objects, a spreading tree, a bubbling spring, a conspicuous rock or sto11e, a lofty mountain peak and the like. Beside these he met and held converse with his gods. The native rock was the first altar.
It was a distinct step in advance when it was recognized that a deity might take up his abode elsewhere than in such natural sanctuaries, as in the massebah or stone pillar and the ashērah or sacred post of wood, reared not by nature but by the hand of man (cf. Gen. xxviii. 18, 22, the origin of the sacred pillar at Beth-el).
The further advance to a real house or temple may be traced to the influence of at least two factors in the social and religious life of a people. One such factor came into play when men began to represent the deity by means of an image, or even when some object, whether natural, like the black stone of Mecca, or manufactured, like the ark of the Hebrews, came to be regarded as specially sacred from its association with the deity. Such objects or images required a house to shelter and guard them. Another factor is to be found in the advance in material comfort which follows the transition from the nomadic to the agricultural mode of life. Among the settled Semites there arose the feeling that the gods of the community ought also to share in this advance (cf. 2 Sam. vii. 2). Accordingly they were invited to take up their abode in a béth ’ĕlōhīm or temple. The dignity and comfort of the gods advance pari passu with those of their worshippers.
It must be kept in mind, however, that the altar remained as before the centre of the sacrificial worship. Around it or before it, under the open sky, the worshippers assembled. To the temple the priests alone, or the head of the sacral community in his priestly capacity, had access. In this respect the worship associated with altar and temple offers a striking contrast to the more spiritual worship of the Jewish synagogue and the Christian Church.
At the date of the Hebrew invasion of Canaan its numerous city-states had reached a fairly high level of civilization. Alongside of the typical Canaanite sanctuary, as known to us from the Old Testament references and from recent excavations, with its altar of earth or stone and its stately massebahs, a temple was probably to be found in all the more important centres. In an early Hebrew document there is a reference to the temple of El-berith at Shechem, which was large enough and strong enough to serve as a place of refuge in time of war (judges ix. 46 ff.). The Philistines also had their temples in this period: thus we hear of a “house” of Dagon at Gaza (ib. xvi. 23 ff.) and also at Ashdod (1 Sam. v. 2), while a temple of Ashtart (Ishtar-Astarte) is mentioned in 1 Sam. xxxi. 10, probably at Ashkelon (Herod. i. 105).
The earliest reference to a temple built by Hebrew hands is to “an house of gods” reared by Micah to shelter an ephod and other sacred images which he had made (Judges xvii. 5). Micah's images were soon transported to Dan, where doubtless another house was built for their protection (xviii. 18, 30 f.). Somewhat later we find the ark of Yahweh installed in “the house of Yahweh” at Shiloh, which house was not a mere tent but a real temple (hêkāl, 1 Sam. i. 9, iii. 3) with doors (iii. 15) and doorposts (i. 9), and a hall in which the worshippers partook of the sacrificial meals (i. 18, Greek text; cf. ix. 22 “the guest-chamber,” Heb. lishkāh). After the destruction of Shiloh at the hands of the Philistines, its priesthood migrated to Nob, where also the incidents recorded in 1 Sam. xxi.—note especially the presence of the shew-bread and the ephod—imply the existence of a temple.
The Temple of Solomon.—The primary source of our information regarding the erection of Solomon's temple is the account contained in 1 Kings vi.-vii., the details of which must have been derived ultimately from the temple archives. On this earlier narrative the chronicler (2 Chron. iii.-iv.) and Josephus (Antiq., VIII. iii. 1 ff.) are alike dependent.
Unfortunately these two chapters of Kings are among the most difficult in the Old Testament, partly by reason of our ignorance of the precise meaning of several of the technical terms employed, partly owing to the unsatisfactory state of the received text, which has been overlaid with later additions and glosses. As regards both text and interpretation, most recent writers have adopted in the main the results of Stade's epoch-making essay in his Zeitsch. f. d. alttest. Wissenschaft, iii. (1883), 129-177, reprinted in his Akademische Reden, &c., with which is now to be compared Stade and Schwally's critical edition of Kings in Haupt's Sacred Books of the Old Test. See also, in addition to the standard commentaries, Burney, Notes on the Heb. Text of . . . Kings, Vincent's critical and exegetical study, Rev. biblique (Oct. 1907), and the literature cited at the end of this article.
