An Overview of Jerusalem Temples
byJohn H. Yingling, MPS

Jerusalem is sacred ground to Jew, 
Muslim, and Christian alike and it occu-
pies a place in their heart so fraught with 
emotion it can only be adequately ex-
pressed poetically. The city is a crossroad 
between great civilizations, an oasis 
fountain of spiritual water, an umbilical 
cord between God and man, a vortex and 
a point within a circle. Across its stage the 
most significant roles in western re-
ligious history have been played out and 
recorded for the world to experience. 
Melchizedek, Abraham, David, Solo-
mon, Nebuchadnezzar, Zerubabel, 
Ezra, Antiochus IV, Pompey, Herod, 
Jesus, Paul, Titus, Hadrian, Helena, 
Jerome, Muhammad, Caliph Umar Ibn 
Al-Kattab, Calif Abdul Malik Ibn Mar-
wan, Baldwin, Saladin and Suleiman the 
Magnificent, have appeared and left 
their mark. Every great political force 
that has occupied the area has built 
temples of exquisi.e beauty to express 
their spiritual insights and to invoke the 
blessings and protection of God. Temples 
are evidence that men sense a divine 
presence and feel a need to congregate 
for worship. The earliest archeological 
evidence of temple building is in Me-
sopotamia, Egypt and the Levant. Men 
as early as the neolithic period demon-
strated the creative capacity to express 
their most intimate and compelling feel-
ings with building material. It is under-
standable that Freemasonry would 
weave a legend around the construction 
of King Solomon's temple and use it in 
their ritual as an allegory to help men 
come to a better understanding of the 
relationship between God and men, and 
between men.
According to Jewish tradition, it was in
Jerusalem that King David conquered 
the Jebusites and on the threshing floor 
of Araunah built an altar, and a tent to 
house the most sacred object of the He-
brew people: the Ark of the Covenant. It 
was an oblong acacia wood box covered
with gold. Its cover lid was the Mercy 
Seat of God with two cherubims whose 
outspread wings covered the Divine Pre-
sence. In the Ark were the Tables of the 
Covenant between God and his people. 
They were given to Moses at Mount 
Sinai and housed in a portable taber-
nacle during their wandering from Sinai 
to the Promised Land. It seemed to King 
David that the time of wandering and 
settlement was over. A permanent place 
of abode for the Ark was needed. In 967 
B.C.E., his son King Solomon set about 
building a palace complex. It included 
the Temple of the Lord, the palace 
proper (his residence), the house of the 
Pharaohs daughter (whom he had 
married), the Throne Room, the Hall of 
Commons, and the House of the Forest 
of Lebanon. The Temple was to be a 
national religious center that would 
house the Ark of the Covenant and all the 
Tabernacle furniture. It would be the 
focus of Israel's religious and cultural life 
and its judicial and educational activi-
ties. A place where the integrity of the 
priesthood would fix the spiritual level of 
the nation and from which would flow 
brotherly love, social justice and 
economic equality. A place where the 
fires of sacrifice would send up a sweet 
savor to God renewing the bonds of 
Covenant.
These magnificent buildings required 
architectural skills the pastoral Hebrews 
did not have; skills the Canaanites had 
acquired in building other temples in the 
Levant. David's Canaanite friend, King 
Hiram of Tyre and Hiram, son of a man 
of Tyre and a woman of the tribe of 
Napthali (now widowed) joined Solomon 
in the enterprize. A structure meeting 
the requirements of a symbolic taber-
nade with a courtyard, a holy place and 
the Holy of Holies, was erected. Two 
giant columns, commonplace in 
Canaanite Shrines, were placed at its 
entrance. The architecture and adorn-
ment of the building was so beautiful and 
impressive that its fame spread 
throughout the nations. It shaped the 
turbulent life of Israel even in those times 
when used for the worship of those 
Canaanite gods so abhorrent to the 
prophets and priests of Yahweh. In 586, 
almost four hundred years after its com-
pletion, it was looted and razed by Ne-
buchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who 
took the elite of Judah to his capitol. 
Seventy years later, when Cyrus the Per-
sian came to power, he permitted 
Zerubabel to return to Jerusalem to re-
build the Temple. Later Nehemiah and 
Ezra returned to rebuild the city walls. 
The restoration, while it was so lacking 
in magnificence that it made the old men 
weep who remembered Solomon' s 
Temple, still established a place of Jewish 
identity. The second temple existed 
under Persian, Greek, Egyptian and Syr-
ian dominance. The Syrian Antiochus 
IV plundered and committed sacrilege 
in the Temple precipitating the Has-
monean Revolt and a cleansing of the 
Temple.
In 63, the Roman General Pompey, 
captured Jerusalem. Herod usurped the 
Jewish throne, rehabilitated the Temple 
Mount and restored much of the magni-
ficence of the second Temple.
This was the temple into which accord-
ing to Christian tradition, Jesus made his 
triumphal entry as foretold by the proph-
ets. He threw out the money changers 
and healed the blind and the sick. The 
Romans who feared his royal blood gave 
Jesus political aspirations to an earthly 
rather than a spiritual kingdom cruelly 
crucified him. From here Paul left on a 
mission for the Sadducees that turned 
into his missionary journeys to the gen-
tiles.
The Romans, a devoutly religious 
people, felt very strongly that their phe-
nomenal military and political success 
was due to the Gods appreciation of their 
religious observance and did not want to 
curry their disfavor by permitting the 
worship of strange gods. However, they 
had made a special case of the Jews, 
allowing them a limited religious free-
dom. While the rest of the empire was 
relatively peaceful, Jerusalem was a hot 
bed of political revolt so General Titus 
laid siege to it in 70 C.E. He completely 
destroyed the Temple, fulfilling the 
prophecy of Jesus, killed or enslaved 
most of the Jews and left the city in ruins.
In 130 C.E. the Roman Emperor 
Hadrian visited Jerusalem to establish a
garrison colony. They plowed along the 
ruins to build the city walls and called the 
colony Aelia Capitalina. This set off 
another revolt which Hadrian ruthlessly 
put down. He banned all Jews under
pain of death and began the construction
of temples to the Roman Gods to insure 
their blessing.
The Temple Mount called the Quadra 
or Square was left outside the colony 
plans. A temple to Jupiter was erected 
there with an equestrian statue of 
Hadrian facing it. The Tricameron 
Temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and 
Minerva was situated near the main 
market place with a temple to Venus 
