Who Built Solomon's Temple?, Transcript

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(00:00) um Marcus agria uh you know luuk eelus Consul tertium faket so in other words um Marcus agria the son of Lucius made this building when he was consul for the third time so it almost sort of says uh who built the pantheon agria so agria was the great um Admiral uh who fought uh for Octavian the Emperor Augustus uh in during the Roman Civil Wars and the the pantheon says that he built it on the front of it and yet the actual answer is that the emperor hadrien is who built the pantheon uh he built it uh more than a century after um Agrippa had

(00:42) died um and and the and the the reason why it has that is that there was an earlier Temple that that Agrippa did build uh of which the only part that survives is that little front part the facade that says agria built me uh instead uh hadrien who is again one of the great uh building emperor of the Roman Empire he famous for building the wall in Britain um uh built what is still the largest um uh unsupported I think concrete Dome that's ever been built in in in the in the world in the pantheon it's an amazing U

(01:18) building so for the to get to the question who built Solomon's Temple we have to kind of ask what do we mean by Solomon's Temple um so I mean here's an idealized picture of Jerusalem from The nurburg Chronicle so from the 15th uh century and there are also other medieval ones that go back where they have it the same um in the Middle Ages the Christians who uh conquered Jerusalem as Crusaders they identified the mosque the Dome of the Rock as the Temple of Solomon and you can see it it says that in this diagram

(01:54) there is a there's a domed temple in the center called templum salomonis um and so because the control of that structure that mosque was given to the Knights Templar the Templars if you are familiar with them um they took their name from the fact that they had you know they they had their headquarters uh in the Dome of the Rock which they considered to be Solomon's Temple so um this of course is not Solomon's Temple despite the what medieval people just decided it was um it's rather one of the oldest extant

(02:29) works of Islam architecture the Dome of the Rock was built at the end of the 7th Century on the Temple Mount platform um that was actually constructed by King Herod the Great um and right before the beginning of in the first at the end of the first century BC so who's Herod so Herod the Great um was King uh king of Jerusalem King of Judea uh and he was though a client King of the Roman Empire so at this point the Roman Empire totally dominates the entire Mediterranean world but not every component of it um is incorporated into the Empire as a province that's ruled

(03:10) directly by uh a provincial Governor instead some are nominally independent with their own their own client their own kind of Kings but they are kings that have to do what Rome says and so those are called client Kings um Herod uh um is one is probably the greatest builder of any ancient ruler of of uh of Judea of Palestine that area and he undertook very massive building projects uh including completely rebuilding um the second Jerusalem Temple so that second Jerusalem Temple is the one that had originally been constructed by uh

(03:47) the E Exiles the exiled judeans who were returning from Babylon in 5:116 um and they were led by judeans who are in fact officials um of the Persian Emperor and it's because at this time both Babylon and uh the territory of Jerusalem um are part of the Persian Empire and our province is the Persian Empire so it's not the second temple is not built by an independent Kingdom but rather it's built by uh uh Jewish Persian officials okay and although we sometimes like look at that part in the middle of herod's Temple and we think that's the

(04:25) temple um actually the whole Precinct um and so this what we make sometimes called the Temple Mount um it's a platform though it's an art I mean there's a mount underneath it that was the original Temple Mount but there's an artificial platform um that Herod uh constructed and in fact the big platform part is actually the the more substantial part of what get got built that was actually kind of one of the larger um uh building projects in the uh first century BC in the Middle East like this it's a very enormous project um and that's the component that actually um

(05:03) you know had survived the destruction uh when the Romans uh after uh Judean re Revolt the Romans took Jerusalem and and destroyed uh the temple and then later after a second Revolt um they destroyed the city ex exiled all judeans from there and um refounded it actually again Hadrian Emperor Hadrian refounded it as a um as a as a pagan City Alia capitalina um whose ancient um the ancient stuff that's in Jerusalem today largely is from that uh rebuilding so anyway when we think of that that today Jerusalem today um the

(05:47) Western Wall The Wailing Wall sometimes called um which is very uh sacred to the Jewish people that's actually not you know the the side of let's say Solomon's Temple or herod's Temple but in terms of the the holy part in the middle middle but rather it's the side the Western portion of that um Temple platform uh that Herod the Great built so you can kind of see how it fits there with in the Dome of the Rock on top of the platform so um so then this internal components like the this is actually the holy place within the temple um and so you can kind of see here this is a

(06:23) reconstructed comparisons computer generated comparisons um of kind of the scale of what Herod Temple that was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD um would have looked like maybe in comparison to what uh Solomon's Temple or the the temple that was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC would it looked like and so obviously herod's Temple is uh much larger it's from a much later time period with much you know much richer uh uh the time period of the Roman Empire as opposed to the the Iron Age um at the time of you know the Babylonian

(07:01) Empire so what we mean then by Solomon Temple is the building anyway that was destroyed in 586 uh by the Babylonians um for this even though we've seen all these architectural um reconstructions that I keep showing that different people have made um there is absolutely no archaeological evidence in fact no archa archaeology has ever been done because that's impossible because of the the structure um if any remains existed it would be underneath the dumb of The Rock and it's not able to be um excavated as

