Written by Stephen Langfur
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Page 5 of 5
The Mishnah as a Source for Knowledge of the Temple
The Mishnah says that the "mountain of the Temple" was a square, 500 cubits on each side.
Yet we can see all four corners of the rectangular Temple platform (although the northeastern one is in dispute) and we know it was twice 500 cubits long and more than 500 wide.
Ritmeyer supposes that the Mishnah is referring to a pre-Herodian Temple, but the text gives no warrant. Its authors clearly mean the Temple as it was remembered. Twice they mention difficulties in remembering. Surely, memories would not skip over the last two generations of Temple use! Moreover, Ritmeyer often uses the Mishnah to refute others' theories about the Herodian Temple.
Finally, 112 years before the Mishnah was written, Josephus described the Temple. Despite divergences, both sources clearly portray the same building, and of Josephus there is no doubt: he meant to be describing Herod's Temple, which he knew personally.
The mishnaic square of 500 cubits per side seems to be derived, then, not from actual measurements, nor from memory, but from the vision of the Temple in Ezekiel 42:15-20. Sanders , p. 59, notes: "Where Middot differs from Josephus, it is usually in agreement with a biblical description of a non-Herodian temple: Solomon's or Ezekiel's (visionary) temple." Also, the Mishnah fails to mention the great porticoes, which Josephus describes and which no one doubts were there.
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