ON THE SITE OF SOLOMON’S TEMPLE
I want to take you this morning to the summit of Mount Moriah and show
you the site of Solomon’s Temple. It is on the same spot where Abraham,
at the command of the Lord, was about to sacrifice his only son, Isaac,
when he was told to desist and shown the ram with its horns caught in the
thicket behind him. It is the place where the wisdom of the boy Christ
astonished the wise men; where David, Solomon, and Elijah used to pray,
and where, according to the Mohammedans, the blast of the trumpet will
sound forth at the Day of Judgment. The spot is sacred to both Christians
and Moslems. Indeed, it may be called the holiest on the face of the
globe.
The geologists say that Mount Moriah is one of the two oldest parts of
the world, the other being Mount Sinai, upon which Moses received the Ten
Commandments. They prove this by the rocks, saying that when the world
was thrown off by the sun and floated about in its nebulous state through
the air the parts which first solidified were the summit of Sinai and the
rock which now stands inside the mosque on the top of Moriah. There is
also a Jewish tradition that as the Lord saw the solid earth rising out
of chaos He blessed these two spots and said:
“They shall be great in the history of the human race, which I shall
create, and upon one of them shall my holy city be built.”
Mount Moriah is on the eastern edge of Jerusalem proper. It is just
opposite the Mount of Olives and above the Garden of Gethsemane across
the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Its top is a plateau containing thirty-five
acres, or about one seventh of the whole of Jerusalem, inside the walls.
The walls partially bound this plateau, and in them at the northeast
corner of the city is the gate through which St. Stephen is said to have
passed when he was stoned to death by the Jews. Across from the plateau
and far down below it is the Jews’ wailing place. Hugging it on the west,
south, and north are the box-shaped limestone houses which form the
greater part of Jerusalem.
In going to it we leave our hotel on Mount Zion and make our way down
David Street through a horde of pilgrims of all colours and races. We
pass the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, go through a bazaar where men
and women, sitting on the ground, are selling glass bracelets and beads
from Hebron, past shops selling candles to be burnt at the tomb of our
Saviour, and on through a vaulted tunnel-like street which was once the
cotton bazaar, but which now sells everything else. Ascending a stairway
at the end of this tunnel, we find ourselves on the plateau now occupied
by the Mosque of Omar, but formerly the site of the Temple of Solomon.
This plateau rises in terraces. We come first on to the level, which
was known as the Court of the Gentiles, and was open to Jew and Gentile
alike. From this we go up to the Court of the Israelites and then to the
Court of the Priests, which is now under the great Mosque of Omar. In
the latter court stood the open-air altar for burnt offerings, the very
rock upon which Abraham tied Isaac when he was about to sacrifice him in
obedience to the Lord’s command.
The great flat rock on the summit of Mount Moriah over which the dome of
the Mosque of Omar now rises was the ancient threshing-floor of Ornan the
Jebusite. In many parts of Palestine to-day a flat rock or a hard piece
of ground is selected as a threshing-floor upon which the ripe grain is
laid down to be trodden out by cattle or mules. David purchased this
particular floor from Ornan as an offering to the Lord so that the people
might be freed from a terrible pestilence then raging in Jerusalem. The
Bible account continues: “Then David said, This is the house of the Lord
God and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel.” And right
away he began preparations for the temple which was actually built on
this spot by his son Solomon.
The Moslems have their own tradition regarding this rock. Since ancient
times it has been the custom in the Holy Land to bring the harvested
grain to the community threshing-floor, which is soon walled with
toppling piles of sheaves, each pile belonging to a different farmer.
The owners of the wheat sleep on the threshing-floor at night so as to
keep watch over their property. According to the Mohammedan story, two
brothers, one married, the other a bachelor, lay down to sleep beside
their respective piles. The married brother, waking in the night, began
to think how much grain he had and then of his brother’s lot compared
with his own.
“Poor fellow,” said the married man, “he has no wife and children to
comfort him and make his life happy. To even things up a little I will
slip over and add some of my sheaves to his and he will never know I have
given them to him.”
