The disciples steadily remained the diligent and constant attendants of their heavenly teacher, in his long and frequent seasons of instruction in the temple, where he boldly met the often renewed attacks of his various adversaries, whether Herodians, scribes, Pharisees or Sadducees, and in spite of their long-trained subtleties, beat them out and out, with the very weapons at which they thought themselves so handy. The display of genius, of taste, of learning, of ready and sarcastic wit, and of heart-searching acuteness, was so amazing and super-human, that these few days of open discussion established his divinely intellectual superiority over all the elaborate science of his accomplished opponents, and at the same time secured the fulfilment of his destiny, by the spite and hatred which their repeated public defeats excited in them. Imagine their rage. Exposed thus before the people, by whom they had hitherto been regarded as the sole depositaries of learning, and adored as the fountains of right, they saw all their honors and power, to which they had devoted the intense study of their whole lives, snatched coolly and easily from them, by a nameless, untaught pretender, who was able to hold them up, baffled and disgraced, for the amusement of the jeering multitude. Here was ground enough for hatred;——the hatred of conceited and intolerant false learning, against the discerning soul that had stripped and humbled it;——the hatred of confident ambition against the heroic energy which had discomfited it, and was doing much to free a long enslaved people from the yoke which formal hypocrisy and empty parade had long laid on them. And again, the intolerable thought that all this heavy disgrace had been brought on the learned body of Judaism by a Galilean! a mere carpenter of the lowest orders, who had come up to Jerusalem followed by a select train of rude fishermen and outcast publicans;——and who, not being able to command a single night’s lodging in the city, was in the habit of boarding and lodging in a paltry suburb, on the charity of some personal friends, from which place he quietly walked in for the distance of two miles every morning, to triumph over the palace-lodged heads of the Jewish faith. From such a man, thus humbly and even pitiably circumstanced, such an invasion and overthrow could not be endured; and his ruin was rendered doubly easy by his very insignificance, which now constituted the chief disgrace of their defeat. Never was cause more closely followed by its effect, than this insulted dignity was by its cruel vengeance.
THE PROPHECY OF THE TEMPLE’S RUIN.
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,)