(a) The Site of the Temple.—On this important point our earliest authority is silent. It is now universally acknowledged, however, that the whole complex of buildings erected by Solomon stood along the crest of the eastern hill, crowned by the temple at the highest point, as Josephus expressly testifies (Bell. Jud.; V. v. 1, with which compare the letter of (Pseudo) Aristeas, sect. 84). This at once brings the site of the temple into proximity to the world-famous sacred rock, the sakhra, over which now stands the building known as the Mosque of Omar, and, more correctly, as the Dome of the Rock. Here another important consideration comes to our aid. From the recognized persistence of sacred sites in the East through all the changes in the dominant religion, it is well-nigh certain that the sanctity of the sakhra rock goes back to the days of David and Solomon, or even, it may be, to prehistoric times. On it, or over it, the angel was believed to have been seen by David, and there David built his altar (2 Sam. xxiv. 18-25; cf. Judges vi. 20 f., 24; xiii. 19 ff.). This is undoubtedly the site assigned to the temple by the oldest extant tradition (see 1 Chron. xxii. 1; cf. 2 Sam. xxiv.). By every token, then, Solomon's altar of burnt-offering, if it was not identical with the sakhra (see below), at least stood upon it. Since the altar necessarily stood in front, i.e. to the east, of the temple, the site of the latter was a short distance to the west of, and in line with, the sacred rock (see Jerusalem).
The alternative view, associated in recent times with the names of Schick and Conder, which places the most holy place, or innermost shrine of the temple, over the sakhra, has now few advocates (e.g. Col. Watson in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund for 1896 and 1910). Apart from difficulties of space towards the east, which this location involves, it cannot be accepted in face of the fact that the sakhra still bears the marks of its former use as a rock-altar (see esp. Kittel, Studien zur hebr. Archëologie, 12 ff.). Moreover the rock, measuring as it does some 55 ft. by 40, could not have been contained within the “holy of holies,” which was less than 30 ft. square (see below).
A third site, still within the present Haram area, but towards its south-west angle, favoured by Fergusson (The Temples of the Jews), Robertson Smith (Ency. Brit., 9th ed., art. “Temple”) and others is open to even more serious objection, and has no prominent advocate at the present day.
(b) The Temple Building.—In the fourth year of his reign Solomon “began to build the house of the Lord” with the laying of a massive foundation of “great stones,” as required by the rapid fall of the ground to the west of the sakhra. Architecturally the temple consisted of three distinct parts: (1) the naos or temple proper, (2) a porch or pylon in front of the naos, and (3) a lower and narrower building which surrounded the naos on its other three sides (see fig. 1).
(1) The first of these, “the house of the Lord” in the strict sense, in which alone He was worshipped, was oblong in plan, and was divided into two compartments in the proportion of 2 : 1 by a partition wall. The room next the porch was 40 cubits in length by 20 in breadth, with a height of 30 cubits,[1]
- ↑ The length of the cubit at this period cannot be determined with absolute certainty. From the fact that Herod's naos was an exact replica of Zerubbabel's as regards inside measurements, coupled with the presumption that Zerubbabel built upon Solomon's foundations, it is permissible to suppose that one and the same standard of length was used throughout. Now the present writer has shown from an inductive study of the height of the courses in the walls of the Haram and of other existing remains of the Herodian period that the cubit used by Herod's builders was exactly 17.6 in. or 447 millimetres (see Expository Times, xx. [1908-09] 24 ff.). There is therefore good reason for believing that this was also the cubit of Solomon's temple, notwithstanding the statement of 2 Chron. iii. 3 that the latter was a cubit “after