This he did, and then fell fast asleep again.
A little later the bachelor brother woke and thought of his great stacks
of grain and how he, being unmarried, needed so much less than his
brother.
“Poor fellow,” thought he, “I who am free have much more than I need, I
will give him some of my grain while he sleeps, for he would never take
it from me if he knew I was giving it.”
So he transferred a generous portion of wheat from his heap to his
brother’s.
In the morning both were astonished to find their piles exactly the same
size as they had been the night before. Then a prophet appeared to them
and told them what had passed in the night. He said that God, who had
seen and approved the evidences of their brotherly kindness, had decided
to make this threshing-floor the place of prayer for the whole world.
[Illustration: Priests of the Greek Church bless the waters of the Jordan
at Easter, when hundreds of pilgrims bathe in the river, many of them
clad in their burial shrouds. Across the Jordan Joshua led his hosts
dry-shod to the assault on Jericho]
[Illustration: Sturdy character shows in the faces of these Russian
women, who patiently trudge from shrine to shrine. The Russians are
perhaps the most devout of all the thousands of pilgrims who come to the
Land of Christ]
Directly under the plateau on which Solomon’s Temple stood is a great
catacomb, which once formed a part of one of the Jerusalems of the past.
Let us first visit these underground caves before going into the mosque.
Descending the steps, we come into a wilderness of vaults with roofs
upheld by pillars and arches of stone. Some of the stone blocks are of
enormous size. I have measured one which is eight feet wide and fifteen
feet high. These stones are beautifully laid. They are closely joined
and show mechanical ingenuity in their construction. The pillars are
about four feet square, and some of them have holes bored through the
corners. It is claimed that the vaults were constructed by Solomon for
his stables, and that the holes in the columns were the tying places for
the horses. In some of them are stone mangers, which the guides say were
used long ago. Others claim that this stable story is a fiction, and that
the excavations were made in erecting the Temple and the great columns
put up to sustain its platform. However that may be, the architecture is
wonderful for that time, or, indeed, for our own. There are altogether
a hundred or more vaults, and the mighty stones which wall them are so
heavy that it would be impossible to handle them nowadays without the use
of machinery.
Since the site of Solomon’s Temple is now a Mohammedan shrine, and under
their control, Christians cannot visit this place unless they first
obtain an official permit. This I obtained through our American consul,
who not only arranged for a soldier to escort us, but sent along his
chief _kavass_, so that we have two guards with us as we walk about. The
_kavass_ is a sort of majordomo of the consul. He has two of them, tall,
straight Syrians attired more gorgeously than Solomon in all his glory.
They wear vests covered with bands of gold embroidery, with long, flowing
sleeves like those of the ladies of the Middle Ages. They wear big, baggy
trousers, each pair of which would make two full suits for a fat man.
They have enormous scimitar-like swords at their sides and carry ebony
staffs as thick as the handle of a baseball bat topped with great knobs
of silver as big as your fist. The United States Government furnishes the
outfits, except for the swords. Formerly, whenever our consul came out
of the cavernous region of his hotel or walked down the narrow stone
stairs of his office, these two gaudy officials preceded him, making
the pavements ring with their staffs as they cleared his path. When he
stepped across the way to church, though the streets were deserted and a
baby might go about without danger, a _kavass_ always went with him and
waited outside the building until His Excellency was ready to return.
Such extreme pomp as this has, however, begun to go out of style, though
the consul still has his strikingly garbed _kavasses_ to lend the dignity
expected of Uncle Sam’s representatives.
The Mosque of Omar was supposed by the Crusaders to be Solomon’s Temple.
This is not so, of course, as the original building was destroyed long
before their time. It is now believed to have been built by a Moslem
governor in the seventh century. But before that, and soon after
Jerusalem was destroyed in the first century after Christ, the Roman
Emperor Hadrian is known to have built on this site a temple to Jupiter.
