worship 41
wall or boundary stone, a sacred area for sacrifices and dedications
without any building. It was only in the eighth century bce that temples
began to be built, perhaps reflecting influence through Greek trading
contact with Egypt. In Palestine this process had begun rather earlier,
and the narrative in I Kings of Solomon’s decision to build the Jerusa-
lem Temple is thus not implausible, even if its magnificence may have
been exaggerated: ‘Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure
gold ... Next he overlaid the whole house with gold, in order that
the whole house might be perfect; even the whole altar that belonged to
the inner sanctuary he overlaid with gold.’ Also plausible is the rationale
for this vast expense as given by the author of I Kings: ‘Now the word of
the Lord came to Solomon, “Concerning this house that you are build-
ing, if you will walk in my statutes, obey my ordinances, and keep all my
commandments by walking in them, then I will establish my promise
with you, which I made to your father David. I will dwell among the
children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel.” ’ The Temple,
like the ritual it housed, was designed to ensure divine favour.^4
If the biblical chronology is correct, the Jerusalem Temple after its
foundation by Solomon was the main focus for Jewish worship for a
thousand years, from c. 1000 bce to its razing by the Romans in 70 ce,
with only a comparatively brief interruption between the destruction of
Solomon’s edifice in 586 bce and the building of the Second Temple by
the returned exiles in the late sixth and fifth centuries bce. The central-
ity of the building in the eyes of many Jews emerges clearly in the
prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, who urged this rebuilding on
Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, and Joshua, the High Priest, rebuk-
ing those who said, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s
house.’ Haggai’s message was not complicated: the Lord of hosts had
ensured that ‘the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the
earth has withheld its produce,’ because ‘my house lies in ruins, while all
of you hurry off to your own houses’. Even during the period between
the Temples, the prophet Ezekiel, dreaming in exile in Babylonia about
perfect worship of God, had an intense vision that intermingled recol-
lections of the destroyed Temple with pure fantasy: ‘water was flowing
from below the threshold’ of the Temple, forming a stream which
became ‘a river that could not be crossed’ and which continued down to
the Dead Sea, where it would sweeten the waters and they would swarm
with fish.^5
The actual practice of the sacrificial cult in the Temple is not accorded
universal approval in the biblical texts. Critical comments are found