An idea tangent to, rather than identical with, the thought of the altar
sacredness of the temple threshold, as found among primitive peoples, is
that the first temple foundation is the foundation for all subsequent
temple building at that place. And it has already been shown that the
threshold, or hearthstone, or corner-stone, is considered the
foundation.[438]
In ancient Babylonia a temple, however grand and extensive, was supposed
to be built on the foundation of an earlier temple; the one threshold
being the first threshold and the latest. If, indeed, there was a
variation from the original foundation in the construction of a new
temple, there was confusion and imperfectness in consequence, and the
only hope of reformation was in finding the first temple threshold and
rebuilding on it.
There is an illustration of this in an inscription discovered in the
foundation of a temple at “Ur of the Chaldees.”[439] Nabonidus (556–538
B.C.), the last Babylonian king, tells with interest of his search for
the old foundation, or outline plan, of the ancient temple, Eulbar, or,
more properly, Eulmash, of the goddess Istar of Agade, as follows:[440]
The foundation of Eulmash in Agade had not been found from Sargon, king
of Babylon (3800 B.C.), and Narâm-Sin, his son, kings living formerly,
until the government of Nabunaʾid king of Babylon.
King Kurigalzu (II.), about 1300 B.C., had, in his reign, searched for
this foundation, but had failed to find it, and he had left this record:
“The foundation of Eulmash I sought, but did not find it.” Later on,
Esarhaddon, king of Assyria and Babylonia (681–669 B.C.), searched for
it, but without success. Again, Nebuchadrezzar (605–561 B.C.) mobilized
his large armies, and ordered them to search for the foundation stone,
or threshold, but all his efforts were in vain. Finally Nabunaʾid, the
last king of Babylon before its fall under Cyrus, gathered his many
soldiers, and ordered them to search for the foundation stone. For
“three years in the tracks of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon,” says
Nabunaʾid, “I sought right and left, before and behind, but did not find
it.”
Encouraged by a prompting from the moon-god Sin, Nabunaʾid tried at
another time and in another place, and this time with success. He found
the inscription of King Shagarakti-Buriash (1350 B.C.), which tells that
he had laid a new foundation exactly upon the old one of King Zabû
(about 2300 B.C.). Then Nabunaʾid made sure to preserve the exact
outline of the old shrine. He laid the foundation, and restored the
ancient temple, so that “it did not deviate an inch to the outside or
the inside.”[441]
There are indications of the same high value set upon the primal
foundation of a temple in the records of ancient Egypt. A temple at its
highest grandeur is in the location of a prehistoric sanctuary. “The
site on which it is built is generally _holy ground_,[442] that is, a
spot on which since the memory of man an older sanctuary of the god had
stood. Even those Egyptian temples which seem most modern have usually a
long history,–the edifice may have seemed very insignificant, but as the
prestige of the god increased larger buildings were erected, which
again, in the course of centuries, were enlarged and rebuilt in such a
way that the original plan could no longer be traced. This is the
history of nearly all Egyptian temples, and explains the fact that we
know so little of the temples of the Old and of the Middle Empire; they
have all been metamorphosed into the vast buildings of the New
Empire.”[443]
While early Vedic and Brahmanic religion makes no mention of temples as
such, fire from an ancestral altar was borne to a newly erected altar,
in order to secure a continuance of the sacred influences issuing from
that original family threshold.[444] And Vishnooism takes old temples
from Booddhism for its centers of worship, prizing the old sacred
foundation.
“Buddha-Gaya,” or “Bodhi-Gaya,” in Upper India, is famous as the
locality of the holy pipal tree, or the Booddha-drum (“Tree of
Knowledge”), under which for six years sat Sakya Sinha, in meditation,
before he attained to Booddha-hood. A temple still standing on that site
is supposed to have been rebuilt A.D. 1306, on the remains of one
visited by Hwen Thsang, a Chinese traveler, in the seventh century of
our era, which, in turn, had been built by Amara Sinha, or Amara Deva,
about A.D. 500. This earlier temple is said to have been built by a
command of Booddha himself conveyed in a vision, or by a command of the
Brahmanical Mahâdeva, on the site of a still earlier sanctuary, or
monastery, erected by Asoka between 259 and 241 B.C., on the site of
Booddha’s meditations, about 300 B.C.[445] The existing temple has been
called at different times “Buddha-pad” and “Vishnu-pad,” “Booddha’s
foot” and “Vishnoo’s foot.”
