In preparing his disciples for the great events which were to take
place in a few years, and which were to have a great influence on their
labors, Jesus foretold to them the destruction of the temple. As he
was passing out through the mighty gates of the temple on some occasion
with his disciples, one of them, admiring the gorgeous beauty of the
architecture and the materials, with all the devotion of a Jew now
visiting it for the first time, said to him, “Master, see! what stones
and what buildings!” To him, Jesus replied with the awful prophecy,
most shocking to the national pride and religious associations of every
Israelite,――that ere long, upon that glorious pile should fall a ruin
so complete, that not one of those splendid stones should be left upon
another. These words must have made a strong impression of wonder on
all who heard them; but no farther details of the prophecy were given
to the disciples at large. Not long afterwards, however, as he sat
musingly by himself, in his favorite retirement, half-way up the Mount
of Olives, over against the temple, the four most loved and honored of
the twelve, Peter, James, John and Andrew, came to him, and asked him
privately, to tell them when these things should be, and by what omen
they should know the approach of the great and woful ruin. Sitting
there, they had a full view of the enormous pile which rose in immense
masses very near them, on the verge of mount Moriah, and was even
terraced up, from the side of the slope, presenting a vast wall, rising
from the depths of the deep ravine of Kedron, which separated the
temple from mount Olivet, where they were. It was morning when the
conversation took place, as we may fairly guess, for this spot lay
on the daily walk to Bethany, where he lodged;――the broad walls, high
towers, and pillars of the temple, were doubtless illuminated by the
full splendors of the morning sun of Palestine; for Olivet was directly
east of Jerusalem, and as they sat looking westward towards the temple,
with the sun behind them, the rays, leaving their faces in the shade,
would shine full and bright on all which crowned the highth beyond. It
was at such a time, as the Jewish historian assures us, that the temple
was seen in its fullest grandeur and sublimity; for the light, falling
on the vast roofs, which were sheeted and spiked with pure gold,
brightly polished, and upon the turrets and pinnacles which glittered
with the same precious metal, was reflected to the eye of the gazer
with an insupportable brilliancy, from the million bright surfaces and
shining points which covered it. Here, then, sat Jesus and his four
adoring chosen ones, with this splendid sight before them crowning
the mountain, now made doubly dazzling by contrast with the deep gloom
of the dark glen below, which separated them from it. There it was,
that, with all this brightness and glory and beauty before them, Jesus
solemnly foretold in detail the awful, total ruin which was to sweep
it all away, within the short lives of those who heard him. Well might
such words sink deep into their hearts,――words coming from lips whose
perfect and divine truth they could not doubt, though the things now
foretold must have gone wofully against all the dreams of glory, in
which they had made that sacred pile the scene of the future triumphs
of the faith and followers of Christ. This sublime prophecy, which need
not here be repeated or descanted upon, is given at great length by all
the first three evangelists, and is found in Matthew xxiv. Mark xiii.
and Luke xxi.
_The view of the temple._――I can find no description by any
writer, ancient or modern, which gives so clear an account of
the original shape of Mount Moriah, and of the modifications
it underwent to fit it to support the temple, as that given
by Josephus. (Jewish War, book V. chapter v.) In speaking of
the original founding of the temple by Solomon, (Antiquities
book VIII. chapter iii. section 2,) he says, “The king laid the
foundations of the temple in the very depths, (at the bottom
of the descent,) using stones of a firm structure, and able to
hold out against the attacks of time, so that growing into a
union, as it were, with the ground, they might be the basis and
support of the pile that was to be reared above, and through
their strength below, easily bear the vast mass of the great
superstructure, and the immense weight of ornament also; for
the weight of those things which were contrived for beauty
and magnificence was not less than that of the materials which
contributed to the highth and lateral dimension.” In the full
description which he afterwards gives in the place first quoted,
of the later temple as perfected by Herod, which is the building
to which the account in the text refers, he enters more fully
into the mode of shaping the ground to the temple. “The temple
was founded upon a steep hill, but in the first beginning of the
structure there was scarcely flat ground enough on the top for
the sanctuary and the altar, for it was abrupt and precipitous
all around. And king Solomon, when he built the sanctuary,
having _walled it out_ on the eastern side, (εκτειχισαντος, that
is, ‘having built _out_ a wall on that side’ for a terrace,)
then reared upon the terraced earth a colonnade; but on the
other sides the sanctuary was _naked_,――(that is, the wall was
unsupported and unornamented by colonnades as it was on the
east.) But in the course of ages, the people all the while
beating down the terraced earth with their footsteps, the hill
thus growing flat, was made broader on the top; and having taken
down the wall on the north, they gained considerable ground
which was afterwards inclosed within the outer court of the
temple. Finally, having walled the hill entirely around with
three terraces, and having advanced the work far beyond any hope
that could have been reasonably entertained at first, spending
on it long ages, and all the sacred treasures accumulated from
the offerings sent to God from the ends of the world, they
reared around it, both the upper courts and the lower temple,
walling the latter up, in the lowest part, from a depth of three
hundred cubits, (450 feet,) and in some places more. And yet the
whole depth of the foundations did not show itself, because they
had greatly filled up the ravines, with a view to bring them
to a level with the streets of the city. The stones of this
work were of the size of forty cubits, (60 feet,) for the
profusion of means and the lavish zeal of the people advanced
the improvements of the temple beyond account; and a perfection
far above all hope was thus attained by perseverance and time.