(07:35) a result of that um but even if we could which we can't um the idea of it um is most likely actually that if there had been any remains of this structure um they would have been probably totally destroyed when Herod uh went forward and just wiped the Temple Mount clean in order to build his giant platform so probably any remains that existed would have been destroyed at that time and so probably doesn't have anything in underneath there but obviously people would like to know if they could um so all of these pictoral reconstructions

(08:09) are uh based on just on the literary descriptions that are found in the Bible um so herod's Temple you know it's has AR it has massive architectural I'm sorry archaeological remains so we've seen the platform for example and there's also some Contemporary Images we can kind of get a sense of what it looks like because they have coins for example that that have pictures of it um we don't have anything like that for Solomon's Temple so um all of the ideas that people have about it are essentially based on the literary

(08:37) descriptions found in the Bible and then just comparative stuff they look at what other um uh Canaanite and pho in other words people who are ethnically similar neighbors um what their temples look like so the Bible contains a very detailed description of the temple actually um and and it's specifically probably the the description is of it of how the building would have existed at the time of its destruction um uh a lot of archaeologists have said that it's probably very similar actually uh in terms of design to what a contemporary

(09:15) uh Pagan Temple would be in like the Phoenician or um other um Le lentine areas um and and in fact even in the biblical narrative there is the um understanding that Solomon had conted king hyam of Ty uh in order to get um Cedar beams but in other words also maybe to it's reflecting that um Phoenician connection um as with all these kind of temples we don't have this um we don't have these experiences as much in the west where we see these because um synagogues and mosques and churches the idea of these places of worship now are uh for people to come

(09:57) inside and be together in in in prayer and other kinds of um Services involving people ancient temples by contrast are not anything that anybody all the people get to go in other than the high priests and things like that um instead these are actually literally houses for the Gods in this case the house for God uh and so as a result it's it's like a house that's enclosed as a as a shrine as opposed to something that anybody goes into for worship um the worship is done on the outside where the the animal sacrifices and other sacrifices happen so people Gather in that big um Courtyard and things the

(10:35) markets so most contemporary temples um would have had large cult statues of the god or Gods uh goddesses to whom the house is dedicated um Solomon's Temple as described in the Bible lacks such a statue and instead um the Bible says the temple holy of holies so the innermost house there contained two cherubim which probably would have looked like you've probably seen these Assyrian uh winged winged lions or winged bulls with uh with human heads um which they're outspread Wings then would cover a cult

(11:10) object that's able to be moved around the Ark of the Covenant um which the Bible describes as a kind of a box that contains things like the uh tablets of the Ten Commandments okay so given that our description of the temple comes from the Bible and the Bible also indicates that Solomon built the Temple shouldn't that just answer our question right so in other words we built Solomon's Temple Solomon right and um it's not as easy as that so the the fact is that ancient and medieval authors are able to be much more reliable when they're com

(11:47) commenting on contemporary events and artifacts so if they're just telling um the story of what is happening in their own lifetime or their reign of the king that they are actually serving um they they have more reliable information now they may be they may be biased they may only be uh if they may be actually commissioned by that King and therefore only telling the good stuff um but for example if they are describing um let's say a contemporary building like a temple that they that either either have spent a lot of time

(12:19) and maybe it just got destroyed and they're writing down what it was like or something like that beforehand their memory is probably all right and they can do it fairly good um and so the book of Kings which is our source for the description of the temple it's part of this um set of books in the Bible that we call the deuteronomistic history um and so these are the books that are going from um right after the pentat right after the Torah so um it's sort of these history books that are Joshua and judges down through you know Samuel and Kings um this uh these go are written

(12:57) together and they told a continuous story the time of the Temple's they're written around the time of the Temple's con destruction in 586 so maybe a little bit before and maybe edited somewhat after um and thus as um as its description of the temple is probably likely to be Fairly reliable most Scholars don't um think that um as opposed to for example the Visionary Temple that Ezekiel describes which did not ever exist but is a Visionary one that isn't like anything that was built because nothing like that ever ever existed it's Visionary um this the

(13:30) temple described uh in in the dter nstic history in the book of Kings is completely reasonable to have existed I mean you already saw in the in the diagram before the size of that compared to for example even herod's Temple which we also know existed so um that said even though we probably have a fairly good description of what the the temple actually was um the deuteronomistic history is also the source for King Solomon and the problem here is that King Solomon would Liv three or four centuries prior to the time when that

(14:03) text is being composed and so like I say even though the D nistic historians the people that are writing the book of Kings would have been in a very good position to be able to describe a contemporary Temple when they're trying to tell stories of somebody as far removed as Solomon um what they're doing is going to be much closer to what for example Homer and your contemporary is doing when he's describing U the Legends and Legend figures like adicus or King pre of Troy talking about the Trojan War um there was a historical memory there

(14:38) but nothing in the um in the story as told in The Iliad and then the Odyssey um you know is actually those are not actually historical stories they are um anyway legendary Mythic accounts and so we're probably dealing with something much more like that with Solomon so um the deuteronomic so this is just like to get into a little bit about this deuteronomic and deuteronomistic history that I've been talking about so there's a um at least an initial draft and then there is a later revision that it looks

(15:14) like and so um the initial draft looks like it was written before um you know the the death of King Josiah and the fall of Jerusalem and then the redactor um has maybe made a couple edits to uh to fix it now that um some of the predictions of for example uh the kingdom Never Falling um have to be re Rewritten a little bit in light of the fact that it fell right uh and so um after the fall of Jerusalem the text was continued a little bit and then also edited to explain the fall um and it may be that there's a final redactor who

