JESUS   THE   MESSIAH

His Life and Times

No. 21

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In The Temple of Jerusalem  

It is thought that in the spring of AD 9, that Jesus went up for the first time to the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem.  Coponius would have had the job of Procurator, and Annas ruled in the Temple as High Priest when Jesus appeared among its doctors.  Far more things other than political thoughts must have occupied the mind of Christ, though.  For a very brief time, there was a calm that had fallen upon the land and there was nothing provoking active resistance for them.  The Zealots still existed, but they had just gotten to be a philosophical party and their minds were busy with an ideal that their hands had not yet made into a reality.  

With none of the different factions warring with each other, it was a quiet country for a change when Jesus would have gone up to worship for the very first time.  As the festive people went into the city singing psalms to the accompaniment of the flute, they could totally yield themselves to the spiritual thoughts that might have been kindled by the words they were singing.  

As the pilgrims stood within the gates of Jerusalem, they would have no difficulty finding hospitality.  No matter how crowded the city was, the people of this area considered hospitality to be one of their finest attributes.  The Bible keeps silent on how Jesus must have felt as he entered the city for the very first time and saw its splendor.  It may have been here that Jesus felt the first conscious impulse of His Mission and Being.  He may have been overwhelmed, not by just the grandeur and beauty, but that He was in His Father's House for the first time.  

As a person ascended the Mount to the Temple for the first time, he had to be filled with much enthusiasm.  The Mount was crested by a symmetrically proportioned building that could hold within its walls 210,000 persons.  The Mount itself seemed like an island which abruptly rose from out of a deep valley.  It was surrounded by a sea of walls, palaces, streets, and houses.  But its crowning glory was a mass of snowy marble and glittering gold that rose terrace upon terrace - the Temple itself.  It measured a square of about 1,000 feet.  At its northwest angle, and connected to it, was the Tower of Antonia that was held by the Roman garrison.  The huge walls were pierced by massive gates - the gate Tedi on the north, which was unused;  the Susa Gate on the east, which opened on the arched roadway to the Mount of Olives;  the two Huldah gates, which led by tunnels from the priest-suburb Ophel into the outer Court; and four gates on the west.  

Within the gates all around the inside there were covered double colonnades, with benches for those who wanted to pray or just talk.  The most magnificent of the colonnades was the southern, or twofold double colonnade.  It had a very wide space between the double columns so that people could be cool as they gathered.  Its name was Solomon's Porch, or eastern colonnade.  

If a person entered from the Xystus bridge under the tower of John, they would pass along the southern colonnade (over the tunnel of the Huldah-gates) to its eastern extremity over which another tower rose.  It is this last tower that is thought to be 'the pinnacle' that Satan was trying to tempt Jesus from in Scripture.  It was from this tower that the Kedron valley dropped off 450 feet beneath it.  It was from this highest point that the priest each morning watched and announced the earliest streak of day so that the activities in the Temple could begin. 

According to the description of the Rabbis, after passing Solomon's porch one would have reached the Susa Gate.  It was here that the standard measures of the Temple were said to have been kept.

After one passed out of the porches, he would enter the 'Court of the Gentiles', or what the Rabbis called 'the Mount of the House'.  This was the widest on the west side and got more and more narrow as it went to the east, south, and north.  This was called the Chol, or 'profane' place to which Gentiles had access.

It must have been here where they had the market for the sale of sacrificial animals, the tables of the money-changers, and places for the sale of other needful articles.  After advancing in this Court, you reached a low breast-wall, that marked the space beyond which no Gentile, or Levitically unclean person could proceed.  There were tablets that bore inscriptions that warned them that they could go no further.  

Thirteen openings went into the inner part of the Court.  Then there were 14 steps that led up to the Chel or Terrace, which was bounded by the wall of the Temple-buildings.  A flight of steps led up to the massive, splendid gates.  There were two small openings on either side that it seems were to be used for workmen.  North and south were 4 gates, but the most splendid gate was that to the east, termed 'the Beautiful' in Acts 3:2.  

When you entered by this gate you came into the Court of the Women. so called because the women occupied in it two elevated and separated galleries.  They only filled part of the whole court, though.  There were fifteen steps that led to the Upper Court, which was bounded by a wall.  This was where the famous Nicanor Gate stood that was covered with Corinthian brass.  It was here that the Levites were standing when they conducted the musical part of the service.  Also in the Court of the Women were the Treasury and the thirteen 'Trumpets' that held the money for the sacrifices.  (All this is covered more in depth at the archives page on my home page at top.  Just go to The Temple Archives and then Temple Order, Revenues and Music page.  Also I have covered many other aspects of The Temple there that are much more in depth than this passage is, and there are also many pictures of The Temple and its Gates and Courts that can give you more of an idea of what it looked like).  At each corner of the Court there were chambers that were designated for various purposes.  Also beyond the 15 steps to the Nicanor Gate, there were rooms to hold the various musical instruments. 

The Upper Court beyond the Nicanor Gate was divided into two parts by a boundary - the narrow part forming the Court of Israel, and the wider part was that where the priests did their jobs around the great Altar and the Laver.  

The Sanctuary itself was on a higher terrace than the Court of the Priests.  There were twelve steps that led up to its Porch, which extended beyond it on either side north and south.  In the extensions were separate chambers that contained all that was necessary for the sacrificial service.  On two marble tables near the entrance the old shewbread was taken out and the new brought in and placed in the same way that the old had been.  

