Replicas of the Jewish Temple are scale models or authentic buildings that attempt to replicate either the Temple of Solomon or the Second Temple (Herod's Temple) in Jerusalem.
In the seventeenth century, Rabbi Jacob Judah Leon of Amsterdam (1602–1675) built a widely exhibited model of the Temple based on his understanding of the biblical specifications. [1]
Another notable model was constructed by Gerhard Schott (1641–1702), follows an interpretation made by the Spanish Jesuit Juan Bautista Villalpando. Schott's model, known as the Hamburg temple model, is still displayed in the Hamburg Museum in Hamburg. [2]
Conrad Schick constructed a series of replicas of the Jewish Temple. His replica of the Biblical Tabernacle was visited in Jerusalem by several crowned heads of state, toured the United Kingdom, and was exhibited at the 1873 Vienna World's Fair. It was purchased by the King of Württemberg, who awarded Schick a knighthood in recognition of his work. Schick built a replica of the contemporary Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock for the Ottoman Sultan. His final model, in four sections, each representing the Temple Mount as it appeared in a particular era, was exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. [3] [4]
A scale model existed at the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, but was destroyed during World War II. Two of Schick's models are located in the basement of the Schmidt school for girls in east Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate.[ citation needed ]
Another of Schick's models is at the Bijbels Museum ("Biblical Museum") in Amsterdam.
The Israel Museum in Jerusalem houses the Holyland Model of Jerusalem, a model of Jerusalem in the Late 2nd Temple Period originally constructed by archeologist Michael Avi-Yonah at the Holyland hotel.
The Yeshiva University Museum in Manhattan has models by archaeological architect Leen Ritmeyer. [5] The North Visitors' Center at Temple Square, in Salt Lake City, Utah has a scale model of Jerusalem as it may have looked at the time of Christ. [6]
Alec Garrard of Norfolk, UK, worked for 30 years creating a 1:100 scale model of Herod's Temple. His model has been recognized as the most authentic version of the temple in the world. [7]
The Holy Land Experience, a Christian theme park in Orlando, Florida featured a large replica of Herod's Temple inside the walls of a replica of the Jerusalem of Jesus' day. [8]
In 2009, Jews from settlements Mitzpe Yeriho in the West Bank, began to build a life-size replica of the Temple of Jerusalem. [9]
In 2010 the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God started the construction of a replica of Solomon's temple in São Paulo, Brazil. According to local press reports, the building would be an "exact replica" of the ancient Temple of Solomon, [10] but with increased dimensions, despite resembling considerably more Herod's Temple.[ citation needed ] The temple was inaugurated in July 2014. The mega-church seats 10,000 worshipers and stands 180 feet tall, the height of an 18-story building.
Several churches and synagogues have been designed to evoke the Temple. The most famous of them is el Escorial, the royal residence of Spain (1563–1584) by architect Juan Bautista de Toledo under the order of Philip II of Spain. The central axis reveals a pattern of courtyard, sanctuary, Holy of Holies. [12]
The Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor, New York was built in 1844 by architect Minard Lafever as a replica of the Temple. [13] [14]
The 1906 building of Temple Israel in Boston was intended to be a replica of the Temple. [15] The Church of St. Polyeuctus in Constantinople was built with the precise proportions given in the Bible for the Temple. [16]
The 1909 building of the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in Tel Aviv, designed by Joseph Barsky, was intended to evoke the Temple following a widely-circulated reconstruction of the temple by Charles Chipiez. [17]
A handful of temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are evocations of the Temple. The Cardston Alberta Temple, Laie Hawaii Temple, and Mesa Arizona Temple are all designed after the style of Herod's Temple. [18] Others, such as the Salt Lake Temple pay more indirectly homage, by orienting towards Jerusalem and having a large basin used as a baptismal font is mounted on the backs of twelve oxen, as was the Molten Sea of the Temple. [19]
Masonic Temples in Freemasonry bear a similar symbolism. Solomon's Temple is a central symbol in Freemasonry, which holds that the first three Grand Masters were Solomon, Hiram I of Phoenicia, and Hiram Abiff, the fictitious craftsman and architect who built the temple. Masonic initiation rites include the reenactment of a scene set on the Temple Mount while it was under construction. Every Masonic lodge, therefore, is symbolically the Temple for the duration of the degree, and possesses ritual objects representing the architecture of the Temple. These may either be built into the hall or be portable. Among the most prominent are replicas of the pillars Boaz and Jachin through which every initiate has to pass. [20]
During and after the Christian conquest of Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock was renamed the Templum Domini, and the nearby Al Aqsa Mosque was renamed the Temple of Solomon, the latter of which was where the Temple Knights had their headquarters in Jerusalem. The two buildings were sometimes conflated, [21] and a number of buildings were designed as replicas of Solomon's Temple in the shape of the Dome of the Rock.
These replicas include the octagonal, fifteenth-century Church of St. Giacomo in Italy, and the octagonal, nineteenth-century Moorish Revival style Rumbach Street synagogue in the Pest section of Budapest. [22]
Palestine Park on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York has a small replica of the temple, depicted as the Dome of the Rock, part of a living topographical map of the Holy Land, complete with the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea. Lake Chautauqua stands in for the Mediterranean. [23]
In art, both Perugino's Marriage of the Virgin and Raphael's The Marriage of the Virgin both show the Temple as a Renaissance version of the Dome of the Rock. [24]
The Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania has a replica of the biblical tabernacle dating from 1922. [25] The Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania had a replica dating from the 1940s. [26] [27]
The Mishkan Shiloh synagogue in Shilo, Mateh Binyamin is designed as a replica of the Tabernacle. [28]
In Israel, Timna Valley Park and Kibbutz Almog feature full-scale replicas. [29] [30]
The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple, refers to the two religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. According to the Hebrew Bible, the First Temple was built in the 10th century BCE, during the reign of Solomon over the United Kingdom of Israel. It stood until c. 587 BCE, when it was destroyed during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. Almost a century later, the First Temple was replaced by the Second Temple, which was built after the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire. While the Second Temple stood for a longer period of time than the First Temple, it was likewise destroyed during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
A temple is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temple" in English, while those of other religions are not, even though they fulfill very similar functions. The religions for which the terms are used include the great majority of ancient religions that are now extinct, such as the Ancient Egyptian religion and the Ancient Greek religion. Among religions still active: Hinduism, Buddhism(whose temples are called Vihar), Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, the Baha'i Faith, Taoism, Shinto, Confucianism.
A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It has a place for prayer where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. They also have rooms for study, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and many places to sit and congregate. They often display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself.
The Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif, al-Aqsa Mosque compound, or simply al-Aqsa, and sometimes as Jerusalem's holyesplanade, is a hill in the Old City of Jerusalem that has been venerated as a holy site for thousands of years, including in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The Dome of the Rock is an Islamic shrine at the center of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is the world's oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture, the earliest archaeologically attested religious structure to be built by a Muslim ruler and its inscriptions contain the earliest epigraphic proclamations of Islam and of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
The Second Temple, later known as Herod's Temple, was the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem between c. 516 BCE and 70 CE. Defining the Second Temple period, it stood as a pivotal symbol of Jewish identity and was central to Second Temple Judaism; it was the chief place of worship, ritual sacrifice (korban), and communal gathering for Jews. As such, it attracted Jewish pilgrims from distant lands during the Three Pilgrimage Festivals: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the tabernacle, also known as the Tent of the Congregation, was the portable earthly dwelling used by the Israelites from the Exodus until the conquest of Canaan. Moses was instructed at Mount Sinai to construct and transport the tabernacle with the Israelites on their journey through the wilderness and their subsequent conquest of the Promised Land. After 440 years, Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem superseded it as the dwelling-place of God.
The Holy of Holies is a term in the Hebrew Bible that refers to the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle, where the Shekhinah appeared. According to Hebrew tradition, the area was defined by four pillars that held up the veil of the covering, under which the Ark of the Covenant was held above the floor. According to the Hebrew Bible, the Ark contained the Ten Commandments, which were given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. The first Temple in Jerusalem, called Solomon's Temple, was said to have been built by King Solomon to keep the Ark.
The Israel Museum is an art and archaeological museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading encyclopaedic museums. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, adjacent to the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
According to the Bible, Boazand Jachin were two copper, brass or bronze pillars which stood on the porch of Solomon's Temple, the first Temple in Jerusalem. They are used as symbols in Freemasonry and sometimes in religious architecture. They were probably not support structures but free-standing, based on similar pillars found in other nearby temples.
Juan Bautista Villalpando also Villalpandus, or Villalpanda was a Spanish priest of Sephardic ancestry, a member of the Jesuits, a scholar, mathematician, and architect.
Zedekiah's Cave, also known as Solomon's Quarries, is a 5-acre (20,000 m2) underground meleke limestone quarry under the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem that runs the length of five city blocks. It was carved over a period of several thousand years and is a remnant of the largest quarry in Jerusalem.
The Holyland Model of Jerusalem, also known as Model of Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period is a 1:50 scale model of the city of Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period. The model, designed by Michael Avi-Yonah, was moved from its original location at the Holyland Hotel in Bayit VeGan, Jerusalem, to a new site at the Israel Museum in June 2006.
Leen Ritmeyer is a Dutch-born archaeological architect who currently lives and works in Wales, after having spent 22 years (1967–89) in Jerusalem.
Conrad Schick (1822–1901) was a German architect, archaeologist and Protestant missionary who settled in Jerusalem in the mid-nineteenth century. For many decades, he was head of the "House of Industry" at the Christ Church, which was the institute for vocational training of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews.
The Brunswick Terrace Synagogue, also sometimes called the Roof-top synagogue, was a private Orthodox Jewish synagogue that was built on the roof-top of 26 Brunswick Terrace, a terraced-row of houses on the Brunswick Estate in Hove, now a constituent part of the city of Brighton and Hove, in East Sussex, England, in the United Kingdom.
Temple denial is the claim that the successive Temples in Jerusalem either did not exist or they did exist but were not constructed on the site of the Temple Mount, a claim which has been advanced by Islamic political leaders, religious figures, intellectuals, and authors.
The Templum Domini was the name attributed by the Crusaders to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It became an important symbol of Jerusalem, depicted on coins minted under the Catholic Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple, was a biblical Temple in Jerusalem believed to have existed between the 10th and 6th centuries BCE. Its description is largely based on narratives in the Hebrew Bible, in which it was commissioned by biblical king Solomon before being destroyed during the Siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 587 BCE. Although no remains of the temple have ever been found, most modern scholars agree that the First Temple existed on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by the time of the Babylonian siege, though there is significant debate over the date of its construction and the identity of its builder.
The Schick models of Jerusalem are notable wooden models of buildings and areas in the city of Jerusalem constructed by Conrad Schick in the late 19th century. The series of models covered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Islamic buildings of Al-Aqsa on the Temple Mount and the terrain beneath it, as well as replicas of the Jewish Temple based on the information available in his time, and benefitting from his architectural knowledge.