(15:48) made Ed edits as late as the time of Ezra the fifth century BCE in other words after the Exiles come back and rebuild the second temple that might be the last when we get the final version of it so so we're not going to go into total depth but I made a little bit of timeline because I tried to keep track of these things but um essentially uh if we get over to the right hand side here of the timeline you can kind of see kind of the Assyrian period the Babylonian period and the Persian period which I'm

(16:18) you know color blocking there um and so really um the earliest components of the Bible start to be written a little bit before the Assyrians conquer Samaria the Northern Kingdom of Israel and all of these Exiles from the northern kingdom come down to be a part of Jerusalem and then the you know richest early biblical writing time period is that green time period of kind of a of Jerusalem as a as kind of either being a dependent or uh or holding out against the Assyrians and before the Assyrians uh overthrow the uh I'm sorry

(16:56) the Babylonians overthrow the Assyrian Empire and ultimately um destroy Jerusalem and so and then the the final editing and things like that come in the Persian period when the Exiles return from Babylon and you can kind of see I ran across the top of there I showed kind of where the Trojan War kind of is taking place and to where the Dark Ages and then also this time period uh on the right here between when the the components of the Bible are being written and then this time period this legendary time period when Saul and

(17:27) David uh and SA um are remembered to have existed in the text which is just so so far removed from when the writing happens so who was Solomon though according to the Bible so the kings of Judah at the time of Jerusalem's destructions in other words when the texts are getting written down they were from a royal family that's called The House of David and that name House of David is actually uh attested in historical Source outside of the Bible so so um we do have that so it's a from a non-biblical source that is confirming that that's the name of the royal uh

(18:08) family at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem however although that some people say that that confirms that David is actually a historical figure it isn't actually doing that what it is actually doing is it's saying that the Royal house um was named that they went by that name and and it it implies that they probably um traced their ancestry to uh an what's called an aonomus ancestor so in other words they're called The House of David so at some point or other they assume or they presume that their ancestor was named David they might not have very much in

(18:45) the way of of of of anything about him um but anyway the the stories could therefore have just simply been attached to the Royal House in order to um in order to tell wonderful stories about about the king's ancestors essentially so we can't say that that makes David a historical figure although it could have been but we might not know anything about that figure other than is the ancestor of the Kings so however in the Bible um you know it it is they do talk a lot about David so the Bible as we have it David's the primary hero specifically of this this section of the Bible that we've

(19:21) been talking about the deuteronomistic histories and so that um actually follows a there's a whole series of kind of DAV David sagas so he starts out as a Shepherd boy we saw that Michelangelo the boy who kills the giant goath then goes on to be sort of a a bandit when um King Saul is the king of of Israel so Saul who is from the northern uh Kingdom area um and so during that time period uh David is down in the hills of Judah essentially being like a kind of a mercenary Bandit uh and then when uh Falls and and and his house is destroyed um David takes over he'd already been

(20:05) appointed as uh in the book in the text anyway as God's choice for King now he becomes king so even though that happens though um and he's the hero uh once the the kind of the kingly section starts um as King David falls into temptation and uh and actually serious errors including um this description of his affair with basheba and who is the wife of one of his so ERS UAH the hittite and um because he anyway wants to be able to I mean he's already had an affair with basiba and he wants to be able to marry her he actually um contri uh conspires

(20:43) to have Uriah killed uh which that which ends up happening and so he's end up able to be married to Bas Sheba and the text actually introduces Solomon so who's Solomon Solomon is the eldest surviving son of David and baath sheba this um wife that he has had an affair with you know somebody his his soldier's wife according to the text and then really I mean at the end it also infeed and and um and also you know quite pathetic end for for David um and so in his old age David is a very um feeble ruler his court is really torn apart by uh all

(21:23) this infighting between all of his many wives and their sons um as each one of them VI to have their their son their portion of the clan become the next king succeed David um um in the meantime they're they're uh essentially behaving out of control so David's son amnon um rapes his sister Tamar another David's daughter um later David's most beloved Son absolum uh Rebels um but uh David is actually more anguished um when he finds out that absalon's been killed by David's loyal General then then he has actually concerned for the Kingdom's

(22:03) safety as everything is falling apart um and so not a not having a good end as an aging king um when David's eldest after epson's death when his eldest remaining son adona moves to become uh accepted as king uh ba Sheba then her you know this comes in and schemes essentially she successfully manipulates the Aging David into designating her son Solomon as the heir to the throne and then then when David dies Solomon um goes ahead and puts his half brother adona to death in order to secure his own hold on the

(22:36) Kingdom so it is um a courtly Intrigue story and all kinds of Court politics and treachery that occur in the deuteronomistic histories here um as king um Solomon is blessed with wisdom which also allows him to become fabulously wealthy so it's described then as this amazing time of uh of economic increase and that's where the narrative comes for him building Temple to the Lord uh and also building an even bigger Palace for himself um based on that reputation for wisdom that he has in the Deuter nistic

