HEROD’S TEMPLE

At the Jewish Museum in Berlin, there was a model depicting Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem.  Although, of course, there have been innumerable passing references to it over the decades, I had never stopped to wonder what it might have looked like.  So when I saw the model, I thought, ok, cool, here is what the temple looked like.  I’ll take a few photos and then draw it later.  Easier said than done, as it turns out.

When I started to review the photos I took, I realized that I did not have any information on the interior of the building.  So I looked that up.  And it was then I realized, wow, nobody really knows exactly what it looked like.  When you do an image search using terms such as ‘Herod’s Temple interior’, a very wide range of interpretations come up.  Some are physical scale models.  Others are draughters.  Others are drawings.  And none of them are in agreement.

The largest point of disagreement is whether the series of cells and surround the East, West and (some say) North sides of the Temple extended to the roof?  Or did they stop midway up.  Where was the exterior altar in relation to the Temple?  What was the architectural expression of the walls, the sanctuary doors, etc.

Of course, it makes sense that nobody knows exactly what it looked like.  As all anybody has to go on is the writings of scribes like Josephus in the Bible.  Which, as we might expect, puts architecture in the same boat as Christianity:  nobody really knows what it was like then as all we have to go on is writings that were done decades after the fact and were done as vehicles to codify a struggling Jewish sect.

So, once I realized that I also could, then interpret, I had fun drawings, for example the cornice.  I chose to sort of recess it, but not put in a much corbeling as are in some of the images on the web.

I just learned that Hanukkah started as the yearly celebration of the purification of the Second Temple.  The miracle is that the menorah burned for eight days, even though there was only enough sacred oil for one day’s lighting.

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This drawing exercise gave me a fresh appreciation for the cultural importance of Temple Mount, and it goes something like this.  The Jews built the first temple there around 580BC.  They built the second temple, Harod’s Temple, in the same spot around 20 BC.  Harod’s Temple was destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans during their sack of the city.  The Christians, then, basically gloated over the destruction of the Temple as Biblical prophesy, which ‘proves’ the guilt of the Jews.  Then Muslims came along and in around 680 CE, built the Dome Of the Rock on, basically the same spot.  The Rock, as I understand it, is both a foundation stone of Harod’s Temple and served as the point of departure of Mohammad during his ascent into heaven.  What a mixed up mess.