“And well worthy of these foundations were the works which stood
upon them. For all the colonnades were double, consisting of
pillars twenty-five cubits (40 feet) in highth, each of a single
stone of the whitest marble, and were roofed with fretwork
of cedar. The natural beauty of these, their high polish and
exquisite proportion, presented a most glorious show; but their
surface was not marked by the superfluous embellishments of
painting and carving. The colonnades were thirty cubits broad,
(that is, forty-five feet from the front of the columns to the
wall behind them;) while their whole circuit embraced a range
of six _stadia_, (more than three-quarters of a mile!) including
the castle of Antonia. And the whole _hypethrum_ (ὑπαιθρον,
the floor of the courts or inclosures of the temple, which
was exposed to the open air, there being no roof above it) was
variegated by the stones of all colors with which it was laid,”
(making a Mosaic pavement.) Section 1.
* * * * *
“The outside of the temple too, lacked nothing that could strike
or dazzle the mind and eye. For it was on all sides overlaid
with _massy plates of gold_, so that _in the first light of
the rising sun_, IT SHOT FORTH A MOST FIERY SPLENDOR, which
turned away the eyes of those who compelled themselves (mid.
βιαζομενους) to gaze on it, as from the rays of the sun itself.
To strangers, moreover, who were coming towards it, it shone
from afar like a complete mountain of snow: for where it was
not covered with gold it was most dazzlingly white, and above
on the roof it had golden spikes, sharpened to keep the birds
from lighting on it. And some of the stones of the building
were forty-five cubits long, five high, and six broad;”――(or
sixty-seven _feet_ long, seven and a half high, and nine broad.)
Section 6.
“The Antonia was placed at the angle made by the meeting of two
colonnades of the outer temple, the western and the northern. It
was built upon a rock, fifty cubits high, and precipitous on all
sides. It was the work of king Herod, in which, most of all, he
showed himself a man of exalted conceptions.” Section 8.
* * * * *
In speaking of Solomon’s foundation, he also says, (Antiquities
book VIII. chapter iii. section 9,)
“But he made the outside of the temple wonderful beyond account,
both in description and to sight. For having piled up huge
terraces, from which, on account of their immense depth, it was
hardly possible to look down, and reared them to the highth of
four hundred cubits, (six hundred feet!) he made them on the
same level with the hill’s top on which the _shrine_ (ναος) was
built, and thus the open floor of the _temple_ (ἱερον, or the
outer court’s inclosure) was level with the _shrine_.”
* * * * *
I have drawn thus largely from the rich descriptions of this
noble and faithful describer of the old glories of the Holy
Land, because this very literal translation gives the exact naked
detail of the temple’s aspect, in language as gorgeous as the
most high-wrought in which it could be presented in a mere fancy
picture of the same scene; and because it will prove that my
conception of its glory, as it appeared to Christ and the four
disciples who “sat _over against_ it upon the Mount of Olives,”
is not overdrawn, since it is thus supported by the blameless
and invaluable testimony of him who saw all this splendor in its
most splendid day, and afterwards in its unequaled beauty and
with all its polished gold and marble, shining and sinking amid
the flames, which swept it utterly away from his saddening eyes
forever, to a ruin the most absolute and irretrievable that ever
fell upon the works of man.
This was the temple on which the sons of Jonah and Zebedee gazed,
with the awful denunciation of its utter ruin falling from their
Lord’s lips, and such was the desolation to which those terrible
words devoted it. This full description of its location shows
the manner in which its terraced foundations descended with
their vast fronts, six hundred feet into the valley of Kedron,
over which they looked. To give as clear an idea of the place
where they sat, and its relations to the rest of the scene, I
extract from Conder’s Modern Traveler the following description
of Mount Olivet.
“The Mount of Olives forms part of a ridge of limestone hills,
extending to the north and the south-west. Pococke describes
it as having four summits. On the lowest and most northerly of
these, which, he tells us, is called _Sulman Tashy_, the stone
of Solomon, there is a large domed sepulcher, and several other
Mohammedan tombs. The ascent to this point, which is to the
north-east of the city, he describes as very gradual, through
pleasant corn-fields planted with olive-trees. The second summit
is that which overlooks the city: the path to it rises from the
ruined gardens of Gethsemane, which occupy part of the valley.
About half way up the ascent is a ruined monastery, built,
as the monks tell us, on the spot where the Savior wept over
Jerusalem. From this point the spectator enjoys, perhaps, the
best view of the Holy City. (Here Jesus sat, in our scene.)
“The valley of Jehoshaphat, which lies between this mountain
and the hills on which Jerusalem is built, is still used as a
burial-place by the modern Jews, as it was by their ancestors.
It is, generally speaking, a rocky flat, with a few patches
of earth here and there, about half a mile in breadth from
the Kedron to the foot of Mount Olivet, and nearly of the same
length from Siloa to the garden of Gethsemane. The Jews have
a tradition, evidently founded on taking literally the passage
Joel iii. 12, that this narrow valley will be the scene of the
final judgment. The prophet Jeremiah evidently refers to the
same valley under the name of the valley of the Son of Hinnom,
or the valley of Tophet, the situation being clearly marked as
being by the entry of the _east_ gate. (Jeremiah xix. 2, 6.)
Pococke places the valley of Hinnom to the south of Jerusalem,
but thinks it might include part of that to the east. It formed
part of the bounds between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah,
(Joshua xv. 8. xviii. 16,) but the description is somewhat
obscure.” [Modern Traveler Palestine, pp. 168, 172.]
Illustration: MOUNT MORIAH.