(23:17) history which is part of the oldest older part of the Bible there's some prophetic works that are the oldest parts and then this is um some of the older Works um many later uh Jewish Sages uh end up attributing their books to Solomon they want um Solomon's essentially in premature to say if you put that on on these Proverbs if we say this is the wisdom that Solomon spoke then people are going to pay more attention to them and so explicitly the books of Proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Solomon wisdom of Solomon they all claim Solomon as their author but they're all

(23:50) compiled um long after the book of kings and we already saw that the book of Kings is three or four centuries after Solomon's lifetime so um none of these these cases I these books are all pseudepigraphical or they pseudo Solomon not really Solomon um the courtly narrative continues even with Solomon though so um Solomon is also said to marry numerous foreign wives including uh one of Pharaoh's daughters so obviously it's a he's a very um that's a huge coup if anybody can actually marry to pho's royal family it's not usually allowed the um I mentioned Song of

(24:28) Solomon is one of the ones that's attributed to him that's based on a relationship uh described in in Kings with that Solomon has with the Queen of Sheba which is to say the area of Arabia maybe Yemen now uh which is where all of this very um lucrative um spice trade and everything from the East is coming coming up the kind of the Caravan routs uh from Arabia and before that uh through the Indian Ocean to get into this spice areas um maybe not happening actually at Solomon's time but is happening at the time of the that the text is being

(25:08) written so um anyway in his old age um according to the text Solomon begins to worship all of his wife's gods and so estarte of sidon Milan and Molech of Ammon chemes of Moab and in all of these cases he brings um their uh idols and cult into the Temple and so those all become part of the temple which is um described then thereafter until uh until the time of Hezekiah as as not simply being um u a place where Yahweh alone is worshiped but rather where a whole Pantheon of gods is worshiped so one of the things one of

(25:52) the reasons why people have argued for a long time well this this kind of reads like a history because um you'd want to leave this stuff out if you could um and so for example when the biblical um when a Biblical author actually reworks Samuel and Kings so the author of the book of Chronicles 1 and 2 Chronicles um is a much later author uh who is pretending to have all of these sources at hand that have all been lost but actually is very clearly using the deuteron nimous histor the books of Samuel the books of Kings in order to make a sanitized version of them one

(26:35) that doesn't have all of this court Intrigue and Scandal and so if you were to just if we had missed we hopeful the chronicler was hoping to replace those books and get rid of them um that didn't end up happening instead they end up being right next to each other and so we can see what the chronicler is trying to do in terms of sanitizing and so um in Chronicles then there's no seduction of bath Sheba by David there's no court Intrigue there's no incest there's no rebellion of sons it's only a very orderly succession from David to Solomon

(27:05) and there's no um Solomon imposing idolatry or anything like that in the chronicle version and so we kind of call this the Criterion of embarrassment um the idea that the deuteronomistic history Samuel the Kings is filled with such highly unflattering stories about David and Solomon it's made the character seem more lifelike and it also seems like since we're given such mixed portraits um it more likely to be accessing a real historic figures with human imperfections why wouldn't you just um if you were for example a prophet or a religious writer a priest

(27:37) who's writing about um an ancient King you might want to just make him be just so totally amazing that you know he's it's a heliography it's a it's a it's essentially a life of a saint um and so working from that premise um that the biblical accounts were largely historic back in the mid 20th century archaeologists identified a whole bunch of sites as being solomonic so they assumed that Solomon was this great king that ruled this vast Empire and so um in places uh that the Bible verses mentioned megido hazor and gazor

(28:13) um uh the um sites were identified as solomonic which made it seem like there was um archaological evidence for Solomon's building program um but in fact actually since there's nothing on any of those buildings that indicate Solomon or anything like that it's it's actually kind of circular reasoning and what's subsequently been found out is that there are uh buildings that have these interesting structures the sixfold gate houses and things like that there are other ones of these that are outside of what the solomonic realm is and

(28:45) they're not dated to the right time so this is not um it's not actually evidence of Solomon and so um more current ex archaeology in and specifically in Jerusalem itself is I think kind of the um put the brick on the scale in terms of of whether or not Solomon existed as a king who was a ruler over a vast uh uh Empire so Israel finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman um are U uh archaeologists who have written a bunch of different studies and I recommend this book David and Solomon if you're interested in all the things

(29:24) we're talking about they go into a lot of detail but it's a very accessible book um very much worth the read um you know essentially they say that although this kind of out-of-date uh information continues to circulate um the the the situation in Jerusalem has kind of made this idea of a distant solomonic State moot um because the biblical account really squarely identifies Jerusalem as the capital of Solomon's Empire and the center of his building program and and everything else however at that time you know the time in Solomon would have been around Jerusalem really remained a very

(30:01) tiny small Hilltown with only a few hundred inhabitants it simply doesn't have the kind of massive size or structure or Monumental buildings you know other than we can't tell the Temple Mount but even through the city of David also the the whole um Western portion uh that is now part of the city or is little south of there that has been part of the city anciently um none of that was part of the city in the 10th century when Solomon would have been around uh instead that expansion happens later and specifically it happens in the generations immediately uh proceeding and during which uh the B biblical

(30:39) counts are themselves written and so again there as always tends to happen um writers they when they're when they when they're writing they they introduce all kinds of anachronisms when they try to write about the past because they describe what they know in their present and so the Bible doesn't actually describe uh the 10th century see when uh when it's talking about David and Solomon but instead is describing uh the Jerusalem of the present when at that time so Jerusalem's too small like I say to be the capital of this Empire um as

