Tent Work in Palestine — Part 163

Assuming the outer boundary of the Temple Hill, to have been thus defined, as coinciding with the Haram walls except on the north-east, we have next to explain the statements of the Talmud, which make the "Mountain of the House” 500 cubits by 500.

The explanation is not difficult. Maimonides tells us, in a passage of which Dr. Chaplin kindly sent me a translation, in 1873: "The men who built the second Temple, when they built it in the days of Ezra, they built it like Solomon's, and in some things according to the explanation in Ezekiel.”

The learned Professor Constantine l'Empereur, speaking of the same question in 1630 A.D., quotes the Talmud Commentary as follows:

"The Mountain of the House was to the north of Jerusalem, and the mountain was indeed much greater than five hundred cubits on each side would contain, but to the outer part of it the sanctity did not extend.”

In this particular, then, the men of the second Temple followed the injunction in the Book of Ezekiel. "Five hundred long and five hundred broad, to make a separation between the sanctuary and the profane place” (Ezekiel xlii. 20); or, in the words of the Revelation (xi. 2): "The court which is without ... measure it not, for it is given unto the Gentiles.”

Thus the 500 cubits refers apparently to that part of the Temple, within the Soreg or Druphax, which could not be entered by any Gentile.

The measurements of Josephus are only approximate. They cannot, as we have seen in the case of Cæsarea, be relied on for accuracy, and in one particular (the measurement of the altar) they are impossible. But it is otherwise with his general descriptions. Dimensions estimated in a distant country may be incorrect, and figures are liable to alteration in copying; but general position and arrangement we must accept, unless we condemn the author as thoroughly untrustworthy. As to the position of the Holy House, Josephus and the Talmudic writers are in accord. The Temple stood on the top of the hill, which, at first, was scarcely large enough for the Holy House and the Altar (B. J. v. 5, 1). This statement is the proper starting-point for any reconstructive plan of the Temple and its courts.

The top of the Temple Hill is, without dispute, the Sakhrah Rock; from it the mountain slopes down on all sides, and we now know accurately the general lie of the rock. At the Sakhrah, consequently, Josephus places the Holy House.