facing it. There is evidence from coins 
that a whole pantheon of Gods were wor-
shipped there.
In 326, the Roman Emperor Constan-
tine made Christianity the official re-
ligion of Rome. Macarius, the Bishop of 
Aelia, persuaded Helena (the mother of 
Constantine) to visit the city. It is said 
that 300 years of Roman rule had erased 
all record of the places associated with 
the life of Jesus and it was Helena who 
determined their most likely location. 
She ordered the dismantling of the 
Roman monuments.
There then began under Constantine's 
influence a period of church building in 
Jerusalem. He commissioned Greek ar-
chitects to build the church of the Holy 
Sepulcher in 335. Another church, the 
Eleona was built on the slope of the 
Mount of Olives. The churches of As-
cension and Gethsemane were erected in 
the 380's by noble and rich women who 
had accornpanied St. Jerome to 
Jerusalem. The Byzantine Empress 
Eudocia spent lavishly on churches such 
as St. Stephen. A Samaritan revolt in 529 
and a Persian conquest in 614, led to the 
destruction of most of the churches. In 
629, the Byzantine Christians recovered 
the city.
Meanwhile, according to Muslim 
tradition, Muhammad who had received 
God's last revelation to man and who 
was preaching the monotheistic religion 
of Islam in Mecca, turned his face daily 
to Jerusalem in prayer, as did his fol-
lowers. Escorted by the angel Gabriel 
and mounted on the wondrous horse Al-
Buraq, the Prophet rode from Mecca to 
Jerusalem, stopped and tethered his 
horse at a place later commemorated by 
a mosque, went to the site of the Old 
Temple close by and led the former 
prophets in prayer. Later, Muhammad 
ascended to heaven by means of a celes-
tial ladder standing on a rock over which 
now stands the mosque Quabbat Al-
Sakhra (the Dome of the Rock). He there 
experienced the Beatific Vision, de-
scended and returned to Mecca. 
Muslims decide for themselves whether 
this was a spiritual or a physical journey. 
In 638, the Patriarch Sophronius sur-
rendered Jerusalem to the Muslim Ca-
liph Umar Ibn Al-Kattab, who led the 
rapid spread of Islam. Now began 1300 
years of Muslim rule over Jerusalem,
only interrupted by crusader occupation 
from 1099 to 1187. Caliph Umar at-
tempting to identify the places hallowed 
by the Prophets Nocturnal Journey had 
difficulty in locating them. After diligent 
search, he found the Rock of Ascent 
under a dung hill. He led the cleansing 
of the site and caused a primitive mosque 
to be erected close to both the Rock and 
the place where Al-Buraq had been 
tethered.
Fifty years later, Caliph Abdul Malik 
Ibn Marwan, changed the name of the 
city to Bayt Al-Maqdis (the Holy 
House). It was alternately called Al-
Quds (the Holy City) or Al-Quds Ash-
Sharif (Holy and Noble City). Caliph 
Vmars rude mosque was enlarged and 
beautified to become the magnificent
mosque Al-Aqsa. The monumental 
mosque, the Dome of the Rock, was built 
over the rock where Muhammad as-
cended. The area between the mosques 
became known as Al-Haram AshSharif 
(the noble sanctuary). Caliph Malik 
asked his subjects to perform the pilgri-
mage to Jerusalem while Mecca and 
Medina were in the hands of rivals. Four 
hundred years later in 1099, Christian 
crusaders captured Jerusalem. Their 
massacre of Jews en route to Europe was 
continued in Jerusalem where they 
burned the Jews huddled in their make-
shift synagogue and massacred Muslim 
men women and children who took ref-
uge in the mosques and on the Haram. 
They took possession of the holy Chris-
ian unbelievers,
plundered the mosques of their treasures 
and occupied the Dome of the Rock as 
their palace headquarters. They called it 
Templum Domini. They gave Al-Aqsa 
Mosque and the underground stables to 
the Knights Templar who used it as head-
quarters for their European expansion 
and the protection of Christian pilgrims. 
The Knights Templar called the Aqsa
Mosque the Templum Solomonis and
themselves the Poor Knights of the 
Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The
Crusaders ruled Jerusalem until 1187,
when Saladin reconquered the city. He 
led the cleansing of the mosques, re-
stored the Hararm and established many
new educational and charitable institu-
tions. After being expelled from posi-
tions of political and military power in 
Jerusalem, Christians were allowed to 
return to Al-Quds the Holy city of Jeru-
salem as pilgrims at the tomb of Christ 
as they had for centuries before the 
crusades .
The "visit" to Jerusalem like the pil-
grimage to Mecca (now sanctified by 
tradition) was a prescribed rite to be 
performed at the Dome of the Rock, the 
Al-Aqsa and the Haram. There were 
years when as many as twenty thousand 
Muslim pilgrims were inJerusalem dur-
ing the first few days of the pilgrimage. 
In 1193, Saladin's son built the
Maghariba Mosque and in 1200, the 
governor had the Dome of Ascension 
completed . In 1517, the Muslim Turks of
the Ottoman Empire moved into 
Jerusalem and in 1538 Suleiman the 
Magnificent, restored the city walls and 
monuments. The Muslim Turks ruled 
Jerusalem until the first World War when 
Britain united the Arab tribes to help 
fight the Turks and after the victory 
claimed the area.
It became a British Protectorate named 
Palestine. In 1947, the United Nations 
partitioned Palestine into Jewish and 
Arab states with Jerusalem divided be-
tween them. In 1967, Israeli troops re-
sponding to an attack, captured the en-
tire city and made it the capitol of Israel. 
They permitted Muslim and Christian 
structures to be administered by adher-
ents except when in their judgment it 
endangered Israeli security. There are 
over 60 places of religious significance on 
the Temple Mount or Haram Ash-
Sharif. Most of them are Muslim holy 
places . Jerusalem is now a place of tragic, 
bloody confrontation.
Freemasons who also erect magnificent 
temples to God and who revere Jeru-
salem as the symbolic wellspring of their 
institution require of men who petition 
their brotherhood that they believe in the 
one living and true God. They accept 
Christians, Jews, Muslim, and others 
alike without reservation and make no 
effort to syncretize them into one reli-
gion. They respect each others religious 
traditions; there is no room for arrogant 
confrontation over doctrinal differences. 
The ethical principles and practice of 
morals prevails. They earnestly pray 
that the men of many different religious 
traditions who hold Jerusalem to be 
sacred ground and who fervently feel the 
Divine Presence there, can with temper-
ance, fortitude, prudence and justice 
unite in a political solution that preserves 
for all time a halo of tranquility in 
Jerusalem befitting the sacred shrines of 
all.
Here is a list of books for more special-
ized study:

