Quotes & Sayings About Solomon's Temple

Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon. — Benjamin Disraeli

Solomon's temple also was designed to increase the attractiveness of the city of his residence. — Julius Wellhausen

The Exile In July 587 BCE, Babylonian soldiers broke through Jerusalem's walls, ending a starvation siege that had lasted well over a year. They burned the city and Solomon's temple and took its king and many other leaders to Babylon as captives, leaving others to fend for themselves in the destroyed land. Many surrounding countries disappeared altogether when similar disasters befell them. But Judah did not. Instead, the period scholars most often call the "Babylonian exile" inspired religious leaders to revise parts of Scripture that had been passed down to them. It also sparked the writing of entirely new Scriptures and the revision of ideas about God, creation, and history. Much of what is called the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament was written, edited, and compiled during and after this national tragedy. — Walter Brueggemann

From the building of the temple of Solomon, which is also treated as a leading epoch in chronology, a new period in the history of worship is accordingly dated, - and to a certain extent with justice. — Julius Wellhausen

Each word's evocative value or virtue, its individual power of touching springs in the mind and of initiating visions, becomes a treasure to revel in. Besides this hold on affection a word may well have about it the glamorous prestige of high adventures in great company. Think of that the plain word "dust" calls to mind. "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was." "Dust hath closed Helen's eye." "All follow this and come to dust." "The way to dusty death." So, to the lover of words, each word may be not a precious stone only, but one that has shone on Solomon's temple or in Cleopatra's hair. — C.E. Montague

The First Crusade ... set off on its two-thousand-mile jaunt by massacring Jews, plundering and slaughtering all the way from the Rhine to the Jordan. "In the temple of Solomon," wrote the ecstatic cleric Raimundus de Agiles, "one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses" bridles, by the just and marvelous judgment of God. — Herbert J. Muller

Although the author dealt some of John Bunyan's conclusions in spiritualizing the details of Solomon's Temple, he attributes to Bunyan a "consecrated ingenuity". — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The most well known theory concerning the whereabouts of the Ark, made famous by the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, places it in the ruins of the ancient city of Tanis in Egypt. This theory proposes that the Ark was plundered by the Egyptians shortly after Solomon's death. According to the Old Testament, the pharaoh Sheshonq I of Egypt attacked Jerusalem, raided the Temple, and plundered its treasures (1 Kgs 14:26). Sheshonq I established Tanis as the new Egyptian capital, and so it is here that Indiana Jones discovers the lost Ark in Steven Spielberg's movie. — Graham Phillips

The dust comes secretly day after day, Lies on my ledge and dulls my shining things. But O this dust I shall drive away Is flowers and kings, Is Solomon's temple, poets, Nineveh. — Viola Meynell

Neither the Temple of Solomon, the Second Temple, Mount Gerizim, nor Jerusalem itself replace the existential awareness of God within the soul. Likewise, the ornate sanctuaries of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, neither Westminster Abbey in London, nor Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York contain the Holy Spirit without the faith of their congregants. — James Mikolajczyk

We may rifle the treasures of antiquity and make the heathen contribute to the gospel even as Hiram of Tyre served under Solomon's direction for the building of the Temple. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The representation of the tabernacle arose out of the temple of Solomon as its root, in dependence on the sacred ark, for which there is early testimony, and which in the time of David, and also before it, was sheltered by a tent. — Julius Wellhausen

According to Menander's history, as preserved by Josephus, Hiram began his reign 155 years before the founding of Carthage, and according to the Greek historian Timaeus, Carthage was founded in 814 B.C. This sets the beginning of Hiram's reign at 969 B.C. (Liver, 1953, 116). Josephus then dates the beginning of the construction of Solomon's temple to either the 11th (according to Against Apion i 126) or the 12th (according to Jewish Antiquities viii 62) years of Hiram's reign. — Charles River Editors

Wow! So how Solomon's ushers dressed mattered? How the building was built mattered? How the greeters greeted mattered? How the entryway was organized mattered? You better believe it! To this queen, they were all evidence that validated the reality of God at work in Solomon's temple. Notice it says she "had seen all the wisdom of Solomon." How do you "see" wisdom? Every aspect of the temple and its people were managed and trained to create this impression. She was convinced before she even heard Solomon speak. She goes on . . . How the entryway was organized mattered? To this queen, they were all evidence that validated the reality of God at work in Solomon's temple. "However I did not believe the words until — Richard L. Reising

Until the building of Solomon's temple the unity of worship according to it had, properly speaking, never had any existence; and, moreover, it is easy to read between the lines that even after that date it was more a pious wish than a practical demand. — Julius Wellhausen

The Kassideans or Assideans ... arose either during the Captivity or soon after the restoration ... The Essenians were, however, undoubtedly connected with the Temple (of Solomon), as their origin is derived by the learned Scalier, with every appearance of truth, from the Kassideans, a fraternity of Jewish devotees, who, in the language of Laurie, had associated together as 'Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem.' ... From the Essenians Pythagoras derived much, if not all, of the knowledge and the ceremonies with which he clothed the esoteric school of his philosophy. — Albert Mackey