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FAMOUS BIBLE BUILDINGS
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Most people know Herod the Great as the king who ordered the massacre of the Innocents at the time of Jesus' birth. But as well as this he was one of the great builders of the ancient world - cities, fortresses, palaces, the Temple. He built on a grand scale. Construction of the Temple in Jerusalem lasted for 46 years. This building was meant to last. The area of the Temple Mount was doubled and surrounded by a high wall with massive gates. The Temple was raised, enlarged, and faced with beautiful white stone. Its courtyards served as a gathering place and its shaded porticoes sheltered merchants and money changers. A great door led to the sanctuary, at the western end of which was the Holy of Holies. The Temple was not only the center of religious ritual, but the place where the Holy Scriptures and other important Jewish literature was kept. It was the meeting place of the Sanhedrin, the High Court of Jews during the Roman period. Herod also built a huge administrative sector and a luxurious royal palace (see below), but the Temple was still far and away the most impressive building in 1st century Jerusalem. For more pictures and information, go to Jerusalem Archaeology
According to 1 Kings 6:2-3 the First Temple, built by King Solomon, was a long-room temple with a vestibule hall and a separate room for the Holy of Holies. There were two columns in the vestibule hall, and splendid furnishings and fittings. The walls were covered with wooden panels embellished with gold-leaf overlay. The Temple building faced east. It was oblong and consisted of three rooms of equal width:
A storehouse surrounded the Temple except at its front (east) side. The First Temple had five altars: one at the entrance of the Holy of Holies, two others within the building, a large bronze one in front of the porch, and a large tiered altar in the courtyard. Within the Holy of Holies, two cherubim of olive wood stood with the Ark. This innermost sanctuary was considered the dwelling place or focus of the Divine Presence. In 604BC and then again in 597BC Jerusalem was attacked and taken by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. The city was sacked, the Temple treasure was stolen, and the Temple of Solomon was totally destroyed.
For more
pictures and information, go to Bible
Archaeology: Solomon's Temple
The most vulnerable spot in afortress/city was the gateway. So city gates became massive - formidable points of entry, daunting any enemy. At Megiddo (and also at Samaria and Lachish) the city gate was guarded by a double set of towers. From these the enemy could be pelted with a range of missiles - spears, arrows, stones, etc. This kept him from coming too close to the gate. But if he used something like a covered battering ram, he could get close to the gate and break it down. If he got this far he would find himself channeled into a passage between the gates. This had chambers on either side that acted as firing positions for the defenders. The attacker found himself exposed to crossfire from two, three or four directions. Even if the entrance was defended by a single gate tower, it was usually a very strong and deep structure with internal guard rooms and upper-floor firing apertures so as to harass the enemy inside the gate. The gate towers had at least a double set of gates on the outside and on the inside. For more pictures and
information, go to Bible
Archaeology: Megiddo
Did the walls of Jericho come tumbling down at the sound of Joshua's horn, as the Bible describes? In Joshua 2:1 he commands his soldiers to reconnoiter the city, and after this it is destroyed. And archaeology shows that the walls did indeed come tumbling down. There is evidence of a collapsed stone and mud brick support wall. There is also evidence of destruction by fire. Archaeological teams have discovered a number of storage jars containing charred grain from the last Canaanite city that existed at ancient Jericho. This would indicate that the city was conquered at harvest-time and then burned. But it is impossible to tell whether this destruction was caused by invasion or earthquake. Possibly both occurred and both were responsible - and why not? Both were part of God's unfathomable plan for his people. For more pictures and
information, go to Jericho
Archaeology
Of course no-one knows what Mary and Joseph's house in Nazareth was like. The house itself disappeared many centuries ago. But we do know what ordinary village houses looked like in 1st century Palestine, and in Nazareth in particular. The basic floor plan had a central courtyard with rooms opening off it. These rooms were small by our standard, with a minimum of windows. Lattice work and shutters were used to cover window openings. Rooms were small. Stairs or a wooden ladder led up onto the roof, which was used as an outdoor room partly shaded by matting or a tent-like superstructure. The inside rooms tended to be dark, so the courtyard and the roof were important parts of the house, used for tasks that needed good light - Mary of Nazareth and the women of her family would have spun yarn, woven fabric and prepared food there. In hot weather family members slept there as well. For more pictures and information, go to What Archaeology Tells Us About Nazareth