(31:12) existed in uh this is again based on the biblical uh reading and there's not there's no it's not based on history in this case um the town in the 19th century is really tiny for example compared to the very nearby uh philis city of gath and it's really in the 8th Century which is to say just after the destruction of the northern kingdom which we sometimes called Samaria or the Kingdom of Israel that's when Jerusalem really experiences its dramatic growth as it's shown now archaeology and archaeologically and it's it's really it's also its golden age and is is that

(31:49) period Then from the 700 to 587 BC not this um kind of legendary Golden Age period from a thousand to 931 BC as um the Bible kind of remembers so the building in Jerusalem actually corresponds pretty directly to the literary output so this substantial Construction in Jerusalem as a royal Center corresponds really with the remarkable amount of literary output that resulted in our Biblical sourice texts so again like I say that doesn't correspond to the Reigns of David and Solomon but rather to the later divided Kings Hezekiah Manasseh and

(32:28) Josiah and those are really the important um Kings for you know the time period of when uh the biblical texts are being the earliest texts are being composed so as with all texts the authors know more about their own present than they understood about the past so let's look at it a little bit so Hezekiah is probably I mean it's just about the most important um King actually I think in in the history of Judah even it's the actual history um because um he's King soon after the fall of Israel to Assyria the northern kingdom and he just Exiles this I'm

(33:07) sorry he he welcomes this enormous number of Exiles into his court um the the the territory of Judah maybe doubled or more in population um primarily because Northern Exiles were moving south and many of these would have been um very the the at the center the ones that came to Jerusalem are are probably people from the from the northern Court um who have now come South and have helped um Judah become U you know much more substantial than it had ever been uh when the northern kingdom existed so before this time Judah May well have

(33:47) just simply been a vassal Hill tribe of Israel so a vassal state of the northern kingdom now it becomes developed into its own kind of kingdom and even during the for a certain amount of time during the reign of Hezekiah Jerusalem he has um uh built up Jerusalem so much and and fortified it and he he's added for example um this amazing kind of underground uh water tunnel that allows the city to be um supplied with water during a Siege he's able to um hold off the armies of Assyria hold off uh king sarb um during a large Siege so the rest

(34:24) of Judea is is um is ravaged by the Assan syrians but the Assyrians are not able to actually topple Hezekiah and Jerusalem um one of the other things though that Hezekiah does that's just incredibly important to um you know kind of the history of judeo-christianity Islam in other words the entire Western tradition is introduce um monolatry um got getting rid of the uh Idols or just the other all the other um gods that are worshiped in the temple and in dead insists that the worship on the entire Kingdom um is to be

(35:02) centralized at the temple in Jerusalem which is now going to be the Temple of the god of Israel alone uh of Yahweh alone and so he goes around and he destroys all of the high places which is to say all of the local shrines uh where previously um levitical priests have been able to have temples for for time since time in Memorial um and now all the kingdoms um uh all the kingdoms worship is to sacrifices are to be centralized just in Jerusalem and it even says the Bible even says that this is he went and destroyed the nushan which is to say a staff the the bronze staff that Moses had made um which by

(35:40) implication had become a pagan cult item and so um he's part as part of his religious reform he is centralizing everything and destroying local shrines even when they have um connections to to Moses and so um just by way of context here again um when all of this is happening um this is a kind of a a map of the Assyrian Empire and it's not usually shown this way but I think this is more more useful the dark green areas are that are ruled directly by Assyrians as provinces and that includes as we we'll zoom in over here onto the um letine area that

(36:20) includes the areas that had been the noran kingdom specifically kind of the rump area uh Samaria but also um these areas that would have constituted part of the northern kingdom megiddo Gilead dor all that that kind of area and then you can see the Judah is its own kingdom but it's a tributary Kingdom in other words it's a client Kingdom um along with Ammon Moab Edom Damascus and tire um and so although the maps tend to emphasize kind of this Independence of the kingdom of Judah really its rise uh comes after the destruction of Samaria

(36:54) when all of these um Exiles come and help it build up um but it's also integrated into the economic orbit of the Assyrian Empire so there's this vast um increase in terms of being able to for example um increase Olive cultivation uh standardize weights and measures and so on and so forth so they're able to actually export into this larger economic system of the ins Syrian Empire which is what allows uh the kind of growth of Jerusalem and and the the building the fact that there's now this Elite Class that's actually doing all of this

(37:30) writing so after Hezekiah um his son Manasseh has essentially the longest and most successful reign in judas's history um however because he reverses all of his father's religious reforms and so he rebuilds all the high places and he restores all of the different Idols all the different statues to the other gods Ashera Bal and so on into the temple um including Reviving the Canaanite practice of child sacrific to Molech including um the practices of having uh you know Temple prostitution and all those kind of things that all is returned um as a result of all of that

(38:07) the the compiler of the deuteronomistic history the Bible is not a fan of this guy nevertheless um they having trouble trying to explain why um why he had a long peaceful and Incredibly economically successful reign of 55 years um when he dies his grandson Josiah uh returns as does the faction um uh his essentially his corders his um um officials that are the mon monolist so in other words the people who want that religious reform as a result Josiah uh does the thing where he destroys the high places again he cleanses the temple again and he actually goes up and