Kuru-Kshetra, or the “Plain of Kuru,” near Delhi, India, has been deemed
holy ground from time immemorial. At Thâvesar, on this plain, a temple
of Siva was built on a site that was sacred long before Sivaism was
known. It is even believed that the sacredness of this site runs back to
the ancient times of the Rig Veda. The boundaries of this “Holy Land”
are given in the great Hindoo epic, the Mahabharata. This plain is said
to comprise three hundred and sixty holy shrines, each of which is
erected on a foundation sacred from the times of the gods
themselves.[446]
So general, in India, is this habit of building a sanctuary on an old
sacred foundation, that it is said that “the erection of a mosk by a
Muhammadan conqueror always implies the previous destruction of a Hindu
temple.”[447] Thus a mosk erected by the emperor Altamash, A D. 1232, is
supposed to have been on the foundation of a temple of the sun, built
for Raja Pasupati about A.D. 300.[448] Not a new foundation, but an old
one, was sought, in India, for a new temple, even to a god newly
worshiped there.
Fourteen centuries before Christ, Pan-Kăng, an emperor of China, moved
his capital from north of the Ho to south of it because he had
ascertained that the original foundation was attempted to be laid there
by his ancestor Thang in the Shing dynasty, seventeen reigns before him;
hence the removal back to that first foundation would renew the blessing
of Thang upon his descendants.[449]
A temple has added sacredness in China according as its foundation is on
a spot originally chosen or honored by a representative of Heaven as a
threshold of a place of worship. Thus Tai Shan, or the “Great Mount,” in
the province of Shantung, China, is mentioned in the Shoo King, or Book
of Records, as the site of the great Emperor Shun’s altar of sacrifice
to Heaven, 2254 B.C., or, say, three centuries before the time of
Abraham. On this holy mountain, as the earliest historic foundation of
Chinese worship, “is the great rendezvous of devotees, every sect has
there its temples and idols, scattered up and down its sides;” and great
multitudes come thither to worship from near and far.[450]
This idea shows itself in modern discoveries among the ruins of ancient
Greece. It appears that when Pericles (437 B.C.) began his building of
the new Propylæa on the Acropolis, he would have cleared away the
remains of such ancient sacred structures as stood within its outline.
“The plan of Mnesikles the architect was very simple, and is still clear
enough, though it was never fully carried out.” “That the original plan
of Mnesikles had undergone modifications was long ago seen by every
architect who made the Propylæa matter of serious study.” Dr. Dörpfeld
thinks he has discovered how the plan was modified, and why. The
enforced departure from the original plan seems to have been because
that plan involved the destruction of shrines on an earlier foundation,
with a threshold that might not be moved. The gate of Cimon, with its
“statue of some guardian god of the gate,–it may be Hermes Propylaios
himself,”–was within that outline, and also other sacred sites.
“Against such intrusion it is very likely the priesthood rose and
protested, and, before even the foundations were laid, he had to give
up, at least for the time, the whole of the southeast hall, and a part
of the southwest wing.” This conclusion is the result of recent
investigation by careful scholars, and it is in accordance with the
ascertained fact that in primitive thought an original foundation for a
temple or shrine is counted sacred for all time as the foundation there
for such a place of worship, not to be swept away or ignored in any
rebuilding or new building.[451]
When from any reason, in early Europe, an ancient shrine must be removed
from its primitive foundation, it was deemed desirable to remove to the
new site a portion of the foundation itself, as well as the sanctuary or
altar above that foundation. Thus, for example, when Thorolf of Norway,
who had charge of the temple of Thor in Mostur, removed to Iceland in
A.D. 833, he took with him the temple posts and furniture “and the very
earth on which the altar of that idol had been erected.” And when he
landed in Iceland, Thorolf built a new temple of Thor, with an altar on
the foundation which he had brought from the earlier shrine. A thousand
years after this the foundation-site of that second temple was still
pointed out near Hofstad, in Iceland.[452]
Bible language and narrative abound with incidental evidence of the
commonness of this primitive idea. When Jacob, on his way to Haran, came
to Beth-el–a House of God–he lighted on “the place” (_hammaqâm_)
where,[453] long before, his ancestor Abraham had worshiped, as he came
from Egypt by way of the Negeb.[454] And yet earlier Abraham himself, as
he came a pilgrim from Haran and Ur, had there “builded an altar unto
the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.”[455] And if that place
were already known as Beth-el it must have been a sanctuary before
Abraham’s day.
