Then Herod, the Idumæan, made king of the Jews by the Romans, conceived the idea of making himself popular with the people by rebuilding the temple in all the splendour of Solomon. The execution of his plan, which included enlargement,—Josephus says he doubled the original size,—required the complete demolition of the former structure and the rebuilding of the ancient terraces and the gates crowning them. The only portion of the old temple that he seems to have preserved was the eastern gate or gate of Solomon. The ancient plan, however, was apparently not departed from in the main.
The great outer court was surrounded on three sides by a double colonnade of Doric columns twenty-five cubits high. On the south side was a basilica, i.e. “a building with three unequal naves supported by columns.” This enclosure was the Court of the Gentiles, and was open to all visitors. A barrier only three cubits high prevented the ungodly from entering the enclosure reserved for the Israelites, which comprised the Court of Women and the Court of Men, or of Israel. The Court of Women had at its four corners square halls serving for the supplies of the temple, for ablutions, or other pious exercises.
From this court three gates led through a group of buildings to the Court of Israel. The principal one of these gates, celebrated as the Nicanor Gate, had doors of Corinthian bronze, and was of beautiful architectural proportions and rich construction. The Court of Israel, which was reserved for men who had performed certain acts of purification, was eleven cubits wide. The halls surrounding it on three sides, which had façades furnished with porticoes, were appendages of the divine cult. Each was consecrated to a special service. Here the skins of victims were salted and washed; the musical instruments, the salt, the eternal fire, the wood were kept here; and here was the hall of the sanhedrim.
Finally came the Court of the Priests, in the middle of which were the temple proper and the altar of burnt offerings. The temple stood on a terrace six cubits high, so that there was thus a difference of level of eight and a half metres between the platform of the temple and the Court of the Gentiles. Its architectural features were essentially the same as those of Solomon’s temple. This temple of the Jews was one of the most majestic works of architecture that antiquity produced. The succession of enclosed courts rising one above another and crowned by the gigantic white marble pylons of the sanctuary is a conception of genius that was realised only here, and all antiquity had but one voice in praise of its imposing grandeur.
The House of the Eternal was embellished with an unprecedented luxury. Costly woods, gold, silver, ivory, precious stones even—nothing was spared by this people that was so jealous of its God. The accessories of the cult, moreover, sacred vessels, knives, basins, utensils of every kind, were works in which caster and engraver vied with one another in the display of their art.
But it must not be forgotten that the artists who decorated the ancient temple were Phœnicians; and as the Phœnicians always limited themselves to imitation of the Egyptians and the Assyrians, their technique has a hybrid character, which, like Syria itself from a geographical point of view, is a sort of compromise between Asia and Egypt.[d]
The race which had so little influence on the art of the world and so much upon its literature, religion, commerce, and destinies, has had the strangest of all national fates. To the Christian it is as the escape of the soul from the corruption and death of the body. Newman[e] has thus closed his History of the Hebrew Monarchy, in words that may fitly serve as finis here:
“It is not intended here to pursue the later fortunes of the Jewish nation. We have seen its monarchy rise and fall. In its progress, the prophetical and the sacerdotal elements were developed side by side; the former flourished in its native soil for a brief period, but was transplanted over all the world, to impart a lasting glory to Jewish monotheism. The latter, while in union with and subservient to the free spirit of prophecy, had struck its roots into the national heart, and grown up as a constitutional pillar to the monarchy: but when unchecked by prophet or by king, and invested with the supreme temporal and spiritual control of the restored nation, it dwindled to a mere scrubby plant, whose fruit was dry and thorny learning, or apples of Sodom, which are as ashes in the mouth. Such was the unexpansive and literal materialism of the later rabbis, out of which has proceeded nearly all that is unamiable in the Jewish character: but the Roman writers who saw that side only of the nation, little knew how high a value the retrospect of the world’s history would set on the agency of this scattered and despised people.
“For if Greece was born to teach art and philosophy, and Rome to diffuse the processes of law and government, surely Judea has been the wellspring of religious wisdom to a world besotted by frivolous or impure fancies. To these three nations it has been given to cultivate and develop principles characteristic of themselves: to the Greeks, Beauty and Science; to the Romans, Jurisprudence and Municipal Rule; but to the Jews, the Holiness of God and his Sympathy with his chosen servants. That this was the true calling of the nation, the prophets were inwardly conscious at an early period. They discerned that Jerusalem was as a centre of bright light to a dark world; and while groaning over the monstrous fictions which imposed on the nations under the name of religion, they announced that out of Zion should go forth the Law and the word of Jehovah. When they did not see, yet they believed, that the proud and despiteful heathen should at length gladly learn of their wisdom, and rejoice to honour them. In this faith the younger Isaiah closed his magnificent strains, addressing Jerusalem:
‘Behold, darkness covereth the earth,