Few buildings have had a symbolic influence comparable to that of the Temple in Jerusalem built by Solomon. No ruins can be identified with certainty, and what we know comes mainly from the Bible. Yet its measurements, carefully described in the First Book of Kings, have been studied, commented on and reinterpreted for centuries by theologians, kabbalists, architects and initiatory societies. For sacred geometry, the Temple is first of all a system of proportions.
The source: the First Book of Kings
Chapters six and seven of the First Book of Kings describe the building of the Temple. The text gives dimensions in cubits, a unit of measurement based on the length of the forearm. The exact value of the ancient cubit is debated, so it is more useful to reason about the ratios between the measurements than about their absolute size.
According to the biblical account, the main building was sixty cubits long, twenty wide and thirty high. The work lasted seven years.
The three parts of the Temple
The Temple was organised along an axis, in three successive spaces:
| Part | Hebrew name | Measurements given in the text |
|---|---|---|
| Porch | Ulam | twenty cubits wide, ten deep |
| Main hall, the Holy Place | Hekhal | forty cubits long |
| Holy of Holies | Devir | twenty by twenty by twenty cubits |
The route led from outside to inside and from the most accessible to the most reserved. The porch opened onto the world; the main hall was the place of daily worship; the Holy of Holies was the innermost room, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. According to later tradition, only the high priest entered it, once a year, on the Day of Atonement.
The cube of the Holy of Holies
The most significant geometric fact is the shape of the Holy of Holies: a perfect cube, with sides of twenty cubits. The text specifies that it was entirely overlaid with gold and that inside it stood two great cherubim of olive wood, ten cubits high, whose wings reached from one wall to the other.
The cube is the solid figure of absolute stability: all faces equal, all angles right, no privileged direction. In many traditions it represents accomplished perfection and the stable presence of the divine. It is no accident that in the Book of Revelation the heavenly Jerusalem is also described with equal length, breadth and height: the cube of the Temple becomes, at the end of time, the whole city.
The relationship between the measurements is worth noting too: twenty cubits on each side for the Holy of Holies, forty for the main hall. The hall was therefore twice as long as the innermost room, and the whole building, at sixty cubits, measured three times as much.
The pillars Jachin and Boaz
In front of the porch stood two bronze pillars, the work of a craftsman named Hiram, from Tyre. The text gives them names:
- Jachin, on the right, a name connected with the idea of «establishing»;
- Boaz, on the left, a name connected with the idea of «strength».
The pillars were topped by capitals decorated with pomegranates and lily-shaped motifs. They supported no structure: they were signs placed on the threshold. Over the centuries Jachin and Boaz have become very well-known symbols, taken up in particular by the Masonic tradition, which places them at the entrance of the symbolic temple.
The bronze sea and the problem of pi
In the courtyard stood a large round bronze basin, called the bronze sea, supported by twelve oxen arranged in four groups of three, facing the four cardinal points. The text states that it measured ten cubits from brim to brim and that a line of thirty cubits went around it.
The ratio between circumference and diameter therefore comes out as three. This passage has been much discussed, because it seems to give an approximate value for π. Some commentators have explained the difference by the thickness of the rim or its flared shape; others see in it simply an approximation in common use. In any case the passage shows that the biblical text did not merely describe objects but carefully recorded their measurements.
The twelve oxen, three for each cardinal point, anticipate a structure that returns in the description of the heavenly Jerusalem, with its twelve gates, three on each side.
The Temple as an image of the cosmos
Many ancient interpreters, Jewish and Christian, read the Temple as a model of the world: the courtyard as the earth, the main hall as the visible heavens, the Holy of Holies as the invisible heaven where God dwells. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus proposed symbolic readings of this kind for various elements of worship.
From this perspective, the route from the entrance to the golden cube is an image of humanity drawing near to the sacred: by degrees, through thresholds, towards an ever more recollected centre. Studio Esoterico Cornelio studies the Temple precisely as the grammar of this path, rather than as an object to be reconstructed.
In short
- The measurements of Solomon's Temple are described in chapters 6 and 7 of the First Book of Kings.
- The building was divided into porch, main hall and Holy of Holies along a single axis.
- The Holy of Holies was a cube twenty cubits on each side, overlaid with gold.
- The pillars Jachin and Boaz marked the threshold and were taken up by many later traditions.
- The bronze sea, ten cubits across and thirty around, rested on twelve oxen.