It is believed that some of the pillars in the present mosque came from
a church erected on Mount Zion by the Christian Emperor Justinian. The
mosque is one of the finest specimens of Byzantine architecture.
Imagine a mighty dome of greenish copper on the top of which is a golden
crescent. Let this be as large as or larger than that of the Capitol at
Washington, and let it rest upon a vast octagonal temple walled with
tiles so fine that any one of them would be prized as a piece of rare
china. Let there be a dado of marble below the tiles and a wide frieze
above them inlaid with texts from the Koran in Arabic characters, and let
the whole be entered by mighty doors over which are beautifully carved
arches, and you have a faint idea of the Dome of the Rock, another name
by which this mosque is known.
Here may be seen striking evidences of the belief of the Mohammedans as
to Christ and the prophets. They believe in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
and class Jesus as one of the prophets, although not so high as Mohammed.
Among the verses of the Koran on the front of the mosque is one reading:
The Messiah, Jesus, is only the son of Mary, the Ambassador of
God, and His word which He deposited in Mary. Believe, then, in
God and His Ambassador, and do not maintain that in one there
are three.
Another reads:
Blessings be on me in the day of my birth and my death. He is
Jesus, the Son of Mary, the word of truth, concerning whom some
are in doubt.
There are other passages of the Koran which tell the stories of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and the Mohammedans reverence this spot in connection
with them.
Let us take off our shoes and go in. The floor of the mosque is holy
ground, so none is permitted to enter except in his stockings or bare
feet. The inside is even more beautiful than the outside. The walls and
roofs are a mass of carvings and mosaics. The mosaic is made up of bits
of gold and glass, the latter of many colours, all so delicately put
together that they form beautiful pictures. Each bit is only as big as
the head of a nail, or smaller, and thousands of them are required to
make a single picture. The columns upholding the roof are of marble, and
the floor is of marble carpeted with old rugs from Turkey and Persia.
Right in the centre of the mosque is the huge rock upon which Abraham
built his altar for Isaac, and upon which Ornan’s cattle threshed his
grain, and where, the Mohammedans say, the Angel Gabriel will stand when
he blows the last trump calling the people to judgment. At that time,
according to Moslem belief, the souls of the human race will rush to this
spot and present themselves before Mohammed and Christ, who will pass on
their virtues and sins. After that all must go to the Pillar of Judgment
and cross on the wire rope to the Mount of Olives. According to another
Mohammedan story, the Moslems will be turned into fleas, and Mohammed
himself into a sheep, in which form he will ascend to heaven with the
faithful fleas in his wool.
The rock is esteemed sacred by every Mohammedan. It is surrounded by an
iron stockade which none is allowed to enter. It is about forty feet long
and sixty feet wide, and rises some six feet out of the floor. It fills
the whole inclosure and comes so close to the fence that one can touch
it, or, if he is devout, as are most of the worshippers we see in the
mosque, he can put his mouth through the bars and impress a kiss upon it.
As we walk about the fence examining the rock our turbaned guide shows
us its wonders. “Here,” says he, pointing to a round hole in one of the
sides, “is the mark of Mohammed’s heel. It was from that spot that the
holy Prophet ascended to heaven, and as he rose the rock started to go up
with him holding fast to his heel. The Angel Gabriel had to put his hand
upon it to keep it down, and here,” pointing to five curious marks, “are
the places where Gabriel’s fingers rested when he did so.”
[Illustration: Moslem pilgrims pray at the Mosque of Omar, which occupies
the site of Solomon’s Temple. It is said that no faithful Jew will enter
its inclosure, for fear of treading on the spot where once was the Holy
of Holies]
[Illustration: Every Friday devout Jews weep under the walls of the
Mosque of Omar, mourning the loss of their temple. They repeat for hours
their litany: “For the temple that is desolate.... We sit in solitude and
mourn”]
A little farther on the guide tells us that this rock is the centre of
the earth, and that some believe it to be the gate of hell. He shows us
a plate of jasper as big as a checker board, in which are three golden
nails, saying that the plate originally contained nineteen nails which
Mohammed had driven into it. One nail drops out at the end of each age
of the Moslem cycle, and when the last nail is gone the end of the world
will occur. The guide offers to let me pull out the last three nails for
a dollar apiece, but I have no desire to hasten the Judgment Day, and
therefore refuse. In that way I save the world.
