Solomon's Temple

Myth, Conflict, and Faith

Alan Balfour

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118275108
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

A highly original architectural history of Solomon's Temple and Islam's Dome of the Rock that doubles as a social and cultural history of the region

• The most extensive study of the interrelated history of two monuments, Solomon's Temple and The Dome of the Rock, drawing on an exhaustive review of all the visual and textual evidence
• Relayed as a gripping narrative, allowing readers to re-enter and experience the emotions and the visceral reality of the major events in its history
• Integrates illustration with the text to offer a highly detailed and accurate portrait of the major structures and figures involved in the history of the temple
• Opens up a fascinating line of questioning into the conventional interpretation of events, particularly Christ's actions in the Temple
• Reproduces rarely seen detailed drawings of the subterranean passages beneath Temple Mount as part of the British survey in the 19th century

Chapter 1

Solomon's Temple

Told and retold myriad times, the poetic blend of faint truths and splendid myths that shape the creation of a people and a religion have, over time, acquired a greater reality in the imagination than they could ever have sustained in fact. What follows, without question, are the major elements of these tales out of which the Temple of Solomon was formed.

Before there was Jerusalem, before there was Judea, Mount Moriah, Temple Mount, was known to God. In the book of Genesis,¹ God ordered the first Hebrew patriarch Abraham to “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will shew thee: and I will make of thee a great nation…” His father's house was in the city of Ur² in Mesopotamia, a wealthy and civilized city well over a thousand years old when Abraham was summoned.³ After years of wandering and suffering, Abraham arrived in Canaan, the land chosen by God, and was told “Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for unto thee will I give it. And Abram⁴ moved his tent, and came and dwelt by the terebinths of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD:”⁵ Hebron is a name and town that has survived into the present.⁶

Twenty-five years after arriving in Hebron, Abraham produced a son, Isaac; Abraham was 100 years old. Genesis records God's dreadful instruction to an aged father, “Take now…thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac,⁷ and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”⁸

As he prepared the sacrifice, the son called out “My father…Behold, the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And Abraham replied, “God will see for himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” The lamb was Isaac. Then “Abraham built the altar…and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood.” The son offered no resistance. “And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham…Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.” Only then did this demanding God provide a beast for sacrifice: “And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.”⁹

Abraham's reward for such obedience was to become the father of a people. “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven” said God “and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.”¹⁰

The book of Genesis was set down almost three millennia ago, formed in a time when there was no singular idea of God, yet here in these events is the emergence of one Supreme Being.¹¹ The image of a father being forced to prove his faith by killing his son reveals the character of this singular God. Nothing could be more graphic in demonstrating the burden of this faith. And Mount Moriah, still in the midst of Jerusalem, would forever hold the memory of this presence closely watching Abraham and the prone figure of Isaac, bound upon a funeral pyre.

In Antiquities of the Jews, a work completed toward the end of the first century of the Common Era, Jewish-Roman historian Josephus Flavius (henceforth referred to as Josephus) retells in his own words much of the content of the books of the Old Testament. It occasionally offers surprising contrast to scripture. Josephus explains God's actions: “It was not out of a desire of human blood…nor was he willing that [Isaac] should be taken from…his father,” it was instead, to test Abraham's mind: would he be obedient to such a command? All was now resolved, God “was satisfied…he was delighted in having bestowed such blessings upon him; and his son should live to a very great age; and bequeath a large principality to his children, who should be good and legitimate.”¹² Josephus (37–100 CE)was a rabbi and a general. He lived through the most catastrophic event in Jewish-Roman history and managed to play on both sides of the conflict, which makes his major written works The Antiquities of the Jews and The Wars of the Jews highly valuable commentary on all the events that follow.

The Ark of the Covenant

Modern scholarship dates the Hebrew persecution and flight from Egypt to around 3300 years ago, during the rule of Pharaoh Ramses II from 1304 to 1237 BCE.

The origin of the word “Hebrew” is not known with certainty. One theory is that it was derived from the word eber, or ever, a Hebrew word meaning the “other side,” a reference perhaps to a people who were not Egyptian. Another theory is that it was the name given to the semi-nomadic Habiru, recorded in the hieroglyphs of Ramses II.¹³ From the way these are placed in the inscriptions, the designation Habiru is not thought to have had any ethnic or racial connotation, but rather describes a class of people providing casual labor where needed.¹⁴ Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament, clearly states that this was the role of the children of Israel, “the Egyptians…made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigour.”¹⁵

The Egyptian economy was driven and shaped by the task of constructing monuments to ease the passage of the Pharaoh into the afterlife. It consumed vast numbers of conscripted laborers. Ramses II built cities and shrines, and expanded the temples and tombs of his predecessors along the Nile: on structures old and new, many still standing, he would cover the walls with texts that endlessly praised his victories and his divine nature.¹⁶ Texts can still be read recording that the cities of Pi Ramesse and Pi thom were built for Ramses II by the Hibaru. This is repeated in Exodus, “And they built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses.”¹⁷ Whether the Habiru were a mongrel group of migrant workers from across the lands controlled by Egypt or a unified tribal group, their lives and their labor would have been in the service of this prodigious builder: their persecution would have been the abuse of that labor.¹⁸ That labor would also establish in their collective memory both the effective power of great building and the means for achieving it (Figure 1.1). It is within the intimate family of this god-king that the character of Moses was formed. The tale of the abandoned child being found in the bulrushes by a daughter of the Pharaoh Seti I has been so sweetened in the popular imagination that the significance of Moses' relation to the court of the Pharaoh has been diminished. Consider that the same Moses, guiding prophet and teacher, who led the Hebrew people out of the slavery of Egypt, grew up as a privileged ward of the royal court. It was Moses who, in his twenties, attacked and murdered a court official for killing a Hebrew laborer, and then fled into the desert. It was Moses who, time and again, confronted Ramses II with the demand that he, and the people with whom he had kinship, be allowed to leave Egypt. It was to Moses that the true God of the Hebrew, Yahweh, was revealed. Yahweh in translation suggests “He Who Brings Into Existence Whatever Exists”¹⁹ and it was Yahweh who had commanded him to lead this people out of Egypt. And after arguments, threats, and signs of divine intervention Ramses II finally allowed Moses to leave and lead the great Exodus (Figure 1.2). Though the Exodus exists more as myth than fact, it is within the narrative that the ritual performance is defined that will be enshrined in the Temple.

Figure 1.1 Karnack, the Hall of Columns, a temple complex greatly expanded by Ramses II. Francis Firth, 1856.

Figure 1.2 Moses alongside the Ark leads the twelve Hebrew tribes out of Egypt. Illustration from the biblical commentaries of Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672–1757).

Whether it was 600,000 people or 600 families, this vast and disorderly band is described as traveling eastwards out of Egypt and after three months coming to Mount Sinai,²⁰ the granite peak in the midst of the desert in the south-central Sinai Peninsula, close to the border of present day Israel. And Moses was summoned:

Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying…Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all peoples: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.^2...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• List of Figures and Plates
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: Solomon's Temple
• Chapter 2: Herod
• Chapter 3: “Not…one stone upon another”
• Chapter 4: The Holy Sepulcher
• Chapter 5: Dome of the Rock
• Chapter 6: Templum Domini
• Chapter 7: Recreating the Temple
• Chapter 8: Jerusalem
• Chapter 9: Al-Haram Al-Sharif
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments, Sources, and Methods
• Index
• Supplementary Images