Masada is perched on top of an isolated rock cliff at the western end of the Judean Desert. It is a place of gaunt and majestic beauty. The land falls steeply away on every side, making it a natural fortress. It is famous for the fortress/palace built there by King Herod the Great. This was on the northern edge of a steep cliff, with a splendid view. The three buildings shown below were a small but elegant palace-villa for the king. They were separated from the fortress and administrative buildings at Masada so that the king and his favorites could enjoy total privacy and security. This northern palace consists of three terraces, luxuriously built, with a narrow, rock-cut staircase connecting them. On the upper terrace, several rooms served as living quarters. In front of them was a semi-circular balcony with two concentric rows of columns. The rooms were paved with black/white and colored mosaics in intricate geometric patterns. For more pictures and information, go to Bible Architecture: Masada
Though it had beautiful palace buildings and luxurious living quarters, Masada was primarily a fortress, built as a refuge in times of danger. This meant it had to withstand a long siege if necessary, with sufficient supplies of food and water for hundreds of people. The water supply at Masada was guaranteed by a network of large, rock-hewn cisterns on the northwestern side of the hill. They filled during the winter with rainwater flowing in streams from the high side of the plateau, and could be relied on to supply all the needs of the people sheltering in the fortress. One of these cisterns is illustrated below. It supplied water for drinking and bathing, and possibly also for irrigating gardens or vegetable plots. The effectiveness of these cisterns was tested when the Romans laid siege to Masada in 72AD. For two years the defenders of the fortress were able to hold off the attackers, and throughout all this time they were never short of food or water. In the end, they were only defeated when the Romans built a siege ramp and moved a battering ram up to the walls of the fortress, breaching the wall. For more pictures and information, go to Bible Architecture: Masada
The white marble synagogue in this photograph is not the one that Jesus taught in, but it was built on top of an earlier one from the first half of the 1st century AD - almost certainly the one in which Jesus taught. The original synagogue was of black basalt, with gray marble columns and a cobblestone floor. Jesus performed many miracle here, and chose four of his disciples from among its population: Peter, Andrew and the two sons of Zebedee, James and John. Perhaps it was here that the crippled woman was healed by Jesus - the text says he 'called her over', presumably from the seats along the wall of the synagogue.
Machaerus was never a pleasant place to be. A forbidding fortress, it was built to intimidate and control the troubled area between Palestine and Petra. It did its job well. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Machaerus was the place in which John the Baptist was imprisoned and then beheaded (Bellum VII.6.1-2). This makes sense. Herod was frightened by John's fearless criticism of him, and of his power to stir people up. He sensed he had met someone he could not control. Putting John into the prison at Machaerus removed John from his followers, and stopped them from communicating with their leader. No-one could get in or out of Machaerus without Herod knowing about it. When Herod decided to kill John, the walls of the fortess meant there was no-one to oppose him. When the Jewish Revolt broke out in 66AD, the Jewish rebels holed up within Machaerus' seemingly impregnable walls. But the Romans built siege works around the base of the fortress, leading up towards the walls. When the lower part of the fortress was captured and burned, the people in the upper city surrendered. You can still see part of the Roman siege ramp on the west side of the mound, and ruins of the Roman camp lie on the hill to the west. For more pictures and information, go to Bible Fortress: Machaerus
Sepphoris is not mentioned in the Bible, but it was only a good stretch of the leg from Nazareth, and Jesus certainly knew the town. In fact, it is quite probable that Joseph and his young son Jesus worked there - they were builders, and Sepphoris was one of King Herod's great building projects when Jesus was a boy. Since Nazareth was only a small village and work would have been limited if not downright scarce, Joseph may have helped build the beautiful theater there. The theater is about 74meters in diameter, with enough seats for 4,500 people. The people who attended this theater were sophisticated, admiring Greek and Roman plays. Traditional, conservative Jews such as Jesus and his family frowned on this, and preferred their own Jewish culture. For more pictures and information, go to The City Jesus Knew: Sepphoris
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