Temple

A temple (from the Latin 'templum') is a structure usually built for the purpose of, and always dedicated to, religious or spiritual activities including prayer, meditation, sacrifice and worship. The templum was a sacred precinct defined by a priest (or augur) as the dwelling place of a god or gods and the structure built there was created to honor the Deus Loci of a certain place. The word 'temple' dates to around the 6th century BCE in reference to Roman places of worship.

The oldest known temple is that at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey which is 11,500 years old and is decorated with reliefs and pictograms of various animals thought to represent the gods of that place. The temple is an extraordinary building of the Neolithic era with T-shaped pillars and engravings which have yet to be completely understood. The design of the temple, however, with a large room toward the front (possibly for public functions) is recognized in later temples in other lands.

In the religious customs of ancient Egypt the temple was considered 'the horizon' of a divine being, the point at which the god came into existence at creation, and thus every sacred site had a link to the very distant past and honored the specific god whose temple it was. The temple also was a mirror of the universe and a representation of the ben-ben, the sacred mound which rose out of chaos by the will of Amon at the beginning of time.

Every Egyptian temple followed the same basic design (thought to have been decreed by the gods themselves) of a forecourt and reception area for public gatherings with colonnades and inclines rising higher and higher to smaller and even smaller rooms until one reached the room of the Holy of Holies where the god was thought to reside when visiting earth. Only the high priest of the god of the temple could enter the Holy of Holies.

Ancient Mesopotamian temples fulfilled many roles. Not only were they the house of the local god or the patron god of the city, they were also the administrative centers of the first cities in Babylonia. Uruk, once the largest city of the ancient world, was ruled by a priest-king, and it is believed that many early Mesopotamian cities followed the same model. The temple thus served as a seat of kingship, of administration, and organized the distribution of food among the people.

In Judaism, the original ancient Hebrew language refers not to a 'temple' but to a "sanctuary", "palace" or "hall". Each of the two ancient Temples in Jerusalem was called Beit Hamikdash, which translates literally as "the Holy House" and, in this, the Hebrews either copied or independently arrived at the same conception of a temple that the ancient Egyptians had: that the temple was the house of the god. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the site where the First Temple of Solomon and the Second Temple were built. and at the center of the temple was the Holy of Holies, where, as in Egypt, only the high priest could enter.

The Greek word synagogue came to describe Jewish places of worship during the Babylonian Captivity and meant 'to gather together'. The original Hebrew words Bet Knesset ("House of Meeting") and synagogue designate Jewish temples today.

Most Greek religious buildings in the modern day are referred to as "temples," but the Greek pagans (known only as 'pagans' after the rise of Christianity) would have called a holy place a temenos, or sacred precinct. The sacredness of the place had entirely to do with the spirit of the god who resided there, not with whatever building was later constructed on the spot, as in the case of the Temple of Demeter at Eleusis, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus or the famous Parthenon of Athens which housed the statue of Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin, patron goddess of the city). The building which housed the statue, then, was sacred owing to the original presence there of, or some great deed done by, the god of that place.

In ancient Rome the rituals that located and sited the temple were performed by a high priest, an augur, who, through the observation of the flight of birds or other natural phenomena, understood the loci of the god. Roman temples usually faced east or toward the rising sun, though a notable exception is the great Pantheon which faces north (only preserved after the rise of Christianity because it was made into a church instead of being destroyed and built over, which was the fate of most 'pagan' temples). In ancient Rome, only the deities of the Roman pantheon had a templum; any building honoring a foreign deity was called a fanum. Visitors to Rome were welcome to worship at the fanum of their native gods but were required to worship the gods of Rome in the temples. After the rise of Christianity the word 'temple', with its pagan connotations, was rejected by most Christian congregations in favor of designations such as 'church' or 'cathedral', though the word is still used by the Eastern Orthodox Church to refer to their places of worship.

Written by Joshua J. Mark, published on 02 September 2009 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.