(38:49) destroys an very important Shrine from the northern kingdom uh at a place called bethl um where the patriarch Jacob met God so was the house of the Lord this had been one of the most important cult centers and so it's still part of the Assyrian Empire but it's um but the people it's close enough the people could go there as kind of a rival Shrine from Judah now he wipes that place out um as part of Josiah's reform The Scribe hilaya finds a book of Law and so that's speculated that that book that's found in the temple um may be the

(39:22) book of Deuteronomy or maybe it's the book of Deuteronomy and the first draft of the deuteronomistic history so one thing that we can say about uh Josiah is that Josiah is called by the damic historian and new David um and so because no king is honored by the deuteronomic historian as much as doah um that's led to speculation by Scholars that the first draft that phase one of the deuteronomic history is actually composed in Josiah's Reign um in part because um even though Josiah is called such a great king uh and he's favorably compared to David

(40:01) um uh he's I mean's he's the only king that's favorably compared to David he's a new David um and his works are actually written into the text as a fulfillment of Prophecy so um in the deuteronomic history it predicts that a new a king will one day destroy that shrine at bethl and and Josiah does that right uh but unexpectedly um Josiah is killed um by Pharaoh Neco II at megido and so um that that is later thought of as being a battle and that is where we get this idea Armageddon the coner makes that into a battle it's not likely to be

(40:39) a battle it's probably um Josiah came um before Pharaoh as potentially as a client as the Pharaoh is attempting to uh overthrow uh just you know throw off the Assyrians um and so as a result of that um though he for some reason it does not incl anyway it's not recorded um he is killed and so that um makes the all the Prophecies of the deuteronomists um you know kind of be Hollow uh and so Judah Falls uh fairly soon after a couple succession of Fairly weak Kings it falls to the Babylonians and that at that point as I say the first draft of the deuteronomic histories is is revised and edited a bit

(41:23) but kind of lightly actually so so just getting back then with all of that kind of uh context and things like that you know who built the temple as described um you know prior to 586 so right when the temple the description we have is the temple in kind of its final form as it's been purged of of all of the idols and things like that that's the temple as it would have been existing at the time of Josiah um um there would have been shrines on this site going back to time immemorial but they would have been much different already just within um two

(42:04) generations of Josiah the temple would have been quite different U because the temple would have been the center of a much more regular um uh Pagan style worship where there which would have been quite quite in keeping with the local Phoenicians and and other um related peoples um but it's only it's only with hezek and then not during Manassa but again with Josiah and and forward onward um that the the shrine is changed that the temple is changed uh so that its focus is it's the sole source of f of worship within the so legitimate place of worship for uh the kingdom of

(42:47) Judah and also that the only the god of Israel Yahweh is worship there um and so in that sense uh in terms of the size um and and the the building as it was um the most likely um scenario because of its size is that it's built uh at the time of the kind of building programs so either under Hezekiah or his immediate predecessors manasse or Josiah um and it maybe you know having been upgraded and built up in maybe under each one of them and so it may be just Josiah is is where the final form he's done enough to it that he's kind kind of the Builder of it um there's very there will have been very little

(43:32) that could have survived back all the way from uh the time period um of the kind of the legendary Solomon's era in terms of what would have been around and indeed that would have been anyway like I say a much a much smaller Shrine and cult Center essentially just a high place um from the center of uh what would have been you know a small settlement of a few hundred people uh of the on the city of David that is the town of David um back in that kind of uh fall before the U fall of the northern kingdom to the uh the Assyrians and so anyway as always with all of these

(44:10) things what we find with with the texts are that um the texts describe um the time period of the authors um not the time period that the authors are trying to write about that they don't really know that much about um because they're specifically they're not historians they don't have access to all of the history and information and academic disciplines that we have now so that's my um take on who built the temple of Solomon and I guess what we'll do is ask um Leandro I gotta get my phone ask Leandro if there have already been questions and maybe he's already been

(44:51) sending them to me and I will try to find and so I'll invite you now also if you had any comments or questions or anything that you've um thought of in all of this go back to the map here because I there's something cool so Leon asks um I may have missed something but I thought I heard you say at Solomon Solomon's time frame Jerusalem was a small town so then do I understand that the Temple of Solomon was not in Jerusalem so yes that means to say this Temple got to find this where the bigger one here is um when we look at this

(45:44) Temple here this structure would not have existed at Solomon's time so we would have had instead is a much smaller Shrine um and Solomon is there's no evidence at all that uh that Solomon is an actual historical figure there doesn't um he doesn't exist in any other source until the deuteronomic historian uh source and so since it's hundreds of years later um there's no I mean it could be there's the name the name is associated with the building for some reason and so that's been uh put in but whether or not there's any any history

(46:20) behind Solomon at all we wouldn't know but certainly this structure would not have existed in Solomon's time if that's what sure if that's what you're asking so this structure instead uh is the structure that would have existed at the time of Josiah certainly but maybe also Manasseh and maybe maybe Hezekiah uh and then but yet I think I heard you say King he Hezekiah purged Jerusalem the Jerusalem Temple of other gods Etc so yes so according to the biblical narrative so the difference here is between so when we we have two different issues which is we we only have a picture a literary picture of