1. Solomon 's Temple. . . . . . Caldecott
2. The Second Temple. . . . . Caldecott
3. Temple Beyond Time . Klein and Klein
4. The Templars . . . Edward Burman
5. Jerusalem, It's Place in Islam and Arab
History . . . . . . . . . A. L . Tibawi

6. Guide to Dorme of the Rock . . Arif Arif
7 . Encyclopedia Judaica
8. Holy Bible- Kings, Chronicks, Ezra .

Christian - Matthew 23:37
Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that 
killest the prophets and stoneth them 
which are sent unto thee. How often 
would I have gathered thy children to-
gether even as a hen gathereth her chick-
ens under her wings, but you would not.

Mudim Koran - Chapter XVII -
Verse 1
In connection with Muhammads Noc-
turnal Journey to Jerusalem. Glory to 
him who carried his servant by night 
from the Holy Mosque to the further 
mosque (Al-aqsa) the holy precincts of 
which we have blessed.

Jewish - Psalms 137
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat 
down, yea, there we wept when we re-
membered Zion. We hanged our harp 
upon the willows in the midst there of for 
there they that carried us away captive 
required of us a song and they that 
wasted us required of us mirth saying, 
Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How 
shall we sing the Lord' s song in a strange
land. If I forget thee O Jerusalem lest my
right hand forget her cunning if I do not 
remember thee let my tongue cleave to 
the roof of my mouth.


The Philalethes, April 1992