Moses, in the wilderness of Sinai, is told that the ground whereon he
stands is “holy ground,” and that he is to bring the Hebrews out of
Egypt to worship God in that mountain.[456] And the Egyptian records
give reason for supposing that that region of Mt. Sinai, perhaps of the
moon-god “Sin,” was known as holy ground, and as the “land of God,” or
of the gods, before the days of Moses.[457]
At Jerusalem the Temple was built on Mt. Moriah, where the ark of the
covenant rested after its return from Philistia,[458] and where David
erected an altar to the Lord after the staying of the pestilence from
Israel.[459] And it is supposed that this same Mt. Moriah was where
Abraham offered a sacrifice to God on an altar he had built for the
sacrifice of his son.[460] And this site of the Temple at Jerusalem is
held sacred to-day, in view of its being deemed by multitudes a holy
place from the beginning of the world.[461]
When Naaman the Syrian was healed of leprosy by Elisha, the prophet of
Israel, he desired thenceforth to worship Jehovah in his Syrian home. To
this end he asked of Elisha the gift of “two mules’ burden of earth”
from Samaria, in order that he might on that sacred foundation erect in
Syria an altar to Jehovah.[462]
In a prophecy of the Messiah as the foundation, or threshold, of a new
temple, it was declared by the Lord: “Behold, I lay [or, I have laid] in
Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone of
sure foundation.”[463] Again, it was the promise of God to the
Israelites that they should be restorers of worship on former
foundations. “They that shall be of thee shall build the old waste
places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and
thou shalt be called The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths
to dwell in.”[464]
New Testament phraseology makes frequent reference to this same idea.
“According to the grace which was given unto me, as a wise
master-builder, I laid a foundation,” says Paul. “But let each man take
heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than
that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.”[465] The Christian saints of the
“household of God,” as “living stones,”[466] are “built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the
chief corner stone; in whom each several building, fitly framed
together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.”[467]
Muhammadanism, which shows many survivals of primitive ideas and
primitive customs, emphasizes the importance of the first foundation as
the only foundation, in the traditions and legends of the holy places of
its most sacred city. Every _masjid_, or “place of prostration,” in that
vicinity is on a site counted holy long centuries before the days of the
Prophet of Islam.
The Kaʿbah, or Holy House, in the mosk at Meccah is said to have been
built by Adam himself, on the model of a similar structure in heaven. It
would seem as if no earthly foundation, or threshold, could have been
earlier than that; indeed, the Qurân declares: “The first house
appointed unto men to worship in was that which was in Beccah [or
Meccah];”[468] yet there is a tradition that Adam erected a place of
prayer even before he built the Kaʿbah. In the Deluge the Holy House was
destroyed; but Abraham was directed to rebuild it, and on digging
beneath the surface of its site he discovered the original foundation,
and the Kaʿbah was newly built up on that.
According to Muhammadan traditions, it was while Hagar was near the site
of the Holy House, with her famishing son Ishmael, that a spring of
water gushed forth with its life-giving stream from beneath that holy
site. And that spring is the well Zemzem, or Zamzam, whose waters are
deemed sacred and life-giving to-day.
Mount Arafat, a holy hill near Meccah, is another place of pilgrimage,
and its sacredness dates from even an earlier day than the laying of the
first foundation of the Holy House at Meccah by Adam. When our first
parents were cast out of their heavenly paradise, Adam lighted in
Ceylon, and Eve in Arabia. Seeking each other, they met on Mount Arafat,
or the Mount of Recognition, and therefore that spot of their reunion
and new covenanting is a place of pilgrimage and worship for the
faithful of all the world at this time.[469] Adam is said to have built
a _madaa_, a place of prayer, on Mount Arafat, before he built the
Kaʿbah.[470] The religion of Islam thus teaches its subjects to worship
at the earliest threshold laid by our first parents in their primal
covenanting, and all other religions recognize the importance of a
similar idea.
