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Home > Magazines > BAR > September/October 1993

Herod’s Temple in East Anglia

By Kathleen Ritmeyer

There it is in the heart of the British countryside I of East Anglia: the largest, the most detailed and the most accurate model of Jerusalem’s Second Temple ever built.

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Footnotes

1.

The Mishnah is a compilation of rabbinic teachings gathered about 200 C.E.

2.

This sacrifice entailed the slaughter of a spotless red heifer on the Mount of Olives, following which its blood was sprinkled several times toward the Holy of Holies of the Temple. Its ashes were collected, mixed with water and used as a purification for sin.

3.

See Leen Ritmeyer, “Locating the Original Temple Mount,” BAR 18:02.

4.

See Joseph Patrich, “Reconstructing the Magnificent Temple Herod Built,” Bible Review, October 1988.

5.

See “The Religious Message of the Bible—BAR Interviews Pere Benoit,” BAR 12:02.

Endnotes

1.

Two of the works of Alfred Edersheim, The Temple—Its Ministry and Services as They Were in the Time of Christ (Reprinted, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982 [1875]), and The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, New American Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1967 [1883]), were veritable handbooks during the model-making process.

2.

Dean Frederic W. Farrar, The Life of Christ (London: Cassell, 1874).

3.

Middot 5.1–4.

4.

Mishnah, Parah 3.9, 4.2. Middot 2.4.

5.

Flavius Josephus (The Jewish War 5.225), states that it was a square of 50 cubits and stood 15 cubits high. In Middot 3.1, we also find it described as square in shape, but of different dimensions, the base measuring 32 cubits on a side and the place for the altar fire as 24 cubits on a side. Here, the height is given as 8 cubits.

6.

Middot 3.1.

7.

Mishnah, Zevahim 7:1–4; Middot 3:1; Kinnim 1:1.

8.

Edersheim, The Temple, p. 55.

9.

Mishnah, Yoma 3.10; Tamid 1.4, 3.8.

10.

Mishnah, Tamid 3.5; Middot 3.5.

11.

Mishnah, Sotah 7.6; Tamid 7.1, 2.

12.

Middot 3.8.

13.

Josephus, The Jewish War 5.19 3.