Its style.

'costly stones,' 'hewed stones.' It is of these, if of any part of the Temple, that the remains are still to be seen.1

The general arrangements were taken from those of the Tabernacle.2 The dimensions, the divisions, are the same either actually or in proportion; and, thus far, are indicative of the firm hold which the institutions of the desert still kept on the mind even of the most civilised period of the nation.

Little conception as we can form of its architectural effect, we cannot doubt that whatever light is to be thrown upon it must be derived from four styles. 1. Of the influence of Phoenician art, the Tyrian workmen are a sufficient guarantee. However much they may have conformed themselves to the general requirements of the Jewish worship, yet the outward details of the architecture must have been influenced by their national peculiarities. Analogous cases may be noticed in the building of the Alcazar at Seville, by the more civilised workmen of Grenada, or of some of our English cathedrals by the more civilised workmen of France. Scanty as is our knowledge of Phoenician architecture, it enables us to trace resemblances which can hardly be accidental. Whenever in coins or histories, we get a representation of a Phoenician temple, it always has a pillar or pillars standing before or within it. Such in Solomon's temple were Jachin and Boaz. 2. In common with the Assyrian architecture was the mixed use of wood and metal, which alone were used in the Temple for sculpture. 3. Solomon's inter

5

11 Kings v. 17; Josephus, Ant. viii. 3, §2; B. J. v. 5, §1.

2 This was recognised down to a
very late period. See Wisdom ix. 8.

Mr. Fergusson has shown (art.
in the Dict. of the Bible) that
sions of the Temple were
ouble those of the Taber-

• Thus the Temple at Gath (Judg. xvi. 29), at Gades (Philostrat. Vit. Apoll. v. 5; Silius Ital. Bell. Pun. III. 14, 22, 32). and at Tyre (Herod. ii. 44). See Bähr's Solomonische Tempel, p. 250.

Fergusson's Handbook of Archi

tecture.

course with Egypt renders probable the connexion which the actual resemblance almost proves. The courts, the cloisters, the enormous porch, the pyramidal form of the towers,' the painted sculptures on the wall, the successive chambers, the darkness of the adytum, are all found in Thebes or Ipsambul. 4. One other style remains which illustrates the Jewish temple, by likeness, not of architecture, but of design. If the mystery and massiveness of the temple can be found nowhere but in the old Pagan sanctuaries, the pleasant precincts, the means of ablution, and the almost universal absence of imagery, can be found nowhere but in the sanctuaries of the only other existing Semitic religion-the mosques of Islam.

nade.

The result of these combinations was a building unlike The colonany modern edifice, unlike in many respects even to the Temple of Herod, which succeeded, and which must be carefully distinguished from it.

On the eastern side was a colonnade or cloister, which The court. formed the only outward barrier. The later kings continued it all round; but this alone was ascribed to Solomon,2 and his name therefore lingered on the spot long afterwards, and even in the time of the second Temple, gave to it or the cloister built upon its ruins the title of Solomon's Portico.3

This portico opened on a large quadrangle, surrounded by a wall, partly of stone, partly of cedar. Here was retained a relic of the ancient sanctity attached to trees-a vestige of Canaanite and patriarchal feeling clinging to the stillness. and solemnity of a sacred grove. Like the present Harames-Sherîf at Jerusalem, it was planted with trees, amongst which the spreading cedar, the stately palm, and the veneThis may have suggested

rable olive, were conspicuous.

'Ezek. xlii. 4, 5, 6.

Josephus, B. J. v. 5, §1.
John x. 23; Acts iii. 11, v. 12.

Psalm lii. 8, xcii. 12, 13. For the birds, Ps. lxxxiv. 3.

The altar.

or continued the peculiar image of the covert or lair of the Lion of Judah. In Salem is His leafy covert, and His 'rocky den in Zion." Under those trees, too, in the darker days of Jerusalem, were doubtless established the licentious rites of the Phoenician divinities.

Within this was a smaller court, on the highest ridge of the hill. Here was the sacred rock bought by David from Araunah, the ancient Jebusite king, on the day of the cessation of the pestilence. It was, as it were, the reverse of Naboth's vineyard. The memory that David had acquired it by just purchase, not by unjust acquisition, long remained in Oriental traditions; and the rocky threshing-floor of the heathen Prince thus emerging in the very centre of the sanctuary was a monument of the homage paid to Justice and Toleration in the heart of the worship of Jehovah.

On this platform rose the altar; probably the very one erected by David, as there is no special record of its elevation by Solomon. There was something about it, whether from this circumstance or its general rudeness, which seems to have made it out of proportion to the general grandeur of the Temple. Apparently, without regard to the Mosaic law, it was mounted by steps. It was a square chest of wood, plated outside with brass, filled inside with stones and earth,5 with the fire on a brass grating at the top; the whole placed on a mass of rough stone. The rudeness of the structure bore witness to the antiquity of the rites celebrated upon it. It represented at once a table and a hearth, the Table of the Lord,' on which the dead animal was roasted and burnt,

6

Ps. lxxvi. 2.

