall within the naos. Its place, as separating the two compartments, was taken by a magnificent curtain or “veil,” which is mentioned among the spoils carried off by Antiochus Epiphanes (1 Macc. i. 22).[4]
In the matter of the sacred furniture, the holy place contained from the first the table of shewbread, and one golden “candlestick” or lamp stand in place of the ten which illuminated the hêkāl in the later days, at least, of the first temple (Jer. lii. 19). The golden altar of incense, which fell a prey with the rest of the furniture to Antiochus (1 Macc. i. xxi. f.) was probably introduced later than the time of Zerubbabel, since a Jewish author, writing in the 3rd century B.C. under the name of Hecataeus of Abdera, mentions only “an altar and a candlestick both of gold,” and it is natural to identify the former with the gold-plated table of shewbread.[5] In one important respect the glory of the second house was less than that of the first. The holy of holies was now an empty shrine, for no one had dared to construct a second ark.
The second temple also differed from the first in having two courts, an outer and an inner, as prescribed by Ezekiel for his temple of the future. The outer court formed a square, each side of which was 500 cubits in length, also as prescribed by Ezekiel, with the sakhra rock in the centre (see Exp. Times, xx. 182). Within the inner court stood the altar and the temple. The former, as described by Hecataeus, was composed of white unhewn stones (cf. Exod. xx. 25), “having each side 20 cubits long, and its height 10 cubits” (Josephus, Contra Apion, i. § 198), dimensions which agree with those assigned by the chronicler to the earlier altar of bronze (2 Chron. iv. 1).
In 165 B.C., three years after the spoliation of the temple and the desecration of its altar by Antiochus IV., Judas Maccabaeus rededicated the holy house, made new sacred furniture, and erected a new altar of burnt-offering (1 Macc. iv. 41 ff.). But long before this date the temple had assumed a character which it retained to the end of the Jewish state. It had become a fortress as well as a place of public worship, and existing records tell of the repeated strengthening of its defences. “At the time of Pompey's siege (63 B.C.) it constituted an almost impregnable fastness, strengthened on its weakest or northern side by great towers and a deep ditch (Ant., xiv. 4, § 2). Twenty-six years later the temple was again besieged by Herod, who, attacking like Pompey from the north, had to force three lines of defence—the city wall, and the outer and inner temple,” i.e. the walls of the outer and inner courts (W. R. Smith).
The Temple of Herod.—In the 18th year of his reign (29-19 B.C.) Herod obtained the reluctant consent of his subjects to his ambitious scheme for rebuilding the temple and for enlarging and beautifying its courts. The former was finished in eighteen months by a thousand priests trained for this special purpose, the courts in eight years, but the complete reconstruction occupied more than eighty years, lasting almost till the final breach with Rome, which culminated in the destruction of the sacred edifice by the soldiers of Titus in A.D. 70.
- ↑ This feature gives valuable support to the view presented above that Solomon's temple resembled its Egyptian contemporaries in an equally striking characteristic, the decrease in height with the decrease in illumination.
- ↑ This description possibly applies to all the buildings (note verse 9), including the temple itself, and was so understood by the writer of Ezra vi. 4.
- ↑ From Hag. i. 8. Driver indeed infers that “there would probably be almost sufficient stonework remaining [for all purposes] from Solomon's temple” (Cent. Bible in loc.).
- ↑ M. Clermont-Ganneau has put forward the interesting conjecture that the veil presented by Antiochus to the temple of Zeus at Olympia (Pausanias, V. xii. 4) was that taken from the temple at Jerusalem (see “Le Dieu satrape,” &c., in the Journ. asiatique, 1878).
- ↑ The witness of the Pseudo-Hecataeus and of another Jewish Hellenist, the Pseudo-Aristeas, regarding the second temple has recently been examined by G. A. Smith in his volumes on Jerusalem (see esp. index to vol. ii., and cf. Vincent, “Jérusalem d'après la lettre d'Aristée,” Rev. biblique (1908), 520 ff. (1909), 555 ff.).
