When the Jews returned from the Captivity they rebuilt the Temple exactly as it had been described by Ezekiel, in so far as dimensions are concerned, except that, as just mentioned, they do not seem to have been able to accomplish the northern and southern courts.
The materials, however, were probably inferior to the original Temple; and we hear nothing of brazen pillars in the porch, nor of the splendid vessels and furniture which made the glory of Solomon’s Temple, so that the Jews were probably justified in mourning over its comparative insignificance.[[110]]
In the last Temple we have a perfect illustration of the mode in which the architectural enterprises of that country were carried out. The priests restored the Temple itself, not venturing to alter a single one of its sacred dimensions, only adding wings to the façade so as to make it 100 cubits wide, and it is said 100 cubits high, while the length remained 100 cubits as before.[[111]] At this period, however, Judea was under the sway of the Romans and under the influence of their ideas, and the outer courts were added with a magnificence of which former builders had no conception, but bore strongly the impress of the architectural magnificence of the Romans.
An area measuring 600 feet each way was enclosed by terraced walls of the utmost lithic grandeur. On these were erected porticoes unsurpassed by any we know of. One, the Stoa Basilica, had a section equal to that of our largest cathedrals, and surpassed them all in length, and within this colonnaded enclosure were ten great gateways, two of which were of surpassing magnificence: the whole making up a rich and varied pile worthy of the Roman love of architectural display, but in singular contrast with the modest aspirations of a purely Semitic people.
It is always extremely difficult to restore any building from mere verbal description, and still more so when erected by a people of whose architecture we know so little as we do of that of the Jews. Still, the woodcut on the opposite page is probably not very far from representing the Temple as it was after the last restoration by Herod, barring of course the screen bearing the Vine mentioned above, which is omitted. Without attempting to justify every detail, it seems such a mixture of Roman with Phœnician forms as might be expected and is warranted by Josephus’s description. There is no feature for which authority could not be quoted, but the difficulty is to know whether or not the example adduced is the right one, or the one which bears most directly on the subject. After all, perhaps, its principal defect is that it does not (how can a modern restoration?) do justice to the grandeur and beauty of the whole.
As it has been necessary to anticipate the chronological sequence of events in order not to separate the temples of the Jews from one another, it may be as well before proceeding further to allude to several temples similarly situated which apparently were originally Semitic shrines but rebuilt in Roman times. That at Palmyra, for instance, is a building very closely resembling that at Jerusalem, in so far at least as the outer enclosure is concerned.[[112]] It consists of a cloistered enclosure of somewhat larger dimensions, measuring externally 730 ft. by 715, with a small temple of an anomalous form in the centre. It wants, however, all the inner enclosures and curious substructures of the Jewish fane; but this may have arisen from its having been rebuilt in late Roman times, and consequently shorn of these peculiarities. It is so similar, however, that it must be regarded as a cognate temple to that at Jerusalem, though re-erected by a people of another race.
A third temple, apparently very similar to these, is that of Kangovar in Persia.[[113]] Only a portion now remains of the great court in which it stood, and which was nearly of the same dimensions as those of Jerusalem and Palmyra, being 660 ft. by 568. In the centre are the vestiges of a small temple. At Aizaini in Asia Minor[[114]] is a fourth, with a similar court; but here the temple is more important, and assumes more distinctly the forms of a regular Roman peristylar temple of the usual form, though still small and insignificant for so considerable an enclosure.
The mosque of Damascus was once one of these great square temple-enclosures, with a small temple, properly so called, in the centre. It may have been as magnificent, perhaps more so, than any of these just enumerated, but it has been so altered by Christian and Moslem rebuildings, that it is almost impossible now to make out what its original form may have been.
None of these are original buildings, but still, when put together and compared the one with the other, and, above all, when examined by the light which discoveries farther east have enabled us to throw on the subject, they enable us to restore this style in something like its pristine form. At present, it is true, they are but the scattered fragments of an art of which it is feared no original specimens now remain, and which can only therefore be recovered by induction from similar cognate examples of other, though allied, styles of art.