The Porch was adorned by a massive golden vine with a two-leaved gate opening into the Sanctuary itself, which was divided into two parts.  The Holy Place had the Golden Candlestick placed to the south, the Table of Shewbread to the north,  and the Golden Altar of Incense was between them.  A heavy double veil concealed the entrance to the Most Holy Place.  In the second Temple, this room was empty except for the piece of rock called the Foundation Stone in it.  According to tradition, it covered the mouth of the pit on which it was thought that the world was founded.  None of the above really conveys an adequate picture of the vastness of the Temple-buildings.  All the Sanctuary and each of the Courts were surrounded with various chambers and out-buildings which served different purposed connected with the Services that were carried on there.  

In some part of this Magnificent Temple, we must look for the Child Jesus as he talked and asked questions with the Scribes and Pharisees in the Temple.  Only on the first two days of the Feast of Passover was personal attendance in the Temple necessary.  After that commenced the so-called half-holydays, when it was lawful to return to one's home.  There were probably many who started for home on the third day as there was really nothing else going on of special interest to keep them in the city.  The Passover had already been eaten, the festive sacrifice offered, and the first ripe barley reaped and brought to the Temple and waved as the Omer of first flour before the Lord.  This coincides with Luke 2: 43 - 'when they had fulfilled the days'.  

The Bible doesn't say how Jesus came to be in the midst of all the Temple elite, but according to the Talmud the members of the Temple-Sanhedrin made it a rule to come out upon 'the Terrace' of the Temple and teach on Sabbaths and feast-days.  During the other times they sat as a Court of Appeal from the close of the Morning Sacrifice to the time of the Evening Sacrifice.  During these informal times, they would allow students and others to have a time of debate with them and just ask them questions.  It is in this type of audience, which sat on the ground, mingling with the Doctors during the feast, that Jesus would have been found.  He had to have been here during the feast days, though, because the Sanhedrin would not have been there after the end of the feast.  

Jewish writings give other instances of extremely advanced students, so even though the Scribes were astonished at the learning that Jesus had, they still probably did not think of him as supernatural in any way.  Besides, scientific theological learning would not have been necessary to take part in the popular discussions that they had during these times.  

Judging from later arrangements in Babylon and Palestine, there were two kinds of public lectures, and two kinds of students: 

 The first was a more scientific class, and was designated Kallah (literally, bride), and its attendants Beney-Kallah (children of the bride).  These lectures were delivered in the last month of summer before the Feast of the New Year, and in the last winter month immediately before the Feast of Passover.   They implied considerable preparation on the part of the lecturing Rabbis, and at least some Talmudic knowledge on the part of the attendants.  

The second was called Students of the Court.  During ordinary lectures they sat separated from the regular students by a kind of hedge, outside, as it were in the Court.  Some of them even seemed to be ignorant of the Bible, so these lectures would have been of a very different character than the first.

There may have been nothing that rendered His Presence as supernatural, but all who heard Him were amazed at the answers He gave to be so young.  The Bible does not give clues as to what Jesus may have asked the leaders, but one would have to think that He may have challenged their thinking in some way.  

There are also many more questions that come to our mind as we think of Jesus at the Temple for the first time.  Had the Virgin-Mother told her Son about the Angel of God coming to her foretelling of His Birth, and all the other things that we related to her pregnancy and how all the prophecies had come true regarding where He was born ?  

Jesus was a very meek, quiet child and they must have been surprised and found it truly wonderful that He was sitting in the company of such esteemed people.  He was adamant that He didn't understand why they were upset, because they should have known that that's where He would be - about His Father's business.   They certainly must have taken for granted that when they left Jerusalem, that He was among their kinsfolk or friends, or perhaps playing with the children.  Otherwise they would have not been so anxious to find Him, thinking that harm had maybe come to Him; and also so amazed when they did find Him and find out what He had been doing all this time.

The fact that He acted the way He did leads us to believe that He had been so totally absorbed by the awakening thought of His Mission and His Being that He had forgotten everything else around Him.  He even seemed to wonder why they had even come back for Him in the first place.  

It's very possible that He came to realize for the very first time that this place was truly His Father's House, and to feel the very strong impulse that He was to be 'about His Father's business'.  That forgetfulness of His Child-life was a sacrifice - a sacrifice of self; that entire absorption in His Father's business without any thought of any personal ambition or other selfish desires.  Most of all it was a consecration of Himself to God.  It was the first manifestation of His passive and active obedience to the Will of God.  Even at this stage, He must have realized what  is  quoted in the Bible :  "My meat is to do the Will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work."

From what we have already learned of this History, we do not wonder that the answer of Jesus came to His parents as a fresh surprise.  We can perceive everything as a whole in hindsight, but each fresh manifestation came as something completely new to His parents.  There was no way that they as mere humans could have understood the whole picture of His Divinity at that time.  

At the same time, though, if Mary and Joseph had known the complete picture, Jesus could not have been subject to His Parents, nor had true and proper human training in the way that every other normal child did.  This was God's natural and needful process which was best for the learning of Mary herself, and also for the future reception of His Teaching.  He would be able to teach as a true man because He had lived in the same way as them, but without sinning.

In the next text, we will cover what His life and Man-hood were like growing up in Nazareth according to the antiquity texts that have been found from that time.  It must have been hard for Him to go back to that quiet, unassuming life for the next few years with everything that had happened to Him in The Temple.  

For more information from this book, go to the Archives Page at my site     www.cathydeaton.com    There are other articles of interest there also.

This text has been taken from the book Bible History Old Testament written by Alfred Edersheim.  The book has been used by permission.