-----
Footnote 261:
Darmesteter’s translation of _Zend Avesta_, in “Sacred Books of the
East,” IV., 12, note.
Footnote 262:
De Coulange’s _Ancient City_, pp. 32–35, 46 f.
Footnote 263:
Compare Friedrich Delitzsch’s _Assyrisches Handwörterbuch_, s. v.
“Êkallu.”
Footnote 264:
Wilkinson’s _Egyptians in the Times of the Pharaohs_, p. 141.
Footnote 265:
Erman’s _Life in Ancient Egypt_, p. 279 f.
Footnote 266:
Guhl and Koner’s _Life of the Greeks and Romans_, p. 297.
Footnote 267:
See, for example, _Odyssey_, VII., 80.
Footnote 268:
Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Persia_, pp. 240–254.
Footnote 269:
Comp. Gen. 18 : 1–9, and Exod. 26 : 1–14; 39 : 32, etc.
Footnote 270:
Douglas’s _Society in China_, p. 343.
Footnote 271:
See Chamberlain’s _Things Japanese_, pp. 37, 226 f., 378; Griffis’s
_Mikado’s Empire_, p. 90; Isabella Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_,
II., 282.
Footnote 272:
Turner’s _Samoa_, pp. 18–20.
Footnote 273:
Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 703 f.
Footnote 274:
See Fergusson’s _Rude Stone Monuments_, pp. 100, 411–413.
Footnote 275:
Gen. 11 : 1–9.
Footnote 276:
See Mühlau and Volck’s Gesenius’s _Heb. und Aram. Handwörterbuch_
(12th ed.), s. v. “Babel;” also Schrader, in Richon’s _Dict. of Bib.
Antiq._ (2d ed.).
Footnote 277:
See Brugsch’s _Egypt under the Pharaohs_, I., 63; also, Erman’s _Life
in Ancient Egypt_, p. 58.
Footnote 278:
See Perrot and Chipiez’s _History of Art in Chal. and Assy._, II., 72.
Footnote 279:
See Count de Gobineau’s _Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l’Asie
Centrale_; also Browne’s _Year among the Persians, and Traveller’s
Narrative to Illustrate the Episode of the Bab_.
Footnote 280:
_Bibliothèque Orientale_, s. v. “Bab.”
Footnote 281:
John 10 : 9.
Footnote 282:
See, for example, Griffis’s _Mikado’s Empire_, p. 419; Isabella Bird’s
_Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, I., 295 f.; II., 367 f.; Gray’s _China_,
I., 90; Fergusson’s _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 413.
Footnote 283:
See Chamberlain’s _Things Japanese_, p. 429 f.; and, Lowell’s
_Chosön_, pp. 262–266, for a fuller explanation of the origin and
signification of this primitive entrance way.
Footnote 284:
See, for example, Douglas’s _Society in China_, p. 411; Isabella
Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, I., 64; Fergusson’s _Tree and
Serpent Worship_, frontispiece, plates iv-ix, xxi.
Footnote 285:
See Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 656.
Footnote 286:
_Ibid._, p. 569. The doorway in the engraving from the intaglio is
clearly one of the doorway shrines, with the guardians of the doorway
on either side, and not, as has been supposed, an opening into the
ark.
Footnote 287:
Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 657, 662, 759, 762; also Perrot
and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Chal. and Assy._, I., 203, 212; II.,
95, 163, 210, 211.
Footnote 288:
_Ibid._, II., facing p. 212.
Footnote 289:
Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Chal. and Assy._, II., 231;
Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Phœnicia and Cyprus_, I., 9.
See, also, note in Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, II., pp. 148–151.
Footnote 290:
Wilkinson’s _Anc. Egypt_, III., 349; Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, pp.
274, 283; and Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 189, 239.
Footnote 291:
Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, p. 311; Maspero’s _Dawn of
Civilization_, pp. 237, 250, 253, 262, 316, 413.
Footnote 292:
Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, p. 314. See, also, illustrations in
Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Anc. Egypt_, I., 131, 140, 175.
Footnote 293:
Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, p. 319.
Footnote 294:
Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Phœnicia and Cyprus_, I., 256;
II., 31, 57, 147, 178.
Footnote 295:
_Ibid._, I., 53, 54.