2 For the fine Mussulman legend representing the same idea, see Jelaladdin, Temple of Jerusalem, 27.

It is mentioned in 2 Chr. iv. 1, vi. 12; and in 1 Kings viii. 22, ix. 25, but not at all in 1 Kings vi., vii. If it was the old one, this would account for its being too small in pro

portion (1 Kings viii. 64; 2 Kings xvi. 14).

Ezek. xliii. 17; Mishna, Middoth. Comp. Exod. xx. 26.

5 Middoth, iii. 4. A grate represents the altar in the embroidered draperies of the Samaritan synagogue.

• Mal. i. 7, 12; Ezek. xliv. 16.

after having been fastened to one of the four square projections, which under the name of 'horns' protruded from ' each corner a vast hearth on which to light the sacred fire, which went up, spire-like, to the sky, the Hearth of 'God.'

2

3

It was much larger than the ancient altar of the Tabernacle, but was itself to be displaced 'hereafter by a still larger one -as though it grew with the growth of the worship. South of the altar was the brazen laver, supported on twelve brazen bulls, and apparently pouring forth its water into a basin below, which must have been as large as those beneath the fountains in Paris and in Rome. This was used for the ablutions of the priests, as they walked to and fro barefooted over the rocky platform. On each side were the ten lesser movable vessels of brass, on wheels, for the washing of the entrails. They are described with great detail, as if they were considered wonderful works of art. These and the laver were trophies of the victories of David, being made from the brass which he brought back from the conquest of Syria. They were remarkable as the works of Hiram, who accordingly, as a Tyrian sculptor, did not scruple to introduce bulls in the greater laver, and bulls and lions and cherubs in the lesser, probably as the emblems of the two chief tribes.

Round about the lesser court, in two or three storeys raised above each other, were chambers for the priests 7

1 Ex. xxvii. 2; Ps. cxviii. 27. * Ewald, Alterthümer, 118; Lev. vi. 12. 13.

Ariel, Ezek. xliii. 15, 16 (Heb.); Isaiah xxix. 1.

* 2 Chron. iv. 1, compared with Exod. xxvii. 1. In the later Temple it was superseded by one more than twice as large. The smaller size, Ezek. xliii. 13-17, may be explained by supposing it to relate to the brazen

part; the larger, in 2 Chr. iv. 1, to the whole rock or stonework.

The meaning of the name of the engine which supported them (Mechonoth) is lost, and is left untranslated both in the LXX. and in Josephus (Ant. viii. 3, §6).

61 Chron. xviii. 8.

2 Chron. xxxi. 11; Jer. xxxvi. 10; Ezek. xl. 45, xlii. 1.

1

and other persons of rank, as in a college or monastery. In the corners were the kitchens and boiling apparatus. Each had brazen gates.2

Thus far on the whole there was only an enlarged representation of the courts of the Tabernacle. But now, behind the altar, all was new. The space immediately beyond was deemed especially sacred, as intervening between the altar, the centre of the national worship, and the porch of the Temple, which enshrined the presence of the Invisible. Overshadowing this space, there rose-instead of the Tabernacle, half tent, half hovel-a solid building-the 'Temple,' properly so called, the Palace of the Lord. The outside view must, if we can trust the numbers, have been according to modern notions, strangely out of proportion. In front towered the porch, to the prodigious height of more than two hundred feet. Behind was a lower edifice, lessening in height as it approached its extremity. Halfway up its height, and perhaps even over its roof, small chambers, entered only from without, clustered like the shops round the walls of continental cathedrals. A sandal-wood door on the south was the approach to them, and a winding staircase led thence to the second and third storeys, into gilded chambers, accessible to the King alone. The successive diminutions in the thickness of the walls of the Temple enabled the chambers to increase in size, in proportion to the elevation of the storeys. With the exception of the tower, which presented a singular alternation of stone and timber, the exterior of the structure more nearly resembled the Tabernacle, its massive stone walls being

1 Ezek. xlvi. 20-24.

2 2 Chr. iv. 9.

Joel ii. 17; Ezek. viii. 16; Matt. xxiii. 35.

Hical, the Greek vads, as distinguished from the surrounding ¡epòv. The word hical is used for a palace in

1 Kings xxi. 1, 2 Kings xx. 18, Ps. xlv. 8, 15.

51 Kings vi. 8; Josephus, Ant. viii. 3, §2.

1 Kings vi. 6.

Ibid. vii. 12.