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twixt the court of the Gentiles and the court of the Israelites is evidently alluded to in the following passage of St. Paul: But now in Christ Jesus, ye, who sometime were afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ: for he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us," Eph. ii, 13, 14: which expresses the union of the Jews and Gentiles in one church by Jesus Christ.

In the outer court was probably kept the market of beasts for sacrifice, which is mentioned by St. John, chap. ii, 14; and there likewise were the money changers, which he also speaks of, who for a small gratuity furnished people, in exchange for other coin, with half shekels, for payment of the annual tribute which every Israelite was to give into the sacred treasury.

The court of the Israelites was divided into two parts. The first, entering at the east end, was called the court of the women, because they were allowed to come no nearer the temple than that court. Of this indeed we have no account in scripture, except it be the same that was called, in Jehoshaphat's time, the new court, 2 Chron. xx, 5. There seem to have been but two courts originally belonging to Solomon's temple; one called "the court of the priests;" the other, "the great court," 2 Chron. iv, 9; and we read that " Manasseh built altars for all the hosts of Heaven, in the two courts of the house of the Lord," 2 Chron. xxxiii, 5. In the great, or outward court, devout Gentiles were allowed to pay their devotion to the God of Israel; and in the court of the priests, or the inner court, the priests and other Israelites worshipped. And as in those times there seems to have been no other distinction of courts but these two, the setting the women at a greater distance from the temple, and from the special tokens of God's presence, than the men, must have been the contrivance of some later ages, without any divine institution, that we find, to support it.

In this court of the women there was placed one chest, or

of being altidudine, in height ten cubits, it should be latitudine, in breadth. Vid. Mishn. tit. Middoth. cap. ii, sect. iii, L'Empereur, not. 3, in loc. tom. v, p. 326, Surenhus.

more, the Jews say eleven, for receiving the voluntary contributions of the people towards defraying the charges of public worship: such as providing the public sacrifices, wood for the altar, salt, and other necessaries. That part of the area where these chests were placed, was the yagopuλaxiov, or treasury, mentioned by St. Mark, chap. xii, 41. And perhaps the whole court, or at least the piazza on one side and the chambers over it, in which the sacred stores were kept, was from hence called by the same name; as the following passage of St. John seems to imply, "These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple," John viii, 20.

From the court of the women, which was on higher ground than the court of the Gentiles, they ascended by fifteen steps into the inner court, in which the temple and altar stood. Into this court, not only the priests, but all male Israelites might enter. Nevertheless, in this court there was a distinction made in Herod's temple, of which we read nothing in Solomon's, betwixt the court of the priests, and that of the people. The court of the priests was nothing but an inclosure of a rail or wall of one cubit high, round about the altar, at a convenient distance from it, to which the people were to bring their offerings and sacrifices; but none beside the priests were allowed to come within that enclosure.

From hence probably the papists have taken the hint of railing in their altars.

Herod began to build the temple about sixteen years before the birth of Christ, and so far completed it in nine years and a half, that it was fit for divine service. In all which time, the Jews say, it never rained in the day time, but only in the night, that the sacred building might not be retarded. However, the outbuildings of the courts were not finished till several years after our Saviour's death; so that when he was about thirty years old, the temple had been forty-six in building: which is the meaning of this passage in the evangelist John," Forty and six years was, wxodounen, which should rather be rendered, hath been, this temple in building," John ii, 20.

The external glory of this latter temple consisted not only

in the opulence and magnificence of the building, but in the rich gifts, avanuara, with which it was adorned, and which excited the admiration of those who beheld them, Luke xxi, 5. The hanging up of avanuara, or consecrated gifts, was common in most of the ancient temples; as we find it particularly was in the temple at Jerusalem; where, among the rest, was a golden table given by Pompey, and several golden vines of exquisite workmanship, and of an immense size, with clusters, saith Josephus, avdpoμnxes, as tall as a man*.

This magnificent temple was at length, through the righteous judgment of God on that wicked and abandoned nation, who had literally turned it into a den of thieves, utterly destroyed by the Romans, on the same month, and on the same day of the month, on which day Solomon's temple was destroyed by the Babylonians+.