Footnote 296:
_Ibid._, I., 287; II., 147.
Footnote 297:
_Ibid._, I., 264, 321.
Footnote 298:
_Ibid._, I., 320.
Footnote 299:
Bent’s _Sacred City of the Ethiopians_, pp. 185–193.
Footnote 300:
See, for example, Fergusson’s _Rude Stone Monuments_, pp. 100, 168 f.,
217, 233, 335, 337, 344, 385, 388, 398–401, 411–413, 441, 464, 468,
484, 532.
Footnote 301:
See illustrations in Sherrin’s _Early History of New Zealand_, pp.
406, 514, 648.
Footnote 302:
Bancroft’s _Native Races_, IV., 481.
Footnote 303:
See, for example, Williams’s _Middle Kingdom_, I., frontispiece;
Gray’s _China_, I., 11 f.
Footnote 304:
See citation in Bonomi’s _Nineveh and its Palaces_ (2d ed.), pp.
157–160, 174.
Footnote 305:
_Ibid._
Footnote 306:
_Nineveh and its Remains_ (Am. ed.), II., 202.
Footnote 307:
_Assyrian Discoveries_, pp. 75, 78, 429.
Footnote 308:
_Chaldean Magic_, pp. 47, 48, 54.
Footnote 309:
See, for example, 1 Sam. 29 : 6; 2 Sam. 3 : 25; 2 Kings 19 : 27; Psa.
121 : 7, 8; Isa. 37 : 28; Ezek. 43 : 11.
Footnote 310:
See references to the Mezuza of the Hebrews at page 69 f., _supra_.
Footnote 311:
Grotefend Cylinder, Col. I., ll. 44–46. See, also, Rawlinson’s
_Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia_, Vol. I., p. 65, Col. I., ll.
19–21.
Footnote 312:
_East India House Inscription_, Col. III., ll. 48–50.
Footnote 313:
_Ibid._, Col. VIII., ll. 5–9.
Footnote 314:
_Ibid._, Col. IX., ll. 9–16.
Footnote 315:
Grotefend Cylinder, Col. I., ll. 36–38.
Footnote 316:
_East India House Inscr._, col. II., ll. 48–50.
Footnote 317:
See Layard’s _Nineveh and Babylon_ (Am. ed.), p. 424; Perrot and
Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Chald. and Assy._, I., 366–392; Rawlinson’s
_Herodotus_, Bk. II., Chap. 99, 125; Sayce’s _Religion of the Ancient
Babylonians_, p. 96; Mariette Bey’s _Monuments of Upper Egypt_, p. 79
f.; Bunsen’s _Egypt’s Place in Universal History_, II., 378–386;
Rawlinson’s _History of Ancient Egypt_, I., 188–194; Réville’s
_Religions of Mexico and Peru_, pp. 41 f., 179 f., Ellis’s _Polynesian
Researches_, II., 207.
Footnote 318:
Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, Bk. I., Chap. 181–183.
Footnote 319:
The word “_sullam_,” here translated “ladder,” is a derivative from
“_salal_,” “to raise up in a pile, to exalt by heaping up as in the
construction of a mound or highway.” Comp. Isa. 57 : 14; 62 : 10; Jer.
50 : 26. See Bush’s _Notes on Genesis_, in loco.
Footnote 320:
Gen. 28 : 10–22.
Footnote 321:
See Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 691–696, with citation of
authorities at foot of p. 693, and note at p. 695.
Footnote 322:
_Ibid._; also, Sayce’s _Relig. of the Anc. Babyl._, pp. 221–278; 286,
note 3.
Footnote 323:
Comp. Job 1 : 21; Eccl. 5 : 15; 1 Tim. 6 : 7.
Footnote 324:
Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 696.
Footnote 325:
Ezek. 47 : 1–9.
Footnote 326:
Zeph. 2 : 13, 14, with margin.
Footnote 327:
See _Survey of Western Palestine_, “Memoirs,” I., 107.
Footnote 328:
See Gen. 2 : 8–10; Rev. 22 : 1, 2.
Footnote 329:
Ezek. 8 : 8–16.
Footnote 330:
Layard’s _Nineveh and Babylon_ (Am. ed.), pp. 302–311.
Footnote 331:
_Ibid._, p. 69 f.
Footnote 332: