However, it is to the Christian community that we must chiefly trust for the preservation of the traditions relating to the Temple and its precincts; and certainly their testimony is not less trustworthy than that of the Jews themselves; for the native Church, in the earlier times, consisting principally of Hebrew converts, would be as well versed in the Jewish antiquities of the city as the unbelievers; while their continued residence on the spot, at least from the time of Hadrian, when the Jewish traditions were fresh, would cause these traditions to be handed on in an unbroken continuity of succession, however their disregard for the holy places of the Jews might lead to the desecration, and gradually to a partial oblivion, of the site.

It will be worth while, then, to gather into one view the scattered notices of the Temple that occur in Christian writings, before I adduce some points of agreement between the Christians and Jews of the middle ages, which I shall attempt to shew are entitled to some consideration.

The Bordeaux Pilgrim has already been mentioned in connexion with the sacred stone, which was an object of annual pilgrimage and veneration to the Jews. He speaks also of two large pools on the side of the Temple, one on the right, the other on the left, evidently shewing that the limits of the area were then well defined1.

He

notices moreover the crypt where Solomon tortured the demons; the lofty angular tower whereon our Lord was set by the Tempter; and under the wing of the tower itself, many chambers where Solomon had his palace, and the identical one where he wrote his description of Wisdom, which last was vaulted with a single stone. The wonderful reservoirs are also mentioned in connexion with the Temple. In the very house where stood the Temple built by Solomon, on the marble before the altar was seen the blood of Zachariah as though recently shed; and the dints of the nails in the shoes of the soldiers who slew him could be traced over the whole area, as though they were fixed in wax. There were two statues of Hadrian; the pierced stone, annually anointed by the Jews, and bathed with their tears; the house of Hezekiah, and the Judgment-hall of Pilate, where our Lord was heard before His Passion.

Now granting at once the simplicity, credulity, and barbarous Latinity of the western Pilgrim, we must at least conclude from this account, that the position of the Temple and the extent of its area was clearly ascertained in his days, and that certain localities within and about it were regarded with veneration by Christians and Jews, as associated with passages of Scripture history. I have no doubt that I shall be able

ad dexteram, alia ad sinistram, quas Salomon fecit... Est ibi et crypta, ubi Salomon dæmones torquebat. Ibi est angulus turris excelsissimæ, ubi Dominus ascendit, &c..... Ibi est et lapis angularis magnus, &c. Item ad caput anguli, et sub pinna turris ipsius, sunt cubicula plurima, ubi Salomon palatium habebat. Ibi etiam constat cubiculus,in quo sedit et sapientiam descripVOL. II.

sit; ipse vero cubiculus uno lapide est tectus." Then after the passage quoted p. 333 n. 7, 334 n. 1. "Est ibi et domus Ezechiæ Regis Judæ :...ad partem dextram, deorsum in valle, sunt parietes, ubi domus fuit sive prætorium Pontii Pilati. Ibi Dominus auditus est antequam pateretur." Itin. Hierosol. ap. Wesseling, p. 589–593.

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to identify several of these localities. At present I confine myself to testimony, and pass on to Eusebius. His notices of the Jewish remains of Jerusalem are not full, but very unequivocal as far as they go. A passage will be cited from his Theophania, in which he considers and answers an argument that might be brought against our Lord's predictions, from the actual state of the Temple, whose complete overthrow He had foretold; and the reply concedes the fact that large fragments of the Temple, in the more extended sense of the word, still remained in situ'. This was about A.D. 320.

Prudentius again, (cir. A. D. 394,) after the frustration of Julian's design, speaks of the Pinnacle of the Temple and the Beautiful Gate as still standing2; and S. Jerome, about the same time, notices an image of Jupiter and an equestrian statue of Hadrian on the place of the Holy of Holies; the gate of the Temple that led to Siloam, and indeed the whole area of the Temple',

in such a manner as to leave no doubt that its position and limits, with several of its leading features, were sufficiently marked in his day. But from this time forward I have not met with any clear notices of the site, until shortly before the Saracenic conquest, when Antoninus Placentinus (cir. 600) distinctly alludes to the ruins of the Temple of Solomon'. It has been stated that Omar, having enquired for the Mosk of David, was conducted, after some hesitation, to a neglected and polluted site, where traces of ancient masonry still existed. Over these he commenced the erection of his Mosk, which with its more splendid successor has perpetuated the tradition unto this day. The Patriarch Eutychius (A. D. 940) accounts for the desertion and desecration of the site as follows: "When the Greeks embraced the Christian faith, Helena the mother of Constantine built Churches in Jerusalem. But the Sakhrah and the parts about it were then covered with

Sanctcrum loco usque in præsentem diem stetit. Abominatio quoque secundùm veterem Scripturam, idolum nuncupatur: et idcirco additur, desolationis; quòd in desolato Templo atque destructo idolum positum sit. Comment. in loc. Op. Tom. iv. col. 115. See p. 127, note 4, for the passage relating to the Temple area, and the gates leading to Siloam; and p. 335, note 8.

It is to be regretted that we have no trustworthy notices of Jerusalem between S. Jerome (cir. 400) and Arculfus (c. 697), except such as are scattered in the pages of Cyril of Scythopolis, and writers of that class. Antoninus Martyr certainly wrote before the time of Mohammed, for he speaks of the Saracens as idolaters, and describes

their idol, of snow-white marble but chameleon propensities (for it became black as pitch at the time of the festival), their priest, and rites in Mount Horeb; but this writer is so obscure, and draws so largely on the faith of his readers, that his narrative serves rather to bewilder than to guide. Of the Temple he says, “Ante ruinas Templi Salomonis sub platea aqua decurrit a fonte Siloe. Secus porticum Salomonis in ipsa Basilica est sedes, in qua sedit Pilatus, quando audivit Dominum." Sect. xx111. Ugolini Thesaurus, Tom. VII. p. mccxvi.

See the account in Vol. 1. p. 316, and notes.

Eutychii Annales, Arab. et Lat. Oxon. 1658, 4to. Tom. 11. pp. 286, 289.

ruins, and were so left. Indeed, they had cast soil on the rock, so that it became a large dunghill, and was altogether neglected by the Greeks, who did not reverence it as the Jews had done. Neither did they build any Church upon it; because our Lord Christ had said in the Holy Gospel, Behold, your house shall be left unto you desolate;' and again, There shall not be left one stone upon another which shall not be cast down and laid waste.' On this account the Christians had left it in ruins, and built no Church upon it."

Notwithstanding, however, this neglect and contempt, it may, I think, be safely admitted that the ruins would not allow the tradition to pass into complete oblivion, and that Omar did succeed in recovering the actual site, as the universal consent of Christian and Jewish writers attests. Nor can I doubt that the venerated pierced rock of the Jews, mentioned by the Bordeaux Pilgrim', is identical with the sacred Sakhrah of the Moslems, and that it marks the position-not of the Holy of Holies, as the later Christian, Jewish, and Moslem authors profess, but as an earlier Christian tradition consistently maintains of the brazen altar2

See the quotation above, p. 334, note 1.

I find a curious confirmation of the idea, that the lapis pertusus is identical with the Sakhrah, and that this rock marks the site not of the Holy of Holies, but of the brazen altar, in this, that while the Bordeaux Pilgrim places the lapis pertusus non longe de statuis, S. Jerome states that the statue occupied the place of the Holy of Holies, see p. 338, note 3. The Christians in later times seem to have

fallen into confusion, by supposing that the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, where David erected the altar (which they uniformly identify with the Sakhrah), became, in the arrangement of the Temple, the place of the Holy of Holies; not, as it really did, of the brazen altar. Compare 1 Chron. xxii. 1, with the preceding Chapter. P. Lemming, in his Specimen of Kemal-ed-din, has collected the various traditions of this Rock, pp. xvi—xxi.