Solomon's temple stood in Jerusalem for almost 400 years. It was the crown jewel of Jerusalem, and the center of worship to the Lord. Understanding the significance of its location, history, and design can greatly add to one's reverence for one of the most holy places in the world.
Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple ( 'First House of the Sanctum'), was the first Temple in Jerusalem, according to the Hebrew Bible. It was built during Solomon's reign over the United Kingdom of Israel and was fully constructed by c. 957 BCE.
It stood for almost four centuries until its destruction in 587/586 BCE by the Neo-Babylonian Empire under the second Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, who subsequently exiled the Judeans to Babylon following the fall of the Kingdom of Judah and its annexation as a Babylonian province.
The destruction of the Temple and the Babylonian exile were seen as fulfillments of Biblical prophecies and consequently strengthened Judaic religious beliefs, beginning the Israelites' transition from the polytheistic or monolatristic beliefs of Yahwism to the monotheistic beliefs developed in Judaism.
The Hebrew Bible of Judaism (or Old Testament of Christianity) narrates how Solomon's father David united the twelve Israelite tribes, conquered Jerusalem and brought the Israelites' central artifact, the Ark of the Covenant, into the city.
David subsequently chose Mount Moriah in Jerusalem as the site for a future temple to house the Ark, however, God forbade him from building it because he had "shed much blood".
The First Temple was instead constructed under his son Solomon, who became an ambitious builder of public works in ancient Israel. He placed the Ark in the Holy of Holies, the windowless innermost sanctuary and most sacred area of the temple in which God's presence rested, entry into the Holy of Holies was heavily restricted, and only the High Priest of Israel entered the sanctuary once per year on Yom Kippur, carrying the blood of a sacrificial lamb and burning incense.
According to the Bible, the Temple not only served as a religious building for worship, but also as a place of assembly for the Israelites. The Jews who had been deported in the aftermath of the Babylonian conquest of Judah were eventually allowed to return following a proclamation by the Persian king Cyrus the Great that was issued after the fall of Babylon to the Achaemenid Empire. The returned Jewish population in Judah, under Persian provincial governance, rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, yielding what is known as the Second Temple; the rebuilt Temple no longer housed the Ark, as it had disappeared.
Most scholars today agree that a temple existed on the Temple Mount by the time of Nebuchadnezzar II's siege of Jerusalem, however, its construction date and the identity of its builder are debated.[8] The Books of Kings include a much-detailed description of the construction of a temple by the Israelite king Solomon, dated to the 10th century BCE, which previous generations of scholars had accepted as authentic. Since the 1980s, skeptical approaches to the Biblical text and the archaeological record led some scholars to doubt whether any temple at all was constructed in Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE.
Others suggested that Solomon's original temple was modest, and was later rebuilt in a larger scale during the late-monarchical period.[10] No direct evidence for the existence of Solomon's Temple has been found, however, no real archaeological excavations have ever been conducted on the Temple Mount due to the extreme political sensitivity of the site. Some scholars believe that an inscription on a pottery shard, known as Ostracon 18, that was written around 600 BCE, references the Temple in Jerusalem If so, it would be the only extra-Biblical corroboration of the Temple found.
In the last decade, the picture has been changed by new findings from two ancient Israelite sites in modern-day Israel: a shrine model of the early-10th century BCE from Khirbet Qeiyafa and an actual temple found in Motza on the outskirts of West Jerusalem which dates back to the 9th century BCE. Both bear resemblance to Solomon's Temple as it is described in the Bible.