“The devil got at this plate one day,” so our consular _kavass_ tells me,
“and was jerking out the nails at a great rate when the Angel Gabriel
caught him and pulled him away.”
These stories are silly, but they are only a few of many which are told
us when we are inside the mosque. Nevertheless, the average Mohammedan
of this side of the world believes them, and we see bearded, gowned,
and turbaned men and white-sheeted, veiled women praying over these
holy places. They kiss the marks of Mohammed’s footprints and run their
handkerchiefs and beads over the rock. They pray as they do so, for the
Prophet said that one prayer here is worth a thousand uttered anywhere
else, and he prayed here himself.
The greatest interest of Mount Moriah, however, arises from the fact that
we know this was the actual site of Solomon’s Temple as well as that of
the two other Jewish temples which succeeded it. The first house of God
erected by the Israelites was the Tabernacle. This was constructed at
the direction of Moses just after he had received the Commandments. It
is said to have been just about half the size of the Temple of Solomon,
although there are passages in the Scriptures which lead us to think the
latter must have been very much larger. The Tabernacle was a movable
building. It was about fifty feet long and sixteen or seventeen feet
wide. The roof and walls were formed of curtains made of linen or wool
beautifully sewed and fastened in places with gold buckles. There were
also curtains of goat’s hair and of ram’s wool dyed red. Some suppose the
roof of the Tabernacle to have been flat, and others that it was ridged
like a tent, with a cube inside about sixteen feet square, which was the
Holy of Holies. In the latter were the Ark of the Covenant and the Tables
of the Law.
Solomon’s Temple was planned by David, who collected much of the material
used. Solomon himself made a bargain with Hiram, King of Tyre, to aid him
in supplying the timber and certain classes of the mechanics. Hiram was a
Phœnician king who lived up the coast and who controlled the forests of
Lebanon. He gave Solomon a concession of certain tracts of cedar and fir,
and the Hebrew king sent men in parties of ten thousand each to go to the
mountains and cut down the trees. The servants of Hiram helped them, and
they carried the lumber to the shores of the Mediterranean and floated
it down to Jaffa, whence it was brought up to Jerusalem. The Bible says
that Solomon gave King Hiram every year two thousand measures of wheat
and twenty measures of oil as his part of the contract, and that the two
kings were associated together.
The first temple was begun by Solomon more than twenty-nine hundred years
ago, and it took seven years to build it. I have translated some of its
dimensions into feet. The cubit, which was then the unit of measurement,
was as long as the distance from a man’s elbow to the tip of his middle
finger, and varied from eighteen to twenty-one inches. Putting the
cubit at twenty inches the ground plan of the Temple was sixty-six feet
wide and one hundred and thirty-three feet long, and according to some
statements its height was fifty feet, although one of the roofs rose
eight feet and the other sixteen above the inside walls. There is another
place in the Bible in which it is stated that the height of the porch was
one hundred and twenty cubits, which would make it two hundred feet high.
The Temple of Solomon had disappeared long before Christ was born. It
was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, 596 B.C., and a new building was not
erected until the Jews came back from their captivity at Babylon. This
was also destroyed many years later and a third and last temple was
erected by Herod the Great eighteen years before Christ. In that temple
occurred the scenes of Christ’s ministry. It was there that He talked
with the priests as a boy of twelve, and from there He drove out the
money changers.
The Temple of Herod is said to have been much finer than Solomon’s. It
has been described by Josephus, who probably had a ground plan of the
building before him when he wrote. He says that the space it covered was
about twice as large as that of the old temple. It was of much the same
style as the Temple of Solomon, but its approaches were more imposing,
and it doubtless displayed all the architectural beauties of the time,
which was one of magnificent buildings.