8. ONLY ONE FOUNDATION.
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.