(46:58) when the temple would have been in its final form um and the Bible doesn't tell us when that happened because it um it uh it tells us instead that the structure had been built back in Solomon's day and so anyway the idea of it is that because by the time it's being written they're still having the sense that the original building was old so some components of this will have probably dated all the way back to either Hezekiah or his immediate predecessors when the building really starts going um but they also could have they also could have been upgrading and

(47:31) building it up and making it bigger and so on at at different times um but essentially to the point of it from this is not something that existed in in in David and Solomon's time but um but the Bible talks about it that way and so the confusion maybe is that I was um for some of this I was talking about the biblical narrative but then we're also done trying to figure out when the structure um came into existence and so that's two things that are also going on here the one is going from a fairly regular um um Pagan cult Center um like

(48:06) any other thing like like what they would have in in Damascus or or or in Ty or siden um and then to this this particular kind of a u a national god shrine where where the whole the whole state is essentially unified by the worship of just their own god um and they can only do it at the one sent and so that's uh that's the reform of the religion that's happening under Hezekiah and then being renewed under Josiah after Manasseh uh goes back to the old way so okay oh Leon says oh I asked my question too soon so if I understand

(48:43) correctly then that uh that Solomon probably built no Temple structure in his Reign so yeah and so I we talked about this a little bit and so maybe even one more one more layer like I said there's no particular reason to imagine that the Solomon is a historical character so I would call him a legendary figure and it would be similar to um you know when when uh Herodotus is is telling he might be telling stories about Athenian history and talking about Theus as a as a king of Athens Theus Who U goes and overthrows the minoan uh tribute by killing the minitar so it

(49:19) doesn't mean that there's no chance that there was a guy named Theus but the stories that we know about him are Legend SL myth they're literary as opposed to historical um sunny today says I read somewhere uh that Yahweh was originally a sky God do you think that can be true so landro is the real [Music] expert what do you want to say Leandro wasy yeah so so yeah so the so Yahweh is a um there's a combination of things we take the name Yahweh uh because because Yahweh becomes the focus of the entire State religion the state religion originally is polytheistic so it has

(50:04) multiple gods um and Yahweh takes on the characteristics of lots of these Gods so Yahweh becomes is a combination of Yahweh who had been um is actually we don't know that much about but anyway that we know a little bit about but then also the more commonly known Canaanite god specifically l so we know that if for example that one of the main words for God in the Old Testament is Elohim L is the name though of um essentially the sky God the Father God the god that is kind of like um Saturn or Kronos this God that is the more or or Uranus or

(50:40) Uranus in other words that these gods that are the more um um less fleshy the more Cosmic um uh more Elemental um Sky God kind of thing and so L ceases to have the those all the characteristics of the Alla kind of thing are are absorbed into Yahweh just as um balls um stories and characteristics are absorbed and also uh asherz so even even consort uh his wife her characteristics are also kind of absorbed in the end into the the combined understanding of the the one God um Bruce Nelson wonderful I learned a lot um this changes my mental map of

(51:27) period yeah I mean the map part I think is actually also pretty interesting because we tend to I feel like we see um you know these stories when we're really almost always are picturing kind of an independent um you know the biblical Kingdom as being kind of this own little independent Kingdom it's usually if it's independent it's usually a client Kingdom and certainly at this um at this height when it's actually um the two heights when it's actually both writing the you know this literary outpouring of writing um the B biblical Source texts

(52:01) that's happening after Samaria and the other Northern areas are already directly incorporated into the Assyrian Empire and when Judah is generally speaking a client State sometimes it's in Rebellion against the Assyrians but in any event is in the Assyrian Network and likewise when when they come back from the Babylonian captivity and uh and they rebuild uh the you know a much reduced even province of Judah yehud is a province of the of the Persian Empire and it's simply a province it's that would be colored in directly Persian color at that point not not a client Kingdom um and then there is a brief

(52:37) period of independence of the hasmonean Kingdom the mccabes uh and then Herod and his successors are are um clients of the Romans and then it's just later incorporated into the Roman Empire so Cory Bell um can anything know be known about the jebusites you know who are said to be in Jerusalem for David um so yeah I think it's that's that's interesting so the um um the idea of that I think as they are um I mean I mean as they as they are essentially trying to make a story about about Jerusalem being founded as a as a universal Kingdom of you that unites the North and South and so I think the

(53:23) reason why biblical the biblical authors why the deuteronomic historian is essentially saying that and putting that into the background of why Jerusalem is the capital is because all of these people from the north maybe half of the population of Judah have come from the Samaria area and have all come down and are refugees and so they are bringing all of their um northern traditions and so it's at the same time period we've had um we've had uh lectures already on the pentat on the sources behind that

(53:53) and so the documentary hypothesis that there is the J Source the E Source the dter the D Source you know the P the P Source all those things anyway so the J source is you know thought to be kind of a judahite source but the es source is thought to be kind of the Traditions a writer from who's writing down the traditions of the northern kingdom the Exiles who have come down uh from Samaria and so probably what's trying to go on here in in all of this literary work is a sense um that the Exile writers and local writers are trying to ones who are trying to unify the state

(54:29) and also to elevate Jerusalem as its capital as if it had been the capital in time you know in an ancient time U so it's giving it that special priority but also giving the Royal House of David who are the patrons of all of this writing um them their kind of legendary or special status um and so it's it's essentially making um the the House of David the actual um spiritual Heirs of the of the heritage of the of the northern kingdom even though it probably had not very little to do with it it had probably been a a small poor tributary of the northern kingdom um and so can we say anything