Joseph. de Bell. Judaic. lib. v, cap. v, sect. iv, p. 383, edit. Haverc. On this subject may be consulted Lightfoot's Description of the Temple, and Capel's Templi Hierosolymitani triplex delineatio ex Villalpando, Josepho, Maimonide et Talmude, prefixed to Walton's Polyglot.

СНАР. II.

THE SYNAGOGUES, SCHOOLS, AND HOUSES OF

PRAYER.

THE term synagogue, primarily signifying an assembly, came, like the word church, to be applied to places in which any assemblies, especially those for the worship of God, met, or were convened. The Jews use it in the primary sense, when they speak of the great synagogue; meaning the court of seventy elders, which they pretend to have been instituted originally by Moses, and the members of which they afterwards increased to one hundred and twenty.

We are now to treat of synagogues, chiefly in the latter sense; namely, as denoting places of worship. And thus they were a kind of chapels of ease to the temple, and originally intended for the convenience of such as lived too remote statedly to attend the public worship there. But in the latter ages of the Jewish state, synagogues were multiplied far beyond what such convenience required. If we may believe the rabbies, there were no less than four hundred and eighty, or, according to others, four hundred and sixty*, of them in Jerusalem, where the temple stood. So great a

number indeed exceeds all reasonable belief. Nevertheless it is easy to imagine, that as the erecting synagogues came to be considered as a very meritorious work of piety, see Luke vii, 4, 5, the number might soon be increased, by the superstition of religious zealots, beyond all necessity or convenience.

The almost profound silence of the Old Testament concerning synagogues hath induced several learned men to con

* Gemar. Hierosol. tit. Megill. cap. iii, fol. 73, col. 4, and tit. Cethuboth, cap. xiii, fol. 35, col. 3. Vid. Selden. Prolegom. in librum de Successionibus in Bona Defunctorum. p. 15, 16, apud Opera, vol. ii, tom. i. Or Lightfoot Centur. Chorograph, Matt. xxvi.

Mr. Basnage sup

clude, that they had a very late original. poses them to be coeval with the traditions in the time of the Asmonean princes, but a few ages before Christ. Dr. Prideaux does not admit there were any synagogues before the Babylonish captivity*. Vitringa is of the same opinion, and hath said a great deal in support of it. In favour of which sentiment Reland also quotes some passages from the rabbies. But I cannot think their arguments are conclusive. For in the seventy-fourth Psalm, which seems to have been written on occasion of the Babylonish captivity, there is mention made of their enemies having burnt or destroyed “all the synagogues of God in the land," col-mongnadhè èl baarets, Psal. lxxiv, 8: in which passage not only.

mongnadhe, from jangnadh, convenire fecit ad locum tempusque statutum, seems to be properly translated synagogues, where the people were statedly to meet for divine worship; but the words col and baarets, all the synagogues of God in the land, being added, prevent our understanding this expression, as some do, only of the temple, and the holy places belonging to it at Jerusalem. Vitringa seems. sensible of the force of this argument, and endeavours therefore to show, that the phrase may either mean all the places throughout the land, where God had occasionally met his people in old time, and which on that account were had in peculiar veneration; or, at least, the schools and academies of the prophets. An interpretation, which seems not very natural; and indeed this learned author himself was so doubtful of it, that he adds, discerning persons will not imagine, that this one passage, which is of an uncertain sense, is sufficient to counterbalance the arguments I have produced, to prove that synagogues were of a later original.

Again, I observe that St. James speaks of Moses being read in the synagogues" of old time," Acts xv, 21. And indeed it can hardly be imagined, that the bulk of a nation, which was the only visible church of God in the world, should in their purest times, in the days of Joshua, Samuel, and David, seldom or never pay him any public worship: and

* Connect. vol. ii, p. 534—536.

+ Vitring. de Synag. Vet. lib. i, part ii, cap. ix-xii.

Reland. Antiq. Sacr. part i, cap. x, sect. iii, p. 128, 129, 3d edit. 1717.