Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

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.

Three traditions consent in pointing to the same spot. In other cases, such as Joseph’s Tomb, Jacob’s Well, and the Tomb of Eleazar, we also find such a consent of tradition, and the latter sites are generally accepted as real. When, as in the case of David’s Tomb, traditions are not in accord, we get but little help from them; but, in the few instances where both Moslem and Christian traditions agree with that accepted by the Jews, we may fairly argue that from the Jews they were originally derived. This is the case in the present instance. A rock called “Stone of Foundation” (Eben Shatiyeh) existed, according to the Jews, in the Holy of Holies; round it the world was first gathered together, in it the Ark was hidden, and over it the Mercy-Seat originally stood. The same tradition seems to be repeated in the Crusading chronicles, and the Christians of the twelfth century placed the Holy of Holies above the Sakhrah rock. Moslem tradition also connects the Sakhrah with the Stone of Foundation, for it is, in their eyes, the foundation of the world, as in the tradition of the Jews was the Eben Shatiyeh under the Holy of Holies.

After taking this position for the Holy of Holies as a starting-point, a serious question at once confronts us, namely, the length of the cubit. Here again we must trust to the Jews. The measure they used was not an Egyptian cubit, not a Babylonian cubit, not a Greek or Roman cubit; it was a measure of their own, the Hebrew Amah. Maimonides tells us that the Temple cubit was of forty-eight barley-corns, and any one who will take the trouble to measure barley-corns, will find that three go to the inch. This gives us sixteen inches for the cubit, or the average measure from the elbow to the first joint of the finger, which the Amah is said to have been. I am the more inclined to accept this length, because I find that the Galilean synagogues, measured by it, give round numbers. Thus in the synagogue of Umm el ’Amed, which I measured in 1875, I found the pillars to be ten cubits high, their bases one cubit, their capitals half a cubit, and the synagogue itself thirty cubits by forty, taking the cubit used to have been sixteen inches. The dimensions of the Haram masonry are also commensurate with a sixteen-inch unit; and the piers at the north-west angle have an interval of ten cubits of sixteen inches.

The result obtained from these data is extremely striking. The weak point of all restorations of the Temple which I have as yet seen is this, that no attention has been paid to the character of the ground, or to the elevation of the building. If we apply the well-known measures of the Temple courts, given in the Middoth, to the ground, on the assumption that the Sakhrah is the Holy of Holies, the result is satisfactory, and in fact exact, as regards level. The various levels of the courts we know from the writings of Maimonides; they agree to a foot with those of the rock round the Sakhrah, as a glance at the plan will show: but only in this position is it possible to make them agree; in any other we are obliged to suppose gigantic masonry foundations which are not mentioned by the writer who says the Temple was built on “the higher part of the hill” (B. J. v. 5, 2), and of which not a trace has been found inside the Haram.

The plan shows this agreement better than words can explain it; there is only space here to point out some of the special tests which can be applied.

Placing the floor of the Holy House on the level of the top of the Sakhrah, 2440 feet above the Mediterranean, the Altar-Court should be at a level six cubits lower (2432). The rock is actually known to have the level 2432, immediately west of the supposed position of the Altar on the present plan.

The Court of the Women should have a level 2418·6. The rock in this part is known to be lower than 2419 over a considerable area. The gates north and south of the Temple led down to a level about 2425. The rock in their immediate neighbourhood has been fixed at the levels 2425 and 2426. The outer part, near the Soreg or Wall of Partition, had, on the east, a level 2410. The rock is here known at the level 2409 and 2406.

Nor are these the only indications of exactness in detail. North of the Court of the Priests was the great Gate-house Moked, “the house of the fireplace,” from which a gallery, apparently that noticed by Josephus (Ant. xv. 11, 7), ran under the Sanctuary to the subterranean gate Tadi or Teri, and from this gate the Bath-house was reached. The great subterranean passage called No. 1 on the Ordnance Survey, starts from the north wall of the Court of the Priests, as placed on the present plan, and it leads just as far as the boundary of the 500 cubits. On this same line is the north end of the great excavation No. 3, which Captain Warren has proposed as representing the Bath-house; somewhere on the line of No. 1 gallery, then, I would place Tadi, just outside the Sanctuary, close to the entrance of the Bath-house vault. I may remark that a visit in 1874 showed me that these great galleries are closed on the north by rude modern walls, and the vaults may very possibly run on to meet near the north wall of the Platform.