The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

SUN-WORSHIP IN SOLOMON’S TEMPLE = 277

the Sun towards the East.”* And here it is important to note that the sacred place of the Sun-worshippers was in the court inside the porch, on the flat top of the sacred mount of their ancestors, and outside the Jewish sanctuary containing the tabernacle and ark, which for them was defiled by its bloodshed meat offerings.

Similarly, in the new temple, rebuilt by the Sun-worshipping Cyrus the Medo-Persian, as ‘‘ The house of God of Heaven,” and begun about 535 B.c.*—for which services he was affiliated to Iahvh as “The Messiah”’ or ‘‘ The Lord’s anointed ’’*—Bel worship appears also to have been practised, more or less.‘ And significantly in Herod's new temple, which was still in course of building when Christ began His ministry,* there was an outer court inside the walls of the “temple” enclosure, called “ The Gentiles’ Court,’’® thus recognizing the right of access for Gentiles (Fire-worshippers ?) to a part of the summit of the sacred mount of their Aryan ancestors. This Outer Court was presumably the part of the “ Temple ” in which the father of John-the-Baptist performed his “ course of Abia,” and the part frequented by Christ.

The word ‘‘ Temple”’ in our English translation of the Bible is used in different senses, and for different words. It is used for the Hebrew words for ‘“‘ Palace,”’ ‘“‘ The House,” “ House of God or of Iahvh,”’ which variously designated the smallish building in the centre of the great court, enshrining the ark in a dark chamber, surrounded by cells for offices, the storage of vessels, furniture and treasures. Tt was not a place of worship, in the sense of a meeting-house of worshippers, ‘‘ The small size of the Temple proper is accounted for by the fact that the worshippers remained outside, the priests only went within,”? The altars were in the court in the open air. “ In this great or outer court the

1 Ezek. viii, 16. *'Ezra, 1, 2, etc.; vi, 4, etc.

3 Jsaiah xlv, 1, and cp. xliv, 28.

4Ezra ix, 1, etc., about 450 B.c. Hosea ii, 16, etc., xiv, 3; and later books Amos to Malachi. Antiochus I. about 250 B.c. set up an altar to Jupiter (x Maccab. 1, 23, etc., and Josephus Af. xii, 7, 6).

5 Johnii,20. Itwas not completed till62-644.p. Encycl, Biblica, 4948.

6 Enc. Bib., 4945.

7 Cambridge Companion to Bible, 153.