TEMPLE is a word deriv’d from the greek Τεμενος, a place cut off, inclosed, dedicated to sacred use, whether an area, a circle of stones, a field, or a grove. This matter, as all others, advanced from simplicity, by degrees, till it became what we now call a temple. Thus we read in Iliad II, of Ceres’s field. Iliad VIII, of Jupiter’s field and altar. In XXIII, another at the fountain of Sperchius. In Odyss. VIII, that of Venus Paphia. Pausanias mentions many of these. Cicero too among the Thebans, de nat. deor. III. In Odyss. XVII, a grove perfectly round by Ithaca. And these were encompass’d by a ditch which Pollux calls peribolus. Pausanias makes this particular remark in Achaic, of the grove of Diana servatrix. They were kept by priests who dwelt there for that purpose, as Maron in Odyss. IX.
Tempe signifies a grove or temple, which is the same thing. Strabo writes, that the poets, for ornament sake, call all temples groves. This was in affectation of antiquity.
Est nemus Æmoniæ, prærupta quod undique claudit
Sylva, vocant Tempe.——
Tempulum, or contractedly templum, is a lesser grove, or temple properly speaking, built with pillars, as it were in imitation of a great grove. The patriarchal temeni were call’d במיה excelsa, because generally made on high places. Hence the greek word βωμος. By the hebrew writers they were call’d sacella montana, mountain oratories. Sacellum, says Festus, is an open chapel, or without a roof. At length the word temple was apply’d to sacred structures built with a roof, in imitation of Solomon’s. And that was a durable and fixed one, an edifice of extraordinary grandeur and beauty, made in imitation of the Mosaic tabernacle, which was a temple itinerant, the first idea of a cover’d one, properly. There were two reasons, among others, why it was cover’d and square in form. 1. By way of opposition to the heathen ones, practised in all the countries round about, which were imitations of the first patriarchal temples there, and now were converted to idolatrous purposes. 2. Because it was a type of Messiah, or JEHOVAH who was to come in the flesh, therefore cover’d with skins. And that we may have the greatest authority in the case, our Saviour himself declares in the most publick manner, that the temple of Jerusalem was symbolical of his body, as we find it recorded in the gospel, John ii. 19. And the author of the Hebrews largely deduces the necessity of making temples to be the pictures of heavenly things, and particularly of the mediator, Heb. ix. 11, 23. which can be done no otherwise than symbolically. And authors that describe the tabernacle and temple, insist upon this largely. Nor is it otherwise with us christians, in our cathedrals, designing our saviour’s body extended on the cross. But in the more ancient patriarchal times, before the great advent, they form’d them upon the geometrical figures or pictures, or manner of writing, by which they express’d the deity, and the mystical nature thereof. And this same design of making temples in some kind of imitation of the deity, as well as they could conceive it, was from the very beginning. The heathen authors retain some notion of this matter, when they tell us, of temples being made in the form and nature of the gods. Porphyry in Eusebius pr. ev. III. 7. affirms the round figure to be dedicated to eternity, and that they anciently built temples round; but he did not understand the whole reason. And when they built temples properly, in imitation of the jewish, they made them often of a round form, and often open at top, to preserve as near as might be, the most ancient manner they had been acquainted with. Whence Pausanias writes, the Thracians us’d to build their temples round, and open at top.
Thus at Bethel, the place where Jacob built his temple, and where his grandfather Abraham had built one before, Jeroboam chose it for his idolatrous temple, call’d by the Alexandrian Greeks in after times, οικος Ων, the temple of On. S. Cyril in his comments on Hosea writes, that On is the sun, from its round form. The heathen had done all they could to corrupt the remembrance of the name of the true God, and turn’d Beth-el, which signifies the house of EL or God, to οικος Ων, the house of On, or the sun. As ηλιος, is a word undoubtedly made from EL, in the Hebrew, expressing God’s power and sovereignty; so much like Elion a name of God in Scripture, signifying Hypsistus, the most high. Gen. xiv. 18. Luke i. 37. in Arabic, allah taâla the most high God. Whence Atlas the name of consecration of the African hero, allah taâl.
TAB. V.
P. 8.
The prospect Northward from Rowldrich Stones.
Stukeley del.