(55:09) about the jebusites so the idea what I would just say is is that almost all of these um these people the Judah um Edom Moab Ammon Gilead all Samaria all of these people all the Canaanites even the Phoenicians they're all ethnically just about the same so there isn't um there's probably not um they're all speaking the same language they have all about the same kind of Customs um the divisions into these groupings are are um King groups and things like that and so I don't think that there's any reason to

(55:41) think that they're just simply a a kin group that um to the extent that there's any history behind it at all it's maybe some tradition that they had because that it's too early um for them to have remembered an actual history here but so probably not um Elizabeth in Allan Patton Cry the Beloved Country the main character is a black Minister whose son uh has gone to the city and hasn't been heard of for a year the son's name is Absalon that gives away the plot yeah yeah so like there's a lot of I mean

(56:12) Absalon is the thing about um you know so Absalon has been a has been a story that uh that you know that has resonated with people uh because this is the kind of thing that actually happens it's a very human story and so um and so one of the reasons I think why um the deuteronomic his historian this that these books um have have survived and have been so meaningful for all these thousands of years you know is because they didn't just make some kind of geography if they had just simply written something that is you know like this perfect guy or whatever nobody would have cared about it but because

(56:47) it's like a very human story um that's one of the reasons why it has all of this kind of staying power and these themes continue to resonate and so this is another reason why um we can kind of look at this as probably more likely to have Arisen not as a religious text in a in a kind of a sense of being written by prophets or priests because we kind of know what what the when when a Jewish prophets wrote we kind of know what they sound like they sound like jeriah and Isaiah and all those guys and we also kind of have a sense of what the priests sound like but from just going from the

(57:18) Priestly uh text that's embedded in the pentet which or the Torah which is where it gets boring right so whenever it gets boring you know you're on the priest story and so and so instead though this is probably courtly literature and so this is what um people are creating stories as entertainment for the um or you know as part of the way that create crafting identity they're identity narratives but they're also um what you what are composed by and for the the um the ears of the cour ear um and so and

(57:50) and so that's why they continue to have things like these um Court intrigue the kind of things that would have just been happening all the time which is for thousands of years as long as monarchy continued to exist what's going on in ottum and turkey in terms of um the different all the different wives and all the different kids all wanting to plot to be who's going to be the next Sultan because then they'll kill all the other ones off and so that's the same kind of thing that's happening with Solomon's story so um Raymond writes uh what are your

(58:21) thoughts about the groups that believe the temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem well so anybody who has that sense literally I mean I think that there's no U my thought is that's very dangerous thinking I think that you should there's no reason for um uh I think you to anybody there's no prediction for that that that you should take that anyone should be taking literally in my view of how um prophecy or anything like that works um the the Dome of the Rock is um one of the most important um just even in a secular sense architectur ual

(58:57) structures it's there the idea of doing anything is you know is be is would be uh crime against I don't know human human civilization to if you were going to do anything to that building um I think that if you wanted to make a replica building or a new one you could you could easily do that somewhere else in my view I know that that's not the idea of it that most of the people who are taking this in a very literalistic sense have um nevertheless I actually think um you instead of building that Noah Arc that they bu in Kentucky that somebody should should go to Oklahoma and just make a whole replica that we have that model of Jerusalem just make

(59:34) one uh a a Jerusalem replica and um and they could have all the holidays there and everybody you know would be just this thing that everybody who wants that could have um but yeah no I don't think that it will be done um it's and I don't think I I don't think it should be done uh Leon were the temple worshippers in hezekiah's time actually worshiping a very late and misconstrued understanding of Moses and or Abraham's God so yeah Leandra just commented no from off camera you can maybe hear him but anyway the um so so the answer is is

(1:00:11) that um so the stories of Moses and Abraham are created at this time so what the so what the people it's actually the people in hezekiah's time that are creating the stories of Moses that are that are that are explaining that idea of God so again this is not this is even long before uh Moses and Abraham would be set in time periods far more legendary than Solomon's and so um there is again no reason to assume that those are historical figures and in fact every reason to assume that they're not historical figures and so um R the time

(1:00:53) the the the ideas that are being expressed about Moses and Abraham's understanding of gods are are the ideas that are actually being created are being understood these are new insights about God that are happening in hezekiah's time so what would have happened is all the time before that um things would have been much more and the the religion in this area would have been much more like everybody else around them um and indeed it's it's like everybody else around them up until U almost to the end because manasseh's Reign is is is essentially IND disting isable from everything that went before

(1:01:28) is as described in the Bible so not aaken take yeah one God but it's like the gods of their ancestors the Bible says that you think people can hear you when you talk like that okay well so Leandra has lots of comments on that and so he'll do have a lecture on that again in the future so I think that's all the questions that we've had and so I thank everybody for um for tuning in and like I say we have another lecture on on Thursday at the same time but then Thursday and so you go to his uh historic sites foundation.org in order to participate

(1:02:11) that one's one you have to pre-register in order to get the link for it um but there's actually I think there's already 150 people that have registered so that g to be a nice big lecture and then um like I say we're having a special Sunday service and then our next Tuesday's lecture is going to be on the very hard to grasp but and and even harder to agree with ontological proof for God's existence so thank you again for