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THE TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM

JAMES FERGUSSON

LTHOUGH not one stone remains upon another of

the celebrated Temple of Jerusalem, still, the descriptions in the Bible and Josephus are so precise that, now we are able to interpret them by the light of other buildings, its history can be written with very tolerable certainty.

The earliest temple of the Jews was the Tabernacle, the plan of which they always considered as divinely revealed to them through Moses in the desert of Sinai, and from which they consequently never departed in any subsequent erections. Its dimensions were for the cella, or Holy of Holies, ten cubits or fifteen feet cubic; for the outer temple, two such cubes, or fifteen feet by thirty. These were covered by the sloping roofs of the tent, which extended five cubits in every direction beyond the temple itself, making the whole forty cubits or sixty feet in length by twenty cubits or thirty feet in width. These stood within an enclosure 100 cubits long by fifty cubits wide.

When Solomon (B. C. 1015) built the Temple, he did not alter the disposition in any manner, but adopted it literally, only doubling every dimension. Thus the Holy of Holies became a cube of twenty cubits; the Holy place,

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twenty by forty; the porch and the chambers which surrounded it ten cubits each, making a total of eighty cubits or 120 feet by forty cubits or sixty feet, with a height of thirty as compared with fifteen, which was the height of the ridge of the Tabernacle, and it was surrounded by a court the dimensions of which were 200 cubits in length by 100 in width.

Even with these increased dimensions the Temple was a very insignificant building in size; the truth being that, like the temples of Semitic nations, it was more in the character of a shrine or of a treasury intended to contain precious works in metal.

The principal ornaments of its façade were two brazen pillars, Jachin and Boaz, which seem to have been wonders of metal work and regarding which more has been written, and it may be added more nonsense, than regarding almost any other known architectural objects. The truth of the matter appears to be that the translators of our Bibles in no instance were architects and none of the architects who have attempted the restoration were learned as Hebrew scholars; and consequently the truth has fallen to the ground between the two. A brazen pillar, however, eighteen cubits high and twelve cubits in circumference -six feet in diameter—is an absurdity that no brass-founder ever could have perpetrated. In the Hebrew, the fifteenth verse reads: "He cast two pillars of brass, eighteen cubits was the height of the one pillar, and a line of twelve cubits encompassed the other pillar." The truth of the matter

seems to be that what Solomon erected was a screen

(chapiter) consisting of two parts, one four cubits, the other five cubits in height, and supported by two pillars of metal, certainly not more than one cubit in diameter, and standing twelve cubits apart: nor does it seem difficult to perceive what purpose this screen was designed to effect. The whole of the light to the interior was admitted from the front. In the Temple the only light that could penetrate to the Holy of Holies was from the front also; and though the Holy place was partially lighted from the sides, its principal source of light must have been through the eastern façade. In consequence of this there must have been a large opening or window in this front, and as a window was a thing that they had not yet learned to make an ornamental feature in architectural design, they took this mode of screening and partially, at least, hiding it.

It becomes almost absolutely certain that this is the true solution of the riddle, when we find that when Herod rebuilt the Temple in the First Century, B. C., he erected a similar screen for the same purpose in front of his Temple. Its dimensions, however, were one-third larger. It was forty cubits high and twenty cubits across, and it supported five beams instead of two; not to display the chequer-work and pomegranates of Solomon's screen, but to carry the Golden Vine, which was the principal ornament of the façade of the Temple in its latest form.

Although it is easy to understand how it was quite possible in metal-work to introduce all the ornaments enumer

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